Intellectual Integrity Wins!

Have you ever observed people being accused of resisting someones ideas because of fear? Someone writes a controversial book and reviewers critique the book and take exception to the writer's propositions as expressed in the book. Then the author responds that his critics are reacting out of fear.

Oh really? The author knows this for sure? All the criticism of his book is based on fear? Fear is the primary driving motive of the criticism?

But what if it is not? What if the criticism was based on the reviewer's properly critical rational examination of the author's own words and arguments as presented in the book? What if the criticism is based on an objective scholarly analysis of the author's own words and assertions?

What if the criticism comes from a basis of intellectual integrity, and the reviewer in his or her analysis detects that the author has not been entirely intellectually honest with the data; that critical points of context and other relevant information and data have been ignored or overlooked?

And why is the author responding to his critics with an ad hominem argument? Were the critics suppose to leave their brains at the door of their office before sitting down and reviewing the author's book? Are all critical rational thinking facilities to be laid aside when it comes to examining this writers assertions and claims?

And why use such emotional words such as "fear" or "afraid" in labeling one's critics? After all, does the author want dialogue or monologue?

What if in the end it is not fear that drives the criticism, but on the contrary it is application of the rigor of intellectual integrity?

In that case intellectual integrity and honesty wins.

Love wins?

For a number of years in our metropolitan area there have been those who have summed up their Christian perspective in the slogan "Love wins!".

At face value it sounds nice. We think of John 3:16 and all the other familiar verses in the Bible that talk about the love of God. We think of how God expressed his love in sending His only begotten son. We recognize that God's love plays a very important part in the course of Biblical redemptive history.

So why is it that in recent days I find myself questioning that slogan?

Context means a lot. Here is the context of how the slogan "Love wins.." is being used.

Something very subtle is happening here.

Instead of saying "Love wins!", why don't we say "God wins!"?

God IS love... But God is much more then JUST love... God doesn't win because love wins (as though God is just along for the ride). If love wins, (and it does), love's winning is subsidiary to the fact that God in the whole of His person-hood wins.

So I ask once again. Instead of saying "Love wins!", why don't we say "God wins!"?

What I sense is subtly happening is the person of God is being replaced with some concept of love. In doing so we end up worshiping some idea of "love" instead of the God who in His person is the great "I AM". The other pitfall we face is wanting to define for ourselves what "love" is. God as the source of love is greater then love. God as the source of love is the one who defines both what love is, and what love is not.

Idolatry can be very subtle.

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." (I John 5:21)

God wins!

A New Kind of Christianity or an Old Kind of Heresey?

(Reviews of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity.)

Dr. Mike Wittmer did an extended critical review of Brian McClaren's A New Kind of Christianity. Here are links to those posts:

• A New Kind of Christianity, Introduction
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 1
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 2
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Interlude
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 3
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 4
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 5, Part 1
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 5, Part 2
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 6
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 7
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Questions 8-9
  
• A New Kind of Christianity, Question 10
  
  

A New Kind of Christianity: Review by Tim Challies

Why Brian McLaren’s New Book is Good for the Emerging Church
by Trevin Wax

Kevin DeYoung's two part review:
Christianity and McLarenism (1)
Christianity and McLarenism (2)

Review: Brian McLaren's 'A New Kind of Christianity'
Scot McKnight at Christianity Today

~ The Billy Goat ~

Narrative and Proposition

[This post is a continuation of thoughts flowing from the previous post titled The Emergent Failure, and the further extended comments on the blog post from which that previous post was sparked.]

The pictures in my mind go back over 50 years ago when I was a young boy sitting in the Sunday School class at the church we went to. Three faces and names appear in those pictures; Mrs. Eicher, Mrs. Ennis, and Mrs. Ruckman. There may have been others, but these three ladies were the ones who remain in my memory some 50 plus years latter.

