lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "books" Category
A ViralHope Video
A few months back I mentioned the release of the book ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in-between). I am one of 50 different authors who offers a brief reflection on what the “good news” might mean for my city (which was Memphis when I originally wrote). The book has been doing quite well from what I understand and it now boasts an excellent promotional video.
You can still get single copies of the book through Amazon, or order multiple copies through Ecclesia Press. I hope you’ll consider spreading this video around, maybe with a link to the book.
The video was made by Aaron Nee of the Brother NEE. Check out this trailer from their feature film, The Last Romantic.
Part 2: Reviewing “Knowing Christ Today” by Dallas Willard
A few weeks ago I kickstarted a review of Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, by Dallas Willard (part 1 here).
After a comment by my friend Josh on that post, I thought I’d hop back in with some further reflections. Josh asked about Willard’s reflections on knowledge and their connection to virtue, to truth/Truth, and the works of Polyani and MacIntyre. To my recollection, Willard is not interacting with other contemporary philosophers (at least not directly), but he does speak to the matters of virtue and truth/Truth. Regarding virtue, Willard says,
We today live in a curious period when almost no one is willing to discuss the question of how one becomes a truly good person. There is now a widespread tendency in American culture to think that everyone is already good. This probably arises out of confusion concerning the dignity of the individual or the equality of all people. It seems to many that all you have to do to be worthy is just to be. They mistake worth for worthiness; the most unworthy of persons still has worth, value, a certain dignity to be respected. On the other hand, as we shall discuss later it is now widely thought that there is no objective difference between a good and bad person, or at least that we do not know what that difference is. So, if that is true, a method for becoming a really good person would be presumptuous and pointless. (49)
Willard is saying that there is such a thing as objective virtue, but more provocatively, he is saying that we can know it. Let me trace his argument briefly by noting his comments on Jesus’ answers to the 4 core worldview questions.
1) What is real? Jesus’ answer, God and his Kingdom.
2) Who is well-off, blessed? Jesus’ answer, Anyone who is alive in the Kingdom of God.
3) Who is a really good person? Jesus’ answer, Anyone who is prevaded with love.
4) How do you become a really good person? You place your confidence in Jesus Christ and become his student or apprentice in Kingdom living.
The key to Willard’s line of argumentation here, I believe is found in this passing comment he makes – one that I think he would ave done well to devote an entire chapter (if not a book!) to.
… ‘knowledge’ as the biblical tradition speaks of it is always interactive relationship.
If indeed the sort of knowledge that the Bible is concerned with is characterized by interactive relationship, then it, by nature, has a dimension of subjectivity to it.
The apologetic value of this sort of knowledge therefore is found not in intellectual argumentation, but in inviting people into a relationship with the risen Jesus, manifested (uniquely though not exclusively) in and through the Church as the Body of Christ.
Let me stop there for now and see if anyone wants to engage with what Dallas is doing/saying here.
Reviewing “Knowing Christ Today” by Dallas Willard
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I recently finished a few books that I think are worth discussing. I started with a review of Deep Church by Jim Belcher and though I’d try to tackle Willard’s book next.
Reviewing a book by Dallas Willard is a formidable task. The guy is nothing short of brilliant. Add to this his personal humility and Christlikeness, and we have no choice but to take his words to heart and call ourselves, not him, into question if we think we disagree or have come to understand him fully. Such is my stance as I offer my reflections on this excellent book.
The fundamental issue Willard aims to grapple with in, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, is this,
In the Western world, a great historical struggle between what might be called ‘traditional’ knowledge, represented by the church, and modern knowledge, represented by science, has brought us to where many can only think of religion as mere belief or commitment. (23)
From here, Willard goes on to explain how both conservatives and liberals, in their own unique ways, managed to divorce knowledge from their versions of Christian faith and life. To summarize, on the left, the removal of Christian teachings from the domain of knowledge “was largely a defensive move, designed to insulate Christian faith and practice from any possible negative impact of the results of scientific and historical studies.” (24) On the right, “knowlege was pushed away as inessential to saving faith, having nothing to do with it.” (25)
What willard is after is a vision of Christian faith that ushers us beyond profession (what we say we believe, even if we’re not committed to it or don’t actually believe it), commitment (what we do regardless of its correspondence to reality), and belief (which doesn’t necessarily correspond to truth or knowledge – “we can believe what is false and often do” (16)), to the realm of Christian knowledge. Of Christian knowledge Willard says,
We have knowledge of something when we are representing it (thinking about it, speaking of it, treating it) as it actually is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. (15)
He goes on to say,
Knowledge, but not mere belief or commitment, confers on its possessor an authority or right – even a responsibility – to act, to direct action, to establish and supervise policy, and to teach… Knowledge also confers upon belief and action a stability and communicability that other sources of action do not. This is because knowledge involves truth: truth secured by experience, method, and evidence that is generally available. (18)
Let me go ahead and stop there for now. I will jump back into what Willard is after in this book and its relevance for the lives of disciples and the Church in forthcoming posts, but at the outset, does anyone have initial thoughts on Willard’s project or observations at the outset? Is “Christian knowledge” something you think much about and if so, for what purpose?
