The "Joke" of Biblical Theology

I’ll be candid with you.

When I first started at Talbot School of Theology I thought the discipline of Biblical Theology was a joke. Now, before you judge me as too shallow, let me explain.

Biblical Theology always came across to me as a “light” version of theology that evangelicals could get away with because they held so ardently to the sufficiency of Scripture. I figured the thinking would go something like this: If Scripture is capable of meeting “every need of the human soul,” then why would you need anything else to supplement it?

Something like this mentality started bothering me about midway through my college years. It was about that time that I started taking philosophy classes and I discovered the panoply of tools that philosophy had to offer. How do we know things? What is the nature of reality? What are helpful/logical methods of parsing out difficult issues? I found so many intriguing answers to these questions in the writings of people like Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, Descartes, and Kant. I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to downplay what these gentleman had to say.

Well, let me be clear. I’m not saying that everything these (and other philosophers) had to say was kittens and rainbows.  No doubt – they had some crazy ideas! But, I did notice that many of the evangelical theologians I was exposed to preferred to stay “safe” within the confines of Biblical language and ideas. Sure they might throw Augustine or Aquinas a bone here or there, but they certainly balked at the idea of adopting their comprehensive systems of thought.

Apparently, at that point in my intellectual journey, I wasn’t quite sure how to attain reflective equilibrium and I decided to outright reject the deliverances of Biblical Theology as uninformed and simplistic. Surely these theologians couldn’t have anything relevant to say if they remained sequestered within the confines of “Biblicism.” Right?

Well, as I see it now, I’m not so sure. I think I was more likely a fool when I made that decision instead of an enlightened neophyte.

My change of heart started with a class I took this semester. It was a theology class – a biblical theology class under the guise of a systematics course. Imagine my dismay when in the first class the professor detailed the biblical-theological approach he was going to take towards the material. I was so depressed that I went home and told Judy that I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the semester. All I could think was, “Oh great, another closed-minded theologian who I’m going to disagree with on just about everything.”

Well, God was gracious to me and helped me see how foolish I was for thinking I was so wise. As the semester progressed, I began to realize just how beautiful the Scriptures are. I began to see the complexities of God’s self-revelation and how much I’ve shut myself off from by pursuing theological reflection apart from rigorous biblical knowledge. I’m fairly confident my professor could quote relevant Scripture for just about any theological question I raised.

So what does this mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that I’ve adapted my core beliefs to comport with my professor’s. No, I couldn’t do that right now. I’m still a child of philosophy – adopted later in life, but nonetheless a child – and I don’t think I could ever give that away. I believe in its usefulness far too much.

However, I have been re-encouraged to devote myself to developing a deep knowledge of Scripture. If for no other reason, than that I gain additional, standardizing information for my personal theological reflection. I think too often I’ve fallen prey to uninformed critique of Scripture without full knowledge of what it has to say. I hope to remedy that in the future.

So, I’m grateful. I’m grateful that God decided to take me on a journey this semester towards actually recovering the Scriptures as a source for the theology I produce. Not that I ever doubted it was a source or even the norming norm. I more doubted a simplistic, systematizing approach applied when using it as a source.

I’m also excited to see how God’s gracious hand continues to guide my intellectual journey. I think this experience has taught me (again!) to approach knowledge humbly. I don’t have an objective perspective from which I acquire knowledge. I’m finite, foolish, and foolhardy. But God is good towards me and I’m grateful for his loving-kindness.

The road from Substance Dualism to Functional Holism

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 have been preoccupied for a great deal of time with human beings. I’m fascinated by our complexities and – conversely – often frustrated by our complications. We’re one hell of a metaphysical variety.

What are we?

What makes us tick?

It’s a truism to note the variety evident in the human race. There are many physical, cultural, religious (etc.) contours that testify to our distinctions. Trust me – you can’t walk down Hollywood Boulevard without noticing how many types of people there are.

And yet…

There is something that unites us.  We’re all human beings.

Which brings me back to my original question: what are we? What is a human being?

My early thoughts about human nature revolved around somewhat mundane classifications. I voluntarily accepted much of the “folk-ontology” that I had grown up with. Human beings were essentially something like a spirit that indwelt a body – two separate and distinct entities. Jesus was all about getting my spirit saved via his “spiritual” redemption. I suppose I thought my body was important. It helped me interact with other people and I certainly liked the benefits I received from having a body (i.e. the pleasure of eating a good meal or seeing a beautiful sunset), but I didn’t consider my body essential to who I was. It was something of an extremity.