It was these ladies who taught me at a very young age the Story; the Narrative if you will. It is from these ladies I learned the story of creation and the fall, the story of Noah and the ark, the stories of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and Joseph and his brothers, the small boy named Samuel, David and Goliath, the birth of Jesus, his ministry, his death and resurrection, the out pouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus and his missionary journeys. They told those stories, illustrating those stories with flannel graph figures placed on the board.

Yes, there were rudimentary propositional truths taught along with the stories. It was those propositional truths that gave the stories and the Story meaning and purpose. What was the meaning of the fall? Why was there a flood? Why all the fuss about a baby in a manger? Why was Jesus killed? Why is His resurrection meaningful? All those are questions that require some form of rudimentary propositional statement for an answer.

There were also ethical teachings that went along with the stories, be nice and kind to people, respect your elders, don't "kill" your little brother, love God and do what He says.

The point is that over 50 years ago Sunday School teachers were presenting Christianity to their students as narrative; narrative that provided the context and content for propositional theological and ethical truth.

Even in the churches I've been in that did not have a formal liturgy based on a church calender, there was the observing of Christmas and Easter; occasions pointing back to specific points of the Narrative and recognition of the importance of those Narrative events.

And that's not just my story.

Over the years since that time in my life I've met other Christians from different traditions and church backgrounds who essentially give the same testimony. Christianity was presented to them as the Story that gives a context and content to theological beliefs and ethical behaviour. The Story was not told as "propositional postulates", but as Narrative that has meaning and purpose. The articulating of that meaning and purpose of necessity brings us to propositional postulates, but those postulates only have meaning and basis in the context of the Narrative. We cannot somehow pit Narrative against postulates, nor postulates against Narrative. They go together, Narrative leading, propositional postulates following, but always together, not ever separate.

I whole heartedly agree with the statement, "Telling this story as propositional postulates isn’t a compelling story to most people in America outside of the church." I would only add that telling the story in that fashion would not be a compelling story for most people inside the church as well. But that said, what I do take issue with is the implication that the churches at large have been and are continuing to tell this story only as propositional postulates. To seperate the two is to truncate the Gospel. There have been over the years some popular Gospel presentations that appear to do that, but even those presuppose the Narrative. Rewrite the Gospel tracts if you must, but in doing so, do not minimize either Narrative or proposition. And don't presume the existence of such tracts is normative or has been normative or all encompassing for how the church has been or is telling the Story.

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

The Emergent Failure

“God seems to tolerate pretty much all sins…”

The above quote is from a comment made to a posting on another blog. What follows is my response to that comment.

I don’t know what “bible” you are reading. The Bible I read, the one containing the 66 books recognized from ancient times by the whole church. (Catholic and Protestant alike) clearly teaches that God does NOT tolerate ANY sin. It is the lack of tolerance on God’s part towards sin that made a Saviour necessary; which makes the Gospel necessary (I Corinthians 15). The love of God never over rides God’s intolerance for any and all sin. That’s what the Gospel is; God expressing His love, yet in a way that that maintains and affirms His intolerance of all sin. It only takes one sin to go to hell (James 2:10).

God’s providential dealing with us and our sins while we are yet alive in this world is one thing. How He will deal with those sins in the day of judgement is another. Sin will be dealt with; either at the cross of Christ, or before the judgement seat of God in that last day. Of course if you don’t believe sin is “sin”, you can delude yourself that you are off the hook and all is OK…

There is a lot about Biblical Christianity that an unbelieving world finds “odd”. That’s nothing new. On Mars Hill unbelieving Greeks scoffed at the idea of a resurrection from the dead. We’re not here to make the “odd” “not odd” for an unbelieving world. We are here to bear witness to what God has said in time and space, ie- history, in His objective word. If your post-modern mind rebels at the use of the word “objective”, that is nothing more then an example of your post-modern rebellion against the God who created you. Modernity rebelled against that God too. What you have done in your embrace of Post-modern epistemology applied to Christianity and Scripture is to fail to bear witness against the baals of post-modernity in the same way the old liberalism failed to bear witness against the baals of modernity. To embrace the epistemology of either modernity or post-modernity is a failure of Biblical witness and a compromising with the baals of the age. For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Modernity has its sophistry against which we rightly protest. Post-modernity has just as much sophistry as modernity. The failure of the emergent movement is the failure to protest that sophistry too. In that failure is the failure of the emergent movement to bear authentic Christian witness, and in some cases to put ones self outside of the Christian religion all together.

