Now we terminate Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity with prejudice today.
The previous posts were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church
9. Chapters 8 and 9: Tithing/Paying Ministers (8) and the Sacraments (9)
10. Christian Education
And now, the rest of the book.
First today is Chapter 11, "Reapproaching the New Testament: The Bible is not a Jigsaw Puzzle."
This is the chapter where Viola assumes that all the pastors and seminarians who read the Bible are idiots who don't know that the books of Paul were arranged from longest to shortest, not according to when they were written. He assumes that no one knows that the chapter and verse divisions were added in the late medieval period and that if we would only learn how to read the books (or rather, Paul, he's not as interested in the other books of the Bible) in context, all our problems would be over.
AND... he treats all the house church people who aren't doing it his way ignorant idiots as well. Tell me, who is left to read his books?
Of course those of us who believe in Christian education learned these sorts of things our freshman year in a New Testament Survey course at a Christian college. I can understand that since Viola doesn't believe in Christian education, he would have reason to assume that the people in his assemblies are stupid and don't know the first thing about the Bible. And of course he doesn't believe that there should be pastors who of course then aren't around to bring such basic knowledge to their congregations. Curiously, though, he seems to be willing to teach all those Christian ignoramuses out there what he thinks he knows, preferably on a compound he's developing in Guyana.
Chapter 12: "A Second Glance at the Savior: Jesus the Revolutionary"
Here are some verses Viola might not have put on his "clipboard" (mostly TNIV):
1. "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you" (Matt. 23:2-3). What, you mean Jesus didn't teach rebellion against those establishment Pharisees? Oh.
2. "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 23:6). Wait, Paul calling himself a Pharisee in the present tense near the end of his mission?
3."Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said..." (Acts 15:5). Wait, not pseudo-Christians? A group of Christians with distinct ideologies and practices in the Jerusalem church? Wait, isn't that what a denomination is?
4. "Before certain people came from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles... even Barnabas was led astray... I [Paul] called Peter a hypocrite before them all" (Galatians 2:12-13).
5. The verse where Paul tells us Peter, James, and Barnabas finally saw it his way: .
Oh, that's right, they went their separate ways as different "segments" of the early church with distinct theological ideologies and distinct practices. Wait, isn't that what a denomination is?
6. Their perspective on how Gentiles can eat with Jewish Christians: "You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality" (Acts 15:29).
7. Paul's comment on their position when dealing with the same issues at Corinth: .
8. Matthew's position on the Law: "Do not think I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets... Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:17, 19).
9. Ephesians' position: "he... has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations" (Eph. 2:14-15).
Wait, doesn't Matthew say Jesus didn't come to destroy the Law and Ephesians says Christ did? Then there's Paul in Romans 3:31, "Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law." Sounds like distinct theologies of the Law and perhaps some differing practices in relation to the Law in the early church. Wait, isn't that what denominations are?
10. "They [women, descendants of Eve] have come to be in transgression. Nevertheless, they will be saved through childbearing" (1 Tim. 2:14-15).
11. "By grace you have been saved, through faith... not by works, so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8-9).
12. "... by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy" (Heb. 10:10).
13. "Let women be silent in the churches" (1 Cor. 14:33).
14. "Your sons and daughters will prophesy" (Acts 2:17).
Yeah, the early church didn't have different groups with distinct ideologies and practices and the one, single practice they all had was Viola's theology and practice.
Afterword: "The Next Step"
A new approach to worship: my way.
A new approach to spiritual growth: my way.
A new approach to managing resources: my way.
A new look at your identity: my way.
Final Thoughts
This last bit is a Q & A, probably based on questions people asked after the first edition. My advice, read this Q & A rather than the book. As usual, he is more measured in the Q & A than in the chapters.
I'm calling it quits. I'll probably never do anything more, but the book I'd like to write to right the wrong in this book and right the right in this book is a book I'd title, Generous Ecclesiology.
:-)
Showing posts with label Frank Viola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Viola. Show all posts
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Pagan Christianity 11: Christian Education
Only one chapter from Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity today. I've lost my will. Every post is an effort.
The previous posts were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church
9. Chapters 8 and 9: Tithing/Paying Ministers (8) and the Sacraments (9)
And now chapter 10: "Christian Education: Swelling the Cranium."
There's little doubt that Viola relays a common sentiment that much in ministerial training seems out of focus. We have launched an MDIV program here at IWU for the Fall (we've officially accepted our first two students) and, Lord willing, will officially call it a seminary in less than two weeks. We have launched it recognizing some of the things that Viola mentions in this chapter.
So Viola thinks training should be "hands on" rather than merely intellectual (200). He critiques the notion that "the teaching of knowledge is the teaching of virtue" (215). "Contemporary theological learning is essentially cerebral" and "In the process, our theology rarely gets below the neck" (216).
OK, there's the good in the chapter. But as I've read through this book, here is my fundamental critique. It is not simply that Viola consistently throws the baby out with the bath water. Of course I completely think he does. My critique is that he could have actually done something edifying with this book. At least to some extent, he has correctly identified the superficialism and myopic traditionalism that no doubt pervades and predominates in the church today.
But instead of urging authenticity and genuine spirituality in each tradition, he has insisted that we burn all the institutional churches down and start a house church. For this reason, his book on the whole is not helpful for God's people. It will only appeal to the angry (and feed their angry) and confuse the innocent.
His view of seminaries is stereotypical and unbalanced. Take this statement: "contemporary ministerial training can be described by the religious talk of Job's miserable comforters: rational, objective, and abstract. Very little practical, experiential, or spiritual" (201). But his reaction is not, let's fix Christian education, our approach at IWU. His reaction is, let's burn down all the Christian seminaries, universities, and Bible colleges.
"[C]ontemporary theology is a blending of Christian thought and pagan philosophy" (208). And Viola's thought is a blending of Christian thought and the thinking of a particular American Christian subculture, mixed with some of the ancient cultural forms in which the New Testament message was incarnated. Again, he takes biblical descriptions and supposed descriptions based on him filling in gaps in our knowledge, and he makes them pre-scriptions for a quite different place and time. This is sheer madness.
I'll let the church historians and theologians rip his villianization of Aquinas and his wild connections between things in history.
The previous posts were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church
9. Chapters 8 and 9: Tithing/Paying Ministers (8) and the Sacraments (9)
And now chapter 10: "Christian Education: Swelling the Cranium."
There's little doubt that Viola relays a common sentiment that much in ministerial training seems out of focus. We have launched an MDIV program here at IWU for the Fall (we've officially accepted our first two students) and, Lord willing, will officially call it a seminary in less than two weeks. We have launched it recognizing some of the things that Viola mentions in this chapter.
So Viola thinks training should be "hands on" rather than merely intellectual (200). He critiques the notion that "the teaching of knowledge is the teaching of virtue" (215). "Contemporary theological learning is essentially cerebral" and "In the process, our theology rarely gets below the neck" (216).
OK, there's the good in the chapter. But as I've read through this book, here is my fundamental critique. It is not simply that Viola consistently throws the baby out with the bath water. Of course I completely think he does. My critique is that he could have actually done something edifying with this book. At least to some extent, he has correctly identified the superficialism and myopic traditionalism that no doubt pervades and predominates in the church today.
But instead of urging authenticity and genuine spirituality in each tradition, he has insisted that we burn all the institutional churches down and start a house church. For this reason, his book on the whole is not helpful for God's people. It will only appeal to the angry (and feed their angry) and confuse the innocent.
His view of seminaries is stereotypical and unbalanced. Take this statement: "contemporary ministerial training can be described by the religious talk of Job's miserable comforters: rational, objective, and abstract. Very little practical, experiential, or spiritual" (201). But his reaction is not, let's fix Christian education, our approach at IWU. His reaction is, let's burn down all the Christian seminaries, universities, and Bible colleges.
"[C]ontemporary theology is a blending of Christian thought and pagan philosophy" (208). And Viola's thought is a blending of Christian thought and the thinking of a particular American Christian subculture, mixed with some of the ancient cultural forms in which the New Testament message was incarnated. Again, he takes biblical descriptions and supposed descriptions based on him filling in gaps in our knowledge, and he makes them pre-scriptions for a quite different place and time. This is sheer madness.
I'll let the church historians and theologians rip his villianization of Aquinas and his wild connections between things in history.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Pagan Christianity 9-10: Tithing and Sacraments
Two chapters from Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity today:
The previous posts were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church
And now for the two chapters for today. Two more weeks and we'll be done, d.v.
Chapter 8: “Tithing and Clergy Salaries: Sore Spots on the Wallet”
As usual, Viola is half right and half extreme. The first part of this chapter has to do with tithing, the giving of a tenth of one’s income to the Lord. Underlying his position is of course the fact that he is concerned about giving one tenth to the church. He does not believe in “institutional” churches, so we would expect him to have a sharp distinction in his mind between giving to a church and giving to the Lord.
His bottom line is that “tithing, while biblical, is not Christian” (183). He is mostly right, but I think at least a quarter wrong. Is tithing biblical? Yes, he says, because we find it in the Old Testament. It is not Christian, he would say, because it is not required in the New Testament. He is right that the New Testament does not require a tithe of Gentile believers. Where he is wrong is to suggest that, for this reason, tithing is unchristian.
My problem with Viola’s interpretation is thus not that he is wrong on his read of the New Testament—for the most part at least. He is very much stuck in a naïve version of the “old perspective” on Paul, as most pop speakers like him are. Paul’s teaching on the Jewish Law is far more complex than the simple categories with which Viola operates, as our ongoing review of N. T. Wright’s book on justification shows.
So Viola is right that the Old Testament tithe was an agricultural rather than a monetary tithe. He is right that it was for Levites and the poor in general (I have serious questions about his 23.3% gig--there are probably layers of Old Testament tradition involved on these sorts of issues, where you have differing traditions about what the tithe was more than things to combine with each other). He is right that the New Testament never binds the tithe rule on Gentile believers. Jesus does affirm the Pharisees for tithing their spices in Matthew 23, but they were Jews.
The New Testament urges giving proportional to God’s blessing, but never sets an amount or a percent (e.g., 2 Cor. 9:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).
Where Viola is wrong, as always, is to jump from 1) the Bible does not require it to 2) it is wrong for a church to require it. Just as there were Nazirites who bound themselves to a different way of life, there is nothing wrong with denominations binding together into distinct identities. Paul’s principle with regard to the Sabbath was “one person considers one day above a day; another considers every day the same” (Rom. 14:5). Both need to get off the other’s back. Viola gives proportionately; Wesleyans tithe. I affirm you Viola. Get off our backs.
I might say, by the way, that I have serious doubts about statements like these, “Not a few poor Christians have been thrown into deeper poverty because they have felt obligated to give beyond their means” (179). If anything, churches struggle financially because people don’t tithe, not because everyone’s sending themselves to the poor house because they’re tithing.
The second half of the chapter is where Viola really jumps the shark. Viola’s attempt in the “delving DEEPER” section to dodge the clear implications of 1 Timothy 5:17-18 that assemblies should support their elders materially are completely unconvincing, “the worker is worth their reward.” The same in 1 Corinthians 9—a passage that Viola almost completely avoids. It is appropriate to support materially those who “tread the grain” for them.
The early church did come to have a ministry structure, and Paul admonishes churches to support these leaders materially. Indeed, Paul considers it an obligation. I'm not saying that institutional churches have a good record with money. But as usual Viola throws the baby out with the bath water.
I don't have a problem with the ministers in the house church movement who are supporting themselves. I respect and affirm them. But Viola is the one being unbiblical when he suggests they do not have a "right" to the material support of those to whom they minister, even if like Paul they do not use that right.
Paul, by the way, probably did so to avoid the strings of patronage. Viola mentions the occasional conflict of interests when you need to preach on a topic that steps on the toes of heavy contributors in the church. That situation does bear directly on Paul's practices.
Chapter 9: Baptism and the Lord's Supper: Diluting the Sacraments
The first half of this chapter is on baptism and found me wondering what Viola's background was before he went house church. I wonder if he was Disciples of Christ or Baptist because this chapter seemed to be on a slightly different traditional trajectory than some others, which have seemed much more straight Anabaptist.
First he dismisses infant baptism out of hand. I have come to prefer it. It is interesting because in some ways it would fit with Viola's community focus. In this chapter, for example, he really rejects the "sinner's prayer" (he really hates Moody for some reason). And he rejects the language of a personal relationship with Christ. There is a possible world in which Viola's emphasis on community and disdain for individualism would lead him to affirm infant baptism.
Since I'm on individualism, Viola is of course right that the sinner's prayer was invented to give people a path to becoming a Christian and is not exactly found in any one place in Scripture. And he's right that the emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ is a peculiarly contemporary American phenomenon. As usual, his delving DEEPER section (was this section in the first edition? I suspect he is answering real questions from people) is more balanced. Yes, "We certainly should make our own confessions of faith" (198).
The "diluting" of baptism for Viola is the thinking that the sinner's prayer is basically it. Interestingly--because it seems out of keeping with the trend of the rest of the book--Viola wants a person to be baptized ASAP after coming to faith. But I think he makes too much of the connection between baptism and being "saved" in the New Testament. Receiving the Spirit is the definitive marker of becoming a Christian in Acts, Paul, and Hebrews. Paul de-emphasizes the importance of the act in 1 Corinthians 1.
