It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Philippians 1:15-18
Can’t say that I ever really understood such a case. There certainly are falsely motivated preachers today, but rivalry and trying to stir up trouble? Well, AiG and the hamish ilk I suppose.
It’s been a day of interruptions, so I feel I’m losing the direction (if I ever had it) of our exchange. Trying to get back…
What I am getting at is that there’s a person, a reality behind those statements, who is the object of our believing, not just a collection of true statements. One of the things that Penner has been harping on is the problem of making (testable/provable) propositions (alone) the focus of belief, rather than faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, which are signified by the propositions. Again that how we believe being as important as what we believe. (Obviously, we believe something, but the statements alone are not the entire content or our belief. Nor should anyone be satisfied that someone has been properly catechized because she can rattle off a list of propositions from one or another doctrinal statement.)
Sometime, I would be interested in hearing them. Or, if you have already talked about this in another thread, please direct my (fractured) attention there.
Sorry, Terry. I don’t understand what you’re getting at here.
Having become more and more aware of Finney in my developing antiquity, I detest the damage that man has done to Christian doctrine and practice in the churches I know. Shudder.
I promise, I am not claiming to be or ever to have been Jesus.
I started out, in my infancy, as a Southern Baptist (SB). My stepmother was SB, her son by a previous marriage was an SB minister to the Deaf. When she died, her son–40 years my senior–arranged to have Mom’s former-SB preacher give, what I imagine to have been, a soul-winning sermon. I remember it now–with a smile. There’s nothing quite like a eulogy for the single-most important person in your early life, in which the theme was almost completely: “Have you gotten right with God?” Gripping, to say the least.
The Van Til-ian Presuppositionalist Reformed Baptists seem to come close, in their somewhat more coherent, regular sermons. Two quotes from Van Til himself:
"“So, as we have our tea, I propose not only to operate on your heart so as to change your will, but also on your eyes so as to change your outlook. But wait a minute. No, I do not propose to operate at all. I myself cannot do anything of the sort. I am just mildly suggesting that you are perhaps dead, and perhaps blind, leaving you to think the matter over for yourself. If an operation is to be performed it must be performed by God Himself.”
“It is not kindness to tell patients that need strong medicine that nothing serious is wrong with them.”
The prevailing impression I have is that the hallmark of “bad preaching” is what I call, a bad, “bedside manner”. 'Nuff said.
Not to worry, you answered the question here:
Me neither.
As I see , there are two Gospels: the first brought to us by the one first sent: i.e. Jesus; the second given by those to whom He was sent. The second is rooted in and depends on the first.
I get that,
and I would go so far as to say–adding to, but not correcting you or Penner–that there is a reality beyond that: The Reality of the Father conveyed in and through Jesus. [John 14:6. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me."]
The second Reality–the one that I believe you refer to–is the Reality of Jesus, “the object of our believing”, “the person and work of Jesus Christ”.
And here’s where “my problem” begins. Who is Penner talking to in his book? He certainly isn’t talking to atheists, is he?
With all due respect to @MarkD, Mark is not Penner’s audience. [That is not a criticism; it’s an observation; call it a “proposition” ]
He’s talking to Christians, all of whom are called to “go and make disciples of all nations…” And Penner is telling us that our mission has been seriously compromised, - maybe even hijacked by modernism instead.
Others are free to read it too - there should be no secrets here; bring everything out into the light. But I think his intended audience is the body of Christ living in these times.
I absolutely agree with you, that the “propositions” which we have learned (hopefully) and know “are not the entire content for our belief.” By the way, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and equate the propositions that we’re talking about and the individual statements in our credal statements, i.e. the Church’s creeds are, in essence, the Church’s propositions. Memorizing and knowing them enable or qualify a person to call him- or herself “a Christian”, but they do not make us Christian. At best, memorizing and knowing the propositions make us “semi-intelligible” Christians. Unfortunately, we’re not off the hook, are we? There’s always someone who says (or thinks): What the heck are you talking about, which brings to mind a vivid memory.
