2005: A Century of Heretics

"I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
G.K Chesterton

The 24th Annual Chesterton Conference will be held June 16-18 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. All sessions are free, but you must pay for meals. Speakers include Craig Kibler, James Schall, Dale Ahlquist, Mark Shea and a host of others. For more information, please visit the conference web site: http://www.chesterton.org/rediscover/conference.html

Just Modern War?

Given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war.'"
- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, May 2, 2003.

Post-Emergent Theology?

Maybe I just wanted to be the first person to add my favorite over-used prefix to the term "emergent", but I think there is more that needs to be explored. It is not that I think the Emergent movement is bad. For what ever it is, I feel that it is wonderful. Whatever it is, I feel like it is something a great number of churches or "intentional Christian communities" will benefit from. This is exactly how I felt about Rick Warren/Billy Hybels and the Purpose Drive-Seeker Sensative churches. As a result of that movement, key questions arose that may not have "emerged" had it not been for the movement. Perhaps the most sriking question that arose out of the "seeker movement", was the question of the Church's emphasis on personal and decisional salvation as its central goal. While this issue is finnaly recieving the critical concideration it deserves, I feel this critical reflection would not have happened if it weren't for the distilled focus on personal salvation that the seeker movement so efficiently produced. In many ways, the emergent movement is distinctly post-seeker because its existance is a response to Willow Creek. I'm sure there are many other questions that have condensed in formation of the emergent villeges as an effect of reflection upon the "seeker movement". Now I want to ask, what are the new questions that will arise as a result of the "emergent church" movement.

Words on "The Last Word and The Word After That"

I just finished reading Brian Mclaren's "Last Word and the Word After That". I would like to have some critical thoughts on it. I feel rather wimpy just saying "I liked it" or that "he's pretty much right on". My pride wants to have something critical to say about that book just to show that I did think on my own as I read this book. In some ways, this is my concern. Am I just getting sucked into a new sub-catagory or sect of Christian thought? I feel like if I stepped back and listened to my own thoughts, with a the aid of some distance and perspective, I would imeadiatly recognise my thoughts as the "typical emmergent church" thoughts, and then I would dismiss myself by applying the lable of "dogmatic post-evangelical". This seems like such a real danger, I know that the fundemetalist who reads only "christian newspapers and books" will eventually get caught up in his ideological ghetto, I am begging to wonder if I have constructed my own ghetto. Someday will I look back at this and see myself as being caught up in a turn of the millenium fad. Am I a sheep of the counter-religious-right? It was only five years ago that the "seeker sensitive church" and "Purpose Driven Church" seemed so... "right". Now it seems so over simplified and narrow. I remember five years ago when our pastor said someone asked him what our church would do "after the seeker sensative movement was over". I put that thought in my back pocket, and sometimes I run across it while sorting through the intelectual laundry. This has me wondering, In five years, what will we look back on and see as being short sighted or too narrow about this "emergent church movement"?

Player Piano Dogmatics

When I first heard the term "litmus test for orthodoxy", part of me reacted strongly against such a notion. Often, I would attribute much of the bad ideas in Christian history to unflexible dogmatics. I mean, if one supports the reformation The jury is still out for me on that one, but most protestants would accept a change in Orthodoxy This of course being the moving from authority of the Church to authority of the Bible, which to me, doesn't seem to be an open and shut case since we must innitially trust the Church's following of the Spirit for canonization before we even have a Bible, but that is definatly a different issue. Anyhow, Dogmatic and litmus tests. I don't know that I'm so opposed to thinking of certain theological ideas being "litmus tests" of orthodoxy for people. Unfortunatly sometimes they have become litmus tests for God. Specifically here, think of the crucifiction or all the other times human constructs tell God who he must be.

I have no problem with litmus test being something like: Is Jesus Lord? Or Does God love the world? These seems well supported by the Bible and I have no problems with the these ideas or the trinity being concidered "litmus test of orthodoxy". They are useful ways of stating what we believe. This is how we arrived at doctrines such as Trinity in the first place. The Church needed to clarify what it meant to follow a unified God who had been revealed in the person of Christ and the Holy Spirit, thus the Church began to speak of it as Tri-unity. I have no problem with this. For it seems that Father, Son and Holy Spirit all being one in God is a central part of Christianity. Sure, call it a litmus test, we have to draw lines somewhere. But what if the lines begin to constrict what we allow God to tell us? Sometimes these litmus tests form chains of reasoning which begin reading the Bible for us like a player piano. They insist on playing a predetermined tune reguardless of what God says.

An example could be:
Does God love the world? (insert dogmatic "yes" here)
But now the program continues out of control...
Since God loves the world, and the world is sinful, he must love the sin in it?
The passages which says he hates sin must mean something else, because we know that God loves the world and therefore the sin? (dogmatic progam answeres "yes", but the Bible answeres "no, it seems here that God is telling us he does in fact hate some things, specifically sin")

Player Piano Dogmagtics get more controversial:
"God is not like a human that he should change his mind..." (or is this metaphorical)
"Because you have prayed I (God) have changed my mind..." (or is this metaphorical)
What happens here with Player Piano Dogmatics in the second passage?
Does God sometimes change his mind? Here the Bibleseems to say "yes"
But the Player Piano Dogmatics answers for God, and it says "No"
My intention is not to delve into the the question of whether in fact God changes his mind. I don't have an answer for this other than; Yes, God changes his mind, and God is not like a human that he should change his mind. My question is, do we have Player Piano Dogmatics that answer for God as we read the Bible?

On the emerngence of Modern Theology

1)Once upon a time God told people about The Beautiful Dwelling he envisioned for them.

2) The people then made a drawing of a beautiful dwelling place, it was a beautiful house.

3) The people loved the house which they had created from their understanding of God's desription. The house the people constructed eventually became the absolute standard by wich all dwellings were judeged. As God told them more about The Beautiful Dwelling He envisioned, the people began to recognise only the parts of God's Dwelling wich were consistant with the house they had drawn.

I have been watching the television news coverage of the pope's fading health. A reporter stated they believe his death is immenent and that he is now beyond hope. The cardinal whom they were interviewing responded "The Holy Father's hope goes beyond bodily health"
It would be difficult to overstate the emphasis put on the cross, Christ, and the message of Christianity by the Cardinals during this news cast.

Perhaps it seems mearly fashionable at this moment when all the major news stations are covering the end of the pope's life for me to suggest this; However, I throw this out there with all seriousness and conviction.

Is it time that The Reformation ends? The year 2017 will mark the 500th year of the protestant reformation. Is it time that The Reformation changes into The Restoration ?