Theology by the Seasons

Right from the start, John Colwell’s The Rhythm of Doctrine (Paternoster, 2007) turns things upside down. The Spurgeon’s College theologian begins with Revelation rather than Genesis. Just as the season of Advent points us to “The One Who Comes” both at the Incarnation and again at the Last Day, so does the Apocalypse: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Rev. 1:8).

(See the earlier post in which I introduced this fascinating first attempt to structure a systematic theology around the seasons of the church year, rather than around the three articles of the Creed.)

Colwell unpacks this verse in relation to God’s self-naming in Exodus 3:14: “I am who I am” or better yet “I will be who I will be.” Perhaps most important, he identifies God’s freedom and God’s self-existence implicit in these self-disclosures and shows how they run counter to the vaguer, less personal, less historical notions of God that reign in many theological classrooms and pulpits. “The God of panentheism (or pantheism) cannot ‘come’ to creation since the distinction between God and creation has already been blurred if not abolished..."

God’s immanence, says Colwell, must be conceived of not as necessary, but as free. A necessary immanence not only blurs the line with creation but also destroys both love and grace. “That God ‘comes’ to his creation is an act of grace and the act of coming itself, as a free act, identifies God as gracious.”

Thus the God who freely comes to his world is the same God who came to his people in making covenant with Noah, Abraham, Moses and the children of Israel, and supremely in Jesus. There is an identity of grace between the God who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come.

In spelling out a doctrine of God by reflecting on “The One Who Comes,” Colwell strikes a note of humility. Because the kingdoms of this world have not yet become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, we do not comprehend as we shall comprehend. He casts this humility in postmodern terms, discussing the limits of knowledge—even in relationship to revealed truth. But he is no relativist, and he writes with confidence about what we can know. Because this is the God who has already come to Moses and has come in Jesus, we can hope with confidence.

Colwell is not just subdividing his theology by the liturgical seasons; he is also following his postmodern impulse to tie theology more closely to ethics than to philosophy. Thus he matches each season with a classic theological virtue. In the case of Advent, that virtue is hope. He cites Stanley Hauerwas on the difference between hope and optimism. Optimism is “hope without truth.” Because we know the truth about the God who has come, “we live in hope, not overwhelmed by our sin and our propensity to sin, but continually trusting in a mercy that forgives and a grace that restores and transforms.”

Incarnation, the measure of creation

From Advent (“The One Who Comes”), Colwell moves to Christmas (“The One Who Takes Our Humanity”). Here he deals with the doctrine of Creation—normally one of the first topics in a systematic theology because the Creed and the Bible begin by confessing God the Father as “maker of heaven and earth.”

Because Colwell locates his treatment of Creation under the Incarnation, a curious thing happens—and a good thing it is. Christ becomes the measure of creation. Colwell cites Colin Gunton, who wrote that Irenaeus “views creation as God’s project, a project that only ever reaches its fulfilment in Christ.”

And then: “the perfected humanity of Christ is ever the only means of the fulfillment of creation’s perfection; creation comes to its goal here and not otherwise or elsewhere.”

From this he draws out the purposefulness of creation and the goodness of bodily existence. Also from this perspective, he is able (later, in the chapter on Lent) to bypass the old debate about whether the Son assumed a fallen human nature or an unfallen nature. In this scheme it is not Adam but the Incarnate Son who defines human nature. We know what true humanity is because we know Jesus.

Colwell continues his meditations on the virtues in this chapter on Incarnation. Here he aptly chooses the virtue of love, which entails sexuality. Worth quoting:

Few could have foreseen forty years ago how the relative reliability and availability of contraception would alter notions of public morality. Sever to such a degree the possibility and expectation of child birth from the act of sexual intercourse and the significance of the act of sexual intercourse is changed; the potentially procreational is re-envisaged as the merely recreational. ... [T]his contemporary and popular trivialisation of sex to the merely recreational represents a more pressing and more foundational challenge to Christian virtue than related issues of cohabitation, divorce, and re-marriage.

And after noting the nature of God’s love as revealed in covenant faithfulness, he writes this about human love:

It is love so defined, rather than mere sexual attraction or self-serving desire, that is the essence of marriage: a love that implies consequences but which is unconditional ... ; a love that is faithful and seeks faithfulness; a love that is generous rather than grasping; a love that is both trusting and merciful; a love that seeks to serve rather than to be served; a love that is freely for the other and that, through sexual intimacy, is welcoming of children.