When I was about 14, the “love of my life”, who lived next door, went to Church with me regularly. Her mother–a single mother with two teenage kids and a 3-year old son–decided to put on her Sunday-best and get her youngest dressed in his best clothes and cowboy boots, and go to Church with “the Sampsons”. As we–me, my girlfriend, her mother, and “the kid”, sat in a pew, “the kid” got restless and walked across each of us during my father’s sermon: click-clack, click-clack. My girlfriend and I tried to “entertain” him quietly, but like many 3-year old boys, he lost interest in us and returned across each of us to his mother who, embarassed by “the kid’s” behavior and the sound of his boots on the wooden pews, gripped and shook him, and said: “You’re not supposed to talk when the preacher is talking.” To which "the kid responded in a voice heard throughout the small church: “Well, what the hell is he talking about?” The preacher (my Dad) said: “I think that’s my cue” and ended his sermon, while the mother escorted her son out of the sanctuary.
In ch. 5, Penner makes two claims that I’m trying to reconcile with each other (and he explicitly recognizes the irony - since these are close to each other in pp. 164-165)
This is possible because modern society imagines the self as existing over against its relations to others and one’s personal convictions as having nothing (or little) to do with public policy. And so the dream of modern apologetics is that its arguments and propositions—as objective truths—are timeless, universal, and neutral and may function in any social context without a basic challenge to the governing structures (except in those cases where the existing polity expressly forbids Christian beliefs and practices) and without violence to the individual person.
and
It is ironic, then, that the deep politics of prophetic witness is also what makes the prophetic stance appear politically ambivalent according to the surface politics of particular governmental or institutional systems—while the opposite is so often true in modern apologetics. Often, modern Christians are politically engaged in the surface politics of modern society, fighting the so-called culture wars with very clearly marked political boundary lines, but all the while they are unreflective about the deep politics at work!’ The prophetic stance of Christian witness I am after cannot be identified with political partisanship to any ruling parties, plans, or ideals. The deep political requirement of Christian witness is by; and its primary goal, is person-preserving and not to produce any particular kind of society or particular program of action. The prophetic stance of the Christian witness, then, is an attitude, a way of facing society and engaging programs of action?’ To be wedded to any particular society or program of action indissolubly subverts the prophetic thrust of witness as that which stands against the powers that stand against the truth.
So which is it? Is it a chimera - an illusion - that apologetics can imagine itself to be free of politics and power dynamics (1st quote above)? Or alternately … to be ‘wedded to’ any particular political program subverts the prophetic witness that should be speaking truth to power (2nd paragraph - and the one I can more easily take on board as an Anabaptist)?
I also find this bit provocative from p. 167:
Truth undoes or compromises the easy confidence we have in ourselves and our received beliefs, so that faithfulness to ourselves and our traditions often takes the form of questioning our ability to account for our world. I am placed in question by the Truth, and I in turn place the practices and beliefs of my community in question.
So would it be fair to say that the Christian is called to practice: humility, humility, humility … but instead we want to adopt the marketing strategies of the world that tell us it’s more effective to practice (or at least display): confidence, confidence, and certainty!
… the witness to truth has a place from which to stand both within Christian tradition, as a representative of it, and outside it, calling it back to faithfulness. What is also true of prophets, then, is that while they challenge and even speak against their traditions, they are also more deeply committed to them than those who are comfortable in the status quo.82 It is precisely because they are so committed to their tradition and believe in its deepest impulses that prophets sometimes attack it. The prophetic call is always to a deeper fidelity to the founding event of the tradition, but not in such a way that controls it or even tries to make it into a univocal, monochromatic tradition.
I don’t think apologetics will ever actually end. We practice apologetics whenever we use scripture and interpretation of it to defend why we believe it’s not a historical account of scientific info in genesis 1 and so on. So I don’t feel the justification of apologetics is restrained to just some issues.
By disagreeing - even ‘vigorously’ and then steadfastly maintaining relationship and contact with each other outside of that disagreement (i.e. - not letting the disagreement become a replacement for your entire relationship - but permitting it to be part of it.) This means you don’t start passive-aggressively avoiding them because of their refusal to agree with you on some important thing.