I liked that perspective. It was so naïve, but so satisfying. I could sleep at night.

In late high school and early college, my thoughts began to change. I was introduced to the great Greeks (i.e. Plato and Aristotle). Something about them felt marginally safe. They posited something similar to the “folk-ontology” of my early years, but they seemed to take things a step further. They talked about something like a relationship between “spirit” (i.e. soul) and “matter” (i.e. body). While Plato conceived of this spirit/matter pairing as unfortunate, Aristotle suggested a necessary metaphysical link between the two – soul gave form to matter. Whatever I made of these ideas at that point, I couldn’t help but feel like my simplistic conception of human nature was expanding. Thoughts of “necessary relation” or “form” had never entered my mind. Maybe, per Aristotle, we had a body for a reason. Maybe…

At any rate, I was intrigued. These ideas stuck a chord with me and I jumped on board the substance dualist wagon. Looking back, I was surely confused concerning which wagon I was on exactly – my conflation of important distinctions was remarkable – but I was confident that I was (probably) most essentially my soul but now with some important relationship with a body. At this point I was still, however, most convinced of an asymmetrical relationship between body and soul where the soul influences the body, but not vice versa.

Through the end of college and into my first year of seminary, I don’t think much changed. I was getting more comfortable on my substance-dualist wagon and didn’t foresee any need to get off.

Unfortunately, I kept reading books.

Word to the wise: If you ever want to maintain you perspective on something, don’t read books.

Most notably, I read two books: Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies by Nancey Murphy and Body, Soul & Life Everlasting by John W. Cooper.

Both of these authors come from notably different points of view. Murphy is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary and Cooper is a long-time Professor of Philosophical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary. Nevertheless, both of them played a part in coaxing me towards the next step in my thoughts about human nature.

Murphy’s book explores the implications of recent scientific and philosophical advances concerning human persons. Given her interpretation of the data, she concludes that non-reductive physicalism best accounts for what human beings are. On her view, our bodies are essential to being human. Without them we do not exist. That thing we used to call the “soul” (i.e. the epicenter of human-ness) is actually unnecessary to posit.  Our physical brain gives rise to “immaterial” mental states that supervene on us. Given her understanding, if we can explain where immaterial thoughts come from without the soul, then we don’t need the soul any longer. Well, whether or not this perspective actually works is another story (In fact, I think this theory runs into some difficulties – especially in relation to personal identity over time and biblical testimony on the afterlife.). Nevertheless, It motivated me to reconsider some of my, at that point, engrained opinions about human beings.

Maybe we’re not essentially our souls.

Cooper, on the other hand, provided me with an enlightening read of Scripture sans dualistic presuppositions. His explication of Old Testament data helped me see the Jewish holistic perspective on human beings. On their view, a human being is not a circumstantial concurrence of spirit and matter, but a complex unity of ‘apar and nephesh/ruach. There is such a tight unity between the body and spirit that one might even understand them to be mutually dependent. Again, whether or not Cooper is exactly right on all of this biblical interpretation (although, I suspect he might be) is somewhat secondary for me. At the end of the day, he stirred something transformative in the way I think about us as human beings.

Maybe we’re not essentially our souls.

At this point, I think I might count myself as a functional holist. Cooper introduced me to this language and I find it satisfactory. As a functional holist, I believe that human beings are naturally embodied beings. We were created to exist in that way. This does away with any gnostic denigration of physicality. Nevertheless, there is still a non-physical part of who we are as human beings. Scripture makes it difficult to deny the unembodied state of some persons post-death. And I’ve yet to be convinced of either immediate resurrection theories or substitute body theories for the intermediate state. Maybe one day they’ll win me over, but for now it seems that something unembodied exists post-death that is identical with the embodied human person pre-death, so I have to accept something non-physical in order to jive with that.

I suppose I’m rambling now, so I’ll wrap it up.

I guess I’m happy.