And again, Viola wrongly assumes that we have to do everything exactly the way the earliest Christians did. Yes, let's baptize soon after a person receives the Spirit. Immersion? Why not, I like the symbolism. Infants? I prefer it because 1) baptism does not save (1 Pet. is figurative), 2) I believe it fits the corporate formulation of identity reflected in the early church, and 3) it says our children are in the church and that we are guarding their souls until they are old enough to decide for themselves what faith path their own life will take. I will tolerate you holding our children out a three story window of faith until they are old enough to ask you to kindly let them come into the safety of the house if you will tolerate my affirmation of God's prevenient grace and predilection to save rather than to damn.
Then of course Viola gets to communion. Yes, it was originally a meal. Yes, I find the individual crackers and cups of juice highly perverse when one primary meaning of the meal is "because there is one bread, we are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). Hard to see how individual cups and wafers convey the unity of the body at all but in an American context simply reinforces the false idea that we are only in a personal relationship with Christ. The corporate dimension is primary, the personal dimension secondary. Viola is right here.
I think Viola is part right and part wrong on examining ourselves. What the Corinthians were to examine is whether they rightly discerned the body of Christ as they ate, namely, the church. Were they in proper relationship to their brothers and sisters as they partook. So it was an examination of corporate sin Paul had in mind rather than individual sin.
Nevertheless, there is a power to the abbreviated "meal" we now take that I believe God has sanctioned. What could be wrong with taking this moment, indeed many moments to examine your own life in terms of sin and righteousness? There is a place for the "pot luck," but I can't remember any that were as powerful spiritually as some moments I've had in communion.
So the eucharistic service is a development from the New Testament in some ways, but it is so powerful that I have to believe it is a God ordained one. Viola's assemblies are losing something if they abandon the possibility of God ordained "sacred moments" (sacraments) like communion where ordinary bread and juice can become catalysts for the "real" presence of Christ. Yes, he's always there. Yes, you can experience his "real" presence anywhere.
But God seems to have given this particular place and time His approval, as with baptism. And God has the right to create a thousand other "sacred moments" on the spot whenever and wherever He chooses.
The previous posts were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church
And now for the two chapters for today. Two more weeks and we'll be done, d.v.
Chapter 8: “Tithing and Clergy Salaries: Sore Spots on the Wallet”
As usual, Viola is half right and half extreme. The first part of this chapter has to do with tithing, the giving of a tenth of one’s income to the Lord. Underlying his position is of course the fact that he is concerned about giving one tenth to the church. He does not believe in “institutional” churches, so we would expect him to have a sharp distinction in his mind between giving to a church and giving to the Lord.
His bottom line is that “tithing, while biblical, is not Christian” (183). He is mostly right, but I think at least a quarter wrong. Is tithing biblical? Yes, he says, because we find it in the Old Testament. It is not Christian, he would say, because it is not required in the New Testament. He is right that the New Testament does not require a tithe of Gentile believers. Where he is wrong is to suggest that, for this reason, tithing is unchristian.
My problem with Viola’s interpretation is thus not that he is wrong on his read of the New Testament—for the most part at least. He is very much stuck in a naïve version of the “old perspective” on Paul, as most pop speakers like him are. Paul’s teaching on the Jewish Law is far more complex than the simple categories with which Viola operates, as our ongoing review of N. T. Wright’s book on justification shows.
So Viola is right that the Old Testament tithe was an agricultural rather than a monetary tithe. He is right that it was for Levites and the poor in general (I have serious questions about his 23.3% gig--there are probably layers of Old Testament tradition involved on these sorts of issues, where you have differing traditions about what the tithe was more than things to combine with each other). He is right that the New Testament never binds the tithe rule on Gentile believers. Jesus does affirm the Pharisees for tithing their spices in Matthew 23, but they were Jews.
The New Testament urges giving proportional to God’s blessing, but never sets an amount or a percent (e.g., 2 Cor. 9:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).
Where Viola is wrong, as always, is to jump from 1) the Bible does not require it to 2) it is wrong for a church to require it. Just as there were Nazirites who bound themselves to a different way of life, there is nothing wrong with denominations binding together into distinct identities. Paul’s principle with regard to the Sabbath was “one person considers one day above a day; another considers every day the same” (Rom. 14:5). Both need to get off the other’s back. Viola gives proportionately; Wesleyans tithe. I affirm you Viola. Get off our backs.
I might say, by the way, that I have serious doubts about statements like these, “Not a few poor Christians have been thrown into deeper poverty because they have felt obligated to give beyond their means” (179). If anything, churches struggle financially because people don’t tithe, not because everyone’s sending themselves to the poor house because they’re tithing.
The second half of the chapter is where Viola really jumps the shark. Viola’s attempt in the “delving DEEPER” section to dodge the clear implications of 1 Timothy 5:17-18 that assemblies should support their elders materially are completely unconvincing, “the worker is worth their reward.” The same in 1 Corinthians 9—a passage that Viola almost completely avoids. It is appropriate to support materially those who “tread the grain” for them.
The early church did come to have a ministry structure, and Paul admonishes churches to support these leaders materially. Indeed, Paul considers it an obligation. I'm not saying that institutional churches have a good record with money. But as usual Viola throws the baby out with the bath water.
I don't have a problem with the ministers in the house church movement who are supporting themselves. I respect and affirm them. But Viola is the one being unbiblical when he suggests they do not have a "right" to the material support of those to whom they minister, even if like Paul they do not use that right.
Paul, by the way, probably did so to avoid the strings of patronage. Viola mentions the occasional conflict of interests when you need to preach on a topic that steps on the toes of heavy contributors in the church. That situation does bear directly on Paul's practices.
Chapter 9: Baptism and the Lord's Supper: Diluting the Sacraments
The first half of this chapter is on baptism and found me wondering what Viola's background was before he went house church. I wonder if he was Disciples of Christ or Baptist because this chapter seemed to be on a slightly different traditional trajectory than some others, which have seemed much more straight Anabaptist.
First he dismisses infant baptism out of hand. I have come to prefer it. It is interesting because in some ways it would fit with Viola's community focus. In this chapter, for example, he really rejects the "sinner's prayer" (he really hates Moody for some reason). And he rejects the language of a personal relationship with Christ. There is a possible world in which Viola's emphasis on community and disdain for individualism would lead him to affirm infant baptism.
Since I'm on individualism, Viola is of course right that the sinner's prayer was invented to give people a path to becoming a Christian and is not exactly found in any one place in Scripture. And he's right that the emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ is a peculiarly contemporary American phenomenon. As usual, his delving DEEPER section (was this section in the first edition? I suspect he is answering real questions from people) is more balanced. Yes, "We certainly should make our own confessions of faith" (198).
The "diluting" of baptism for Viola is the thinking that the sinner's prayer is basically it. Interestingly--because it seems out of keeping with the trend of the rest of the book--Viola wants a person to be baptized ASAP after coming to faith. But I think he makes too much of the connection between baptism and being "saved" in the New Testament. Receiving the Spirit is the definitive marker of becoming a Christian in Acts, Paul, and Hebrews. Paul de-emphasizes the importance of the act in 1 Corinthians 1.
And again, Viola wrongly assumes that we have to do everything exactly the way the earliest Christians did. Yes, let's baptize soon after a person receives the Spirit. Immersion? Why not, I like the symbolism. Infants? I prefer it because 1) baptism does not save (1 Pet. is figurative), 2) I believe it fits the corporate formulation of identity reflected in the early church, and 3) it says our children are in the church and that we are guarding their souls until they are old enough to decide for themselves what faith path their own life will take. I will tolerate you holding our children out a three story window of faith until they are old enough to ask you to kindly let them come into the safety of the house if you will tolerate my affirmation of God's prevenient grace and predilection to save rather than to damn.
Then of course Viola gets to communion. Yes, it was originally a meal. Yes, I find the individual crackers and cups of juice highly perverse when one primary meaning of the meal is "because there is one bread, we are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). Hard to see how individual cups and wafers convey the unity of the body at all but in an American context simply reinforces the false idea that we are only in a personal relationship with Christ. The corporate dimension is primary, the personal dimension secondary. Viola is right here.
I think Viola is part right and part wrong on examining ourselves. What the Corinthians were to examine is whether they rightly discerned the body of Christ as they ate, namely, the church. Were they in proper relationship to their brothers and sisters as they partook. So it was an examination of corporate sin Paul had in mind rather than individual sin.
Nevertheless, there is a power to the abbreviated "meal" we now take that I believe God has sanctioned. What could be wrong with taking this moment, indeed many moments to examine your own life in terms of sin and righteousness? There is a place for the "pot luck," but I can't remember any that were as powerful spiritually as some moments I've had in communion.
So the eucharistic service is a development from the New Testament in some ways, but it is so powerful that I have to believe it is a God ordained one. Viola's assemblies are losing something if they abandon the possibility of God ordained "sacred moments" (sacraments) like communion where ordinary bread and juice can become catalysts for the "real" presence of Christ. Yes, he's always there. Yes, you can experience his "real" presence anywhere.
But God seems to have given this particular place and time His approval, as with baptism. And God has the right to create a thousand other "sacred moments" on the spot whenever and wherever He chooses.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Pagan Christianity 8: Ministers of Music
It's just going to be two posts on Viola today. This is the second.
The previous reviews of Pagan Christianity were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
Now for another short one, chapter 8, "Ministers of Music: Clergy Set to Music."
Same pattern:
1) The New Testament church had open participatory music.
2) Everyone who doesn't have open participatory music traces their worship forms back to something pagan.
3) We should have open participatory music.
4) Do you really mean we cannot have set music and worship leaders? Normally he says, "Not at all." But this time he really does stick mostly to his guns. Choirs and worship teams contradict Scripture (168). "If one has never seena group of Christians choosing and leading their own songs spontaneously under Christ's headship, it is difficult to grasp what this would look like."
Well, actually, coming from fairly old fashioned revivalist roots, I have experienced spontaneous song leading from the congregation during services. What often happens is that the same basic people are the ones that have a tendency to sing out a song and it is sometimes a predictable song.
"We are not part of the Levitical priesthood; we are priests after the order of Melchizedek" (169). Well, not really. That would be Jesus alone, "without father, without mother, without genealogy, neither having beginning of days nor end of life, he remains a priest forever" (Heb. 7:3).
Again, the question of history does not necessarily negate use today. Mind you, I don't enjoy worship bands or special songs. It does very often seem very shallow to me. But I make myself affirm those who I think are in the majority who I think do worship God through these forms. In my opinion, there is no single God ordained way to do music or worship in terms of forms.
When Viola says, "In the early church, worship and singing were in the hands of all of God's people" (158), I suppose he's right. But then again, we don't really have enough evidence to say. Awefully flimsy basis to stake so much on. "Every one of you hath a psalm" (1 Cor. 14:26). A description, not a prescription--and that of a church whose problematic worship Paul is trying to correct!
WOW! 1 Corinthians validates the kind of worship Viola wants to have. Go for it. But it does not invalidate everyone else's worship...
The previous reviews of Pagan Christianity were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
Now for another short one, chapter 8, "Ministers of Music: Clergy Set to Music."
Same pattern:
1) The New Testament church had open participatory music.
2) Everyone who doesn't have open participatory music traces their worship forms back to something pagan.
3) We should have open participatory music.
4) Do you really mean we cannot have set music and worship leaders? Normally he says, "Not at all." But this time he really does stick mostly to his guns. Choirs and worship teams contradict Scripture (168). "If one has never seena group of Christians choosing and leading their own songs spontaneously under Christ's headship, it is difficult to grasp what this would look like."
Well, actually, coming from fairly old fashioned revivalist roots, I have experienced spontaneous song leading from the congregation during services. What often happens is that the same basic people are the ones that have a tendency to sing out a song and it is sometimes a predictable song.
"We are not part of the Levitical priesthood; we are priests after the order of Melchizedek" (169). Well, not really. That would be Jesus alone, "without father, without mother, without genealogy, neither having beginning of days nor end of life, he remains a priest forever" (Heb. 7:3).
Again, the question of history does not necessarily negate use today. Mind you, I don't enjoy worship bands or special songs. It does very often seem very shallow to me. But I make myself affirm those who I think are in the majority who I think do worship God through these forms. In my opinion, there is no single God ordained way to do music or worship in terms of forms.
When Viola says, "In the early church, worship and singing were in the hands of all of God's people" (158), I suppose he's right. But then again, we don't really have enough evidence to say. Awefully flimsy basis to stake so much on. "Every one of you hath a psalm" (1 Cor. 14:26). A description, not a prescription--and that of a church whose problematic worship Paul is trying to correct!
WOW! 1 Corinthians validates the kind of worship Viola wants to have. Go for it. But it does not invalidate everyone else's worship...
Pagan Christianity 7: Dressing Up
I might manage three Viola posts by the end of the day. This is the first.
The previous reviews of Pagan Christianity were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
Now Chapter 7: "Sunday Morning Costumes: Covering Up the Problem."
Same basic formula, although I didn't have nearly as much problem with this chapter as others. He's only a little over the top in a couple places, then he's more sane in the "Delving Deeper."
So let me start with the "delving DEEPER" section. He responds to those for whom dressing up for church is a reminder of giving God the respect he deserves. Viola responds, "If... you can do it unto the Lord with pure motives, then by all means do so" (155).
Does he think the practice of dressing up can be redeemed? Yes, he says, "There is nothing inherently wrong with wearing dressy clothes to a Christian gathering" (155).
Thanks. So agree with him that 1) dressy clothes are not in any way necessary for church, 2) many people hide their real selves behind dressy clothes that are little more than image management, 3) the clothing ministers wear, from etherial albs and mitres to business suits, are cultural and way post-biblical.
My disagreements are same old same old. The meaning of what we wear to church is a function of what it means today, not how it started. You can't assassinate Halloween today by reference to where it came from. The meaning of something today is a function of its context today.
