This is true for me, especially #3… the innies and the outies. I just can’t believe it right now. I lean so heavily toward ultimate reconciliation because of this, and I can barely fathom how any of Christianity can be true without a universally salvific Christ.
Question: do you think we’re missing something like philosophy or historical theology in the evangelical church and that this could be driving much of the deconstruction?
Morgan, the story of deconstruction will only be known with clarity in a generation or two, but it's a complicated cultural product more than any single element. The emphasis in the last generation on Jesus and his teachings and his kingdom vision have put the way of the American church under an exposing microscope.
I agree. “What does it mean to be saved?” is THE question. Are we saved from or saved into? I suspect those who are deconstructing are ultimately interested in this process in what group redemption places them into. They want to identify with justice-minded communities and with the red letters of Jesus. As the pastor of a “Monday-Saturday” church I’m all for that. Yet I remain convinced that the gathered body still matters, that corporate worship is essential, that incarnation is not just a justice word but also a worship word. Finding effective ways to say this to a deconstructing world is our big challenge.
This has been an interesting read for me, Scot. I think your analysis is good, esp if one thinks of "salvation" with basically a Protestant understanding. As I wrote before, the Incarnation plays into salvation in ways Protestant theology doesn't address, and I think that lack has to do with at least part of what's behind the longing for a holistic salvation.
There are some overlaps in EOrthodoxy for sure, but the angle at which the whole thing is viewed is different, and the end is Union with God. When we say "That thing in my life happened for my salvation," we ultimately mean that Union. At the same time, we understand soteria as both deliverance and healing, which can be an all-at-once kind of thing (number one being Heb 2, our deliverance from the slavery to death) but is most often a process, just as healing of a bodily wound. On my journey, I found that yes, indeed, the whole step-by-step aspect is not to be found in the NT, or in the writings of the earliest Christians; they never discussed salvation in those terms, including as "atonement theories". Yes, I needed a holistic understanding - so much that my heart hurt - and a different way to understand people with other kinds of beliefs, both Christian and not, or with no belief, than simply in/out.
The first thing I did was to seek Jesus in the Gospels, trying to lay aside the definitions and interpretations I had been given as a Protestant. The question "Why did Jesus come?" had a different answer in the Gospels, an answer that was much closer to Athanasius than anything else, and in which the Resurrection can't be separated from the Cross.
In EO, one attends to the healing of the depths of one's own heart in Christ; that will have ramifications within all of my relationships, and all the time between Sunday worship services. Do the next good thing for the people around me; follow Jesus' commands. That's how justice is delivered in this world - face to face, in my own neighborhood; very rarely does the Lord call me outside of that. But how that would truly change the world, if each Christian lived as if what Jesus came to do was actually reality... As St Seraphim said, acquire the Holy Spirit and thousands around you will be saved (Orthodox understanding).
And speaking of saints, they are the examples. There is plenty about their lives that is not "legendary", simply hard work loving and serving others from a life of deep prayer and a sacramental view of everything, not just Sunday worship. One of the most liberating things for me about finding EO was that I didn't have to (re)construct anything; everything I had been longing for was already there, waiting for me to step into it.
Sorry this is so long, and so "evangelistic" - the sense of finally being at home hasn't worn off after +12 years. You're kind to let me keep commenting :)
Yes to all of this! Salvation may or may not include a "sinner's prayer, but it will always involve a decision. Not just one decision, but many decisions, and many moments of consecration and surrender. I grew up under the soterian model. I now value every moment of testimony as I through my piece of wood on the fire at summer camp, or raised my hand during a call to give all to Christ. Whether or not I was "saved" at age five when my mother explained salvation to me, or when I "settled things" with Christ in my dorm room at Moody Bible Institute, every decision towards Christ is important!
For me, salvation is such a loaded word, that it is carrying a lot of extra meaning that it probably was not meant to carry, thus not having room for its intended meaning to have the impact it could. As a matter of rule and now habit when I see salvation in my biblical reading I replace it with “delivered”. Being delivered better describes a movement (delivered from, delivered to) that comes from following, versus a position or place obtain. For me, Pauls use of us being “in Christ” better describes our place, and then all three tenses of being delivered (past, present, and future) can remain in play as we live our life In Christ.
"I am convinced the reconstructors care more about M-Saturday than the Sunday 1-1.5 hour." This is gold! I like a good worship band as much as the next guy, but I'm more about what the church does in and for the community than what kind of show they put on Sunday morning.
