Seeking Understanding
Over the past couple months the Abbey has gained a lot of new readers from my church family at First Baptist Greensboro. As I expected, they have a lot of questions, and some have concerns. I regret that some have not come to me with their concerns. Maybe they don't know me and are afraid I'll be offended. Maybe they've had bad experiences with other church leaders in the past and they expect it to always be a negative experience when bringing a critique to a clergy member. I hope we will have a chance to talk soon so you can see that I am willing to listen and reach understanding with anyone.
As someone whose passion is educational/formational ministry, one of my favorite ministry activities is helping people understand something. I realize that folks who are new to the blogosphere; new to postmodern conversations about theology and church; new to neomonasticism; and new to the emergent movement engage this site and find language and concepts on here that they do not understand. Until recently, my readership has been mostly postmodern, emergent Christians along with the spiritually curious. Writing for that audience is quite different from writing to your average FBC member.
In these next several journal entries that I plan to post here I'll do my best to shed some light on the language and conepts that are creating some misunderstanding for folks. I'll start by addressing the elements in the paragraph above.
1. Blogosphere: the realm in which people blog. Blog is short for "Weblog" which is simply an online format for journaling. The blogger makes his or her posts and others can leave comments. Its a medium for virtual conversation. Anyone is welcome to leave comments on my posts here at the Abbey Journal page. Simply click the word "comment" highlighted in green at the bottom of this post.
2. Postmodern: Is often unfairly reduced in definition to "relativism". It is a worldview that has critiqued and deconstructed many of the defining narratives of the modern era = roughly the period of time from the Enlightenment to the middle of the 20th century. It sees truth as relational as opposed to objective. Truth is not out there separate from human experience and community. A postmodern understanding of the world operates with two hermeneutical practices: the hermeneutic of finitude, and the hermeneutic of suspicion.
3. Hermeneutic: How one interprets narrative or text. Hermeneutics is the study of theories of interpretation of the Bible and other texts.
4. Hermeneutic of Finitude: Also called the hermeneutic of humility. Its premise is that humanity is always limited in perspective. Persons can only understand things from their location. No one has God's perspective. Paul talked about this in a letter to the Corinthian church when he said that "we know in part and speak in part." Postmoderns believe that we cannot speak to anything impartially. All truth claims that we make are colored by our own personal and communal histories.
5. Hermeneutic of Suspicion: Humans are broken and predisposed to a will to power. Because humans are finite, their systems, concepts, and institutions are finite and flawed as well. As a result human constructs demand ongoing critique and reform. There is no incorruptible human conception that can stand for all eternity. This seems to fit the Bible's estimation of human sinfulness. It is a key reason why Baptists have fought for soul competency and local church autonomy. Truth is less suspect when it is held in community in contrast to being imposed by a single authority.
6. Emergent: This word has no definition, but it does have a metaphor. Brian McLaren introduced the term several years ago in a conversation among ministers involved with what used to be known as "Leadership Network". When foresters go into a forest to determine its health they do not climb up into the trees. They get on their hands and knees and scour the ground for 'emergent growth'. Emergent is web of individuals and worshiping communities that are sprouting up from the forest floor. A soil that has its blend of modern and postmodern nutrients. A soil that also has an ecumenical blend of nutrients. Emergent is an organic conversation about shifts in theology. Its an organic experiment with ancient and new church practices.
To be continued... (I'll talk about neomonasticism at length next.)
Zach Roberts
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Reader Comments (4)
Nice, succinct definitions here. I think this is helpful for those new to and/or skeptical of the emerging conversations. Thanks Zach.
very helpful for someone new to all things emerging, and trying to sort it all out. Keep them coming!
Glad to be helpful! Thanks for reading!
I think that one must state clearly that becoming postmodern will eventually not be an option to choose, but a fact of life.
In the year 1500, it was the middle ages.
Everyone was medieval. A few radical seekers began to revision the world due to things like: the printing press, market capitalism, loss of authority for RCC and kings, change from seeing astronomy as a science of perfect spheres around the earth to objects far away, change from belief in absolute premodern authority being found in the church to the MODERNIST belief that authority rested in objective study of the bible. The reality shifted from authority being the church which was COMMUNAL. Authority now rested with the INDIVIDUAL and the BIBLE. Hence a certain novel, modern and liberal theories of religion was begun that included: separation of church and state, priesthood of believer, and sola scriptura. None of those doctrines could have been conceived during the period of the early church. For example, Paul and the early Christians could not have followed solo scriptura. Paul wrote his letters having never read a written gospel. The book of john was written after the death of Paul.
For Paul, one authority was absolute: the risen Christ that struck him blind!
Paul saw the Old Testament as inspired, not statically authoritative. You do not radically re-interpret a book that is your sole authority. You re-envision a source that is revisoned by Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the gospels of the apostles. What was the gospel at that point? It was the preaching and proclamation of the apostles. Paul saw spoken oral communication as having the authority of Jesus. He saw himself and the apostles as having authority from Jesus.
It was not lay people that decided what books of the bible would be called" bible books" The local Baptist church did not take a vote on which books would be canon. The idea that christians would vote would be considered either insane or heresy. God was seen as working from top to down. Apostles were obeyed!
It was those called charismatically and later communally as apostles to proclaim the gospel that created the canon. Those of apostolic authority eventually came up with canon, a concept not in scripture or of Jewish origin. Is the canon a good idea? It is an awesome idea! The apostles were led by god to the conception of canon. But the canon did not lead them to canon. Experience, the gospels, the apostle's collegial authority led to canonization and was overseen by the Holy Spirit.
By the year 1700, the world was modern. A few isolated villages might still be medieval. Even the Amish are modern compared to the Middle Ages.
One can choose to move from modernism to postmodernism as an adult in 2007.
A child born in 2040 will not have the luxury of choosing postmodernism. He will grow up in a postmodern world where conservatives and liberal, supernaturalists and materialists will be postmodern. In fact, those old categories may not even occur to him/her.