So how you should dress in church, whether minister or not, would seem to be a matter of what certain dress signifies in your context. I doubt you can come to the vast majority of churches in America in a string bikini with a godly heart. I doubt a Christian woman in certain parts of the Middle East could come to church without a veil and have a godly heart. Paul told the Corinthian women to wear veils in their worship.
Jesus didn't condemn the clothing the Pharisees wore as clothing but as an expression of the motives of certain Pharisees. Indeed, many think that the "hem" of Jesus' garment was in fact the tassels that a man would wear to signify he was a rabbi, a teacher (women pretty much not allowed in the club).
The previous reviews of Pagan Christianity were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
Now Chapter 7: "Sunday Morning Costumes: Covering Up the Problem."
Same basic formula, although I didn't have nearly as much problem with this chapter as others. He's only a little over the top in a couple places, then he's more sane in the "Delving Deeper."
So let me start with the "delving DEEPER" section. He responds to those for whom dressing up for church is a reminder of giving God the respect he deserves. Viola responds, "If... you can do it unto the Lord with pure motives, then by all means do so" (155).
Does he think the practice of dressing up can be redeemed? Yes, he says, "There is nothing inherently wrong with wearing dressy clothes to a Christian gathering" (155).
Thanks. So agree with him that 1) dressy clothes are not in any way necessary for church, 2) many people hide their real selves behind dressy clothes that are little more than image management, 3) the clothing ministers wear, from etherial albs and mitres to business suits, are cultural and way post-biblical.
My disagreements are same old same old. The meaning of what we wear to church is a function of what it means today, not how it started. You can't assassinate Halloween today by reference to where it came from. The meaning of something today is a function of its context today.
So how you should dress in church, whether minister or not, would seem to be a matter of what certain dress signifies in your context. I doubt you can come to the vast majority of churches in America in a string bikini with a godly heart. I doubt a Christian woman in certain parts of the Middle East could come to church without a veil and have a godly heart. Paul told the Corinthian women to wear veils in their worship.
Jesus didn't condemn the clothing the Pharisees wore as clothing but as an expression of the motives of certain Pharisees. Indeed, many think that the "hem" of Jesus' garment was in fact the tassels that a man would wear to signify he was a rabbi, a teacher (women pretty much not allowed in the club).
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Pagan Christianity 6: The Pastor
You're not going to believe it, but it's true. I recommended Viola to a pastor in town yesterday. I told him not to pay any attention to Viola's analysis of history, but that he would really resonate with the basic ideas.
This pastor was saying things like 1) "Most pastors think their crap doesn't stink" and 2) I'm afraid in 5 years our church plant will become a conventional church and 3) I hate the institutional church and 4) I don't want a church building. I want Hobby Lobby... So I recommended Viola to him. I said I thought his historical analysis was idiotic but that he's scratching your itch.
By the way, this pastor is hoping to take out a billboard later this year that says, "Satan, get the h*ll out of town." Anyone living in Marion, Indiana now knows who I'm talking about, given the infamous "sex" billboard last year. :-)
I suspect today is going to be filled with surprises. Although I believe in ordination and I believe in being called to be an ordained minister, I do agree that there is great freedom within the big tent of Christianity for various levels of empowerment of ministers. And the fact that I am OK with the way Viola does "minister" in and of itself means that I do not think the rules set down by other traditions, including the Methodist tradition of which I am a part, are absolute.
Although I follow my tradition and would enforce my tradition for those within our fellowship, I have significant self-doubt about the idea that only an ordained minister (on some level) can consecrate the elements in communion. I certainly prefer to be in the succession of ministers going back to the early church. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions would not recognize me as being in proper "apostolic succession," but I am glad to say I was ordained by a minister ordained by a minister... who was ordained by someone among the first apostles of believers.
But I cannot defend this preference of mine as a requirement or a necessity. I like the fact that my local church can't just up and ordain me. I like the fact that my denomination hasn't just up and ordained me. It makes me feel that I am a part of something much bigger than some group of 27 people in the mountains of Kentucky. I am connected as a minister across space and time back to the earliest apostles.
But it doesn't necessarily make me one bit better equipped to serve than that person genuinely anointed by the Spirit in Kentucky.
I am all for training of ministers too. I'm sick of the anti-education sentiment that is very much apart of the American anti-intellectual ethos, the only country where being good at math and science makes you someone to laugh at. We're the only country where, if the vast majority of experts on a topic think something, that makes that particular position highly dubious. Yes, I agree, seminaries and churches bear a lion's share of blame for this divide. They have made themselves irrelevant.
Yes, I have that tendency too, to be irrelevant. You'll be happy to know that I have consistently yielded to the practioners in the design of IWU's new MDIV and probably seminary. It will be, I think, the most practical and adult-education friendly MDIV on the market.
But the fact that seminaries are largely irrelevant, the fact that those who most like to teach usually are, by personality, most interested in the least immediately pressing matters, doesn't mean that they are wrong on what they think. Short term irrelevancy is not the same as being incorrect or even irrelevant in the long term. Make fun of them for their conflict management skills, yes. That doesn't mean they understand God less than you do.
It is a horrible and ironic situation. The most "successful" pastors often seem to be those who are the most ignorant of things biblical, theological, philosophical, etc... Meanwhile, those who are most knowledgeable about things biblical, theological, etc. seem least effective in getting the work of the ministry done. How do we get these two very important parts of the body of Christ into real dialog with each other?
Again, we have gone to great strides in IWU's MDIV to balance the importance of practice with the importance of depth of knowledge. I and others are currently going over every assignment in the first main course, Missional Christianity, with a team of practically minded bright minds, trying to find the balance between practice and underpinings.
Well, this post is supposed to be about Viola's sixth chapter, the pastor, so let me get to it.
The previous reviews were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
Chapter 6: The Pastor: Obstacle to Every Member Functioning
I agree with Viola that there is sparse support in the New Testament for the idea of a single leader of a local assembly. I personally wonder if, somewhat like the "synagogue rulers," an elder in a local assemby rotated as a kind of director each year, but I can't prove it.
In Acts 20 Paul calls the elders of the churches of Ephesus and then says in verse 28 that God has appointed them overseers of the flock (thus the pastoral image). This passage both seems to support and undermine some of Viola's claims. On the one hand, it supports his claim that there was no single overseer or "pastor" of these assemblies. Yes, they likely were literally old men. The evidence is not strong for them all being men but it is probably a safe assumption in most instances. Yes, "pastor" probably was not a senior leader of the assembly.
1 Peter also writes elders who oversee and shepherd, fairly obviously in imitation of Christ, I think. 1 Timothy does speak of individuals aspiring to be overseers and ministers (diakonoi), but it is not clear that this fact means there was only one of them in a locality. I personally imagine that multiple individuals in a given locality might have aspired to these roles.
But as usual, I think Viola pushes things too far. I had a conversation with a colleague who suggested to me that the house church movement was possibly in decline and that Viola's vigor is really an attempt to keep it going. The problem, my colleague suggested, is that these local church fellowships can't get their people to stop attending established churches. If this is at all true, then I understand Viola's work to be an attempt to get people out of the established churches and into their fellowship alone.
This is of course the place in every chapter where Viola pushes me over the edge. It is not enough for him to justify his house fellowships. I have little against that. I am all for small group accountability and charismatic fellowship.
My problem is that he then wants to burn all the established churches down and villainize them. The reason the later parts of the New Testament move toward institutionalization--indeed why revival movements become more conventional in the second and third generation--is not because of the myth of the dying of the light and the work of Satan in the institutional church. It's because institutions ensure survival of a movement.
If we go back to the chapter where Viola villainized Whitefield as the poster child for Methodism. Whitefield was apparently an amazing preacher. Benjamin Franklin was said to have left his wallet at home when he went to hear him so that he wouldn't be able to contribute money to him... and Franklin wasn't even a Christian!
But where are Whitefield's crowds today? I can tell you where the crowds of the organized, institutionalizing Wesley are. They are the various variety of churches in the Wesleyan tradition. Detach from an institutionalized church and your movement will die after you do, unless the second generation institutionalizes. You can blah, blah, blah about the Holy Spirit all you want. That's just the way it works, and any one who says differently is fighting the entirety of human history.
Mock the Roman Empire all you want. It lasted 1000 years. Mock the Roman Catholic Church... and lets see where the descendants of your house church are in 1500 years.
So back to the Bible. I think we have every reason to think that the role of elder in a local assembly was more or less for life. Clement of Rome was writing in the 90's. And he wrote to Corinth telling them that they did not have the authority to remove from the office of overseer individuals who had been appointed by the apostles.
And at the turn of the century, these overseers seem to have covered an entire city--Onesimus, bishop of Ephesus, for example. Could this be the same Onesimus we read about in Philemon? What a horrible man to depart so dramatically from the teaching of Paul! Or maybe the idea of designated leaders wasn't so out of keeping with Paul after all.
Viola also suggests that church planters like Paul left localities "so the church could function under the headship of Christ" (141). Nah, I think they wanted to spread the gospel throughout the world before Christ returned and needed to get to, oh say, Spain (Rom. 15).
The earliest church, including Paul, did not expect the wait for Christ's return to go quite so long as it did. Regardless of what you think about the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, it seems pretty obvious to me that this book represents a "battoning down the hatches" for the long haul in the absence of apostles like Paul around to keep the church as a whole on track. I know there are better scholars than me who disagree, but I smell cop-outs on their breath. So Paul passes on to Timothy a "deposit" of teaching to pass along.
It is probably in this area of sacramentalism and ordination that I feel most squeemish in terms of where the great catholic tradition went. I sit loosely to it believing that 1) it is important for there to be sacred things and 2) God meets us in certain basic ways that are fundamental to all human nature, which means we can see the light of God even if dimly in the "pagan" arena, 3) it is important for there to be local experts on Christian belief and practice and 4) so called Spirit-led, undirected expressions are more often than not, not, 5) denominations certainly have a ton of mess in them and solo pastors have their quirks and can be self-defeating, but they ensure the perpetuation of the faith in a way a house church does not (unless it's an underground house church movement where there are no established churches).
Like I said, I am very comfortable with my own denominational structure, especially if we don't take ourselves too seriously.
This pastor was saying things like 1) "Most pastors think their crap doesn't stink" and 2) I'm afraid in 5 years our church plant will become a conventional church and 3) I hate the institutional church and 4) I don't want a church building. I want Hobby Lobby... So I recommended Viola to him. I said I thought his historical analysis was idiotic but that he's scratching your itch.
By the way, this pastor is hoping to take out a billboard later this year that says, "Satan, get the h*ll out of town." Anyone living in Marion, Indiana now knows who I'm talking about, given the infamous "sex" billboard last year. :-)
I suspect today is going to be filled with surprises. Although I believe in ordination and I believe in being called to be an ordained minister, I do agree that there is great freedom within the big tent of Christianity for various levels of empowerment of ministers. And the fact that I am OK with the way Viola does "minister" in and of itself means that I do not think the rules set down by other traditions, including the Methodist tradition of which I am a part, are absolute.
Although I follow my tradition and would enforce my tradition for those within our fellowship, I have significant self-doubt about the idea that only an ordained minister (on some level) can consecrate the elements in communion. I certainly prefer to be in the succession of ministers going back to the early church. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions would not recognize me as being in proper "apostolic succession," but I am glad to say I was ordained by a minister ordained by a minister... who was ordained by someone among the first apostles of believers.
But I cannot defend this preference of mine as a requirement or a necessity. I like the fact that my local church can't just up and ordain me. I like the fact that my denomination hasn't just up and ordained me. It makes me feel that I am a part of something much bigger than some group of 27 people in the mountains of Kentucky. I am connected as a minister across space and time back to the earliest apostles.
But it doesn't necessarily make me one bit better equipped to serve than that person genuinely anointed by the Spirit in Kentucky.
I am all for training of ministers too. I'm sick of the anti-education sentiment that is very much apart of the American anti-intellectual ethos, the only country where being good at math and science makes you someone to laugh at. We're the only country where, if the vast majority of experts on a topic think something, that makes that particular position highly dubious. Yes, I agree, seminaries and churches bear a lion's share of blame for this divide. They have made themselves irrelevant.
Yes, I have that tendency too, to be irrelevant. You'll be happy to know that I have consistently yielded to the practioners in the design of IWU's new MDIV and probably seminary. It will be, I think, the most practical and adult-education friendly MDIV on the market.
But the fact that seminaries are largely irrelevant, the fact that those who most like to teach usually are, by personality, most interested in the least immediately pressing matters, doesn't mean that they are wrong on what they think. Short term irrelevancy is not the same as being incorrect or even irrelevant in the long term. Make fun of them for their conflict management skills, yes. That doesn't mean they understand God less than you do.
It is a horrible and ironic situation. The most "successful" pastors often seem to be those who are the most ignorant of things biblical, theological, philosophical, etc... Meanwhile, those who are most knowledgeable about things biblical, theological, etc. seem least effective in getting the work of the ministry done. How do we get these two very important parts of the body of Christ into real dialog with each other?
Again, we have gone to great strides in IWU's MDIV to balance the importance of practice with the importance of depth of knowledge. I and others are currently going over every assignment in the first main course, Missional Christianity, with a team of practically minded bright minds, trying to find the balance between practice and underpinings.
Well, this post is supposed to be about Viola's sixth chapter, the pastor, so let me get to it.
The previous reviews were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
Chapter 6: The Pastor: Obstacle to Every Member Functioning
I agree with Viola that there is sparse support in the New Testament for the idea of a single leader of a local assembly. I personally wonder if, somewhat like the "synagogue rulers," an elder in a local assemby rotated as a kind of director each year, but I can't prove it.