Thanks, Scot, for tackling this subject. If we ignore Jesus, we can come up with many clever ways of getting people to sign on the dotted line. But if we listen to Jesus, we have to pay attention to the things he said matter with God, namely feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, etc., etc (cf Matthew 25:31-46). I suspect we have Darby in the 1870s to "thank" for getting us totally off-track, allowed to ignore what Jesus said mattered with God. I doubt that "new birth" is a one-shot deal; instead birth should lead to a fully-lived life with God's values and objectives paramount in all of our days. That's very different from "praying the prayer," then thinking that's all it takes to be "right with God."
We were reading in 1st Timothy at church yesterday and we talked about how women would be saved through childbirth. The idea here isn't that they're going to be saved from some hell because they gave birth to children but that they would be protected through childbirth. Salvation could be seen as healing. It can be seen as having one's life in another's hands. The desire of course is that all men be saved but each in their own order.
As a Cuba Pentecostal pastor I find this discussion extremely relevant. Even though we Cubans have not been exposed to deconstruction ideas until some years ago, there is a new generation of young Pentecostals longing for a political and social transformation of traditional faith.
salvation: the meaning didn't carry forward. context seems to have been lost in translation in later generations, and filtered through men's interpretations to the masses. .... liberation. seems to me to be heavy on the now as opposed to the next life. maybe almost completely flopped.
I stopped identifying with Evangelicals first for their eager approval of Trump. Then came an exploration into evolution, documentary hypothesis, biblical criticism that made the rigid view that Christianity is held together by an infallible bible untenable for me. I eagerly disavowed the PSA view of atonement. Left Paul for the gospels. They made so much more sense when forgetting the reformed view of atonement that ignores the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about ceaselessly. I cannot accept the doctrine of eternal conscious torment or even annihilationism. I lean toward a David Bentley Hart view of christian universalism. But also who knows. I will never make the mistake again of needed to be certain to enter into spiritual practice. I take a mystic approach. I love the Christian faith tradition but also know that other religions have valuable spiritual knowledge within their own traditions as well that can enrich my faith.
While the church is based in a building that people drive to for worship services and education programmes, the church is not equipped to bring justice and social relief to local communities, because it can only do it by offering programmes that come in from the outside and to give people what the church thinks they need.
To achieve what deconstructed people are looking for, the church will need to go back to the communities where people live and become the body of Jesus there. I have described how this can happen in my book called Being Church Where We Live. http://amzn.to/1JiN4Lp
Yes yes yes yes yes. I feel like this entire series has been ME. Thank you for this. I’ve felt alone and crazy and even heretical at times. It means so much to know that my restlessness is part of a bigger movement.
This is true for me, especially #3… the innies and the outies. I just can’t believe it right now. I lean so heavily toward ultimate reconciliation because of this, and I can barely fathom how any of Christianity can be true without a universally salvific Christ.
Question: do you think we’re missing something like philosophy or historical theology in the evangelical church and that this could be driving much of the deconstruction?
Morgan, the story of deconstruction will only be known with clarity in a generation or two, but it's a complicated cultural product more than any single element. The emphasis in the last generation on Jesus and his teachings and his kingdom vision have put the way of the American church under an exposing microscope.
I agree. “What does it mean to be saved?” is THE question. Are we saved from or saved into? I suspect those who are deconstructing are ultimately interested in this process in what group redemption places them into. They want to identify with justice-minded communities and with the red letters of Jesus. As the pastor of a “Monday-Saturday” church I’m all for that. Yet I remain convinced that the gathered body still matters, that corporate worship is essential, that incarnation is not just a justice word but also a worship word. Finding effective ways to say this to a deconstructing world is our big challenge.
Yes, what Alice wrote.
This has been an interesting read for me, Scot. I think your analysis is good, esp if one thinks of "salvation" with basically a Protestant understanding. As I wrote before, the Incarnation plays into salvation in ways Protestant theology doesn't address, and I think that lack has to do with at least part of what's behind the longing for a holistic salvation.