But Scripture does not put the full burden of reflecting God’s love on the institution of marriage. It is the church, writes Colwell, that “is called to be the principal and most profound reflection and mediation of the faithful and merciful love that is God’s eternal nature.”

Last Things

That’s just a sample of how organizing a theology around the church year can give us a chance to view essential doctrines from a different angle. To give a thorough account of the book—with its treatments of Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, and All Saints— would take a much longer essay; so let me conclude with a few words of commendation.

First, Colwell’s method allows us to re-appropriate the Jewish context of the gospel. Because it is set in the context of Israel’s story and Israel’s Messiah, this approach pulls us away from centuries of anti-Judaism and centuries of philosophizing and asks us to engage with the particularity of the revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. Colwell makes this particular man the measure of what we mean when we say God, what we mean when we say human, and what we mean when we say perfect. That is all to the good.

Second, Colwell’s method counteracts a Flatlander’s approach to Scripture. Hebrews is very clear in pointing us to a Christological reading of Scripture—a series of revelations that culminate in Christ. In times past, says Hebrews, God spoke to our ancestors in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken through his Son, who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:1-3). Despite this inspired commentary, some evangelicals treat types and shadows as if they were "the exact representation." But viewing God’s revelation through the lens of the church year reminds us that earlier revelations were indeed a foreshadowing—and that Christ is the fulfillment.

One final comment: Colwell is among those who find theories of penal substitution inadequate to explain the work of Christ. But he is to be commended for not dumping all notions of substitution. Indeed, he recognizes that the theme of substitution is woven throughout Scripture—Christ indeed makes our place his, and his place ours.

And Colwell is also to be commended for not rejecting outright Luther’s insights even as he holds a different view of Paul's purposes. He recognizes that Luther may have been making appropriate use of Paul in his rejection of “works righteousness” in the late medieval context.

Other critics of penal substitution make both of these mistakes. But I won’t write more about that until a later post. Abingdon has just published Scot McKnight’s new book, A Community Called Atonement, and I want to read and digest that before engaging further with Colwell’s argument.

The Rhythm of Doctrine is a theological sketch worth engaging and even meditating on. Bob Webber's blurb on Colwell's book calls it "cutting edge" and warns that "the older evangelical generation may not be willing to move in this direction." Since I liked the book's direction despite the fact that I am very definitely about to enter my seventh decade, I can only conclude that I must be part of the younger generation. Thanks, Bob.

(Unfortunately, the book is not currently available in the U.S. but can be obtained from several booksellers linked through Amazon.co.uk.)

Read more!

Lark News Satirizes "Orthodox Lite" Worship

The new edition of Lark News takes a shot at--what?--blended worship? Lark is The Onion of evangelical Protestantism--a humor and satire site devoted to evangelical foibles. Its latest effort talks about evangelical churches offering "Orthodox lite" services, complete with "candles, non-specific iconography ... other religious-looking items ... generic vestments and ... a more somber manner."

The piece was supposed to be funny, but I find the phenomenon it was satirizing to be sad. So if you read it and chuckle, that's fine. But since satire is supposed to have a point, let me comment on what I take to be the barb in the Lark's "news item."

According to the fictional EV Free pastor featured in the item,

"It’s the same sermon, same worship songs in many cases, just done in a more liturgical style," Fitzgerald says. "I don’t mind changing the packaging for people. It freshens it up for them and for me."

There's the rub. As long it's about "packaging," adding liturgical elements to a service is pretty empty.

"I like the reverence and the mood," says one girl, 16. "It feels more spiritual."

"I like the candles," her friend chimes in.