In Acts 20 Paul calls the elders of the churches of Ephesus and then says in verse 28 that God has appointed them overseers of the flock (thus the pastoral image). This passage both seems to support and undermine some of Viola's claims. On the one hand, it supports his claim that there was no single overseer or "pastor" of these assemblies. Yes, they likely were literally old men. The evidence is not strong for them all being men but it is probably a safe assumption in most instances. Yes, "pastor" probably was not a senior leader of the assembly.
1 Peter also writes elders who oversee and shepherd, fairly obviously in imitation of Christ, I think. 1 Timothy does speak of individuals aspiring to be overseers and ministers (diakonoi), but it is not clear that this fact means there was only one of them in a locality. I personally imagine that multiple individuals in a given locality might have aspired to these roles.
But as usual, I think Viola pushes things too far. I had a conversation with a colleague who suggested to me that the house church movement was possibly in decline and that Viola's vigor is really an attempt to keep it going. The problem, my colleague suggested, is that these local church fellowships can't get their people to stop attending established churches. If this is at all true, then I understand Viola's work to be an attempt to get people out of the established churches and into their fellowship alone.
This is of course the place in every chapter where Viola pushes me over the edge. It is not enough for him to justify his house fellowships. I have little against that. I am all for small group accountability and charismatic fellowship.
My problem is that he then wants to burn all the established churches down and villainize them. The reason the later parts of the New Testament move toward institutionalization--indeed why revival movements become more conventional in the second and third generation--is not because of the myth of the dying of the light and the work of Satan in the institutional church. It's because institutions ensure survival of a movement.
If we go back to the chapter where Viola villainized Whitefield as the poster child for Methodism. Whitefield was apparently an amazing preacher. Benjamin Franklin was said to have left his wallet at home when he went to hear him so that he wouldn't be able to contribute money to him... and Franklin wasn't even a Christian!
But where are Whitefield's crowds today? I can tell you where the crowds of the organized, institutionalizing Wesley are. They are the various variety of churches in the Wesleyan tradition. Detach from an institutionalized church and your movement will die after you do, unless the second generation institutionalizes. You can blah, blah, blah about the Holy Spirit all you want. That's just the way it works, and any one who says differently is fighting the entirety of human history.
Mock the Roman Empire all you want. It lasted 1000 years. Mock the Roman Catholic Church... and lets see where the descendants of your house church are in 1500 years.
So back to the Bible. I think we have every reason to think that the role of elder in a local assembly was more or less for life. Clement of Rome was writing in the 90's. And he wrote to Corinth telling them that they did not have the authority to remove from the office of overseer individuals who had been appointed by the apostles.
And at the turn of the century, these overseers seem to have covered an entire city--Onesimus, bishop of Ephesus, for example. Could this be the same Onesimus we read about in Philemon? What a horrible man to depart so dramatically from the teaching of Paul! Or maybe the idea of designated leaders wasn't so out of keeping with Paul after all.
Viola also suggests that church planters like Paul left localities "so the church could function under the headship of Christ" (141). Nah, I think they wanted to spread the gospel throughout the world before Christ returned and needed to get to, oh say, Spain (Rom. 15).
The earliest church, including Paul, did not expect the wait for Christ's return to go quite so long as it did. Regardless of what you think about the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, it seems pretty obvious to me that this book represents a "battoning down the hatches" for the long haul in the absence of apostles like Paul around to keep the church as a whole on track. I know there are better scholars than me who disagree, but I smell cop-outs on their breath. So Paul passes on to Timothy a "deposit" of teaching to pass along.
It is probably in this area of sacramentalism and ordination that I feel most squeemish in terms of where the great catholic tradition went. I sit loosely to it believing that 1) it is important for there to be sacred things and 2) God meets us in certain basic ways that are fundamental to all human nature, which means we can see the light of God even if dimly in the "pagan" arena, 3) it is important for there to be local experts on Christian belief and practice and 4) so called Spirit-led, undirected expressions are more often than not, not, 5) denominations certainly have a ton of mess in them and solo pastors have their quirks and can be self-defeating, but they ensure the perpetuation of the faith in a way a house church does not (unless it's an underground house church movement where there are no established churches).
Like I said, I am very comfortable with my own denominational structure, especially if we don't take ourselves too seriously.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Pagan Christianity 5: The Sermon
This is the fifth installment of my review of Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity? I apologize for the earlier caustic language I used about Viola. I don't have hateful feelings toward him. I just think some of his argumentation is absurd. I've edited most of my caustic language out.
The previous reviews were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
Today we look at chapter 5, "The Sermon: Protestantism's Sacred Cow." I'm so tired of this book. Can I rewrite it for him? It will be a lot shorter. Of course I will not be as rhetorically effective as Viola or as entertaining. He's obviously studied writing at some high school and college that no doubt taught composition following the techniques of Greco-Roman rhetoric.
And of course to stoop to using the book form would be to submit to pagan influence, since none of the Old or New Testament writers used the book form. They wrote on scrolls. The book form actually came into Christianity from pagan culture in the third century because Constantine wanted all the churches to have a standardized form of Scripture that could be mass produced and put into every basilica (that he ordered built to stamp out vibrant, open participatory meetings). He ordered 50 complete copies of the whole Bible made on book form, using the text he had chosen, and distributed throughout the empire.
Of course half of what I wrote above is a joke. And you should take half of what Viola writes about as seriously as what I just wrote too.
What's good in the chapter
Do church meetings have to have a sermon or homily given by an official minister in the same format to individuals who do not feel free to ask questions or interact with the speaker?
As far as I'm concerned, if Viola and others want to meet in a home, pray, search the Scriptures, study together, maybe occasionally have a visiting speaker who is obviously graced by God with particular wisdom, go for it. I affirm you.
How's that?
As for your critique of preaching? Barna's research suggesting that most sermons do not facilitate worship or draw people nearer to God, or convey life-changing information (104)? I suspect there is some substance to their claims about the effectiveness of most sermons.
Frankly, the same principles apply to college lectures. What is it, students will likely retain 5% of a lecture, making it the most ineffective form of teaching in itself?
Viola's five points on preaching are:
1. It makes a preacher a virtuoso performer with muted spectators who watch a performance (97).
2. It often stalemates spiritual growth by fostering passivity (97).
3. It preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality (98).
4. It doesn't equip the saints but de-skills them (98).
5. Today's sermon is often impractical (99).
Number 3 is the next chapter so I'll leave it alone for now. Yes, I would agree that in perhaps even the majority of churches the congregation mostly lets the pastor do the work of the ministry when they should be fully involved.
Yes, I would agree that a good many sermons do not have the congregation's "address" on them. People leave thinking, "What am I supposed to do with that?"
And yes, an aweful lot of preachers "get off" on their overestimated authority and wisdom (of course that can apply to professors, bloggers, book writers, and people invited to come speak at conferences). I have longed complained at the dynamic in America that can take a below average person who would have difficulty succeeding at any other job, gives him (less often her) a Bible, and suddenly this person can speak with the authority of God? Nah, most of the time they still don't have much to say.
I'm not, by the way, suggesting that all preachers are this way, not at all. I'm targeting a particular kind of pulpit "know it all" that is actually a "not know much at all." Only in democratic America, where there has often been a tinge of anti-intelletualism, is this phenomenon of the know-nothing pastor at all common.
On the other hand, some people are just wiser than others. Viola is surely one of them in many respects (despite what I say of him below). I fully agree with Augustine when he suggests that you cannot make a person into a great preacher. I believe you can improve a person's speaking ability. But generally, some people were born to have something to share and share it well and most weren't. And some people are gifted to be wise and most aren't.
Again, by "most" I don't mean most preachers, but most people.
I hope you'll forgive me for suggesting that good preaching is primarily about having wisdom to share. We tend to play games with the biblical text, as if any old person can preach if they preach the Bible. Viola likely thinks that any old person in his house church can share great wisdom from the Spirit. Sure. Anyone can have a moment of inspiration or insight.
But in my opinion, God has simply gifted some people in these areas and, most, He hasn't. Most of the time, the wise ones should be speaking, whether in a house church or from a pulpit. A person that God has anointed with wisdom will bring God's word to others around her or him (Viola seems to assume it will be a him). A person not anointed with wisdom will not bring much to those around him or her, even if they are speaking from the Bible.
And by the way, I would agree with Viola that the forty-fifty-ninety minute sermon is no sign of anything except probably a congregation bored out of their skull. These preachers do often leave me thinking they have an overblown sense of the importance of their own words. I bet the take away of the vast majority of congregations is less than five minutes of a sermon, no matter how long the preacher speaks. For me, anything over twenty minutes is usually a waste of time.
There are things lurking in Viola's chapter that should be heard.
Don't read further if you are a Viola groupee.
OK, there's the chapter. Or at least the chapter might have been more productive if it had developed the points above. Instead, like Fonzi in the waning seasons of Happy Days, Viola always jumps the shark. Five pages into the chapter I wrote, "Oh, Come on" in the margin.
So he's going to blame the Christian sermon on pagan Greco-Roman rhetoric snuck into the church by Chrystostom and Augustine, after the vibrant open-participatory meetings of the early church died out?
Same myopia again and again and again:
1. All human life and thinking is enculturated, all the time. It is the nature of incarnation. It is misguided to try (and impossible) to tease out the Christian or absolute from the particular cultural forms of the day. All truth is incarnated and inculturated truth.
2. This was no less true of the life and thinking of the New Testament church and the Old Testament. The New Testament is at the same time thoroughly inspired and thoroughly pagan, in Viola's sense. God sanctifies people and thoughts within culture. He has not set up the system to where you can remove people and thoughts from culture.
And here let me give some reasons why I think Viola is nuts when he tries to pin rhetoric on those pesky church fathers.
Galatians
1:1-5 Prescript (letter opening used in "pagan" letters)
1:11-2:14 Narratio
2:15-21 Propositio
3:1-5:1 Argumentatio
5:2-10 Peroratio
5:11-18 Postscript
Looks a little to me like someone might have studied a little Greco-Roman rhetoric on the side. In other letters Paul has a thanksgiving section (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:2-10), which he borrowed from pagan letters that thanked the gods at this same point in their letters! Paul's omission of this section in Galatians is usually considered rhetorically significant!
Whether you agree with this outline or not, there is an entire branch of New Testament studies called "rhetorical criticism," which brings knowledge of the rhetorical conventions of the day to bear on the interpretation of the New Testament.
Hebrews...
The majority of scholars currently would consider Hebrews a sermon (13:22). Viola might try to argue that a "word of exhortation" was spontaneous in the early church from Acts 13:15. But Hebrews looks like it might have involved quite a bit of sermon preparation!
It opens in "periodic" style, a high style of Greek oratory. For example, the first verse has a string of p words: "polymeros kai polytropos palai ho theos tois patrasin en tois prophetais."
Filthy pagan! I'm appauled to find that Old Testament writers wrote pagan acrostic psalms, copied pagan Egyptian wisdom sayings, drew on pagan mythical imagery. I'm disgusted that New Testament authors use chiasms, inclusios, allegories, similes, synecdoches, metonymy, asyndeton... They draw on Jewish wisdom and apocalyptic traditions. John even draws on the logos of Middle Platonism found in the writings of Philo. Throw out the New Testament because it has been influenced by paganism!
Not really. I guess God doesn't operate the way Viola thinks He does. Oops. Kind of embarrassing, if you ask me.
P.S. Isn't Hebrews 5:11-6:12 an interesting example of captatio benevolentiae? And certainly we can all agree that Hebrews 11:32 a lovely example of praeteritio?
The previous reviews were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
Today we look at chapter 5, "The Sermon: Protestantism's Sacred Cow." I'm so tired of this book. Can I rewrite it for him? It will be a lot shorter. Of course I will not be as rhetorically effective as Viola or as entertaining. He's obviously studied writing at some high school and college that no doubt taught composition following the techniques of Greco-Roman rhetoric.
And of course to stoop to using the book form would be to submit to pagan influence, since none of the Old or New Testament writers used the book form. They wrote on scrolls. The book form actually came into Christianity from pagan culture in the third century because Constantine wanted all the churches to have a standardized form of Scripture that could be mass produced and put into every basilica (that he ordered built to stamp out vibrant, open participatory meetings). He ordered 50 complete copies of the whole Bible made on book form, using the text he had chosen, and distributed throughout the empire.
Of course half of what I wrote above is a joke. And you should take half of what Viola writes about as seriously as what I just wrote too.
What's good in the chapter
Do church meetings have to have a sermon or homily given by an official minister in the same format to individuals who do not feel free to ask questions or interact with the speaker?
As far as I'm concerned, if Viola and others want to meet in a home, pray, search the Scriptures, study together, maybe occasionally have a visiting speaker who is obviously graced by God with particular wisdom, go for it. I affirm you.
How's that?
As for your critique of preaching? Barna's research suggesting that most sermons do not facilitate worship or draw people nearer to God, or convey life-changing information (104)? I suspect there is some substance to their claims about the effectiveness of most sermons.
Frankly, the same principles apply to college lectures. What is it, students will likely retain 5% of a lecture, making it the most ineffective form of teaching in itself?
Viola's five points on preaching are:
1. It makes a preacher a virtuoso performer with muted spectators who watch a performance (97).
2. It often stalemates spiritual growth by fostering passivity (97).
3. It preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality (98).
4. It doesn't equip the saints but de-skills them (98).
5. Today's sermon is often impractical (99).
Number 3 is the next chapter so I'll leave it alone for now. Yes, I would agree that in perhaps even the majority of churches the congregation mostly lets the pastor do the work of the ministry when they should be fully involved.