Kyrie Eleison!

The Twofold Basis of Love

The relationship of love I have with my wife is based on two fundamental epistemological foundations.

First is the objective propositions I know about her. She is Nancy; not Karen or Lucy or Martha. And she is a very specific Nancy; not any of the other Nancys I have had acquaintance with through my life time. There are very specific objective propositions that define who she is and which set her apart from all other individuals. Or to put it another way, there are boundaries that uniquely define who she is in contrast to all others in the world. Those boundaries, of necessity, exclude all others from her uniqueness.

Second is the experiential (existential) relation that I have with her in the marital state that over our years together has resulted in the accumulation of a life time of shared intimate experiences which are not shared with anyone else; and which unite us together in way that was never imagined when we first spoke our vows to one another.

Take away either of these two fundamental foundations, and my marriage to her starts to become meaningless and empty. (In fact I will make so bold to say as an aside that in my observation many a divorce in our culture is a result of a break down at one or both of these foundations.)

It is no small thing that Paul compares the relationship of marriage between a man and a woman to the relationship Christ has with His people as constituted in the church.

I can only begin to know Jesus when I have both objective propositional truth about who He is, and a personal intimate (existential) relationship to Him.

Modernity wants me to rest on propositional truth alone. Post-modernity wants me to rest on existential experience alone. Biblical perspective requires me to resist both extremes, and be counter-cultural to both.

If either one of these foundations are taken away, then it becomes impossible to really know Jesus in any meaningful way. There is a specific Jesus to intimately know. That specificity in itself creates definition and that definition sets a boundary that excludes all others who would claim to be "Jesus".

The Bible talks about false Christs, so it is not just any “Jesus” I need to get to know or “move towards”. The assertion false Christs exist, demands a definition and boundary by which we know who the true Jesus is. That is the Jesus we are be in intimate relation with.

Do you "know" Him?

Peace...

~ The Billy Goat ~

On Being Evangelical
(being a somewhat rambling personal manifesto of sorts.)

It is really easy to bash Evangelicalism. To often Evangelicalism seems to go out of its way to invite the bashing it gets. I'm not talking so much about the antagonism of the unbelieving secular culture, I'm talking about how Evangelicalism gets bashed by those who are its friends and by Evangelicals themselves. And again, all to often, the criticism from within and from without is well earned and deserved.

Evangelicalism is a pretty broad spectrum. Just look at all the different theologs signed up as members of the Evangelical Theological Society. With that broad a spectrum, there is plenty of room for the oddball and the weired, and it is very little wonder that Evangelicalism seems to stumble all over itself. In the world of Blog, much has and is being said about the Evangelical crises and some have looked at the future of Evangelicalism and concluded the future is not very positive at all.

In recent years, one of those critiques of Evangelicalism has come out of the Emergent movement. Much has been written back and forth by both sides of that "conversation", and it is not my intent to bore you to death by rehashing all the nuances of that conversation.

I’ve verbalized before that for Christianity to remain authentic, it is and ultimately has to be counter-cultural, and that means being counter-cultural to both modernity and post-modernity. It occurs to me that what I hear missing in the emergent conversation is the witness concept of the church, and what it is the church is to witness to. The church is to bear witness to God and His redemptive acts in history. Evangelicals tend to lose focus on their role as witness when they get preoccupied with numbers and programs and whatever the latest evangelical fad happens to be.

But this also begs the question, how does being “emergent” bear witness to God and His historical redemptive acts; His breaking into time and history to work redemptively? How is “emergent” countra-postmodernity? If “emergent” is only countra-modernity, and not also contra-postmodernity, then I do not see how “emergent” can be bearing authentic witness to God and His historically redemptive acts.