I’m happy that I see the value of the body. I’m happy to see that (in some way) I am my body. I’m happy to appreciate the fact that my body can influence my spirit/soul in some meaningful way.  I’m happy to see how my body can instantiate God’s Kingdom in the physical world.

I’m happy for this body you all call Dave. 

Here's to the future and what new ideas it will bring.
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For more reading on the topic of embodiment, check out my friend's article here:  http://theotherjournal.com/2013/11/25/reenchanting-the-body/

Why do you read the Bible?

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hy do you read the Bible? What do you expect to gain from reading it? Is it something you do because you feel like you have to? Do you read looking to mine out timeless truths claims that you can believe? Are you looking for existential comfort or encouragement?  What is it that draws you back? Or are you drawn back? Do you lack desire to meditate on Scripture? Do you find it dry and boring?

           

You might find yourself on one end or the other of this spectrum (and, for that matter, anywhere in between). But wherever you are, I hope you might entertain a different idea with me for a moment. As Christians, we believe that Scripture possesses a unique authority in our lives. It is the norming norm by which all other knowledge of God is weighed.  Reason, tradition, and personal experience all find their better in the deliverances of biblical revelation. 

Right? Yes, I think we could all agree with that.

Unfortunately, I think the next move we often make is mistaken. Because we believe the Bible is authoritative, we’re often tempted to scour it looking for essential truths that we can live by. To our chagrin, those truths are often buried under fluffy narrative and anecdotal “Sunday school” stories, so we try to sidestep the story to get to the “really good stuff.” This isn’t a malicious move we make – I think it’s done more unaware than anything else. However, I think in doing this we might actually be missing out on something HUGE that God is trying to communicate to us.

Don’t forget, God could have chosen to reveal himself to us any which way. He could have written the “Top Twelve Things to Know About God” on a piece of parchment and disseminated that to the whole world. He could have had a voice from the heavens eternally repeating the Ten Commandments. But he didn’t do anything like that. He gave us records of a narrative. 

A story.

A drama. 

So what does this suggest to us? What might God be inviting us to by revealing himself in such a way?

Well, I think Scripture as narrative unreservedly draws us into the throws of an unfolding cosmic tale. It offers a redemptive background for us to discover ourselves against and a foundation for us to anchor our lives to.  We each have a personal history; a sequence of past events that have made us who we are. Scripture offers us an opportunity to tether that personal history onto the unfolding Divine plan. The message of Scripture is not at its core a list of “15 fundamentals” or “6 Essential Beliefs.” Instead, it is a narratival invitation to an experiential relationship with God the creator. Jonathan Edwards captures something of this necessity of experiencing God in his Religious Affections when he says, “He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.” Story engages our affections and pulls us into truth via our hearts.

It strikes me that God is keenly aware of the effect that story has on us. Don’t you think he chose to reveal himself in this way for a purpose? I welcome you to meditate further on the narratival form of Scripture and ask the Lord how your reading of the Bible might afford you the opportunity to be further caught up into His grand narrative. Who knows? Maybe this exercise will change the way you read the Bible. Maybe it will help you see that God is after your heart and not just your head.

Emerging Adulthood

Emerging Adulthood:

(or) How the myth of “what you’re supposed to do” stalls you out until you don’t care anymore and just pick something.

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here is a growing body of psychological literature that sketches a view of the “Emerging Adult.”  This is a social category of persons anywhere between the ages of 19 and 29 who no longer fit in adolescence, but fail in one way or another to fill out the elusive category of adulthood (what exactly is this “adulthood” anyway?).   Emerging adulthood is the age of becoming; a discovery of who you are; a differentiation between your niche and everyone else’s. During this period a person unwraps the mystery of themselves and finds their proper place in society (or so they say).  It usually involves a delay of taking on responsibility, an exploration of a variety of careers, and an almost palpable anxiety about “choosing the wrong path.”

This new social category strikes older generations as a bit strange.  I heard a story recently that captures this quite clearly.  Once while speaking with his grandfather, a professor friend of mine mentioned his frustration concerning his son who refused to commit to any particular life path.  His grandfather chuckled and said, “When I was young, I didn’t have any problem knowing what I’d do. I started driving a team of oxen when I was 5 and I kept at that my whole life.” This charming anecdotal story speaks quite strongly to the differences that even 50 years can make when it comes to forecasting your life. The panoply of perceived options proves debilitating for the Emerging Adult.  She’s left wondering, “It seems like that grandfather hardly had to think twice about what he’d do. Why can’t my life be the same? Instead I’m faced with 100 different options. What do I choose? What should I become?”