Yes, I would agree that a good many sermons do not have the congregation's "address" on them. People leave thinking, "What am I supposed to do with that?"
And yes, an aweful lot of preachers "get off" on their overestimated authority and wisdom (of course that can apply to professors, bloggers, book writers, and people invited to come speak at conferences). I have longed complained at the dynamic in America that can take a below average person who would have difficulty succeeding at any other job, gives him (less often her) a Bible, and suddenly this person can speak with the authority of God? Nah, most of the time they still don't have much to say.
I'm not, by the way, suggesting that all preachers are this way, not at all. I'm targeting a particular kind of pulpit "know it all" that is actually a "not know much at all." Only in democratic America, where there has often been a tinge of anti-intelletualism, is this phenomenon of the know-nothing pastor at all common.
On the other hand, some people are just wiser than others. Viola is surely one of them in many respects (despite what I say of him below). I fully agree with Augustine when he suggests that you cannot make a person into a great preacher. I believe you can improve a person's speaking ability. But generally, some people were born to have something to share and share it well and most weren't. And some people are gifted to be wise and most aren't.
Again, by "most" I don't mean most preachers, but most people.
I hope you'll forgive me for suggesting that good preaching is primarily about having wisdom to share. We tend to play games with the biblical text, as if any old person can preach if they preach the Bible. Viola likely thinks that any old person in his house church can share great wisdom from the Spirit. Sure. Anyone can have a moment of inspiration or insight.
But in my opinion, God has simply gifted some people in these areas and, most, He hasn't. Most of the time, the wise ones should be speaking, whether in a house church or from a pulpit. A person that God has anointed with wisdom will bring God's word to others around her or him (Viola seems to assume it will be a him). A person not anointed with wisdom will not bring much to those around him or her, even if they are speaking from the Bible.
And by the way, I would agree with Viola that the forty-fifty-ninety minute sermon is no sign of anything except probably a congregation bored out of their skull. These preachers do often leave me thinking they have an overblown sense of the importance of their own words. I bet the take away of the vast majority of congregations is less than five minutes of a sermon, no matter how long the preacher speaks. For me, anything over twenty minutes is usually a waste of time.
There are things lurking in Viola's chapter that should be heard.
Don't read further if you are a Viola groupee.
OK, there's the chapter. Or at least the chapter might have been more productive if it had developed the points above. Instead, like Fonzi in the waning seasons of Happy Days, Viola always jumps the shark. Five pages into the chapter I wrote, "Oh, Come on" in the margin.
So he's going to blame the Christian sermon on pagan Greco-Roman rhetoric snuck into the church by Chrystostom and Augustine, after the vibrant open-participatory meetings of the early church died out?
Same myopia again and again and again:
1. All human life and thinking is enculturated, all the time. It is the nature of incarnation. It is misguided to try (and impossible) to tease out the Christian or absolute from the particular cultural forms of the day. All truth is incarnated and inculturated truth.
2. This was no less true of the life and thinking of the New Testament church and the Old Testament. The New Testament is at the same time thoroughly inspired and thoroughly pagan, in Viola's sense. God sanctifies people and thoughts within culture. He has not set up the system to where you can remove people and thoughts from culture.
And here let me give some reasons why I think Viola is nuts when he tries to pin rhetoric on those pesky church fathers.
Galatians
1:1-5 Prescript (letter opening used in "pagan" letters)
1:11-2:14 Narratio
2:15-21 Propositio
3:1-5:1 Argumentatio
5:2-10 Peroratio
5:11-18 Postscript
Looks a little to me like someone might have studied a little Greco-Roman rhetoric on the side. In other letters Paul has a thanksgiving section (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:2-10), which he borrowed from pagan letters that thanked the gods at this same point in their letters! Paul's omission of this section in Galatians is usually considered rhetorically significant!
Whether you agree with this outline or not, there is an entire branch of New Testament studies called "rhetorical criticism," which brings knowledge of the rhetorical conventions of the day to bear on the interpretation of the New Testament.
Hebrews...
The majority of scholars currently would consider Hebrews a sermon (13:22). Viola might try to argue that a "word of exhortation" was spontaneous in the early church from Acts 13:15. But Hebrews looks like it might have involved quite a bit of sermon preparation!
It opens in "periodic" style, a high style of Greek oratory. For example, the first verse has a string of p words: "polymeros kai polytropos palai ho theos tois patrasin en tois prophetais."
Filthy pagan! I'm appauled to find that Old Testament writers wrote pagan acrostic psalms, copied pagan Egyptian wisdom sayings, drew on pagan mythical imagery. I'm disgusted that New Testament authors use chiasms, inclusios, allegories, similes, synecdoches, metonymy, asyndeton... They draw on Jewish wisdom and apocalyptic traditions. John even draws on the logos of Middle Platonism found in the writings of Philo. Throw out the New Testament because it has been influenced by paganism!
Not really. I guess God doesn't operate the way Viola thinks He does. Oops. Kind of embarrassing, if you ask me.
P.S. Isn't Hebrews 5:11-6:12 an interesting example of captatio benevolentiae? And certainly we can all agree that Hebrews 11:32 a lovely example of praeteritio?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Pagan Christianity 4: Order of Worship
This is the fourth part in my review of Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity? The previous reviews were:
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
For today I read chapter 3: "The Order of Worship: Sunday Mornings Set in Concrete." As I did last time, I found Viola's final Q & A at the end of the chapter the best place to begin. I don't know but I suspect these final sections are additions to the revised expanded edition. They seem to raise the right questions given Viola's content in the chapters... and his answers don't always ring true. What I mean is, I've found those asking the questions usually to have found the weak points of the chapter.
Final Question: "Are you saying that just because the first-century church had open-participatory meetings, we should too-even though we live in the first century?"
Viola: No...
Schenck: Hogwash. That's exactly what he's saying and it is exactly the tone of what he's said the entire chapter. As usual, I have no problem whatsoever with the kind of community Viola is trying to promote. But he's simply another tradition trying to foist his preferences and personality on everyone else.
Viola has not learned the lesson of the first week of seminary when you take a personality inventory--don't mistake your personality for everyone else's. This is also the first week of worship class--don't mistake your preferred worship style for the way everyone should worship. And, yes, the first week of leadership class--don't mistake your leadership style for the way everyone should lead.
What's good in the chapter?
In the question I mentioned above, Viola goes on to say that this chapter means to raise three key questions:
1. After exploring where the modern Protestant order of worship came from, is it really successful at transforming people and expressing Jesus Christ?
2. Is it possible that open-participatory church meetings are more in line with what God had in mind for His church than the Protestant order of worship?
3. Would it be worth our time to begin exploring new ways to gather and express Christ in our church life together?
Good questions, and have have little doubt but that the vast majority of churches around the United States need to think seriously about these sorts of things. It would be interesting to me to know Viola's church background, what he's reacting to. Yes, I think he's right that most Christians just come and sit like a bump on a log. Yes, this is a recipe for the death of the Church.
I just think there are more ways to do what he's doing than his way--and his trumpet is too loud to the contrary for his, "that's not really what I'm saying" to be credible.
Should all Christians be involved in a small group for accountability and full Christian engagement? Unlike Viola, I hesitate to take a "one size fits all" approach to discipleship and community. But I personally would be happy if every Christian were a part of an "open-participatory group." What he's urging is good. The way he goes about it is skybala.
Yes, I think it may very well be essential for every Christian community to take some time to consider whether they are truly a community and whether their body life does indeed reflect a church rather than a mindless habit. But it's absolutely not necessary to sell their church building and jettison traditions through which God has spoken to them their entire lives, just because it doesn't have to be done that way (and because Viola doesn't like not being able to share his great wisdom if he would deign fit to grace a Lutheran church with his presence).
"But I'm not saying that," saith the Viola. "Bull-hockey," saith the Schenck.
What I don't like...
The attitude, the arrogance. A thousand disclaimers at the end don't undo the clear tone of everything that precedes. If you're not in a house church, you're ignorant and blindly following stupid, deceived-by-paganism, out of touch intellectuals like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Moody, Pentecostals... well, everyone but me and those few of us that actually know what the New Testament says.
You see, you can't trust the people who've written stuff. The real church, the secret church, are those grass roots people who never actually wrote anything and so, whom we can't exactly prove existed, but the ones who really had the Spirit just weren't in power these last 2000 years, the people who were like me. Let's finish the Reformation and go with my understanding of the New Testament.
If I might just point out a really odd thing about this chapter, his section attempting to assassinate the Methodist tradition features Whitefield, who is hardly the person to pick as the poster child for Methodism (how about John Wesley as a better choice?). By the way, that's the offensive style of the book. He goes tradition by tradition, assassinating each one. He finds anything negative he can think of about each tradition, including not a little grasping at straws. Then he finally gets to his option, blessed be he, which just happens to be the way Paul and the early Christians did it.
He doesn't talk about Wesley because Wesley had small groups and was absolutely about moving from conversion to sanctification. Oops, he can't shoot at that so he just omits it. Whitefield was peripheral to the substance of Methodism.
And he assassinates Moody for being a pragmatist. Funny, this description of Moody reminds me a little of something Paul said: "I am all things to all people so that I might by all means save some."
Looking at the New Testament
All the things I've said thus far continue to apply. We remember, for example, that 1 Corinthians was written to ancient Corinthian Christians and the issues of that church. Does 1 Corinthians address a church of 300? No. Would Paul have given the instructions of 1 Corinthians 14 to a church of 300? We have no way of knowing--and even if we could guess, it didn't make it into Scripture and so wouldn't be authoritative! Paul is not authoritative. The Spirit-led appropriation in the church of texts God inspired through Paul is.
Would Paul tell a church of 300 to split up into smaller groups? We don't know--and even if we did it wouldn't be authoritative because it didn't make it into Scripture!
We have to make a distinction between the descriptions of the early church and the prescriptions of the early church. We have few prescriptions on how to worship in the New Testament. "Don't quench the Spirit." Ok, there's one, written to the Thessalonians.
On the other hand, Paul tries to lasso the "Spirit" a bit with the Corinthians, reel their wild and crazy random tongues speaking. For tongues, it's 2 or at the most 3, one at a time, and only with interpretation. The same goes for prophecy. In other words, he imposes order on the free for all happening there. By 1 Timothy and Titus, significant structure in leadership is beginning to take place to ensure proper teaching. Paul himself won't be around to do it.
You have to search for side-comments most of the time even to begin to build a case for how the early churches structured worship or structured leadership. There's hardly a clear voice in the New Testament on these issues. So it is dubious in the extreme, not only to presume this worship style was universal and monolithic--that you have it figured out. It is even more dubious to take such a hypothetical reconstructed description as prescriptive.
Viola's argument against any connection between Christian worship and synagogue worship is absolutely ridiculous. We should expect there to be significant overlap. For example, remember, James, Peter, and John did not compel Titus to be circumcised. That seems to imply that they thought it was preferable for him to be circumcised. Let that sink in a little, the apostle Peter and James the leader of the Jerusalem church thought it preferable for a Gentile convert to convert to Judaism.
Paul himself likely lost the debate at Antioch over table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. He tells us when people admit they were wrong. Complete silence here. Paul likely served on the periphery of the early church for much of his mission. He was right, because his side ended up in Scripture. But don't pretend for one second that the worship or ideology of the early church was monolithic.
The burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who would argue for significant discontinuity between Jewish worship and early Christian worship. The earliest Gentile converts were, what, God-fearers who had been worshipping in the synagogue. It is ludicrous to think that Jesus and Paul went to the synagogues because it was part of their mission, all the while seriously objecting to the idea of a synagogue itself because of its institutional nature.
There simply aren't broadly prescriptive passages in the New Testament on the form worship must take. It is massively dubious to think that all churches did it the same way descriptively. Even if they did, even if Paul had some thoughts Viola can read--they didn't make it into Scripture in a universally prescriptive form.
We know the elements of worship. The New Testament has no demand on how we package them. I'm okay with Viola's way and, yes, the church as a whole would probably do well to take on his core suggestions. But all the same, those of us in my worship venue are going to say the Apostle's Creed, take communion, and say some set prayers this Sunday the way we do every Sunday... and I suspect God will be with us every bit as much as whatever small group Viola is a part of.
1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
For today I read chapter 3: "The Order of Worship: Sunday Mornings Set in Concrete." As I did last time, I found Viola's final Q & A at the end of the chapter the best place to begin. I don't know but I suspect these final sections are additions to the revised expanded edition. They seem to raise the right questions given Viola's content in the chapters... and his answers don't always ring true. What I mean is, I've found those asking the questions usually to have found the weak points of the chapter.
Final Question: "Are you saying that just because the first-century church had open-participatory meetings, we should too-even though we live in the first century?"
Viola: No...
Schenck: Hogwash. That's exactly what he's saying and it is exactly the tone of what he's said the entire chapter. As usual, I have no problem whatsoever with the kind of community Viola is trying to promote. But he's simply another tradition trying to foist his preferences and personality on everyone else.
Viola has not learned the lesson of the first week of seminary when you take a personality inventory--don't mistake your personality for everyone else's. This is also the first week of worship class--don't mistake your preferred worship style for the way everyone should worship. And, yes, the first week of leadership class--don't mistake your leadership style for the way everyone should lead.
What's good in the chapter?
In the question I mentioned above, Viola goes on to say that this chapter means to raise three key questions:
1. After exploring where the modern Protestant order of worship came from, is it really successful at transforming people and expressing Jesus Christ?
2. Is it possible that open-participatory church meetings are more in line with what God had in mind for His church than the Protestant order of worship?
