11.03.09

the church at the close of Modernity..

Posted in formation, gospel, hermeneutics at 5:00 am by len

Here in the death throes of Modernity we live mostly in our heads. The Church is little different than the culture. The solutions and attempts at change, in particular the calls for leaders and churches to change, are largely appeals to change our thinking and sometimes appeals that shame or guilt us. (Just listen to the sermons we preach). The problem is seen as one of correct thinking or right belief – therefore the solution advanced is new and better information. We have attempted to bring change in this way for most of the last generation and the result is churches in decline, a valley full of dry bones, and a Church that looks very much like the world around it. Our churches are filled with consumers of religious goods and services.

Where did we go wrong?

What if we have completely skewed our anthropology, in part because we have misread the New Testament through Enlightenment eyes?

What if instead of Reason as primary our affections are where we deeply live? We are creatures of desire. As Smith argues, eros must order agape.
What if formation cannot take place except through the embrace of disciplines that form us body and soul? (See the disciplines of engagement and abstinence in Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines).
In short, what if the analysis of writers like William Cavanaugh (Being Consumed) and James K.A. Smith is correct? And really, we would have to include Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson and Dallas Willard in this group, but the work of James Smith in Desiring the Kingdom has drawn out the philosophical and theological thread in much richer detail. This “thick description” may help us see the problem more clearly. Realistic treatment grows out of a correct diagnosis – and the patient does not have much time left..

We have rightly been concerned with truth, but that concern has not produced apprentices of Jesus. Perhaps this is a clue that the mind is not the “primary” locus of personality formation in humankind?

This past weekend I listened to a passionate young preacher defending “absolute truth” as knowable and unchanging. He began by identifying Truth (cap “T”) with God, but then proceeded to defend reason as a path to knowing God. He clearly assumed that defending reason was defending our faith.

Lesslie Newbigin, the father of western mission, asked this question in Foolishness to the Greeks:

As people who are part of modern Western culture, with its confidence in the validity of its scientific methods, how can we move from the place where we explain the gospel in terms of our modern scientific world-view to the place where we explain our modern scientific world-view from the point of view of the gospel? (22)

When did reason become the foundation of our faith? How does reason relate to revelation? And more importantly, how does love relate to knowledge? We have many people who call themselves disciples because they believe rightly or because they perform good deeds — are these things the essence of faith or a necessary result of knowing God? If they are the essence, why do we have so many bored congregants who are mostly concerned with enjoying the good life and do not live as citizens of God’s kingdom?

If the problem of discipleship is a problem of right thinking or right action, then we should really have got it right by now — but the Church is in deep trouble. I hear appeals to morality and behavior on one hand, and appeals to correct belief on the other. There are few places where I hear a real call to conversion at the level of Spirit and desire. But the Monastics had it right — “God is not known if he is not loved.” It is by the witness of the Spirit in our hearts that we know that we are children of God, and it is the Spirit who transforms us.. the flesh profits nothing.

“Hear, O Israel. The LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength…”

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