Well, whether or not you believe Emerging Adulthood should even exist (let’s just posit for now that it does), I think we can all agree that something needs to be done about it; there needs to be some movement forward. I’m just as humored and bothered as the rest of you by the stereotypical male, college graduate who lives in his parents basement and plays video games all day or the female twenty-something who is off on another year long adventure at another job trying to “find herself.”  We all know this gets ridiculous at some point and something needs to change.  Toward that end, I think it will be helpful to examine two myths that are often circulated around this topic of discovering identity.

[I think it’s important to note here that I don’t t believe this category of Emerging Adults applies de facto to all 19-29 year olds. In fact, I know a good number of respectable, hard-working, faithful, responsible adults in this same age bracket. Nevertheless, I think what follows will be helpful for that group as well (God-willing, myself included) as we envision what life could be.]

Myth 1: I Can Be Anything I Want To Be

I regret to burst your bubble, but this is just flat out wrong. You can’t actually be anything you want to be. How about an illustration to make this clear? Let’s consider Billy. Billy is 20 years old. He’s trying to determine what to do with his life. He’s tried a couple of jobs, he even went to college for a year, but he just can’t seem to find that one thing that he’s supposed to do. Well, Billy’s parents (being kind and loving parents) told him his whole life that he could be anything he wanted to be when he grew up. Billy remembers his parent’s encouragement and decides that he wants to be a professional baseball player.  So, he goes and tries out for the Boston Red Sox even though he hasn’t played a day of baseball in his life. Obviously he doesn’t make the team. He leaves tryouts dejected and chalks this up to another failed attempt at discovering what he’s supposed to do.

Well, obviously this is only an illustration and it suffers from the same hyperbolic bloat that many illustrations do.  But I think it illustrates the point I’m after. Billy is not in fact able to be anything he wants to be. For Billy, “anything he wants to be” includes the idea of being a baseball player. Unfortunately, Billy is actually incapable of becoming a baseball player. Why? Because Billy doesn’t have the proper capacities for the sport.  Perhaps you’ll say, “Well, this is clearly an improbably situation. Nobody in their right mind would attempt to be a baseball player if they hadn’t played a single day in their life.” True.  But how often do analogous situations play out in everyday life? How often do people genuinely believe they can succeed in something without the requisite capacities?

I can imagine an objection at this point. Couldn’t the notion of infinite horizon still be true, but just dependent upon acquiring the necessary capacities? I have two things to say here. First, I might be more open to this qualified sense of “infinite horizon.” However, remember that as soon as you take a step towards Option A you take a step away from Option B. Billy can’t pursue being a professional baseball player and a banker at the same time. To do either one of those well, he will need to devote his time and energy to developing the requisite capacities of that career.  Second, I would add that there seems to be some things that, regardless of how hard a person tries, are just impossible for them to attain. We’ve all heard those bands that really should give up their dream about becoming the next U2.  Their hearts are golden, but their fingers are lead. I digress.

Emerging Adults need to realize that what is open to them is limited. As soon as they step towards one option, another option closes. But this isn’t a bad thing! It’s a real life thing.

Myth 2: There Is One Thing I’m Supposed To Be

I think this second myth is particularly frustrating for Christian Emerging Adults. We’re supposed to live life with purpose. Right? We’ve been commanded: Don’t Waste Your Life! We’ve gotta get on this personal identity thing….like yesterday! Let me just help you relax for a moment. Guess what? The reality is, there isn’t actually any “one thing” you’re supposed to be or do.

            Again, I can hear the wash of objections popping up in your head. What about God’s will for my life? What about “THE PLAN”? Well, have you ever stopped to think about “the plan”? Have you ever noticed that your life up until this point has been deeply embedded in the cultural and social variables of your environment? You probably didn’t decide to go a high school that was two states away from where you parents live. Why? Because you were reasonably restrained by the reality that a high school existed two block away from you. The fact is, our physical, emotional, and spiritual location determine quite a lot in our lives.  I think the advent of exorbitant amounts of technology has dimmed our understanding of this reality. Our ability to “know” about opportunities around the globe might cause us to forget our limitations and seek meaning in unattainable goals (see discussion above).