3. Would it be worth our time to begin exploring new ways to gather and express Christ in our church life together?
Good questions, and have have little doubt but that the vast majority of churches around the United States need to think seriously about these sorts of things. It would be interesting to me to know Viola's church background, what he's reacting to. Yes, I think he's right that most Christians just come and sit like a bump on a log. Yes, this is a recipe for the death of the Church.
I just think there are more ways to do what he's doing than his way--and his trumpet is too loud to the contrary for his, "that's not really what I'm saying" to be credible.
Should all Christians be involved in a small group for accountability and full Christian engagement? Unlike Viola, I hesitate to take a "one size fits all" approach to discipleship and community. But I personally would be happy if every Christian were a part of an "open-participatory group." What he's urging is good. The way he goes about it is skybala.
Yes, I think it may very well be essential for every Christian community to take some time to consider whether they are truly a community and whether their body life does indeed reflect a church rather than a mindless habit. But it's absolutely not necessary to sell their church building and jettison traditions through which God has spoken to them their entire lives, just because it doesn't have to be done that way (and because Viola doesn't like not being able to share his great wisdom if he would deign fit to grace a Lutheran church with his presence).
"But I'm not saying that," saith the Viola. "Bull-hockey," saith the Schenck.
What I don't like...
The attitude, the arrogance. A thousand disclaimers at the end don't undo the clear tone of everything that precedes. If you're not in a house church, you're ignorant and blindly following stupid, deceived-by-paganism, out of touch intellectuals like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Moody, Pentecostals... well, everyone but me and those few of us that actually know what the New Testament says.
You see, you can't trust the people who've written stuff. The real church, the secret church, are those grass roots people who never actually wrote anything and so, whom we can't exactly prove existed, but the ones who really had the Spirit just weren't in power these last 2000 years, the people who were like me. Let's finish the Reformation and go with my understanding of the New Testament.
If I might just point out a really odd thing about this chapter, his section attempting to assassinate the Methodist tradition features Whitefield, who is hardly the person to pick as the poster child for Methodism (how about John Wesley as a better choice?). By the way, that's the offensive style of the book. He goes tradition by tradition, assassinating each one. He finds anything negative he can think of about each tradition, including not a little grasping at straws. Then he finally gets to his option, blessed be he, which just happens to be the way Paul and the early Christians did it.
He doesn't talk about Wesley because Wesley had small groups and was absolutely about moving from conversion to sanctification. Oops, he can't shoot at that so he just omits it. Whitefield was peripheral to the substance of Methodism.
And he assassinates Moody for being a pragmatist. Funny, this description of Moody reminds me a little of something Paul said: "I am all things to all people so that I might by all means save some."
Looking at the New Testament
All the things I've said thus far continue to apply. We remember, for example, that 1 Corinthians was written to ancient Corinthian Christians and the issues of that church. Does 1 Corinthians address a church of 300? No. Would Paul have given the instructions of 1 Corinthians 14 to a church of 300? We have no way of knowing--and even if we could guess, it didn't make it into Scripture and so wouldn't be authoritative! Paul is not authoritative. The Spirit-led appropriation in the church of texts God inspired through Paul is.
Would Paul tell a church of 300 to split up into smaller groups? We don't know--and even if we did it wouldn't be authoritative because it didn't make it into Scripture!
We have to make a distinction between the descriptions of the early church and the prescriptions of the early church. We have few prescriptions on how to worship in the New Testament. "Don't quench the Spirit." Ok, there's one, written to the Thessalonians.
On the other hand, Paul tries to lasso the "Spirit" a bit with the Corinthians, reel their wild and crazy random tongues speaking. For tongues, it's 2 or at the most 3, one at a time, and only with interpretation. The same goes for prophecy. In other words, he imposes order on the free for all happening there. By 1 Timothy and Titus, significant structure in leadership is beginning to take place to ensure proper teaching. Paul himself won't be around to do it.
You have to search for side-comments most of the time even to begin to build a case for how the early churches structured worship or structured leadership. There's hardly a clear voice in the New Testament on these issues. So it is dubious in the extreme, not only to presume this worship style was universal and monolithic--that you have it figured out. It is even more dubious to take such a hypothetical reconstructed description as prescriptive.
Viola's argument against any connection between Christian worship and synagogue worship is absolutely ridiculous. We should expect there to be significant overlap. For example, remember, James, Peter, and John did not compel Titus to be circumcised. That seems to imply that they thought it was preferable for him to be circumcised. Let that sink in a little, the apostle Peter and James the leader of the Jerusalem church thought it preferable for a Gentile convert to convert to Judaism.
Paul himself likely lost the debate at Antioch over table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. He tells us when people admit they were wrong. Complete silence here. Paul likely served on the periphery of the early church for much of his mission. He was right, because his side ended up in Scripture. But don't pretend for one second that the worship or ideology of the early church was monolithic.
The burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who would argue for significant discontinuity between Jewish worship and early Christian worship. The earliest Gentile converts were, what, God-fearers who had been worshipping in the synagogue. It is ludicrous to think that Jesus and Paul went to the synagogues because it was part of their mission, all the while seriously objecting to the idea of a synagogue itself because of its institutional nature.
There simply aren't broadly prescriptive passages in the New Testament on the form worship must take. It is massively dubious to think that all churches did it the same way descriptively. Even if they did, even if Paul had some thoughts Viola can read--they didn't make it into Scripture in a universally prescriptive form.
We know the elements of worship. The New Testament has no demand on how we package them. I'm okay with Viola's way and, yes, the church as a whole would probably do well to take on his core suggestions. But all the same, those of us in my worship venue are going to say the Apostle's Creed, take communion, and say some set prayers this Sunday the way we do every Sunday... and I suspect God will be with us every bit as much as whatever small group Viola is a part of.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Pagan Christianity 3
We finally get to the substance of Frank Viola's book Pagan Christianity. Chapter 2 is titled, "The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex." For my first looks at the book, see
Viola's Preface
Barna's Introduction
One thing that struck me as I made my way through chapter 2 is the two very interesting "emerging" trajectories right now. Barna, Viola, and Erwin McManus are a kind of anti-institutional radical Protestantism trajectory. What's funny is that at the same time there is the "ancient-future" thing going on, where interest in incense, symbol, sacred space, etc. is on the rise. Very interesting!
Viola ends the "Delving Deeper" section of the chapter with "five key points" he is trying to establish in this chapter (46--by the way, I hate the way they have done the page numbers and footnotes in the Revised edition. They must only want young people to read the book. I've been reading it at night in dim light and my forty something year old eyes have suffered immensely. Very frustrating--the people who are prone to read footnotes can't read them!!! I can't even make out the page numbers at night without squinting).
Here are the five key points of the chapter, although the highlights are from me:
1. It is unbiblical to call a building a "church," "the house of God," "the temple of God," the "sanctuary of the Lord," etc...
2. The architecture of the typical church building hinders the church from having open-participatory meetings.
3. It is unscriptural to treat a building as though it were sacred.
4. The typical church building should not be the site of all church meetings because the average building is not conducive to face-to-face interaction.
5. It is a profound error to assume that all churches should own or rent buildings for their gatherings.
Review
1. Let me start by saying that there is something significant to be gained here. I don't like the way Viola has gone about saying it, but I agree with what I take to be the heart of what he is getting at. For many, maybe most Christians, "church" is a somewhat superficial activity that doesn't penetrate into the core of who they are.
Interestingly, we were looking at 1 Corinthians 5 today in class and the question of church discipline at Corinth, the man sleeping with his step-mother. We were looking at the "little leaven leavens the whole lump" concept and pointing out some of the things Viola does, namely, that the church of Corinth was probably no more than forty or fifty people that met in houses. The potential for corruption of the "body" is way higher in such a small group than it would be in the 1000's of Willow Creek.
So then we posed the question, "Can we really be the church in a church that large if all we ever visit is a large, Sunday morning, "seeker sensitive," service?" (I realize Willow Creek is moving awy from this approach) If a person never gets into a small group out of the evangelistic fishing service into small group discipleship, has a person really "gone to church" (a phrase Viola hates)? Wesley of course had small class meetings where accountability took place.
At the same time, it is curious to me that Viola focuses all his energies on the building. To me it has more to do with the numbers. I value his concern for face-to-face interaction, for open participation. If all you are doing is going to a service of several 100 on a Sunday morning in which you sit and think about lunch, Viola is right, you are not experiencing the church. What's unfortunate in my view is all the distracting focus on the building.
I might toot the horn of the Wesleyan tradition and mention that in the past our revivalist heritage managed to accomplish many of Viola's goals in church buildings. First, because we were inwardly focused and a tad sectarian, we tended to be small in number. Secondly, we had even smaller Sunday night services and a "Wednesday prayer meeting" of which testimonies were often a part. And, interestingly, the really great Sunday morning service was when the "Spirit" came over the congregation and the pastor didn't even preach.
I speak of these things in the past tense because they are largely a part of the past in the Wesleyan Church, although small groups are on the rise!
2. I want to affirm Viola's sense that the local "church" is the visible gathering of the people of God and not the building. Of course I have no problem with referring to the building as a church. It just isn't the church.
At the same time, even though Viola correctly understands the body of Christ as the new temple of God, I think he so avoids the idea of the holy in general that he is unable to understand the nature of the sacred altogether. He gets the "Abba Daddy" side of the equation. He doesn't get the Ananias and Sapphira dropping dead side.
To be holy is to be set apart to God. Yes, this most meaningfully applies to the people of God. But when Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 delivers a member of the assembly over to Satan, what is the physical manifestation of it? The person cannot meet with the body of Christ any more. In other words, a shift in location is involved.
The idea of sacred space and sacred time is not absolute, in my view. To that extent I agree with Viola. But Paul continued to value feasts like Pentecost--it was a different kind of day than the others (e.g., 1 Cor. 16:8). He did not require believers to observe the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday (Rom. 14:5) but he also instructed the assembly not to look down on those that did (Rom. 15:1). The early believers met together ritually (not a bad word) on the Lord's Day (1 Cor. 16:2).
Any understanding of God that does not allow for sacred space and sacred time is an impoverished understanding. Leonard Sweet is not just unable to shake off tradition because it is too deeply ingrained in his head (37 n.198). This is a great gift that God has given us and that is part of our psyche. I agree with Viola--we should not absolutize such things. But we are robbing ourselves of something very special if we go with the radical Reformation, and the ancient-future movement is a powerful recognition of this fact.
I want to agree with Viola that buildings can be a great expense. I feel a little guilty to worship in such a nice church. When you think of the Crystal Cathedral or some of the incredibly beautiful structures in Europe, you have to wonder how much good could have been done for the poor with that money.
There is another side of me, however, that remembers the women who anointed Jesus' feet. "The poor you always will have with you, but she is anointing me for burial." I'm not saying it necessarily justifies it or that those who built these magnificent structures had the right motives. But many of these structures do indeed lead me upward to God. There is again something impoverished, merely animal, about an approach to God that doesn't have room for the magnificent and grandly artistic.
P.S. The stuff on steeples and Gothic cathedrals being pagan (read "wicked" here despite caveats) because of association with Plato was really bizarre to me. I know that's what I think when I see a spire--heathen philosophers! At times his quest to grab at anything about church buildings that he can associate with things "pagan" seemed to become a stretch.
3. Most of the chapter is a cataloging of how church building structures have interacted with cultural and historical factors. I am not an expert on these subjects but a lot of what he says seems well researched. I would agree with him that I'm not necessarily expecting to see Constantine in the kingdom. I'm okay with the idea that church buildings took off after him (after all, now it was legal to be Christian). I'm okay with the idea that reverence for tombs as holy sites took off after him.
Yes, there are some peculiar things in church history, like paying for your pew (thus "Free" Methodists). Yes, the Protestant tradition's emphasis on the word (not intentionally on the preacher, although this is admittedly a side effect) is reflected in building structure. Yes, I am similarly irritated with the "stage" quality of many modern church pulpits.
However, I think Viola has a very common but fundamental understanding of meaning. Meaning is always synchronous, not diachronous. What I mean is, meaning is always a function of now, not of prior history. To be sure, prior history (diachrony) can explain why the meaning now is what it is. But, ultimately, meaning is a question of the use and significance things have now (synchrony).
I've already talked much about how God meets us all, in every time, place, and generation, where we are at. Then he moves us on from there. Ultimately I don't care what the history of the church building was. To the extent that it fosters worship today is the question. I don't care about the history of Halloween or that Constantine put Christmas on the date when Saturnalia had been. What matters is the significance of these things today.
Paul demonstrates this attitude with meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8-10; Rom. 14). Using Viola's approach to meaning, we would expect Paul to be all concerned with finding out where the meat you were eating had come from. Indeed, some early Christians were so preoccupied--so much so that they became vegetarians (Rom. 14).
But Paul's approach? Don't ask; don't tell. God owns everything so eat the meat without asking questions. If you find out it has been offered to an idol, don't eat it so that you don't mess up the person who does have a problem with it. But no food is unclean in itself. Eat it. Just eat it... eat it... Oooo!
So most of this chapter, in my opinion, is much ado about nothing.
4. Viola uses a lot of language like "unbiblical" and "unscriptural." He is not arguing that you don't have to meet in a building. He says things like "profound error" and "hinders the church." Many will be surprised to find that "The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the New Testament. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Immanuel, God is with us (see Matthew 1:23). And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities."
I have to say, I had and--as I type--am having a good laugh about those evil steeples. God may be immanent, but if I remember my theology correctly, He remains transcendent as well. Viola gets the Abba Daddy part. He just doesn't get the Isaiah 6, Acts 5, or Revelation 4 part.
