MFEO Twitter Giveaway: Clarence Jordan & Dallas Willard

This week I’m going to be giving away books by two authors that I think are M.F.E.O. (Made For Each Other): Clarence Jordan and Dallas Willard:

• The first book is Sermon on the Mount, New Testament scholar Clarence Jordan’s commentary on Jesus’ most seminal teachings. Few Christians in history speak with the weight of authority that Jordan does, having given his life to the practice of these radical teachings.
• The second book is Willard’s now classic bombshell The Divine Conspiracy, which contains his interpretation of The Sermon on the Mount. If you haven’t read this, you need to. Please Note: Both these books are used, so you’ll have to live with annotations and underlines : )

Here’s how the giveaway works:

1. Follow me on Twitter @pastoralia
2. Tweet this message:
   

   Don’t miss! @pastoralia giving away 3 amazing Christian books by Dallas Willard & Clarence Jordan & a documentary DVD http://bit.ly/bYTyzr

3. The winner will be randomly selected and announced a week from today on Monday, February 15, from among my Twitter followers who Tweeted the message above. Please Note: You must follow and Tweet that message in order to win.

Bonus giveaways!

If the number of Twitter retweets reaches 1000 I will also give away one of each of these bonus prizes to two additional winners:

• Dallas Wiillard’s new book, Knowing Christ Today in audiobook form from Christianaudio.com, and
• A DVD copy of the fantastic documentary Briars in the Cotton Patch, which chronicles the story of Clarence Jordan’s Koinonia Farm in the turbulent race wars that led up to the civil rights movement.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Clarence Jordan, Dallas Willard, Giveaway

Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Chapter 1

(Part 2 on my series on Dallas Willard’s latest book. Previous Entries: Intro)

Can Faith Ever Be Knowledge?

Knowledge, says Dallas Willard is to accurately represent a thing as it actually is. In other words, to use a hotly contested phrase, knowledge is objective truth (Willard is a philosophical realist via the phenomenological work of Edmund Husserl). Moreover, this brings the realm of that truth under reliable control, which is what we call evidence. It will be difficult to track with Willard throughout this book unless we understand that he is very concerned about re-appropriating a place for evidence in the realm of religious knowledge. In fact, I was reminded of a Stanley Hauerwas quote in my friend JR Woodward’s email signature:

Just as scientific theories are partially judged by the fruitfulness of the activities they generate, so narratives can and should be judged by the richness of the moral character and activity they generate.

This is what we expect from other areas of life outside religion. Willard uses the example of auto-repair or brain surgery. We expect teachers and practitioners of these arenas to have actual, provable knowledge – not just opinions, or creative ideas – before we allow them to work on our cars or, especially, our bodies.

But not so in religion, where Western Civilization has relegated spiritual knowledge to the realm of belief, opinion, or perhaps plain commitment. None of these carries the authority of demonstrable knowledge. Actual beliefs regularly functions without knowledge (we call that dysfunction or neuroses), commitment is even less dependent on knowledge (only belief or the will), and mere profession of belief is often totally devoid of knowledge. Yet each becomes most empowered and effective when based upon true knowledge.

Willard briefly touches on some key statements of Jesus and Paul that identify knowing Christ as the essence of the faith: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3) and “I want to know Christ and the power of the resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings” (Phil 3:10). I might add scripture also depicts such “knowledge” cuts both ways. I’ve often been troubled (and corrected!) by Jesus’ statement, “Depart from me, I never knew you” (Matt 7:23). Consequently, Willard takes to task the Kierkegaardian “blind leap of faith,” saying,

We can never understand the life of faith seen in scripture and in serious Christian living unless we drop the idea of faith as a “blind leap” and understand that faith is a commitment to action, often beyond our natural abilities, based upon knowledge of God and God’s ways.

There is a good deal more in this chapter, mostly historical and cultural analysis concerning how knowledge came to be disallowed in the realm of religion – the blame of which, in classic Willard fashion, gets laid at the feet of everyone: liberals, conservatives, and secularists alike (there’s also a helpful dismantling of both “certainty” and “tolerance”).

Moreover there is an excellent section concerning the intrinsically political nature of knowledge and how the Church has been systematically excluded from the political realm by virtue of losing its knowledge status over and against secularism which rules precisely by aligning itself with the true knowledge of science and technology.