            At the end of the day, “the plan” will include something – some vocation. You inevitably will do something along the timeline that is your life. But I think identity prescription is a retrospective tool; something that is valuable only when thinking back on your life. You can only know what you were supposed to be after you have become. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it strikes me somewhat intuitively.

What does this mean for the Emerging Adult? It means they can stop worrying about what they should be. As if that is some transcendent metastructure exists that they need to cram their life into and stress out about. It means that they are free to discover themselves….FREE! This is the beauty of life. You have been given freedom to find yourself! This is an especially beautiful reality for the Christian because part of their spiritual location includes the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the Church. These two realities provide an extra set of variables that non-Christians do not have on the journey of becoming.  They uniquely aid in directing the individual towards a life filled with meaning and purpose by confronting them with the reality of God’s kingdom.

Undoubtedly there is much more to be said about these issues. However, I hope these few thoughts might inspire conversation among Emerging Adults as they (we) attempt to figure life out.

On Becoming a Father

I’m becoming a father.

A Dad.

Daddy.

I never could have anticipated the roller coaster of emotions I would experience when this day finally arrived.  When Judy pounced on me that early morning shoving the urine soaked “stick of knowledge” in my face, I was excited. I was bleary-eyed and half-conscious, but I was excited.

A new life – one that her and I had caused. What?

What sort of magic is that? 

I spent the rest of that day on a barely contained emotional high. I am becoming a father. I kept telling myself that over and over again. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing ever felt so surreal. So make believe.

In the following days, the ephemeral excitement settled into an abiding satisfaction. I was content with this new vocation. I was looking forward to becoming a father.

Then something strange happened.

About a week after Judy’s heartfelt early morning raid, I was walking from the university library over to our car and I was struck by a noticeably different version of the previously rehearsed celebration of fatherhood. I thought those same words, but the tone in which I heard them was more sober.

“Oh shit…..I’m going to be a dad.”

I’m not sure if any of you other first time dads have had a similar experience, but for me it was a stop-in-your-tracks kind of thing. In that moment, I started to realize some of the multivalent, inescapable entailments of fatherhood.

For one thing, Judy and I qua Judy-and-I was coming to an end. The carefree explorations of LA on a lazy Saturday. The spur of the moment drives down to San Diego for a quick overnight vacation. I began to realize that the admittedly narcissist do-what-we-please-when-we-please approach to life that I preferred was going to expire.  Honestly, I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I turned out that I was upset for a bit.

I know. I know.  How could I be upset that a new life was on its way into the world? How could I be upset that God had finally chosen to answer our prayers? How could I be so selfish?

Well. I don’t know. It just turned out that I was.

And there I stayed; feeling that disturbance of my life to different degrees for a few weeks.

I’ll note that Judy was especially sweet to me during this time. She let me feel that frustration without condemning me. She surrounded me with her faithful love and granted me the emotional and cognitive space I needed to understand myself.

Yeah…she rocks.

I’m not exactly sure when those feelings went away. I think I might have just woken up one day and realized they were gone.  Somewhere in the midst of sleeping and waking I tamed my demons.

Replacing that feeling of loss was a quiet, almost indiscernible call.

This was less of a “writing on the wall” experience and more of “wind whispering” phenomenon. I couldn’t quite tell at first what I had started to know in that moment, but I knew it was big. The call I heard was attempting to augment the story of my life. I liked that feeling. It felt important and I wanted more.

In the following weeks, as I ruminated on that experience of calling, I began to understand that the call was to fatherhood.

Fatherhood.

This reality is more than a product of potential biological causality.  More along the lines of exemplifying a certain relation to another human person. A relation that bears certain attributes.  Attributes that I know are not – to one degree or another – already dispositions of mine.

I freaked out about that for a few days. Again, cue Judy’s patience and reassurance.

But then I realized something. Something about calling.

When God calls us to something, he anticipates a period of becoming.  Progressive advancement into our new vocation.

No matter how much I want it, fatherhood cannot be actualized overnight. The various attributes that aggregately produce fatherhood are progressively nurtured into a soul. My soul. These cannot be coerced. They are learned.