Once upon a time I was in a church situation where I sensed that I was being forced to choose between the theological tradition of the movement this church was part of, and Evangelicalism at large. Whatever words or assertions to the contrary, the standard of reasonable doubt indicated otherwise. I could either be of tradition "X", or I could be Evangelical, but I would not be allowed to be both at the same time without becoming a major disruption to the peace of that church. What was really sad is the confessional standard of that tradition is, in the main, an evangelical document, but the mentality pervading the churches in that tradition refrained and shied away from embracing evangelical commonality with Evangelical groups that did not share that particular tradition. I ended up leaving. I found that first and foremost, before whatever specific church or theological tradition I would find myself in, I was and remain an Evangelical.

When I first became a Christan, the Almighty gracious God used a “modern” Evangelicalism to reach down and grab me by the scruff of the neck and bring me to Himself. The specific context was a "Four Spiritual Laws" presentation. God sovereignly used that Evangelicalism to bring me to Himself in spite of all of that Evangelicalism’s deficiencies and problems and scandals, and in spite of the weakness, theological or otherwise, of the evangelistic methodology used. For in spite of all that weakness and deficiency, at the foundation and kernel of that presentation was an authentic witness to God and His redemptive acts in time and space, -ie history.

A Jesus devoid of those historical redemptive acts is a Jesus not worth wasting my time or anybody else’s time on. That’s not just my assessment, it was the Apostle Paul’s assessment in I Corinthians 15. No physical bodily Resurrection of Jesus, no reason to believe at all.

I am an Evangelical. I do not fear for the future of Evangelicalism. Christ will, as He has been doing for 2,000 years, build His church. As such, there will always be some sort of Evangelical witness. Evangelicalism as we know it may fade away, and perhaps it should, but there will always be an Evangelical witness to the fact God is, and He has acted in time and space. To be evangelical is to to proclaim the hope of the Gospel; that God exists and He has acted redemptively in history to redeem a lost mankind from their fallenness and enstrangement from Him.

Come! Worship Him!

~ The Billy Goat ~

What is truth?

[In this post I am pulling together, editing and expanding on some comments I made to a recent post on another blog. ]

"Right now, Christianity is seen as a set of beliefs. Believe the right stuff, and you are Christian. Step in this box with its bounded sides, and you are “in.” Step out of line, and you may be outside of the realm of what we consider ‘orthodox’ or right belief. We live and work out of a bounded set constraint.

But there is another way.

A centered set paradigm places Jesus at the center and asks that we move toward him."

When someone distinguishes between "moving towards Jesus" and "Christianity as a set of beliefs" they are presupposing a false dichotomy.

I don’t have to choose between a belief set and “moving towards Jesus”. How do I know the Jesus I must move towards? Yes we must indeed move toward Him, in becoming more like Him. But the Jesus we must move towards is not a Jesus we imagine in our consciousness, but Jesus as He is objectively presented in the Gospel accounts. (I know I just used a “trigger” word post- modernity takes issue with.)

My question for our Emergent friends is who is the “Jesus” you are moving towards? How do you put content and context to who this “Jesus” is? How do you know the “Jesus” your are moving towards is the Jesus you should be moving towards? For that matter, how do you even know you should be moving towards “Jesus” at all? You can’t even speak of these things at all without context and content, and as soon as you have context and content, guess what? You have a belief set box!

It’s not “either/or”. It is “both/and”. I need a belief set to know who the Jesus is that I desperately need to be moving towards. And that box is not one of my making. God has spoken in time and history and He has spoken objectively about what reality is. We did not draw the box. He did. We can only recognize what He has already drawn. That is what something as basic as the Apostle’s Creed is all about; recognizing the box God Himself drew.

“As Pete Rollins suggests, we know about God and we know much of God, but we don’t know all of God. ”

My Emergent friend, I can accept and agree with this statement taking it at face value. The question that remains is are there things we do know of God that we can know with an unchanging, unwavering certainty that such “God facts” remain true in all times and in all cultures? Is there a box of “God facts” that God Himself has drawn that all, in all times and in all cultures, must believe and accept in order to know God rightly and savingly? If Jesus is in that box, then what are the facts about Jesus we need to know in order to really know Him?