On the one hand, Viola has correctly identified a strand of New Testament tradition on the Jerusalem temple that points to the body of Christ (Paul) or heaven itself (Hebrews) as the temple of God. For Hebrews and Revelation, there is no need for a temple any more. I would similarly agree that, although Paul never says this, Paul's theology has no need for a temple. Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 does indeed seem to call the temple perjoratively a building "made with hands," as does the Marcan saying in Mark 14.
However, I think that Viola is slightly misreading these verses because of his radically Protestant lenses. For one, he assumes the popular but blatantly wrong idea that Jesus and Christianity left Judaism--he sees a sharp break with Judaism that seemly wasn't the case. It is far more accurate to call the early Christians Christian Jews than to call them Jewish Christians, in my opinion.
Secondly, most of the passages he is using as lenses are, in my opinion, more explanations for why the temple was destroyed than polemics against the temple per se. Even Stephen's speech in Acts 7 was written after AD70 and this fact likely (IMHO) plays a role in how it is presented.
Even the Jesus tradition against the temple should be read more as an indictment of that temple and its administration rather than against the temple institution itself. These are debatable points, to be sure, but I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about them.
Viola admits that the early Christians did meet at the temple and in buildings like the School of Tyrranus at Ephesus. Important for him is that the Christians didn't build them. I find this drawing at straws. A house is as fixed a building as a church building. I personally would not be surprised if we were one day to find out that some synagogue building somewhere (and it is significant to realize that most synagogues at this time probably weren't free standing, dedicated buildings either--a "synagogue," like an "assembly" simply referred to a gathering) completely accepted Christ and, thus, that there actually was an early Christian assembly meeting in a building somewhere at this time that was wholly given over to Christian-Jewish worship.
So, Viola has some very important points to make in this chapter. Unfortunately, those points are overshadowed by a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, in my opinion. Next week, the order of worship.
Viola's Preface
Barna's Introduction
One thing that struck me as I made my way through chapter 2 is the two very interesting "emerging" trajectories right now. Barna, Viola, and Erwin McManus are a kind of anti-institutional radical Protestantism trajectory. What's funny is that at the same time there is the "ancient-future" thing going on, where interest in incense, symbol, sacred space, etc. is on the rise. Very interesting!
Viola ends the "Delving Deeper" section of the chapter with "five key points" he is trying to establish in this chapter (46--by the way, I hate the way they have done the page numbers and footnotes in the Revised edition. They must only want young people to read the book. I've been reading it at night in dim light and my forty something year old eyes have suffered immensely. Very frustrating--the people who are prone to read footnotes can't read them!!! I can't even make out the page numbers at night without squinting).
Here are the five key points of the chapter, although the highlights are from me:
1. It is unbiblical to call a building a "church," "the house of God," "the temple of God," the "sanctuary of the Lord," etc...
2. The architecture of the typical church building hinders the church from having open-participatory meetings.
3. It is unscriptural to treat a building as though it were sacred.
4. The typical church building should not be the site of all church meetings because the average building is not conducive to face-to-face interaction.
5. It is a profound error to assume that all churches should own or rent buildings for their gatherings.
Review
1. Let me start by saying that there is something significant to be gained here. I don't like the way Viola has gone about saying it, but I agree with what I take to be the heart of what he is getting at. For many, maybe most Christians, "church" is a somewhat superficial activity that doesn't penetrate into the core of who they are.
Interestingly, we were looking at 1 Corinthians 5 today in class and the question of church discipline at Corinth, the man sleeping with his step-mother. We were looking at the "little leaven leavens the whole lump" concept and pointing out some of the things Viola does, namely, that the church of Corinth was probably no more than forty or fifty people that met in houses. The potential for corruption of the "body" is way higher in such a small group than it would be in the 1000's of Willow Creek.
So then we posed the question, "Can we really be the church in a church that large if all we ever visit is a large, Sunday morning, "seeker sensitive," service?" (I realize Willow Creek is moving awy from this approach) If a person never gets into a small group out of the evangelistic fishing service into small group discipleship, has a person really "gone to church" (a phrase Viola hates)? Wesley of course had small class meetings where accountability took place.
At the same time, it is curious to me that Viola focuses all his energies on the building. To me it has more to do with the numbers. I value his concern for face-to-face interaction, for open participation. If all you are doing is going to a service of several 100 on a Sunday morning in which you sit and think about lunch, Viola is right, you are not experiencing the church. What's unfortunate in my view is all the distracting focus on the building.
I might toot the horn of the Wesleyan tradition and mention that in the past our revivalist heritage managed to accomplish many of Viola's goals in church buildings. First, because we were inwardly focused and a tad sectarian, we tended to be small in number. Secondly, we had even smaller Sunday night services and a "Wednesday prayer meeting" of which testimonies were often a part. And, interestingly, the really great Sunday morning service was when the "Spirit" came over the congregation and the pastor didn't even preach.
I speak of these things in the past tense because they are largely a part of the past in the Wesleyan Church, although small groups are on the rise!
2. I want to affirm Viola's sense that the local "church" is the visible gathering of the people of God and not the building. Of course I have no problem with referring to the building as a church. It just isn't the church.
At the same time, even though Viola correctly understands the body of Christ as the new temple of God, I think he so avoids the idea of the holy in general that he is unable to understand the nature of the sacred altogether. He gets the "Abba Daddy" side of the equation. He doesn't get the Ananias and Sapphira dropping dead side.
To be holy is to be set apart to God. Yes, this most meaningfully applies to the people of God. But when Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 delivers a member of the assembly over to Satan, what is the physical manifestation of it? The person cannot meet with the body of Christ any more. In other words, a shift in location is involved.
The idea of sacred space and sacred time is not absolute, in my view. To that extent I agree with Viola. But Paul continued to value feasts like Pentecost--it was a different kind of day than the others (e.g., 1 Cor. 16:8). He did not require believers to observe the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday (Rom. 14:5) but he also instructed the assembly not to look down on those that did (Rom. 15:1). The early believers met together ritually (not a bad word) on the Lord's Day (1 Cor. 16:2).
Any understanding of God that does not allow for sacred space and sacred time is an impoverished understanding. Leonard Sweet is not just unable to shake off tradition because it is too deeply ingrained in his head (37 n.198). This is a great gift that God has given us and that is part of our psyche. I agree with Viola--we should not absolutize such things. But we are robbing ourselves of something very special if we go with the radical Reformation, and the ancient-future movement is a powerful recognition of this fact.
I want to agree with Viola that buildings can be a great expense. I feel a little guilty to worship in such a nice church. When you think of the Crystal Cathedral or some of the incredibly beautiful structures in Europe, you have to wonder how much good could have been done for the poor with that money.
There is another side of me, however, that remembers the women who anointed Jesus' feet. "The poor you always will have with you, but she is anointing me for burial." I'm not saying it necessarily justifies it or that those who built these magnificent structures had the right motives. But many of these structures do indeed lead me upward to God. There is again something impoverished, merely animal, about an approach to God that doesn't have room for the magnificent and grandly artistic.
P.S. The stuff on steeples and Gothic cathedrals being pagan (read "wicked" here despite caveats) because of association with Plato was really bizarre to me. I know that's what I think when I see a spire--heathen philosophers! At times his quest to grab at anything about church buildings that he can associate with things "pagan" seemed to become a stretch.
3. Most of the chapter is a cataloging of how church building structures have interacted with cultural and historical factors. I am not an expert on these subjects but a lot of what he says seems well researched. I would agree with him that I'm not necessarily expecting to see Constantine in the kingdom. I'm okay with the idea that church buildings took off after him (after all, now it was legal to be Christian). I'm okay with the idea that reverence for tombs as holy sites took off after him.
Yes, there are some peculiar things in church history, like paying for your pew (thus "Free" Methodists). Yes, the Protestant tradition's emphasis on the word (not intentionally on the preacher, although this is admittedly a side effect) is reflected in building structure. Yes, I am similarly irritated with the "stage" quality of many modern church pulpits.
However, I think Viola has a very common but fundamental understanding of meaning. Meaning is always synchronous, not diachronous. What I mean is, meaning is always a function of now, not of prior history. To be sure, prior history (diachrony) can explain why the meaning now is what it is. But, ultimately, meaning is a question of the use and significance things have now (synchrony).
I've already talked much about how God meets us all, in every time, place, and generation, where we are at. Then he moves us on from there. Ultimately I don't care what the history of the church building was. To the extent that it fosters worship today is the question. I don't care about the history of Halloween or that Constantine put Christmas on the date when Saturnalia had been. What matters is the significance of these things today.
Paul demonstrates this attitude with meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8-10; Rom. 14). Using Viola's approach to meaning, we would expect Paul to be all concerned with finding out where the meat you were eating had come from. Indeed, some early Christians were so preoccupied--so much so that they became vegetarians (Rom. 14).
But Paul's approach? Don't ask; don't tell. God owns everything so eat the meat without asking questions. If you find out it has been offered to an idol, don't eat it so that you don't mess up the person who does have a problem with it. But no food is unclean in itself. Eat it. Just eat it... eat it... Oooo!
So most of this chapter, in my opinion, is much ado about nothing.
4. Viola uses a lot of language like "unbiblical" and "unscriptural." He is not arguing that you don't have to meet in a building. He says things like "profound error" and "hinders the church." Many will be surprised to find that "The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the New Testament. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Immanuel, God is with us (see Matthew 1:23). And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities."
I have to say, I had and--as I type--am having a good laugh about those evil steeples. God may be immanent, but if I remember my theology correctly, He remains transcendent as well. Viola gets the Abba Daddy part. He just doesn't get the Isaiah 6, Acts 5, or Revelation 4 part.
On the one hand, Viola has correctly identified a strand of New Testament tradition on the Jerusalem temple that points to the body of Christ (Paul) or heaven itself (Hebrews) as the temple of God. For Hebrews and Revelation, there is no need for a temple any more. I would similarly agree that, although Paul never says this, Paul's theology has no need for a temple. Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 does indeed seem to call the temple perjoratively a building "made with hands," as does the Marcan saying in Mark 14.
However, I think that Viola is slightly misreading these verses because of his radically Protestant lenses. For one, he assumes the popular but blatantly wrong idea that Jesus and Christianity left Judaism--he sees a sharp break with Judaism that seemly wasn't the case. It is far more accurate to call the early Christians Christian Jews than to call them Jewish Christians, in my opinion.
Secondly, most of the passages he is using as lenses are, in my opinion, more explanations for why the temple was destroyed than polemics against the temple per se. Even Stephen's speech in Acts 7 was written after AD70 and this fact likely (IMHO) plays a role in how it is presented.
Even the Jesus tradition against the temple should be read more as an indictment of that temple and its administration rather than against the temple institution itself. These are debatable points, to be sure, but I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about them.
Viola admits that the early Christians did meet at the temple and in buildings like the School of Tyrranus at Ephesus. Important for him is that the Christians didn't build them. I find this drawing at straws. A house is as fixed a building as a church building. I personally would not be surprised if we were one day to find out that some synagogue building somewhere (and it is significant to realize that most synagogues at this time probably weren't free standing, dedicated buildings either--a "synagogue," like an "assembly" simply referred to a gathering) completely accepted Christ and, thus, that there actually was an early Christian assembly meeting in a building somewhere at this time that was wholly given over to Christian-Jewish worship.
So, Viola has some very important points to make in this chapter. Unfortunately, those points are overshadowed by a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, in my opinion. Next week, the order of worship.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Pagan Christianity 2
Last Thursday we began looking at Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity. For today I read through George Barna's Introduction and Viola's first chapter. So much build up... sorry I'm not to the concrete controversy yet! Someone complained last week that I reviewed the Preface.
Introduction
So Barna's introduction is more build up. There is a great sense of foreboding. The "institutional" church is in great crisis. It is like a plane that got slightly of course and has been flying for so long that it's way off course. It's like a cow that zig zagged, then a dog followed, then sheep, then horses, then people, then roads were built and cities and we're wasting thousands of miles of travel because we're stuck in that cow's rut.
What horrible shape we must be in! Sounds like Viola and Barna are the Luther and Calvin of the day, here to bring about a new Reformation!
Let me say, for all my tongue and cheek above, that their goal is great, to "get in touch with both the Word of God and the history of the church" (xxvii). "Our goal is to be true to His plan so that we may become the people He desires us to be and that the church may be all she is called to be" (xxix).
And let me also say that their definitions of things like "Pagan," "Pagan Christianity," and "Biblical" are carefully worded not to be simply dismissive of everything that had its origins in secular culture.
Chapter 1: Have We Really Been Doing It By the Book
The opening illustration is a guy who yells at his family trying to get them ready for church. They get to church late. Then they all have to smile and pretend they're happy while listening to a boring sermon about how "We at First Bible New Testament Community Church do everything by this book! Everything!" (3).
I'm assuming this image will resonate with a lot of American Christians? I certainly get the morning get to church panic. Actually, it applies in my family more in relation to getting to school. Obviously a pagan rather than a Christian problem. The problem--the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The problem--take a chill pill Dad and take a class in family management.
I do remember churches where what you wear and being on time is all important. Maybe they are the vast majority. The take away--Down with the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The take away is for a whole lot of people to get their priorities straight.
Sorry, my church isn't like that. People wear jeans and shorts and T-shirts if they want to. Those for whom dressing up is a (cultural) expression of God's holiness dress up--and shame on anyone who tells them they can't do this.
Are there people who look askance at the Schenck family if they're late? Probably. Maybe I need to pray about my attitude toward them because my thought is usually, you shallow loser for thinking that matters one iota. The institutional church the problem? Naw, I don't think so.