Kendel, you’ve probably already asked this numorous times, but even if so, I’ll repeat it here now toward the end of Penner’s book:
So we know what Penner is against … do we also now have a handle on what he is for? - and if so, what is that?
It might be difficult to do better than Penner himself in terms of concluding paragraphs - the very last sentences of his book with the ‘broken mirror’ imagry - I thought that was powerful and insightful.
In the last few days @Randy, @Christy and I have been having a side discussion related to this post about Wycliffe translators, SLI and JAARS. Christy works for SIL and gave us some important updates on what is going on there now.
The book she mentions is the one I ran across that I thought legitimized the claim from the art exhibit:
There was more from Christy, but this is plenty.
I don’t want to say, by putting out an update, that nothing from the past counts, and it’s all been swept under the rug. Decisions that were made years ago still seem to have ramifications in the present. However, it’s good that there has been a conscious effort to change and also be transparent.
Thanks to @Christy and @Randy for making me aware of this newer information.
I don’t think Penner is trying to “start anything new” as it were, but is trying to be a prophetic voice calling us (believers) back to faithful witness of a “more apostolic” kind - but now with an awareness of modernism and what all modernism has brought us, both good and bad. I would also say he wants us to be able to hold modernism out at arm’s length for inspection, and to very carefully use it as a tool, but not let it be the entire toolshed.
Merv, I think I understand what he is getting at and what the difference is. It has to do with who is imagining or dreaming of what. Actually, I think the answer is in the surrounding text that you didn’t quote.
Against modern apologetics, a postmodern prophetic witness acknowledges that there is no space outside political power in which we can persuade people. The deep politics of modernity allows modern apologetics to imagine itself as operating apolitically, as dealing only with the rational justifications for objective truths, and therefore as concerned only with the private, religious beliefs of individuals. It is “a politics of the privileged…” (Pg 163 and 164)
When any apologist approaches people with no knowledge of or concern for their background, thinking, history, etc. and then attempts to convince the hearer of the truth of various Christian propositions, the apologist is imagining the message is OUNCE and therefore in no way connected to identities of the hearers. Additionally, if the assumption of private faith is in play, the back story should make no difference. We’re talking about here and now and “universal truths.” But with the examples of Kenzo’s father and the Indian Boading Schools, we must recognize that to the “objects” of the apologist, there is a great deal of deep politics in play, which have nothing to do with OUNCE or Jesus.
This is the kind of drastic error that is fostered by “a politics of the privileged,” that is modern-thinking person of the dominant culture, who has not had to deal with the complications of histories and cultures where the “crowd” does not support the genius apologist’s assumptions that the apologetic propositions are true because they are simply true.
Then before your second quote:
Against this, the prophetic witness I advocate understands persuasion, reason, and witness to be political acts in the sense they are public (or interpersonal) acts that always and fundamentally concern persons-their identities, their relations, and the powers at work on, in, and through them. The witness brings personal commitments into public space, and places every society in question, along with the powers that generate its status quo and have vested interests in keeping the private and public spheres separate.
It is ironic, then, … [and on to your second quote.] (pg. 164)
I think he answered your question here in this last quote.
Which is it? Apologetics IS political, whether the apologist recognizes it or not.
The difference here is between the thinking of the modern apologist, who fails to see the complications as well as the great value of identity, and the prophetic witness who does see them and works with them.
What do you think, @Mervin_Bitikofer? How do you see it? Have I come close to addressing your concern?
CHAPTER TWO
Would that Christians of all kinds saw it this way!
CHAPTER THREE
May it be just as you have said!
YES! THIS, TOO.
And please, let’s call into question EVERY SINGLE fad that comes into the churches through whatever means it comes. Because church and culture ARE in a dialectical relationship, whether we want to believe it or not. What damage has been done in just MY puny life time just by the nonsense I can name: Satanic Panic, anti-intellectualism (continuing saga), Purity Culture and ALL the crappy baggage that goes with it, Prayer of Jabez, Left Behind, ramped up (hyper) complimentarianism to the point of mental-corseture, Cult of the Family, Cult of Homeschool, etc, etc, etc.
QUESTION! QUESTION! QUESTION!
