Theological Thought

Now Blogging at Machines4Living.com

Friends,

My spiritual interests and concerns have led me in a particular direction, which I am pursuing at my new blog: Machines4Living.com.  I have come to the conclusion that modernity has alienated man from his authentic self to such an extent that spiritual growth is unnecessarily difficult. This isn't a novel idea, of course.  I came to this conclusion a couple years ago when reading Pastor Frazee's The Connecting Church while taking philosophy courses at Catholic University of America.  Unlike many Catholic and Straussian thinkers (whose responses seek a premodern revival) and many liberal and emergent thinkers (whose responses appeal to postmodernism), I see the only possible, realistic response as lying in a development within modernism itself.  While this is not a fashionable position (and many will find the mission statement below to be decidedly unfashionable) I'm reminded of a question that Dr Richard Velkley once asked, "If modernity is so bad, then what accounts for its appeal?". 

The mission statement of Machines4Living.com is copied below.

For centuries, we've designed systems that alienate us from ourselves, from community, from the flow of life and our natural desire to do good. With the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, we live in a designed world. We can redesign it to be smarter, more efficient, and responsive to our natural lives and processes. Just as modernists called a house “a machine for living in”, so today all systems must be redesigned as machines for living.

Christian Leaders are Always Having Ethical Failures, Why Would I Want to Be Like Them? – Part II of God as Goodness

    Why do our Christian leaders disappoint us with their ethical failures?  Why is it that we cannot seem to go a month without hearing of a respectable Christian leader who has committed adultery, or abusively berated their children or their employees, or coldly ignored poverty on their doorsteps while putting millions of dollars into their churches?  I believe that the problem and the solution are in the same place – the Christian doctrine of man’s depravity.  I hope you find resources for hope in what follows, as have I, that despite our ethical failures freedom and transformation are possible in the way of God as revealed in Scripture.  This post also responds, I hope charitably, to the Calvinist critiques of Part I of those post, I Try to Be a Good Person, Isn't that Good Enough?

Darfur: The Political is Personal

        Darfur is the genocide of my generation.  When I consider how I can stop the death toll of 400,000 from continuing to climb, I think that I can do nothing, because this is a political crisis, and only a political solution between powerful men whom I don’t know can bring this genocide to a halt.  And, oddly, this thought comforts me, because I’ve done everything I can do.

        For awhile, though, this thought has no longer provided comfort to me.  A friend named Keith emailed me a link to a video of a speech by Bono.  In the speech, Bono asked, “Can we really say that we would allow this to happen if it was happening anywhere else but Africa?”  As I envisioned genocide in Norway, or Japan, or Poland, I suddenly thought of all the additional things I would try to do to bring it to an end.  Sad, but true.  What are these things I would do?

I Try to be a Good Person, Isn’t that Good Enough? - Part I of God as Goodness

Evangelists from all religious traditions get asked this question a lot. If someone is inviting you to learn more about God, it’s the most obvious question to ask. I try to be a good person, isn’t that enough? As an evangelist myself, I instinctively resist answering yes to this question. But why?

An Idea to Broaden the Emergent Conversation

            Sometimes friends of mine ask me, incredulously, why I am involved in the Emergent conversation and why I like Brian McLaren’s writings so much.  I generally don’t agree with postmodern philosophy (though it is often helpful and deserves close reading), I study philosophy at a conservative Catholic school (The Catholic University of America) and I serve on the boards of CUA and a conservative campus ministry (Washington DC Chi Alpha).
            I hope, in answering this question here, to help broaden the Emergent conversation so that people like me will feel both more welcome and engaged in, and less suspicious of, Emergent.  I know that broadening the Emergent dialogue is central to the efforts of Emergent leaders such as McLaren and Tony Jones.  The views I hold dear, which I sketch out below, are also dear to several disciples of Dallas Willard and to several in the Catholic Church (two groups of people generally absent from or at odds with Emergent).  What a wonderful next step in the Emergent conversation were we to find ourselves in common cause and dialogue with many Catholics, with some scholars at Biola and others influenced by Willard, and with others who share Emergent’s concerns about modern Christianity.