Yes, to know someone involves more then just knowing facts about that person, but at the same time without some basic facts about that person, I can’t really start knowing him or her.

I am freely willing to confess that even after several thousand years in glory, we will still have to say we don’t know all of God and as finite beings never will know all of God. What I resist is a notion that what I do know of God I can not know with unwavering certainty. There are many lesser points of theology I am willing to hold with a loose hand. But I also see some core fundamental issues that I need to hold with a tight fist if I am to truly be in the faith.

Is it asking to much to ask of our Emergent friends that they clearly define those things they would hold to with a tight fist? Is it so wicked a sin to insist on and ask for clear and precise definitions? After all, what is truth?

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31)

Some Excerpts from The New Evangelical Scandel
by Matthew Lee Anderson, The City
(A publication of Houston Baptist University)

...The rejection of partisanship by younger evangelicals is part of a broader deterioration and rejection of the institutions that shaped the identities of our parents. While younger evangelicals may claim to be above the partisan fray politically, they are increasingly segregated into self-selected niche communities from which they derive—or better, create—their respective identities. Despite its claims to reject modernity, this communitization suggests the triumph of western liberalism over the evangelical mind....

...This principle of self-control and self-realization undergirds young evangelicals’ consumption of media. The new mantra of cultural engagement provides young evangelicals an effective cover to consume the same media as their peers. They are deeply convinced that such media has no effect on their lives—remaining confident they are carefully protected from the bad effects of consumerism by their flawless decision-making abilities.

This is one of the deep ironies of the young evangelical ethos. While vehemently rejecting the consumerism of 20th century evangelicalism, young evangelicals have adopted a new consumerist mindset under the guise of engagement with culture—a mindset that earns them access into the social standing they desire. The consumerism that has infected the core of evangelicalism has not been eradicated in the younger generations—it has simply been subsumed under a new teaching. Young evangelicals aspire to be urbane, sophisticated, and not appear judgmental or harsh—they want to be cool. And being cool means tossing aside the social mores that many of them grew up in, and transforming themselves into faith-soaked libertines....

...Young evangelicalism, then, is not so different from previous iterations. It shares the same contours, the same pursuits, and even the same human propensity to self-deception as previous generations. But it is different in its expression, and in this it presents new opportunities and challenges for the Church in America.

The above excerpts are from a lengthy essay by Matthew Lee Anderson. Please use the link above to access the full essay.

Interview with Tim Stoner 1: Emerging’s False Dichotomies

Trevon Wax interviews Tim Stoner, author of The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditation on Faith. Stoner helpfully provides a list of what he sees as the Emergent Church's "false antinomies (driving a wedge between concepts that only appear to be opposites)", and "Its false synonyms (equating concepts that only appear to be similar)...". Here is the excerpt from that part of the interview:

First off, there are the Emerging Church’s false antinomies (driving a wedge between concepts that only appear to be opposites):

1. The Gospel is about a person, not a message.
2. The Gospel is an event to be proclaimed, not a doctrine to be professed.
3, The message and its interpretation is fluid, not static and solid.
4. The Gospel is about behavior, not belief.
5. The Gospel is primal/elemental (ancient), not European/sacramental (antiquated).
6. The Bible is a human book, not an utterly unique, divinely inspired revelation from God.
7. The church is for the lost, not the found.
8. Life is about searching (pioneer), not finding (settler).
9. Evangelism is about saving the world, not individual souls.
10. The Bible is about stories (indicatives that describe), not prescriptions (imperatives that prescribe).
11. God cares about the boardroom, not the bedroom.
12. Jesus came to set an example, not appease the wrath of God.
13. God is a God of love, not judgment (because He loves He does not hate).
14. Those who teach or believe other “stories” need to be respected, not converted.
15. We are to love the “world”, not hate it.
16. Our posture toward culture is to affirm it, not critique it.