"Packaging" or "feel" or "mood" are all about marketing. But liturgical worship is about other things:

• It is about doing what the people of God have done for nearly two millennia: Word and Sacrament. (Candles and incense really are optional.) The round of Scripture reading and sacramental practices shape us and mold us--keep us from being squeezed into the world's mold (Rom. 12:2).
• It is about worshiping as embodied souls. Physical acts (kneeling, singing, bowing, lifting our hands) and the use of physical substances (bread, wine, oil, water, incense, salt) remind us that we are not just here to learn, but to participate. The life of a Jesus follower is about believing and doing. And worship needs to order both our thoughts and actions.
• It is about objectivity (the opposite of "feel" and "mood"). Ritual actions are designed to help us praise God whether or not we "feel like it." And they are about opening us to God's action in our lives, about placing ourselves at his disposal, rather than creating a subjective, emotional response.
• It is about setting aside our own "creativity" and opening ourselves to God's re-creating grace. This is the "sabbath" nature of worship. We've been doing all week. With long to-do lists in hand, we've been responsible for making things happen in our homes and our workplaces. On the Sabbath, we don't need to engage in a lot of innovation. Worship doesn't depend on us. The saints are already casting their crowns before the throne and crying alleluia. The pressure on us to be original, creative, and subjective is off. All we have to do is join the chorus.
• It is about making sure that we proclaim God's story. Non-liturgical worship can easily become oriented to felt needs or therapeutic self-help discourse: How to be a good parent. How to manage your finances Christianly. How to deal with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. All good topics, but they are not of the substance of worship. Liturgical worship ensures that we read the full range of the scriptural story and walk through the cycle of Jesus' story every year. And within that context, we will be shaped as parents and financial stewards.
  
• Okay, okay, it is about mood and atmosphere, but only to the extent that it signals a break from a world that tells us stories other than God's story. In the world's stories, you are an individual who is a consumer (your worth is in what you own) or an achiever (your worth is in what you or your family accomplish) or a cool person (your worth is in your ability to keep up with trends in music, clothing, coffee, electronics, and so forth). But when you come to worship, the narration of all those stories is put on "pause," and you listen once more the God's story and how you are part of a called-out and redeemed community destined to play a role in the restoration of creation.

I could go on. But my point is made. The Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future says we should have "public worship that sings, preaches and enacts God's story" and and we must "recover the historic substance of worship of Word and Table and to attend to the Christian year, which marks time according to God's saving acts." This is about liturgical worship as substance, not as surface. The things we do in liturgy "shape our lives and signify the meaning of the world."

Now, I'm all for blending historic liturgical elements into worship services that also feature contemporary song and drama and elements from the non-liturgical traditions. But we must do the blending with an eye to telling God's story comprehensively to people who are daily squeezed into the world's mold, and who need instead a vision of God's way and God's future.

So, was the Lark News item funny? Well, I did laugh at the very end, when "the Bartel family of suburban Cleveland, Ohio, tried the local Orthodox church for a month, but 'couldn’t make the cultural shift long-term' ... When they walked back into an evangelical service, 'the drums and guitars sounded pretty good for once.' "

Liturgy takes work and commitment and even "cultural shift." But it doesn't exclude drums and guitars.

* * *

Lark News updates its satirical news items the first of every month. In addition to humor, you can find religious artifacts for the cynical, including tee-shirts that say "Homeschooled & Wild," "Heard You Got into That Christian College. Bummer," and "Jesus Loves You! Then again he loves everybody."

Read more!

A Baptist Theologizes the Liturgical Year

Every week my desk at Christianity Today is flooded with review copies of new books. Most look a bit too familiar, modeled on other books the way the house-brand raisin bran at your grocery store is modeled on the name-brand versions by Post and Kellogg. They’re probably serviceable, but they really don’t grab your attention.

Last Monday, there was a book that caught my attention for its originality: The Rhythm of Doctrine by John E. Colwell. The book is subtitled, A Liturgical Sketch of Christian Faith and Faithfulness.

The book caught my attention, first, because the author is trying to organize a systematic theology around the seasons of the church year. I don’t know of anyone else who has done this, and Colwell says it’s such an obvious idea that “someone must have adopted this approach previously.” Except that neither he nor I know of such attempts. Most systematic theologies are organized around the three major sections of the Creed: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Occasionally someone tries a different organizing principle. James McClendon tried organizing a systematic theology using ethics as his starting point back in 1986. And Tom Finger tried to organize a systematic around eschatology in 1985. But these are highly unusual departures.

But it wasn’t merely novelty. Colwell’s effort caught my attention for several other reasons.