But this covers the gist of his remarks about knowledge itself in Chapter 1 and I want to keep these posts as brief as possible. So…what are your thoughts?

Questions:

1. How do you feel about Willard’s insistence upon a religious knowledge that is rational and bears evidence? Is this a step backward toward Modernity or is it a helpful corrective to post-Modernism?
2. Evangelicalism has famously represented the idea of knowing Christ in terms of “having a personal relationship with Jesus,” while more liberal traditions tend to de-emphasize or dismiss that entirely as primitive or “mystical.” What do you understand Jesus to mean by us “knowing God” (John 17:3) and him “knowing” us (Matthew 7:23)?
3. If you track with the Emerging and Missional Church movements, how does Willard’s concern for lack of “evidence” correspond to the concerns of these movements? How does it correspond to the concerns of more traditional churches? Is there common ground here?

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, Dallas Willard

Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Introduction

(For the next five weeks I’ll be blogging every Wednesday and Friday through Dallas Willard’s latest book, Knowing Christ Today, one chapter at a time. Today, I begin with the Introduction.)

A memorable quote from a college lecture appears on page five of Willard’s latest book, attributed to Dr. William Provine, professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutioinary biology tells us loud and clear…there are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans either.

Willard’s one-sentence response is simply, “Logically viewed, this statement is simply laughable.” That statement pretty much summarizes the book, which is primarily concerned with re-appropriating real knowledge itself – as opposed to mere information, belief, opinion, emotion, or fantasy – as the foundation of faith.

It would be hard to find a better candidate for the task. Dallas Willard is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and is generally well known by Christians as the author of the 1999 book The Divine Conspiracy. Since then he’s followed up with a series of books, all of which address his ongoing central theme of spiritual formation.

Willard states the problem as, “the trivialization of faith apart from knowledge and with the disastrous effects of a repositioning of faith in Jesus Christ.” In other words, the erosion of confidence in religious truth claims as claims of real knowledge has lead to a dismantling of faith as sure footing for life. The most obvious effect of this erosion is the relegating of Christian teachers and leaders on the public stage to general irrelevance.

Yet Willard is concerned about far more than a public relations challenge. Nothing considered to be less than real knowledge can function as the ground upon which lives are lived. For Willard this is the root cause of the identity crisis the Church is currently experiencing.

Some will not appreciate Willard’s prescription for this malaise. He says the answer lies not in the cultivating emotions, faithful practices of ritual or liturgy, just “trying harder,” or even miraculous intervention. He readily admits these all have their place in shaping a person’s faith, but fundamentally belief cannot properly govern life without being in harmony with the genuine evidence of true knowledge as we live it out in practice. Whether we like it or not, that is what we all base our lives upon.

He asks, is that possible? Is it possible to actually know the things you profess or believe as a Christian or is the task of the Christian to simply believe what cannot be known?

I haven’t heard much noise about this book, but this is a highly relevant question for our time for there are many Christians currently claiming that actual knowledge is outside the realm of faith (and many who claim it is outside the realm of all life in general). Willard disagrees, saying:

“A life of steadfast discipleship to Jesus Christ can be supported only upon assured knowledge of how things are, of the realities in terms of which that life is lived [and] There is a body of uniquely Christian knowledge, one that is available to all who would appropriately seek it and receive it.”

I suspect that some in Emerging/Missional Church circles will be uncomfortable with this book because it represents a nod toward a form of certainty that too closely resembles Modern fundamentalism, while some fundamentalist-leaning folks will distrust Willard’s work here because he has had such a profound impact on Emerging/Missional folks in the realm of spiritual formation.

My perspective is that Willard’s work provides a haven from both the paternalistic authoritarianism of Modernity that many, including myself, long for as well as a shelter from the dislocated wilderness of post-Modernity. In that sense, it could possibly represent an epistemological common ground for both progressives and traditionalists alike.

Questions:

1. What has been your experience with the belittling of faith as true knowledge?
2. Do you tend toward faith as a certain form of knowledge or faith as that which fills the gap of knowledge?
3. What do you see as the limits of religious knowledge?

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, Dallas Willard, Jesus Christ

Vineyard Churches at the Crossroads

Yesterday, we all seemed to agree the Vineyard is alive and well, but in a period of stabilization that has resulted in some decline. We also agree this has been a healthy and necessary period of “house cleaning,” regrouping, and redefining in the wake of some damaging fringe elements (i.e. extreme pentecostalism) and the loss our charismatic founding leader.