But then, as if to counter its imbalance, it careens off track by over-compensating, for it brings together things that are not the same.

Its false synonyms (equating concepts that only appear to be similar):

1. Anger with abuse.
2. Authority with authoritarian.
3. Confidence with smug.
4. Fundamentals with fundamentalism.
5. Judgment with judgmentalism.
6. Correction with criticism
7. Power with oppression.
8. Fervor with fanaticism.
9. Militancy with militarism.
10. Uncertainty (ambiguity, doubt) with humility

Why Does It Matter: Theological stances

What's the big deal? You have a theological stance and they have their theological stance. You both believe in Jesus, so why argue so much?"

Our young friend lamouriaam at the Image Bearing blog talks about why in the discussions of emergent theology, the failure to maintain a holistic theology that encompasses all of revelation, is fraught with danger.

The Brian McClaren File

This Changes Everything: An Interview with Brian McLaren
posted by Melvin Bray @ 2/06/2008

"Q: Some might say that heretofore environmentalism, conservationism and other such movements have been very much focused on staving off the catastrophe that is our inevitable future. In this perhaps they find some small common ground with the predominant trends in eschatology. In what ways do you believe the way of Jesus speaks into these convergent themes of inevitable doom, transforming them into meaningful efforts of hope and sustainability?

A: Many Christians seem to believe that God’s relationship with the universe is deterministic, that God has already filmed the future in his mind, and what we’re seeing unfold in history is the showing of a movie that’s already “in the can” so to speak. I don’t believe that. I believe God’s relationship with creation—including us—is interactive. God gives us warnings, which are an invitation to change our ways. God gives us promises, which are an invitation to persevere when the going gets tough. A great example is the prophet Jonah. He was sent to Nineveh to prophesy doom, in hopes that the people would repent so the prophecy wouldn’t come true."

[Brian misses again.... For him God is not sovereign. What about all the prophecy that was fulfilled?]
-----------------------------------------

Interview with Author Brian McLaren
~ by Samir Selmanovic Sep 18, 2007


"This is really one of the key themes of my life – this belief that the issue isn’t Christianity, but Jesus. Depending on your background and what you’re exposed to, the Christian religion can have more or less credibility and appeal. But Jesus has an almost universal appeal. So that’s where I want to work from – not a “Christianity-centered” viewpoint, but from a Christ-centered viewpoint. In the book, I try to take Jesus’ teachings and example and show what resources they can bring to people today in grappling with global crises – whatever the religion of the people is who are getting involved. I don’t want to make the Christian religion the issue, or Western Civilization the issue, or whatever … I want to help people see the resources that Jesus offers to everybody as we and future generations face unprecedented global crises."

[ Is it just me, or is this another reiteration of the old quest for the "historical Jesus"?]
-------------------------------------------------------------

Leaders call 'Emerging Church Movement' a threat to Gospel Posted on Mar 23, 2005 by David Roach

"When asked whether a person must trust Christ as dying to make atonement for sin in order to be a Christian, McLaren replied, "I want to help people understand everything they can about the cross. ... I wouldn't say that having that understanding (Jesus dying as a substitute for sinful humanity) is all that it means to be a Christian. I think that some people might have that understanding and not be interested in following Jesus. They want Jesus' blood to pay for their sins so they can go to heaven, but they aren't really interested in following Jesus in this life."..."

[So what if "some people might have that understanding and not be interested in following Jesus." What a few "might" do invalidates the doctrine? Maybe it is not all there is to being a Christian but the Apostle Paul makes it a pretty core and indispensable item in I Cor. 15.]

The Church between Modernity and Post-modernity.
I was recently asked what I saw as the challenges to the Evangelical church in the Post-modern age. As I contemplated that question, I came across an article by Dr. Russell Moore at the Carl F. Henry Institute ( http://www.henryinstitute.org/ ) where he picks up on and expands on a discussion from his book “The Kingdom of Christ” in regard to the challenges to the emerging Evangelical consensus regarding the "already" and the "not yet" aspects of the Kingdom of God. Moore identifies those challenges as the issue of open theism, and Emergent church emphasis on community defining kingdom.