This is the journey of fatherhood. A journey of understanding and becoming. A wonderful journey. A never-ending journey.

And….here we go.

…

I’m becoming a father.

An Unlikely Wedding: Patristic Problems and Contemporary Concerns

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t first glance, one might wonder what similarities exist between two apologists as bifurcated in time as Justin Martyr and Norman Geisler. What significant comparisons could be made between theologians like Irenaeus of Lyons and Millard Erickson? Beyond solidarity in the Christian faith broadly conceptualized, it seems that these Christian leaders have little in common. However, many evangelical concerns, when carefully parsed out, are found to be modern recapitulations of perennial problems the ancient church has already wrestled with. Of the variety of comparisons between the ancient and contemporary church, several stand out as most noteworthy. First, how should Christians deal with those who are outside the church and blatantly oppose it? This is the apologetic question. Second, how should Christians deal with those who are in the church but hold to aberrant doctrine? This is the heresy question. Third, how can Christians fully tease out the practical entailments of their beliefs to produce a full, enriching life? This is the implication question.

            First, the apologetic question: how should Christians deal with those who are outside the church and blatantly oppose it? The nascent Christian church was faced with opposition from the get go. From a Jewish perspective, the Christian movement was something of an impotent offshoot of Judaism and it’s novelty demanded justification.[1]  Furthermore, Greek misunderstandings about Christian beliefs and practices (i.e. Christ’s divinity, the nature of their “love-feasts”, etc.) gave rise to acrid ridicule, requiring faithful apologists to present thoughtful reasons for their beliefs to the antagonistic pagan world.[2] In like manner, the contemporary evangelical church also faces pressure to account for its doctrinal formulations and praxis; in secular society where human autonomy and reason reign supreme, religious claims to the “God of the Bible” seem suspicious at best. What exactly does it mean to be a Christian? Can someone really believe in that stuff and be intellectually honest in a scientific age? Evangelical theology provides the framework for apologists to go out and answer these questions raised by secular thinkers.[3] In the same way that the early church countered incorrect accusations with reasoned response, so evangelical Christians can use the “prism” of theology to break “the message of the cross and resurrection down into its constituent parts” so as to creatively display the wonders of God’s truth to a skeptical world.[4] Relevant questions and allegations always need answers and thankfully God has equipped the church – both old and new – with the knowledge necessary to explain their beliefs.

            Second, the heresy question: how should Christians deal with those who claim to be in the church but hold to aberrant doctrine? This question quickly focuses attention on the internal workings of the Christian family. Not only did the early Christians face external pressure to explain their beliefs, they also found that they needed to define the lines of orthodoxy within the fold.[5] As Christianity began to grow, various interpretations of biblical data started sprouting up. How is the Holy Spirit divine? What do you need to know to be saved? Christian leaders quickly discerned that not all the answers being given were in line with the testimony of Scripture, so they responded and set the parameters in which orthodoxy dwelt. Now, while evangelicalism as a movement is noticeably diverse, there still remains this issue of knowing when certain teachings or practices fall outside the evangelical realm. For contemporary evangelicalism these debates arise around issues such as biblical authority, hermeneutics, tradition, etc.[6] It would be naïve to believe that these issues are markedly black and white, but much hair-splitting has transpired to determine who should be approved of and who needed to be dismissed as outside the bounds of evangelicalism.  

            Finally, the implication question: how can Christians fully tease out the entailments of their beliefs to produce a full, enriching life? As Wiles points out, it was the “natural desire of some Christians to think through the implications of their faith as deeply and as fully as possible.”[7] In typical patristic fashion, this often played out in the formulation of theological doctrines, but they never did this without praxis in sight.[8] As they determined orthodoxy from heterodoxy, their eye was always to preserve the apostolic teaching about God so that a truly satisfying life could be lived. For example, their doctrine of salvation depended heavily on the doctrine of the Trinity. As God forgives a person’s sins he also grants them access to His divine life through participation with the Son’s life. Thus, our “entering divine life involves our becoming by grace what Christ is by nature: a child of God.”[9] It was only through intentionally participating in this Divine life that the church fathers believed a person could experience a satisfying life here and now. It seems to me that evangelicalism is faced with identical questions. How do these great evangelical doctrines make sense of our daily lives? As McGrath notes, evangelicalism as a movement has succeeded only insofar as it has been able to take the testimony of Divine revelation and apply it to the peculiar context it finds itself in.[10] This is the challenge of the modern day. This is the overt call to contemporary evangelicalism. How well we respond to this call will determine how long evangelicalism lasts or along which trajectory it progresses. How does revelation interpret our post-modern experience? What is the proper relationship between revelation and science? How much does revelation inform us about human persons? With God’s help, these questions can and will be answered for this unfolding age as evangelical theologians continue to grapple with what it means to know God.