Why Phenomenology Matters to Theology: Part II

The Turn to Husserl and Phenomenology by Protestant and Catholic Philosophers for the Redemption of Reason

Paper Presented at Redeeming Reason Conference - November 5, 2005 (www.redeemingreason.org)

(Download Ken_Archer_Redeeming_Reason_Paper.pdf)

I. Introduction

A century ago, Western philosophy split into the two streams of Continental and Analytic philosophy. One of the figures at the center of that split was a German philosopher named Edmund Husserl, for whom the defense and correct understanding of reason was a central concern. While the two traditions that emerged since Husserl have largely abandoned this concern, Christian philosophers in the past four decades have returned to the work of Husserl to continue his project, a project called phenomenology, a particular emphasis of which could be called the redemption of reason. Within both the Protestant and Catholic traditions, these philosophers have not only made major contributions to Husserlian phenomenology, they have then gone on to make significant contributions to theology.

This paper looks at the influence of Husserlian phenomenology in the contributions to theology of one Protestant philosopher, Dallas Willard, and two Catholic philosophers, Msgr Robert Sokolowski and Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II. This paper provides an overview of Husserlian phenomenology as understood by these three philosophers. It will then be shown that the implications for theology of Husserlian phenomenology drawn by these three philosophers are largely the same. These implications are (a) a reading of Scripture, and of any text, rooted in epistemic realism and (b) a nonfoundational doctrine of ethics that simply describes what ethical people do and a consequent concern for the formation of ethical people within Christian theology. These implications reveal the critical role one’s doctrine of reason plays in all of life, not simply confined to epistemology or even philosophy, and the consequent central role that reflection on reason must play in spiritual and theological education. As Willard writes in his Renovation of the Heart, “The prospering of God’s cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well.” (1)

Sermon on The Missional Church - Given at The Church in Bethesda

          I remember once about 4 years ago, when Veronika and I were having lunch one day, and I was complaining, as I often did, about the Sunday morning service to her.  Particularly, I had some issues with the sermons.  I felt like I wasn’t getting anything from them.  And Veronika said to me, “Do you think a 30-minute sermon once per week is what you should rely upon for your spiritual growth?”  And I realized something very important that has stayed with me since – you are who you are, not who you would be if your church was different. 

Review of D.A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church

(This review is available for download in PDF format here.)

At the end of D.A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, Carson leaves us with the words, "Damn all false antitheses to Hell". There is wisdom in this call, perhaps more than even Carson knows. For the struggle to achieve a new synthesis beyond the thesis of modern absolutism and the antithesis of postmodern relativism is one towards which few are seriously working. While this synthesis will come, one day, it doesn't seem to me helpful to critique of group of pastors for not having delivered it yet. The chief virtue of Carson's book is its clear and repeated insistence that we shun this false antithesis. The chief shortcoming of Carson's book is its own failure to move beyond this antithesis, coupled with its criticism of a primarily pastoral movement called the Emerging Church for what is a failure of academics.

Why Phenomenology Matters to Theology: Part I

Protestant Christian theology is in its second century of schism between liberal and conservative schools. I don’t think schism is too dramatic a term. As Brian McLaren prays, "Please, Lord, bring the day when we no longer think in these terms." Beneath this schism are fundamental differences in epistemology, in how we believe we can know God and God’s will. Nancey Murphy has made a very similar argument in the first half of her Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda.

While the conservative school argues from a foundational realist epistemology, and the liberal school proceeds from a postfoundational anti-realist epistemology (these terms will be fleshed out in later posts in this series), premodern philosophy and theology have lost their power over our convictions. This is because classical and medieval philosophy and theology were predominantly realist yet nonfoundationalist. The problematic introduced by modern philosophy was not realism, which was already a given in premodern thought, but rather foundationalism, which is central to the early modern philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes and Locke. Hence the conflation of foundationalism and realism, and the postmodern reaction against both. Renewing the Center, by Dr Stan Grenz (may he rest in peace), and Reclaiming the Center, by Erickson, Moreland, Carson, Groothius et al, are explicitly animated by these two epistemologies; neither book seriously engages premodern philosophy or theology, because premodern thought doesn’t fit into either school.

Neither does either school ever, ever, ever write about Edmund Husserl. He was one of the top 3 philosophers of the 20th century (by anyone’s count); postmodern thought would not be without Husserl’s concepts of absence and horizons; and Dr Dallas Willard, whose Christian writings are respected across both schools, spends much of his time reading Husserl. Why does Husserl matter? Why does phenomenology (the school of philosophy initiated by Husserl) matter?

Discipleship vs Friendship - Part IV: Isn't this So Elitist?