One of those is that I am interested in narrative approaches to theology. And the seasons of the church year are the chapters in the story of salvation. At their best, narrative approaches to theology help us understand God in more dynamic terms than many systematic theologies do. The Bible tells us (in the words of G. Ernest Wright’s 1952 monograph) about “the God who acts.” This notion is born out in the preaching of the apostles as recorded in Acts. Their sermons are a recitation of the mighty acts of God, leading up to and culminating in Jesus. Or in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the prophets introduce us to the God who brings deep pathos to his interaction with a suffering world. In other words, it is through narrative that we best convey knowledge of the God who interferes in human history because he cares deeply.

The third thing, however, that caught my attention is that John Colwell teaches at Spurgeon’s College in London. That’s a Baptist institution, I thought. What’s a Baptist doing organizing his theology around the liturgical calendar. That’s what an Anglican or Lutheran might do. Or perhaps a Methodist. (The closest thing to this effort is Geoffrey Wainwright’s Doxlogy: The Praise of God in Worship (1980). But what’s a Baptist doing writing about such things?
Colwell’s answer is very personal.

I write as as Baptist and some may expect me to conform to this non-conformity of neglect. I write, moreover, as one who teaches in a college founded by a Victorian Baptist preacher who was notorious in his distaste for liturgy.

That's exactly what was puzzling me. So why did Colwell turn to formal liturgy with its prescribed prayers, its creeds, and its set rhythms of devotion?

More than any other factor, it was the experience of wrestling with the crushing darkness of clinical depression that drew me to a more formal devotional life: when you really cannot pray yourself, when every form of ‘felt’ experience has fled, when you are despairing of yourself and despairing of God, then the prayers of others become precious. … I discovered the prayers of the Church, some ancient and some contemporary, that expressed concisely and profoundly what I would have wanted to pray myself if I had been able.

I read that passage just a few days before hearing the revelations about the spiritual dryness of Mother Teresa. Perhaps you’ve seen the news stories. Clearly, without set practices of devotion, she could not have persevered in her saintly work.

And then I thought of how I begin each morning’s prayers. Using an abbreviated form taken from the Book of Common Prayer, I always begin morning devotion with these words from Psalm 51: “Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.” When I say those words, I realize that I do not pray. God prays through me. I cannot pray. I need God to “open my lips.” And then the Spirit helps me in my weakness.

I’m glad that in their “crushing darkness” John Colwell (and Mother Teresa) have learned to rely on the prayers of others. For Colwell and for me, that has meant learning to rely less on self and on feelings and to enter into the larger prayer of the church, which organizes itself around the chapters of the story of salvation. And that is what section four of the Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future invites us to: “Therefore, we call Evangelicals to recover the historic substance of worship of Word and Table and to attend to the Christian year, which marks time according to God's saving acts.”

* * *

How well does Colwell carry out his attempt to organize a systematic around the church year? And what are the strengths of such an approach compared to the traditional way of writing theology?

Those questions will be the subject of future blog posts. Stay tuned.
Read more!

Worshiping with Broken Appliances

About the time she turned 40, my wife said, “It’s not the aging I mind, it’s the way the appliances keep breaking down.”

Does the way appliances fail right after they go out of warranty send us a subliminal message about the human condition?

Whatever the subtle symbolism behind that observation, the Neffs have now had another spate of appliance breakdowns. Appliances don’t fail only when they go out of warranty. They can also sense when you’ve got guests on the way.

And so, with three out-of-town guests in our home, our KitchenAid food processor flew apart in the middle of kneading bread and had to be replaced by a new Cuisinart.

Our electronic bathroom scale just gave us a blank, glassy stare. And when I replaced the batteries—nothing.

We received a recall letter from Maytag, saying that our dishwasher might burn our house down.

And then, after I rinsed the dinner dishes, the garbage disposal emitted an unearthly racket and jammed. All my efforts to follow the manufacturer’s instructions couldn’t remove the mystery object that had frozen the disposal. But probing its interior with my fingers and peering into it at an awkward angle, I realized what had happened. A piece of the exploding food processor had flown into the drain opening and waited for the opportunity to cause mischief.

In Romans 8, Paul reminds us that the whole creation has been “subjected to futility” but that in the end, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Whether it’s a series of minor mishaps (like our appliance breakdowns) or serious catastrophes (like the collapse of a Minnesota bridge or a Utah mine), we know that the physical breakdown of creation is paralleled by the spiritual collapse of the human race. And we know that restoration awaits both God’s creation and God’s children.

* * *

How do we worship when our world keeps breaking down?