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[1] Maurice Wiles, “Motives for Development in the Patristic Age,” in The Making of Christian Doctrine (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 21.

[2] Ibid., p. 22.

[3] Alister E. McGrath, “Evangelical Theological Method: The State of the Art,” in Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), p. 24.

[4] McGrath, p. 25.

[5] Wiles, p. 32.

[6] McGrath, pp. 28-36.

[7] Wiles, p. 19.

[8] As Robert L. Wilken says, “The intellectual effort of the Christian church was at the service of a much loftier goal than giving conceptual form to Christian belief. Its mission was to win the hearts and minds of men and women and to change their lives.” The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale Univeristy Press, 2003), p. xiv.

[9] Donald Fairbairn, Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), p. 185.

[10] McGrath, p.36-37.

Cory Monteith and the Tragedy of Silence

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Image from www.imdb.com

adness washed over the entertainment world a few weeks ago when Cory Monteith was found dead in his Vancouver hotel room. Monteith was a beloved actor on the hit show Glee and had recently opened up in 2011 about his struggle with substance abuse. He had worked through some rehab programs and to onlookers it appeared as if he was getting his life back together. Unfortunately, the toxicology report produced after Monteith’s autopsy reveals a different man altogether.  The toxicity report produced by the British Columbia Coroner’s Office confirms that Monteith died from a “mixed drug toxicity that involved heroin, primarily, and also alcohol.” Sadly, this report suggests that something sinister was actually still at play within Monteith’s own heart – perhaps he wasn’t quite the happily recovered person he presented to the public.

I in no way want to tarnish Monteith’s reputation and I definitely don’t think he deserves harsh critique for the actions leading to his death. If anything, I think his family deserves compassion and comfort for a life lost too soon.

That being said, I can’t help but reflect on how Monteith’s tragic death gives us a window into the universal inclinations of human souls. Even the day of Monteith’s death, friends reported him as being in high spirits and appearing as if everything was going fine. However, lurking beneath the happy-go-lucky exterior was a life-sapping addiction. He had tried to rid himself of it, but it was still there.

I wonder how many of us can relate to this same picture of “human-ness.” Maybe it’s not a drug addiction, but how many of us have an intuitive awareness that something within us is out of whack? It could be an obsession with pleasure (i.e. sex, pornography, etc.), it could be a preoccupation with recognition (i.e. pride, position in the workforce, being “noticed”, etc.) or any host of other things. If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably been told that all of those things need to be “set aside” or “put-off.” But, no matter how hard you try, you find that those particular issues keep coming back into your life and negatively impacting yourself, your family, or your friends.

Well, let me suggest to you that these battles aren’t won through internal resistance. It seems like Monteith started the growth process well by including other people, but somewhere along the way stopped being honest with those same people. Maybe you’ve started the growth process well too, but gave up after you saw the addiction persisting. Maybe you’ve relinquished the loving, encouraging environment of others for a dogged, internal battle against that frustrating flaw.

NEWSFLASH: You truly can’t muscle your way out of the wily jaws of addiction by yourself. In fact, you were never supposed to.

Believe it or not, human beings were really created for relationships. Missing this reality is the great tragedy of silence.

Humans have this natural tendency to hide away. We’d rather keep our “issues” hidden beneath layers of happy faces and fake smiles. We fear judgment and condemnation so we hide and cover. The very thing we need most to change (i.e. community), we innately resist. Well, let me tell you. This approach never accomplishes anything positive and always ends tragically. It may not end in your physical death, but it most certainly will end with discouragement and frustration in your spiritual life.

You need compassionate attention. You need strong arms to hold you. You need gentle hands to comfort you. You need a discerning mind to correct you. You need a careful tongue to remind you of grace and truth.

You need people.