In the first 3 in this series of posts, I have argued that we need to retain the concept of Christian discipleship, rather than replace it with a call to form friendships, or spiritual friendships, instead.  This is because the modern institution of friendship is a poor vehicle for sharing the good news of Christianity.  The ancient ideal of friendship, on the other hand, was a given for Jesus and Paul and thus animated their discipleship of the 12 disciples and of Timothy.  We need to relearn the ancient ideal of friendship, which was based on virtue and requires virtue in order to form true friendship, for this is the type of relationship called upon by Jesus to spread his teachings.

But the classical insight that friendship requires virtue strikes many as elitist.  Can only virtuous people, or those seeking virtue, experience true friendship?  Can virtuous people only be friends with other virtuous people?  The disparity in virtue is a central obstacle and dilemma in the classical notion of friendship and is addressed by Aristotle.   It is my argument that the answer to the questions above is Yes, however the response of virtuous people to the obstacles this poses to true friendship is what matters.  For Aristotle and Jesus, this response is different.

Discipleship vs Friendship - Part III: What Classical Writers Can Teach us About Friendship

In the previous two posts in this series, I reviewed the desire of many Christians to ditch discipleship for friendship, or, spiritual friendship.  I argued that this is a bad idea, for Christian discipleship is nothing like friendship today, however it is very much like the ancient institution of friendship.  Modern friendship is a "distraction, something quite marginal" according to CS Lewis, and is unsurprisingly rarely the cause of real personal transformation anymore.  I then traced the denigration of modern friendship to Christian teachings that call us to focus our hearts on love for humanity and for family, such that the exclusive, private attachments of friendship appear suspicious, insignificant and good for only a diversion.

So what was ancient friendship all about?  Friendship was the subject of treatises by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epicurus and Seneca.  Throughout these classical texts, and articulated most fully by Aristotle, one finds the central classical insight into friendship that is lost today: true friendship requires virtue, and only to the extent that a person is virtuous can that person experience true friendship.

Discipleship vs Friendship - Part II: Why Christians are Often Lousy Friends

In Part I of this series of posts on discipleship and friendship, I described the desire of many Christians to replace discipleship with friendship or, as many say, spiritual friendship.  Pitting discipleship against friendship, I wrote, is misleading, since there is a big, big difference between modern friendship and premodern friendship, as CS Lewis attested to.  Discipleship is much more like ancient friendship, whereas modern friendship is, well, that's the subject of this post - Why Christians are Often Lousy Friends.

The sorry state of friendship in modern times is, sadly, one of the unintended consequences of Christianity.  It is a sad irony that the type of relationship Jesus called upon to spread his teaching is precisely the relationship that was crippled by subsequent Christian teachings.  Jesus never wrote anything nor did he tell anyone else to write anything down and he spent little time talking to large groups of people.  He spent most of his time investing in a small group of people, to whom he told at the end of ministry, "I no longer call you servants, I have called you friends."  When he finished his time with his friends he told them to "Go and make disciples".

Putting Politics before Discipleship

Is there a ministry or charity that you know of that does wonderful work?  One with passionate vision, low overhead, and a focus on results and changed lives?  FamilyLife is one of those ministries. Via marriage conferences and studies for small groups, FamilyLife provides resources for couples to invest in their marriage whether couples are days from divorce or happily-married for 50 years.  Veronika and I have invested in our marriage by attending 3 of these conferences and leading FamilyLife small groups.  There is probably a FamilyLife marriage conference coming to your town in the next couple months, and if you are married or engaged, I can't encourage you more to invest in your marriage by checking the schedule and discussing it with your spouse.

FamilyLife is also an example, I believe, of a ministry that has decided to weigh in on political matters at the expense of its core, person-to-person ministry of discipling couples.  It's not that the quality of their core ministry is compromised by their entry into the political realm; rather, the number of people who would ever dream of walking through the front door of a FamilyLife conference is diminished to only those on the same side of the political fence as FamilyLife.

A Review of McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy

Dallas Willard wrote in The Divine Conspiracy that a discipline is "any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort". Orthodoxy, for Brian McLaren in his book A Generous Orthodoxy, seems to play a similar role. Just as McLaren's Neo said in A New Kind of Christian that "Christianity does not own God", so no orthodoxy can ever “own God”. Rather, a la Willard, orthodoxy seems to be something within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.