Those of us who practice Ancient Future worship often engage in some of the most glorious services to be found this side of the coming kingdom. That’s because we know that our Eucharists are anticipations of the eschatological Marriage Supper of the Lamb and that somehow (as our Orthodox friends have taught us) in this meal, heaven is opened to earth and earth to heaven.

In 2005, Colorado pastor Kevin Navarro published The Complete Worship Service with the subtitle “Creating a Taste of Heaven on Earth.” Bob Webber wrote a foreword to the book, and summarized its main point: “Not just the songs we sing but also the hospitality, the atmosphere, the teaching, the Eucharist—all these and more constitute a taste of heaven.”

Charles Wesley wrote about our heavenly worship in “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”: “Changed from glory into glory /Till in heaven we take our place, / Till we cast our crowns before thee, / Lost in wonder, love, and praise.”

Navarro’s book is devoted to helping us toward the state of being “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” But at one point he warns: “As glorious as our worship services can be, we need to remember that even in the most holy place on earth, the creation is still in labor.” We will never be fulfilled until heaven, he writes, and “the complete worship service is created to help us long each week for what is yet to come.”

And so worship is about “longing.” Section 4 of the Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future deplores the forms of worship that “do not adequately proclaim God’s cosmic redemption” because they treat the self as the source of worship or regard God as an object of the intellect.

The remedy, according to the call, is “worship that sings, preaches and enacts God’s story.” By proclaiming God’s story, our worship can “narrate the world” so that our people experience a longing for the world to come. And by knowing where we are in God’s story, in the already but not yet, we can put the failures of appliances and people in perspective and be strengthened by a foretaste of the redemption for which we long.

* * *

Epilogue:

Good news about our garbage disposal and bathroom scale. A friend was able to dislodge the piece of broken food processor from the garbage disposal. And the bathroom scale mysteriously healed itself. For the moment, however, our dishwasher remains a menace.

Read more!

Crappyjack Spirituality

I learned a new word this weekend—“crappyjack.” Catching up on some of my favorite podcasts while doing my Saturday errands, I heard “A Way with Words” host Grant Barrett report on the new words contest held at the recent meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America.

“Crappyjack” was introduced into the discussion by Erin McKean, chief consulting editor for American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press. Somebody had made up the word during a kind of parlor game at an event she had attended in New York City. The word is obviously modeled on “crap” and “Cracker Jack,” and the definitions she gave were “any kind of food you eat that is bad for you” and “anything you can buy in a crinkly package in a convenience store.”

Right after the session in which someone made up “crappyjack,” an 89-year-old Anglican nun spoke about spirituality. “She managed to use the word ‘crappyjack’ eight times in her talk,” said McKean, taking it from its new but literal meaning to a spiritual meaning. Spiritual crappyjack, she said, is stuff “you bought ... for a quick spiritual fix and then the experience left you hollow and queasy.”

McKean said that everyone listening to that 89-year-old nun knew immediately what she was talking about. That’s because there is a long history of spiritual crappyjack—stuff that promises a lot, is kind of showy, and even, perhaps, gives you a quick rush.

What are the warning signs of spiritual crappyjack? Besides the vacant feeling that follows the empty promise, section 5 of the Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future notes these marks of fraudulent spiritualities: “legalism, mere intellectual knowledge, overly therapeutic culture, New Age Gnosticism, ... dualistic rejection of this world, [or] narcissistic preoccupation with one’s own experience.” So when one of more of those start showing up, it’s time to turn back to the biblical story and the context of the church.

The Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future urges “catechetical spiritual formation of the people of God that is based firmly on a Trinitarian biblical narrative.” It continues, “We are concerned when spirituality is separated from the story of God and baptism into the life of Christ and his body. ... These false spiritualities are inadequate for the challenges we face in today’s world. Therefore, we call for a return to an historic spirituality like that taught and practiced in the ancient catechumenate.”

There’s some fancy language in there, but here are the key words: “based firmly on a Trinitarian biblical narrative” and tied to “the story of God and baptism into the life of Christ and his body.” What have you got there? A church context in which people are trained to understand the story of God’s work for the redemption of the world according to the theological consensus that developed in the first five centuries.

Bob Webber’s 2006 book The Divine Embrace unpacks those ideas (book excerpt here; buy the book here). Read it if you haven’t already done so. It's not crappyjack.

Read more!