This article, "The Neo-Fundamentalism of the Evangelical Left: Post-Conservative Evangelical Proposals as Reversal of Evangelical Doctrinal Development" expands on those concerns, and in reading through and meditating on the things Dr. Moore is concerned with, it struck me that these two issues come from two world perspectives. My thesis is that the open theism view comes from a modern rationalistic world view, and community defining Kingdom comes from a Post-modern world view. In these two issues the Evangelical church is besieged from both sides.

Open theism comes as a rationalistic attempt to deal with the tension and mystery of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. In this rationalistic attempt, open theism has denied the real sovereignty of God. The tension is gone. The mystery dissipated. What I object to in this kind of rationalistic resolution of tension and mystery is that I can not hold this view without doing exegetical gymnastics that keep me from fully embracing the full meaning of those Scripture passages that clearly assert God’s sovereignty in all things. It is the tension and mystery between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility that allows me to let Scripture passages on sovereignty and responsibility to mean what they fully mean without engaging in exegetical gymnastics that defrocks either of those passages of their full intended meaning. This kind of attempt to rationalize tension and mystery has been the Achilles heel of Evangelical theological constructions coming from unrecognized modernistic rationalistic epistemological presumptions.

The issue of community defining Kingdom is much foggier and difficult to get a hold of precisely because it comes out of a Post-modern mind set where definition is, by Post-modern definition, “foggy”.

It is at this point the emergent church use of the word “community” becomes suspect. “Community” to be meaningful as a word, demands an objective content set in an objective context. At this point I am relying on Dr. Moore’s assessment of how the word has been, and is being used in the emergent church context. The community concept is indeed part of what the Kingdom is, and it is an aspect of the Kingdom that was not well understood or developed in the Evangelical world at large during the modern era. However, contrary to some emergent thought, community is not all that the Kingdom is. It is the Kingdom that defines the content and context of the community, not some concept of “community” that defines the Kingdom.

My point is that in a post-modern world, meaning and definition is meaningless and undefined. Yes, that is a contradiction, but it is basic post-modern existential epistemology and we are going to see that vagueness of meaning and definitions enter Evangelical theology and discussion.

On the one hand we have to resist the modern mindset that wants to rationalize everything and in so doing, erase the tension and mystery we find in Biblical theology. We resist that view of reason that says all questions can be answered. We also assert that rational apprehension of God’s truth is not enough to save, but there has to be with that apprehension the experiential (existential) encounter and communion with the God which that rational apprehension points us to.

On the other hand we resist that post-modern epistemology that makes meaning meaningless and definition undefined. Words have some objective meaning and definition. If that were not so, we could not communicate at all with one another and God communicating to man through His revelation of event and Word would be just as impossible. We resist the Neo-Orthodox view that the only “truth” is our existential encounter with a “God Word”. In reading the Bible we are not listening for the Word of God, we are listening to the Word of God; an objective Word given by God in time and space.

So what is a Post-modern Evangelical? Simply, it is one who is living in a post-modern age. Biblical Christian Evangelical epistemology calls me to embrace both objective (rational) reality outside of myself, and the existential experience of being able through that objective reality to know and commune with the Sovereign God of all creation as my Lord and Savior.

~ The Billy Goat ~

“The Already” And the “Not Yet”: Implications for Evangelical Theology


A Review of The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective by Russell D. Moore (Crossway Books, 2004)


Over the last 60 years Evangelical theology has not been static. Russell D.Moore's The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective traces the development of a growing Evangelical consensus regarding the "already" and "not yet" perspective of the Kingdom of God as reflected in both the modified covenant theology of Hoekema's The Bible and The Future and Blaising and Bock's Progressive Dispensationalism. This book is not for the faint hearted. The extended footnotes and bibliography take up over one third of its three hundred and twenty pages.