How do I get started in philosophy? A Review of The Closing of the American Mind

I am often asked for a good introductory book on philosophy. I am overjoyed when people ask me this question, and would be even more overjoyed if I had a great answer. You see, beginning to study philosophy presents a bit of a catch-22. A healthy sense of all that one does not know and a passionate desire to know all nonetheless (what many classical philosophers meant when they used the term eros) is required to read the essential philosophical texts from the likes of Plato and Nietzsche without being intimidated by their language. Only this philosophical eros - what can be defined as an unquenchable desire for knowledge of the whole - can sustain you while reading difficult and long works of philosophy. On the other hand, one develops eros in this classical sense by reading great texts of philosophical thought. So beginning one's study of philosophy without burning out quickly is a catch-22.

That is why I recommend Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind as a fantastic introductory text. With Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, we are given the opportunity to enter a life of passionate learning. Some who read this book are already living such a life, while many purchase this popular book unsuspecting of the invitation to a life of wonder that awaites them. Bloom integrates an appeal to intellectual eros in the reader with a subsequent history of philosophical thought to begin satisfying that eros. In fact, these two steps form the first part, followed by the second and third parts, of The Closing of the American Mind.

Postmodern Christianity Came and Went...150 Years ago

An example of the poor job done by seminaries in equipping Christian leaders in the history of theological thought is the emerging church, or postmodern church, movement itself. Most of the insights and discoveries evident in the writings of those in this movement have been made before and, in my opinion, better by the first go-round of postmodern Christianity - Berlin from 1800-1850. (A significant exception to this generalization is Brian McLaren, who writes from a deep engagement with the history of theological thought.)

The first half of the 19th century in Berlin was a hotbed of postmodern Christian thought that covered most of the territory covered by today's postmodern Christian writers. I am using the term postmodern anachronistically, however. Postmodern wasn't the term used to describe the thought of the period. Rather, German Idealism was the term of the day. Both German Idealism and postmodern Christianity share the essential feature of being reactions against Enlightenment thought. The fact that German Idealism is barely mentioned in the recently published Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology is an unfortunate consequence of the fate of relearning the lessons of the past for those who are not taught about the past.

Review of The Connecting Church

I've just reviewed Randy Frazee's book The Connecting Church on Amazon. You can read my review here.

Review of The Post-Evangelical

I've just reviewed Dave Tomlinson's The Post-Evangelical on Amazon. Please read it here. You can read all of my Amazon book reviews with the hyperlink in the left sidebar.

Plato and Aristotle in Brian McLaren's KNOC Trilogy - Part II

Plato, in his Phaedo, has Socrates explain his doctrine of Ideas, or, Forms. We live in a world of particulars - particular dogs and cats, particular people with particular desires. There exists, according to Plato's Socrates, an essence to each of these - dogs, cats, man, etc - that is its Form, its natural essence. The particulars that we see around us are imperfect versions of the perfect Forms.

This doctrine is extremely important to understanding the history of theological thought. Philosophy began in a world that believed in multiple gods which govern the world. If there were multiple gods, gods who battled each other, there were multiple truths about the world. What marked the beginnings of philosophy was the attempt to know not truths, but Truth; or, the attempt to know the essence or nature of reality. Plato's doctrine of the Ideas is an attempt to know the essence of reality.

Dallas Willard's Real Conspiracy

I have read all of Dallas Willard's books on the Christian life, including Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart and Hearing God. I taught a year-long book study on the Divine Conspiracy immediately after the study guide to the book was published. Willard's teachings on the Kingdom of God, spiritual formation and discipleship have had an influence among Christian leaders and laypeople over the past decade that is difficult to overstate. When one hears Willard speak at the Renovare conferences of his friend of numerous decades, Richard Foster, one realizes that spiritual formation into a life of discipleship to Jesus within the Kingdom of God isn't just one aspect of Christian living among many for Willard, akin to Christian marriage or service to the poor, for example. Rather, to Willard this is all there is to the Christian life. It is a refreshing message that calls us back to the actual words of Jesus. I cannot encourage you to read these books more strongly.

Dallas Willard is also a professor of philosophy. As a philosophy student myself who (a) has read and been changed by Willard's books and (b) has a deep respect for my elders in the field, I left last weekend's National Faculty Leadership Conference, at which Willard gave 3 keynote addresses, confused. Dr Willard is a gentle figure who lives his message of renovation daily. When I say I was confused, it is not a genteel way of saying I was critical. I was confused.