CHAPTER FOUR
I’ve been asking this question in different forms, as you said, from the beginning of the book, which I take now as the introduction to a very long process.
The biggest things I’m holding here is to think differently and live differently. That Bivalent Form which dissolves if split.
While I love the imagery of the last sentence of the chapter, Merv, again, I’ve underlined the sentence before that:
But at the same time, I trust this book leaves us with enough of a prophetic witness to the truth of Jesus Christ that we are edified and built up without trying to pretend that modernity never happened and then setting about the business of reconstructing the order of the premodern world. (p. 171)
But now I think I’ll add that last sentence as well to complete the thought.
To this I will add the valuable last paragraph of the book in the Epilogue:
And so also, I am tempted to say; it is with all those who possess a seemingly coherent set of rational, well-justified, well-argued Chris tian beliefs, but do not allow themselves or anyone else to be edified by them. Such beliefs may be reassuring, they may be intellectually satisfying, and they may even “preach good,” but in the end the person who holds them will have missed the one thing that was necessary. All on account of the “wig.” (p. 174)
I have looked diligently for Volume Two, The How-To Manual. It eludes me. [I’m joking, you know.] However, if the manual were to focus on the original premise of the book (the end of apologetics), I think it would miss the wider application. In some ways this has been my intro to Kierkegaard, which I feel a great need to continue. He clearly had a great dealt to say about the things that concern many of us in the church today. Additionally, this book has been my dive back into theory, which has been wonderful and demanding and challenging and rewarding. Really, really rewarding. There’s no manual for that.
CHAPTER FIVE
Almost forgot this:
Precisely. HOW DOES ONE DO THIS?
I never saw myself as passive-aggressive. Excellent at avoiding conflict, though. And certainly some of those techniques overlap in inappropriate areas. Ugh.
CHAPTER SIX
GOLD STARS FOR YOU! YOU READ IT ALL! (or skimmed.)
Excellent answers to the ‘dilemma’ or tension that I highlighted in the last post. I wasn’t too worried about a good resolution being found and articulated by someone, and you came through in spades. We are politically-situated creatures whether we acknowledge it or no.
Maintaining friendship despite differences always takes two - so it’s not just all on you. And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to do, since either party can unilaterally “shoot it down” by deciding that the disagreement loomed more important to them than the relationship. But I suppose you can do the (also-even-harder) part of trying to reach out to them every once-in-a-while with gestures just to let them know that, for your part, you are more interested in them than in their agreement (if indeed you actually are.)
And like a good prophet, makes liberal use of irony in so doing to draw us into thoughtful consideration.
Thank you guys for bringing up these questions and discussing them for our benefit. I found it a difficult read, but ultimately one that clarifies the place apologetics should hold in our witness. So many good lessons to continue to work on, for me being how to disagree well, and the need to value and cherish relationship over rationality.
Phil, those a great insights. Thanks for all you have added to the discussion according to what you had time to do. Always of value, in spite of, or rather because of, brevity.
What Penner presents as a problem for faith also constitutes a problem for human wholeness more generally. The real problem is excessive reliance on rationality even in domains for which it isn’t a natural fit and to the point it displaces and leads to a devaluation of other human capacities such as emotional intelligence, intuition and imagination. These capacities undergird empathy and strengthen relationships, communities and a regard for the sacred. Excessive reliance on rationality encourages instrumental justification for expenditures of effort, wealth and affection and that is destructive to any healthy expression of humanity, Christianity included.
There is much in Penner’s book which is not directly applicable to nonChristians. But the ways in which the Enlightenment privileges what is neutral, universal and objective is basically as corrosive for human functioning generally as it is for Christianity in particular.
For nons as for Christians the truth of post modernism doesn’t entail the rejection of everything the Enlightenment has given us, it’s just a corrective. We still need the benefits of rationality but we shouldn’t worship it or attempt to make it the prototype for how all decisions should be made. For claims regarding empirical matters science and rationality should still dominate. But regarding questions of what is ultimately most important and how, in light of that, we should live our lives and treat each other, rationality alone can only hypothesize. However we ground our assessment of those hypotheses, rationality should serve but not rule.
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