This is a quote of a quote but I though it was brilliant. It is written by Scott McKnight about NT Wright's book "Virtue Reborn" or "After you Believe" as it has been titled in the States.
"It deserves to be said: one reason so many people read Tom Wright today is because he can write prose that is flat-out captivating. Like this: in discussing love, Wright says the "English word 'love' is trying to do so many different jobs at the same time that someone really ought to sit down with it and teach it how to delegate." But those early Christians, who found the Greek word agape, "seem to have settled quickly on this word as the best available one, and they then gave it the fresh privilege of carrying a new depth of meaning in which some aspects of its previous career were highlighted and others were set aside." Vintage Wright."
Looks like a good read.
Showing posts with label Scott McKnight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott McKnight. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
So What? (Warning: this post is controversial and also quite long!)
So I read a bunch of books over the summer - nothing new there - I'm always reading and thinking - after all my summer book reports the big question is - So What ? How does it change me? What are the challenges? And what am I going to do about them anyway?
The big thing I understand, is it is all founded on relationship (I know that doesn't sound very radical after all 'personal relationship with God' is the mantra of evangelicalism) but bear with me...
Maybe the realisation started a few years back when I really began to study the Bible in a lot more depth - looking at differing views of really fine scholars - and finding that there are competing opinions across a whole range of Christian thought - there isn't one version of the truth (controversy #1). Christianity is a broad church - literally!
Actually - what I have come to understand, is that Christianity is more like independent travel than a package holiday where you accept the whole thing whether you like it all or not. I have become aware that actually what I am looking for is a different skin - one I feel more comfortable in. It is still absolutely a Christian skin, but there are lots of Christians who understand their faith very differently from each other. I guess the branch I've been in for quite a while, and have over time begun to find an increasing dissonance with, is much more certain than I am comfortable with. (you're either in or you're not; you're either saved or you're not; you're either going to hell or heaven; you have to believe the whole Bible is literally true, not myth or story or narrative and other types of literature - Jonah was definitely swallowed by a big fish, there was literal garden with 2 trees and a serpent and actually that serpent was the devil etc.)...and I'm honestly not saying this to disrespect others who believe this (and OK I'm maybe exaggerating for effect!) But honestly, there is a liberation in discovering that you have a valid choice about the kind of journey you make, and that you can make choices about the elements of belief that make sense to you and that you wish to journey with.
You see I do have problems with the Bible (controversy #2) (I agree with Scott McKnight on the emergent podcast) - it doesn't really make any difference to me that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not literally true; I really have no problem that there is such a thing as evolution (no actually that doesn't negate God - that's a category error as John Lennox points out); I have some real questions around some Christians' behaviours - (most of what is on the God Channel; Todd Bentley and his ilk, and what appears to me to be cynical manipulation and a particularly iniquitous brand of "superstitious christianity"); I have problems with hell; I don't care if the Bible is contradictory, that there was more than one Isaiah and that Paul was sometimes expressing an opinion; but I do have real issues about the immorality and the depiction of a god who is a mean, petty, war monger; I'm happy to ask the question about what kind of truth can be found in scripture. I understand that some of this is socially located and not universal theology; that some of this is down to partial revelation and narrow nationalism. The Bible, (unlike the Muslim belief in the Qu'ran or the book of Mormon, didn't pre-exist, wasn't handed down to us complete, by an angel) it is a product of the cultures and people in which and by whom it was written over many hundreds of years. (controversy #3) You have to understand that in order to make sense of it!
The relationship between the Bible and Christians has become significantly different in the last couple of hundred years; it has become individual, not located in community any more; it has completely mediated our understanding of God replacing our "felt" and "lived" experience; speaking into a specific time and place to a particular group of real people. It mirrors our move to "personal" salvation (and yes - as I tried to explain to the housegroup - to nonsense like the rapture - we are individually OK cos we're leaving anyway) (yip I know - controversy #4); no longer is the gospel about the transformational impact on society by a living, believing community.
That's why I like Rob Bell, Shane Claibourne, Emergent, Peter Rollins, Jamie Smith (and even Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard) etc. - it's about fundamentally redefining church as a transformational community; it's about permission to become a Christian traveller and not a package holiday maker passing through without touching the culture, living in my own personal Christian bubble eating at the tourist snack bars which sell egg and chips and show football on satellite TV. (does this make sense?)
What has become important to me is to search for understanding; learning to practice my faith in ways which come from many Christian traditions; which help me make sense of the world and God.
I do believe in a loving Creator and in the full revelation of this God being incarnated in Christ; I do believe that Jesus life and resurrection are just as important as his death; I understand this to be about love and showing a better way; I don't understand it to be legal, transactional or about assuaging God's wrath; I understand much better that theology is a conversation and that the gospel is always incarnated in a cultural context; and at it's heart is about a relationship, in fact the ultimate relationship.