More importantly, Viola assumes throughout that the pastor is right about doing it solely by the book. He thinks the problem is that the pastor is not doing it by the book. Again, this pastor (and therefore Viola) at least borders on being the ignorant one.
When we look at the addresses on the Bible is says it was written to someone called (ancient) Israel and someone called "the churches of Galatia" and "to those who are at Rome." No one alive today is the actual audience of these books. And guess what, they were people embedded in a culture. It is impossible to extract yourself from culture, from "paganism." Paganism as Viola defines it will always, of necessity, of the nature of the case, always be inextricably intertwined with the business of being Christian, even of being an "organic" Christian.
So the biblical message is already thoroughly "pagan" in his sense, culturally embedded. And we don't go strictly "by the Book" because the living out of the gospel in their cultures (plural) has to be translated into living out the gospel in our cultures (plural).
Certainly Viola recognizes this to some extent. He says things a little like this in his notes. But the premise of the book seems to deny his acknowledgement as it gets into the details.
We'll see.
Introduction
So Barna's introduction is more build up. There is a great sense of foreboding. The "institutional" church is in great crisis. It is like a plane that got slightly of course and has been flying for so long that it's way off course. It's like a cow that zig zagged, then a dog followed, then sheep, then horses, then people, then roads were built and cities and we're wasting thousands of miles of travel because we're stuck in that cow's rut.
What horrible shape we must be in! Sounds like Viola and Barna are the Luther and Calvin of the day, here to bring about a new Reformation!
Let me say, for all my tongue and cheek above, that their goal is great, to "get in touch with both the Word of God and the history of the church" (xxvii). "Our goal is to be true to His plan so that we may become the people He desires us to be and that the church may be all she is called to be" (xxix).
And let me also say that their definitions of things like "Pagan," "Pagan Christianity," and "Biblical" are carefully worded not to be simply dismissive of everything that had its origins in secular culture.
Chapter 1: Have We Really Been Doing It By the Book
The opening illustration is a guy who yells at his family trying to get them ready for church. They get to church late. Then they all have to smile and pretend they're happy while listening to a boring sermon about how "We at First Bible New Testament Community Church do everything by this book! Everything!" (3).
I'm assuming this image will resonate with a lot of American Christians? I certainly get the morning get to church panic. Actually, it applies in my family more in relation to getting to school. Obviously a pagan rather than a Christian problem. The problem--the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The problem--take a chill pill Dad and take a class in family management.
I do remember churches where what you wear and being on time is all important. Maybe they are the vast majority. The take away--Down with the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The take away is for a whole lot of people to get their priorities straight.
Sorry, my church isn't like that. People wear jeans and shorts and T-shirts if they want to. Those for whom dressing up is a (cultural) expression of God's holiness dress up--and shame on anyone who tells them they can't do this.
Are there people who look askance at the Schenck family if they're late? Probably. Maybe I need to pray about my attitude toward them because my thought is usually, you shallow loser for thinking that matters one iota. The institutional church the problem? Naw, I don't think so.
More importantly, Viola assumes throughout that the pastor is right about doing it solely by the book. He thinks the problem is that the pastor is not doing it by the book. Again, this pastor (and therefore Viola) at least borders on being the ignorant one.
When we look at the addresses on the Bible is says it was written to someone called (ancient) Israel and someone called "the churches of Galatia" and "to those who are at Rome." No one alive today is the actual audience of these books. And guess what, they were people embedded in a culture. It is impossible to extract yourself from culture, from "paganism." Paganism as Viola defines it will always, of necessity, of the nature of the case, always be inextricably intertwined with the business of being Christian, even of being an "organic" Christian.
So the biblical message is already thoroughly "pagan" in his sense, culturally embedded. And we don't go strictly "by the Book" because the living out of the gospel in their cultures (plural) has to be translated into living out the gospel in our cultures (plural).
Certainly Viola recognizes this to some extent. He says things a little like this in his notes. But the premise of the book seems to deny his acknowledgement as it gets into the details.
We'll see.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Pagan Christianity 1
I thought I might aim to read through Frank Viola and George Barna's book Pagan Christianity on Thursdays for a while. While I expect to disagree with it greatly, it is no doubt an important respresentation of where a whole lot of the church is today. That begs us to ask, what truth about the church does this book embody, even if I believe we should strongly disagree with a lot of the specifics of what it says. I am also proud to say that Frank Viola is my friend on Facebook. :-)
I start today with the Preface and Acknowledgements by Viola. First, I have enjoyed the interspersed quotes. They've picked some great ones.
In the Preface, Viola gives the main point of the book: "the church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to function as it does" (xx). On the following page, he makes a more modest claim, "those who have left the fold of institutional Christianity to become part of an organic church have a historical right to exist--since history demonstrates that many practices of the institutional church are not rooted in Scripture."
I don't think I have a problem with the right of "organic" churches to exist. He defines an organic church as "a church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic churches are characterized by Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership" (xix). I don't have a problem with the house church movement in general. I will certainly grant to organic churches the right to exist. :-)
However, in practice a group of individuals just going with the flow of the "Spirit" might just as easily turn out to be a group that commits mass suicide to join a passing comet. What Viola and Barna don't realize is that what keeps the house church movement sane is as much its Christian subconscious as its use of the Bible itself. Nothing in the Bible itself will keep you from going off with David Koresh. Such groups certainly would claim to be Spirit-led. In practice, more than anything else, even more than the text of the Bible itself, it is our inherited Christian glasses that keep us on track. And these glasses would not wrongly be called "tradition."
Viola and Barna are not aware of their own glasses while they are in the process of enlightening the rest of us hoping that "every literate Christian would read this work" (xx) so they can be rescued from their ignorance.
Viola begins his preface with a "parable" involving Jesus, Pharisees, and Sadducees. I call it a parable not because Viola does, but to highlight the fact that he is passing on to us a tradition on how to interpret Jesus' interaction with "characters" in the story called Pharisees and Sadducees. No doubt most of Viola's readers will be familiar with the "tradition of the contemporary elders" that he passes on.
Pharisees are those who added to Scripture. Sadducees are those who took away from Scripture. Both of them took steps to put the Son of God to death. Let he who has ears to hear, hear. The interpretation is that those in the "institutional" church oppose the spirit of Jesus by adding "reams" of things that are not in the Bible. Meanwhile, there are many practices of the early church that the institutional church has removed from its practice.
Why do I call this a Violian parable? Because it is a (contemporary) traditional interpretation of the Pharisees and Sadducees that goes well beyond the Bible. For example, it is true that Jesus and Paul disagreed with the Sadducees on the topic of resurrection. But nowhere in the Bible is the objection made to the Sadducees that they take things out of Scripture. The objection is to what they teach (e.g., Matt. 16:12). In other words, Viola is following traditions of his own outside the Bible without knowing it. I don't have a problem with it--he does.
As a matter of fact, although Viola can claim some good scholars behind his understanding of the Sadducees, the idea that they did not believe in angels and restricted Scripture to the Law are both a matter of significant debate among scholars. Both of these claims are based on single statements (e.g., Acts 23:8), the meaning of which is genuinely ambiguous.
On the matter of the resurrection, it is important to point out that on this issue the Sadducees were actually more Scriptural than the Pharisees, since only one passage in the Old Testament points to resurrection (Dan. 12:2) and many deny it (e.g., Job 14:14). The Sadducees thus represent with the Old Testament Scriptures the approach that Viola and Barna are advocating!
With regard to the Pharisees, it is true that they had traditions on how to keep Scripture. So do we! Because the Bible does not address every possible situation that might occur--indeed, the overwhelming majority of decisions we must make in life are not addressed in the Bible--we are forced to apply more general biblical statements to the specifics of our world and situation.
Is Viola against abortion or pornography or pre-marital sex. These are appropriate Christian beliefs. But the Bible has no verse against abortion. Indeed, the only explicit comment on the death of an unborn child (Exod. 21:22) involves a fine in distinction from "serious injury" that might occur to the mother. The oft quoted Matthew 5:28 as a prohibition of lust was about adultery and thus is not about unmarried individuals lusting after each other. And it would be difficult to find any explicit prohibition of pre-marital sex in the Bible other than an assumed expectation for women to be virgins when they married.
What I am saying is that the common Christian prohibitions on things like abortion, pornography, and pre-marital sex is appropriate Christian working out of basic principles in life that is exactly the kind of "tradition of the elders" that the Pharisees generated over time. Jesus criticizes them sometimes for what they add and especially for the misplaced emphasis of their worst representatives.
But in Matthew 23:3 he tells the crowds to obey their teaching. He affirms their tithing of mint, spice, and cummin (23:23)--which is added tradition on how to tithe. And perhaps even more significantly, Paul identifies himself as a Pharisee in the present tense in Acts 23:6.
My point is that before the book even begins, in Viola's preface, he has already demonstrated a penchant to interpret Scripture within a tradition, and the impossibility to apply it without in a sense "adding" to it.
This is going to be fun!
I start today with the Preface and Acknowledgements by Viola. First, I have enjoyed the interspersed quotes. They've picked some great ones.
In the Preface, Viola gives the main point of the book: "the church in its contemporary, institutional form has neither a biblical nor a historical right to function as it does" (xx). On the following page, he makes a more modest claim, "those who have left the fold of institutional Christianity to become part of an organic church have a historical right to exist--since history demonstrates that many practices of the institutional church are not rooted in Scripture."
I don't think I have a problem with the right of "organic" churches to exist. He defines an organic church as "a church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic churches are characterized by Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and nonhierarchical leadership" (xix). I don't have a problem with the house church movement in general. I will certainly grant to organic churches the right to exist. :-)
However, in practice a group of individuals just going with the flow of the "Spirit" might just as easily turn out to be a group that commits mass suicide to join a passing comet. What Viola and Barna don't realize is that what keeps the house church movement sane is as much its Christian subconscious as its use of the Bible itself. Nothing in the Bible itself will keep you from going off with David Koresh. Such groups certainly would claim to be Spirit-led. In practice, more than anything else, even more than the text of the Bible itself, it is our inherited Christian glasses that keep us on track. And these glasses would not wrongly be called "tradition."
Viola and Barna are not aware of their own glasses while they are in the process of enlightening the rest of us hoping that "every literate Christian would read this work" (xx) so they can be rescued from their ignorance.
Viola begins his preface with a "parable" involving Jesus, Pharisees, and Sadducees. I call it a parable not because Viola does, but to highlight the fact that he is passing on to us a tradition on how to interpret Jesus' interaction with "characters" in the story called Pharisees and Sadducees. No doubt most of Viola's readers will be familiar with the "tradition of the contemporary elders" that he passes on.
Pharisees are those who added to Scripture. Sadducees are those who took away from Scripture. Both of them took steps to put the Son of God to death. Let he who has ears to hear, hear. The interpretation is that those in the "institutional" church oppose the spirit of Jesus by adding "reams" of things that are not in the Bible. Meanwhile, there are many practices of the early church that the institutional church has removed from its practice.
Why do I call this a Violian parable? Because it is a (contemporary) traditional interpretation of the Pharisees and Sadducees that goes well beyond the Bible. For example, it is true that Jesus and Paul disagreed with the Sadducees on the topic of resurrection. But nowhere in the Bible is the objection made to the Sadducees that they take things out of Scripture. The objection is to what they teach (e.g., Matt. 16:12). In other words, Viola is following traditions of his own outside the Bible without knowing it. I don't have a problem with it--he does.
As a matter of fact, although Viola can claim some good scholars behind his understanding of the Sadducees, the idea that they did not believe in angels and restricted Scripture to the Law are both a matter of significant debate among scholars. Both of these claims are based on single statements (e.g., Acts 23:8), the meaning of which is genuinely ambiguous.
On the matter of the resurrection, it is important to point out that on this issue the Sadducees were actually more Scriptural than the Pharisees, since only one passage in the Old Testament points to resurrection (Dan. 12:2) and many deny it (e.g., Job 14:14). The Sadducees thus represent with the Old Testament Scriptures the approach that Viola and Barna are advocating!
With regard to the Pharisees, it is true that they had traditions on how to keep Scripture. So do we! Because the Bible does not address every possible situation that might occur--indeed, the overwhelming majority of decisions we must make in life are not addressed in the Bible--we are forced to apply more general biblical statements to the specifics of our world and situation.
Is Viola against abortion or pornography or pre-marital sex. These are appropriate Christian beliefs. But the Bible has no verse against abortion. Indeed, the only explicit comment on the death of an unborn child (Exod. 21:22) involves a fine in distinction from "serious injury" that might occur to the mother. The oft quoted Matthew 5:28 as a prohibition of lust was about adultery and thus is not about unmarried individuals lusting after each other. And it would be difficult to find any explicit prohibition of pre-marital sex in the Bible other than an assumed expectation for women to be virgins when they married.
What I am saying is that the common Christian prohibitions on things like abortion, pornography, and pre-marital sex is appropriate Christian working out of basic principles in life that is exactly the kind of "tradition of the elders" that the Pharisees generated over time. Jesus criticizes them sometimes for what they add and especially for the misplaced emphasis of their worst representatives.
But in Matthew 23:3 he tells the crowds to obey their teaching. He affirms their tithing of mint, spice, and cummin (23:23)--which is added tradition on how to tithe. And perhaps even more significantly, Paul identifies himself as a Pharisee in the present tense in Acts 23:6.
My point is that before the book even begins, in Viola's preface, he has already demonstrated a penchant to interpret Scripture within a tradition, and the impossibility to apply it without in a sense "adding" to it.
This is going to be fun!
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