Where Do You Live?
Just caught this short video from a favorite author of mine, Andy Couch. A while back I took the time to review his latest book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. See what he has to say about the link between idolatry and the questions which define us.
Reviewing Deep Church by Jim Belcher
Jim Belcher, the author of Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and I have much in common.
We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.
We both have a heart for church planting.
I teach a class on the Emerging Church based on the intensive that he references in his book. (35)
We get frustrated when people talk past one another, defaulting to caricatured stereotypes rather than embracing a posture of openness.
And we both value looking for a “third way” to approach dichotomistic thinking.
He is right when he says,
It seems that every time someone criticizes the emerging church, they pick the worst-case scenario or the most extreme statements. (49)
He is also correct in noting,
It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair. (76)
The larger Body of Christ would indeed be served well by discourse that is deeper, more specific, and marked by a sense of humble openness. Belcher’s chapters on Deep: Truth, Evangelism, Gospel, Worship, Preaching, Ecclesiology, and Culture, are essentially his attempts to facilitate just that – a worthwhile enterprise in my opinion.
While Belcher’s book is truly helpful in this regard, I’m not sure he really hits the mark in terms of articulating a true “third way” as a means of engaging these topics. Very often, his conclusions in these chapters are a combination of a chastened version of the EC position he articulates and an expanded version of the traditional position he articulates (usually w/ reference to Tim Keller and his church!). I suppose this is a kind of “third way,” maybe even precisely the one Belcher desires, but I’m not certain it’s the most helpful kind of third way for the Church to pursue.
The mistake, I believe, comes in the assumption that one can simply pit the positions of the EC against the positions of the traditional church. The main problem here is that many in the EC camp are themselves trying to articulate and maneuver a “third way” between the modern categories of conservatism and liberalism, a feature that Belcher seems to either overlook or discount w/o comment. An indication of this is his quick dismissal of the Anabaptist tradition from which many in the EC draw as one which is able to circumvent many of the dichotomies addressed in this book on account of its fundamentally, Christendom-rejecting, stance. Belcher never seems to ask, “How might people in the EC camp already be searching for a third way in response to classic approaches to these issues?,” but assumes that their positions are simply reactions against the positions of traditional churches.
Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,
We need to define it [the emerging church] as a movement, particularly its theology. The best way to do this is to look at what the emerging church movement is against – the things they are protesting and the rasons why they are calling for change. (38)
For the life of me, I can’t grasp why someone would want to define a movement by what they are against (even it it is a protest movement) rather than what they are for. We certainly regard what the classic reformers were for as far more more important than what they were against! But more than this, Belcher fails to identify missiology as a core motif for the EC. For many, if not most, in the global EC movement, it is an attempt to participate with God and God’s mission in the world that is reshaping how they understand the sorts of topics that Belcher raises in his book, not vice versa.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I am glad that Jim wrote this book and don’t doubt for a second that it has an will continue to help many.
**Jim has recently decided to resign from his position as lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. You can read a letter he wrote to the congregation regarding this transition here and some additional discussion about this sort of trend here.
Discussing Church, Christ, and Community
While Amy was away I had the chance to read some books that has been on my hitlist for a while.
Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge by Dallas Wilard
Free for All: Rediscovering the Bible in Community by Tim Conder and Daniel Rhodes
I plan to offer some thoughts on all three eventually, but I was wondering if there might be some lifeasmission readers out there who have read any of these and were anxious to have some discussion on one in particular.
(Books link to BetterWorldBooks.com, my book supplier of choice).
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