On a final note (and in no way controversial I think), my daughter has started attending youth housegroup, run by a fantastic couple, and she's really loving it. She came home the other week and said - "Christianity has so many rules to follow" (the discussion had got around to going "up the town" on a Saturday night drinking and clubbing and what the Christian thing to do is). I said to her - "I don't understand God like that - Do you have a set of rules that you follow living in this family?" She thought about that, "No" she said. "Actually" I said "how we understand each other is through our relationship, living in the context of mutual love and acceptance. We love each other, and so we seek to understand one another and live together in a way that makes sense to us and honours the relationship". (that sounds a bit pretentious and I probably said it more simply - but she really got it)
I honestly understand God like this now. We find our journey in God completely mediated by his loving relationship with us. But our Christian lives are also mediated in community - in some senses it's never just about "God and me".
The big thing I understand, is it is all founded on relationship (I know that doesn't sound very radical after all 'personal relationship with God' is the mantra of evangelicalism) but bear with me...
Maybe the realisation started a few years back when I really began to study the Bible in a lot more depth - looking at differing views of really fine scholars - and finding that there are competing opinions across a whole range of Christian thought - there isn't one version of the truth (controversy #1). Christianity is a broad church - literally!
Actually - what I have come to understand, is that Christianity is more like independent travel than a package holiday where you accept the whole thing whether you like it all or not. I have become aware that actually what I am looking for is a different skin - one I feel more comfortable in. It is still absolutely a Christian skin, but there are lots of Christians who understand their faith very differently from each other. I guess the branch I've been in for quite a while, and have over time begun to find an increasing dissonance with, is much more certain than I am comfortable with. (you're either in or you're not; you're either saved or you're not; you're either going to hell or heaven; you have to believe the whole Bible is literally true, not myth or story or narrative and other types of literature - Jonah was definitely swallowed by a big fish, there was literal garden with 2 trees and a serpent and actually that serpent was the devil etc.)...and I'm honestly not saying this to disrespect others who believe this (and OK I'm maybe exaggerating for effect!) But honestly, there is a liberation in discovering that you have a valid choice about the kind of journey you make, and that you can make choices about the elements of belief that make sense to you and that you wish to journey with.
You see I do have problems with the Bible (controversy #2) (I agree with Scott McKnight on the emergent podcast) - it doesn't really make any difference to me that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not literally true; I really have no problem that there is such a thing as evolution (no actually that doesn't negate God - that's a category error as John Lennox points out); I have some real questions around some Christians' behaviours - (most of what is on the God Channel; Todd Bentley and his ilk, and what appears to me to be cynical manipulation and a particularly iniquitous brand of "superstitious christianity"); I have problems with hell; I don't care if the Bible is contradictory, that there was more than one Isaiah and that Paul was sometimes expressing an opinion; but I do have real issues about the immorality and the depiction of a god who is a mean, petty, war monger; I'm happy to ask the question about what kind of truth can be found in scripture. I understand that some of this is socially located and not universal theology; that some of this is down to partial revelation and narrow nationalism. The Bible, (unlike the Muslim belief in the Qu'ran or the book of Mormon, didn't pre-exist, wasn't handed down to us complete, by an angel) it is a product of the cultures and people in which and by whom it was written over many hundreds of years. (controversy #3) You have to understand that in order to make sense of it!
The relationship between the Bible and Christians has become significantly different in the last couple of hundred years; it has become individual, not located in community any more; it has completely mediated our understanding of God replacing our "felt" and "lived" experience; speaking into a specific time and place to a particular group of real people. It mirrors our move to "personal" salvation (and yes - as I tried to explain to the housegroup - to nonsense like the rapture - we are individually OK cos we're leaving anyway) (yip I know - controversy #4); no longer is the gospel about the transformational impact on society by a living, believing community.
That's why I like Rob Bell, Shane Claibourne, Emergent, Peter Rollins, Jamie Smith (and even Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard) etc. - it's about fundamentally redefining church as a transformational community; it's about permission to become a Christian traveller and not a package holiday maker passing through without touching the culture, living in my own personal Christian bubble eating at the tourist snack bars which sell egg and chips and show football on satellite TV. (does this make sense?)
What has become important to me is to search for understanding; learning to practice my faith in ways which come from many Christian traditions; which help me make sense of the world and God.
I do believe in a loving Creator and in the full revelation of this God being incarnated in Christ; I do believe that Jesus life and resurrection are just as important as his death; I understand this to be about love and showing a better way; I don't understand it to be legal, transactional or about assuaging God's wrath; I understand much better that theology is a conversation and that the gospel is always incarnated in a cultural context; and at it's heart is about a relationship, in fact the ultimate relationship.
On a final note (and in no way controversial I think), my daughter has started attending youth housegroup, run by a fantastic couple, and she's really loving it. She came home the other week and said - "Christianity has so many rules to follow" (the discussion had got around to going "up the town" on a Saturday night drinking and clubbing and what the Christian thing to do is). I said to her - "I don't understand God like that - Do you have a set of rules that you follow living in this family?" She thought about that, "No" she said. "Actually" I said "how we understand each other is through our relationship, living in the context of mutual love and acceptance. We love each other, and so we seek to understand one another and live together in a way that makes sense to us and honours the relationship". (that sounds a bit pretentious and I probably said it more simply - but she really got it)
I honestly understand God like this now. We find our journey in God completely mediated by his loving relationship with us. But our Christian lives are also mediated in community - in some senses it's never just about "God and me".
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