Moore starts with a valuable historical picture of development of the Kingdom aspect of Evangelical theology since the end of World War II, beginning with the concerns of Carl F.Henry and George Ladd. He discusses how the differing views of the Kingdom held by traditional Dispensationalism on the one hand, and traditional Covenantal theology on the other, contributed to an Evangelical lethargy regarding cultural engagement specifically in the political arena. This is set in the historical context of the Fundamentalist reaction to a liberal theology that had replaced the Gospel with a truncated “social gospel” that effectively denied individual redemption.

As theologians from both sides of Evangelicalism began to wrestle with the meaning of the “already” and the “not yet” perspective of the Kingdom, over time a consensus began to emerge regarding the Kingdom. Moore discusses how positive aspects from both sides of the Evangelical debate over the Kingdom came to be embraced in a consensus regarding the nature and cosmic scope of the Kingdom in its inaugural form in the New Covenant as well as its consummation in the New Heavens and the New Earth. The result is that though both sides may and do still debate details, both Progressive Dispensationalism as found in the writings of Blaising, Bock, and Saucy, and modified Covenant theology represented by Hoekema, Gaffin, Poythress and others, agree on a foundational structure and the cosmic scope of the Kingdom of God.

I might add that there is little discussion in this book of Post-millennialism. There are historical as well as theological reasons for that. Nineteenth century Post-millennialism was as much a product of the influence of the modern age’s optimism as was the optimism in the liberal churches embrace of the “social gospel”. Nor is it clear that current Post-millennialism by its own presuppositions is able to grapple in a Biblically meaningful way with an “already” and “not yet” perspective of the Kingdom.

Some may question how wide an impact Progressive Dispensationalism has had on the people in the pew, and see that as a problem for the propositions Moore articulates. The same question may be asked of the just as recent modified Covenant Theology. It is not clear that the average person in the pew of the church adhering to Covenant theology understands that theology any better then the person in the pew of a Dispensational oriented church, (Progressive or traditional), understands that Dispensationalism.

Whatever the case, Moore establishes the point that a theological consensus on the Kingdom provides a foundation for the integration of an organic view of theology as a whole. Modern Enlightenment thinking fed the tendency to categorize theology proper into separate components that were rarely or only superficially related to one another. The recognizing of the organic connection between the categories of theology proper is a welcome development.

This holistic integration of the different areas of theology is seen as Moore traces the impact of the Evangelical consensus regarding the Kingdom on the issues of eschatology, soteriology, and ecclesiology; three areas that have long been bones of contention between traditional Covenant and Dispensational theologians. Moore sets forth how the consensus on the Kingdom has by organic connection led to a basic consensus in these three areas.

Though Moore focuses on how this consensus provides a unified foundation for thoughtful Evangelical political involvement, his discussion also gives a starting place for an Evangelical response to Post-modernism, the communitarianism of the Emergent church, and the Open Theism challenge. That starting place is in the cosmic scope of redemption provided by the “already” and “the not yet”: a cosmic scope that does not negate individual salvation, but on the contrary gives individual salvation a fuller and richer meaning in light of all that Jesus as Messiah King will accomplish.

In the last chapter of The Kingdom of Christ, Moore discusses how at the point of an emerging consensus on the Kingdom, Evangelicalism is being divided by Open Theism on the one hand, and the communitarian focus of the Emergent church on the other; both of which Moore sees as a move away from the clear implications of the “already” and “not yet” Kingdom view. The central focus of the Kingdom view is Jesus reigning as Messiah King, both now in the inauguration, and fully and completely in the future consummation of the Kingdom. Open Theism by definition cannot be consistent with that focus. Communitarianism clouds that focus with an emphasis that makes the church as community central to what the church is.

I am surprised The Kingdom of Christ has not received more attention then it seems to have at this point. It is one of those books that, as I read it, I could not help but sense I was reading something of real monumental importance. Time will tell if such is really the case, but it is a book that I encourage every Evangelical Pastor and theological student to read.

~ The Billy Goat ~
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