How Deconstruction Saved My Faith 2
Written by admin on April 26, 2008 – 4:10 pmI was reading an interview with Brian McLaren on his book Everything Must Change from The Other Journal, and I read something in his narrative from the early 90’s that is very similar to what I was going through during 1990-1999. Here is what he says:
[Lost people's] questions re-opened for me something I had encountered a long time ago in graduate school, and that’s postmodern philosophy, and this cultural shift from modern to a postmodern culture. So in the early nineties I started grappling with that shift, and it was really tough… If you want to use a term that comes out of that postmodern world, the word would be deconstruction. I was undergoing a deconstruction. Not a deconstruction of my faith as a personal trust in God, but of my theological categories and of my theological methodology. So that’s not an easy thing to go through, but once you do a lot of deconstruction, then you have to start reconstructing or else you end up with nothing but a bunch of fragments.
The difference here for me from McLaren is that I actually discovered a more personal trust in God after the deconstruction of my theological categories and cultural history. In about 1993, I began the reconstruction even as I continued the process of theological, cultural, and denominational deconstruction. In fact, I think today I still go through a continual process of deconstructing. I would prefer to call it reformata et semper reformanda - reformed and always reforming. And here is the key to so many things right now for me (and for people like Roger Olson, John Franke, Stanley Grenz before he passed, Kevin VanHoozer, Nancey Murphey, LeRon Shults, John Stackhouse Jr., NT Wright, Rob Bell, Scot McKnight and many many more people). I could probably write a book right now about how so many people in the evangelical world are misunderstanding some new theological and practical movements in the emerging church as heretical, when what these people are honestly trying to do is reform the church according to the Scriptures. In fact, they’re trying to re-read the Scriptures in a way that takes seriously the impact of cultural and theological history upon our reading in good ways and bad. More on this in a couple follow-up posts to come.
Posted under Articles, Books, Church, Culture, Emerging Church, Evangelicalism, Personal, Scripture |
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April 28th, 2008 at 2:43 am
OK, so here’s the thing for me:
I understand that the emerging church people are trying to be faithful and reform (or return, depending on who you speak to) the church to a more scripturally authentic form. Or at least I think that’s what they’re trying to do. And I agree it’s good to, as you say, “re-read the Scriptures in a way that takes seriously the impact of cultural and theological history upon our reading…”
But.
Isn’t there a fine line here between reforming and relativism? Maybe you’ve covered this in older posts, I haven’t looked, but what is your benchmark, your gold standard? I understand your hesitations about labeling people as in or out of a certain group, but don’t we need some definition of what is orthodox? By that I mean, of what we believe to be TRUE? Those things that *don’t* change regardless of time or culture or place? I’m not suggesting that we exclude those who don’t believe those things from our communities or churches– let’s be welcoming to all, whatever their stage in their journey of faith– but as Christians, we do believe in an objective truth on certain matters. Isn’t it important for us to determine what those matters are, and what we believe to be the truth about them? Most obviously, of course, we believe objectively in the birth, death, and resurrection of our Savior. Postmodern, enlightenment, dark ages, renaissance, take your pick– if you’re a Christian, there’s no negotiation about whether or not that’s _true_. But is that all we believe to be objectively true? What else? What about the nature of baptism? Is it OK to baptize babies? What about original sin? What about the trinity? Was Jesus both divine and human? Was Jesus’ birth truly a virgin birth? Is the gospel of Thomas valid?
I’m throwing theological questions out there, some maybe arcane, some not, and I’m not even touching the moral issues like abortion and homosexuality. But how do we determine what is true, and what we need to know the truth about and what we can say it’s ok to have differences of opinion about?
April 29th, 2008 at 1:30 am
[...] April 29, 2008 – 1:30 am Henry asks some great, probing questions. [see his comment under "How Deconstruction Saved My Faith 2] And just as an aside… Henry… I really appreciate how you’ve written these [...]