This weekend I’m participating in a small round table discussion with a few other Vineyard leaders who are experimenting with a variety of alternative approaches to ecclesiology. Most of these folks have been shaped in some way by the sojourn that was the Emerging Church (though most probably wouldn’t identify with the EC). This gathering won’t be prescriptive. We’re hoping to learn from each other. I’d like to have a parallel discussion here on the blog for those who are interested.

First, one observation about why I think the Vineyard is both well positioned to reach our cultures and simultaneously at a variety of crossroads.

While the Vineyard is solidly orthodox, unlike other traditions it doesn’t have an entrenched theological heritage. Wesley was an Anglican; various Reformed traditions trace allegiance to Luther or Calvin; Baptists, I would argue, are so deeply entangled with the American exceptionalism of the era in which they were birthed that their entrenched dogma is a libertarian brand of Christ-driven patriotism (thoughts Caleb?). Even Calvary Chapel – though less so – is fairly strictly governed by the strong theological dogmas of its own charismatic founder (who is still alive, though reportedly ill). And so on.

But the Vineyard’s only strong theological heritage is the recent trajectory of “Kingdom theology” famously developed by George Ladd (via C.H. Dodd), and later expounded upon by a diverse group of theologians including Beasley-Murray (Baptist), Gordon Fee (Pentecostal), N.T. Wright (Anglican), and Scot McNight (Anabaptist) just to name a diverse few – and teased-out by highly influential thinkers like Dallas Willard and J.P. Moreland (both in the Vineyard). There is now a near consensus among the aforementioned traditions that Kingdom theology is true.

Consequently, both because of the absence of a firmly entrenched dogmatic heritage and a commitment to a theological foundation that is fairly ecumenical, there’s a tremendous amount of freedom for Vineyard churches to explore what it means to be the people of God, embodying a foretaste of the Kingdom in our local contexts while valuing and cooperating with a variety of other Christian traditions. This is one of the reasons I’m convinced the Vineyard – as Jason Smith put it yesterday – is well positioned for a “post” culture (post-Christendom, post-evangelical, post-denominational, etc.).

Having said that, I think there are a number of crossroads facing Vineyard leaders as we depart the decade of the the “Emerging sojourn.” Those include:

Missional vs. Attractional
The Emerging conversation has very much given way to the Missional conversation, and now every church in the West wants to be seen as missional. Some see this as a polarity, but others see it as a continuum. In my observation, those who define missional as “outwardly-focused” see this as a both/and continuum, whereas those who define missional as “following God into a foreign culture” see this crossroad as an either/or polarity. I’ll tip my hand and say I see this as a polarity, and think it’s more accurate to refer to this choice as “Missional vs Christendom,” where the former is necessarily marginalized, subversive, and decentralized and the latter is necessarily empowered, enthroned, and centralized.

Institutional vs Organic
How is the structure of church best expressed in your area and culture? How are you handling the pitfalls inherent in hierarchy and professionalism? Are you committed to professional leadership or are you leaning ideologically toward some kind of bi-vocational or volunteer status as a leader? A related crossroads is liturgical vs. non-liturgical (I know, everyone has a liturgy… but you know what I mean), especially in light of Todd Hunters recent comment that he see’s a “revival of religion” coming.

Pentecostal vs. Reformed vs. Anglican vs. Anabaptist
Obviously this is a huge oversimplification, but these represent some of the dominant streams of theological thinking within the Vineyard, and Kingdom theology can happily coexist with each. You could include Catholic and Orthodox as well, but I think those are more sources for perspective and inspiration than genuine options for Vineyard folks. In some ways this is the first crossroads, since a pre-disposition here will heavily determine your ecclesiology.

So, what roads you are traveling and why? Do you feel the broader Vineyard leadership, either at the national or local level, is pushing in any particular direction on these? What other crossroads do you see?

I’ll be sharing your responses with the other Vineyard folks I’m hanging with this weekend.

Technorati Tags: Anabaptist, Attractional, C.H. Dodd, Christendom, Dallas Willard, ecclesiology, George Eldon Ladd, Institutional, J.P. Moreland, John Calvin, John Wesley, Liturgy, missional, N.T. Wright, Organic, Pentecostal, Reformed, Theology, Todd Hunter, Vineyard Churches