There are some overlaps in EOrthodoxy for sure, but the angle at which the whole thing is viewed is different, and the end is Union with God. When we say "That thing in my life happened for my salvation," we ultimately mean that Union. At the same time, we understand soteria as both deliverance and healing, which can be an all-at-once kind of thing (number one being Heb 2, our deliverance from the slavery to death) but is most often a process, just as healing of a bodily wound. On my journey, I found that yes, indeed, the whole step-by-step aspect is not to be found in the NT, or in the writings of the earliest Christians; they never discussed salvation in those terms, including as "atonement theories". Yes, I needed a holistic understanding - so much that my heart hurt - and a different way to understand people with other kinds of beliefs, both Christian and not, or with no belief, than simply in/out.
The first thing I did was to seek Jesus in the Gospels, trying to lay aside the definitions and interpretations I had been given as a Protestant. The question "Why did Jesus come?" had a different answer in the Gospels, an answer that was much closer to Athanasius than anything else, and in which the Resurrection can't be separated from the Cross.
In EO, one attends to the healing of the depths of one's own heart in Christ; that will have ramifications within all of my relationships, and all the time between Sunday worship services. Do the next good thing for the people around me; follow Jesus' commands. That's how justice is delivered in this world - face to face, in my own neighborhood; very rarely does the Lord call me outside of that. But how that would truly change the world, if each Christian lived as if what Jesus came to do was actually reality... As St Seraphim said, acquire the Holy Spirit and thousands around you will be saved (Orthodox understanding).
And speaking of saints, they are the examples. There is plenty about their lives that is not "legendary", simply hard work loving and serving others from a life of deep prayer and a sacramental view of everything, not just Sunday worship. One of the most liberating things for me about finding EO was that I didn't have to (re)construct anything; everything I had been longing for was already there, waiting for me to step into it.
Sorry this is so long, and so "evangelistic" - the sense of finally being at home hasn't worn off after +12 years. You're kind to let me keep commenting :)
Dana
Yes to all of this! Salvation may or may not include a "sinner's prayer, but it will always involve a decision. Not just one decision, but many decisions, and many moments of consecration and surrender. I grew up under the soterian model. I now value every moment of testimony as I through my piece of wood on the fire at summer camp, or raised my hand during a call to give all to Christ. Whether or not I was "saved" at age five when my mother explained salvation to me, or when I "settled things" with Christ in my dorm room at Moody Bible Institute, every decision towards Christ is important!
For me, salvation is such a loaded word, that it is carrying a lot of extra meaning that it probably was not meant to carry, thus not having room for its intended meaning to have the impact it could. As a matter of rule and now habit when I see salvation in my biblical reading I replace it with “delivered”. Being delivered better describes a movement (delivered from, delivered to) that comes from following, versus a position or place obtain. For me, Pauls use of us being “in Christ” better describes our place, and then all three tenses of being delivered (past, present, and future) can remain in play as we live our life In Christ.
"I am convinced the reconstructors care more about M-Saturday than the Sunday 1-1.5 hour." This is gold! I like a good worship band as much as the next guy, but I'm more about what the church does in and for the community than what kind of show they put on Sunday morning.
Thanks, Scot, for tackling this subject. If we ignore Jesus, we can come up with many clever ways of getting people to sign on the dotted line. But if we listen to Jesus, we have to pay attention to the things he said matter with God, namely feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, etc., etc (cf Matthew 25:31-46). I suspect we have Darby in the 1870s to "thank" for getting us totally off-track, allowed to ignore what Jesus said mattered with God. I doubt that "new birth" is a one-shot deal; instead birth should lead to a fully-lived life with God's values and objectives paramount in all of our days. That's very different from "praying the prayer," then thinking that's all it takes to be "right with God."
We were reading in 1st Timothy at church yesterday and we talked about how women would be saved through childbirth. The idea here isn't that they're going to be saved from some hell because they gave birth to children but that they would be protected through childbirth. Salvation could be seen as healing. It can be seen as having one's life in another's hands. The desire of course is that all men be saved but each in their own order.
This is all completely consistent with my own research and what I’ve seen in students over recent years.
As a Cuba Pentecostal pastor I find this discussion extremely relevant. Even though we Cubans have not been exposed to deconstruction ideas until some years ago, there is a new generation of young Pentecostals longing for a political and social transformation of traditional faith.
salvation: the meaning didn't carry forward. context seems to have been lost in translation in later generations, and filtered through men's interpretations to the masses. .... liberation. seems to me to be heavy on the now as opposed to the next life. maybe almost completely flopped.
you nailed it…. the impact salvation has on mon thru saturday….thats what i seek….the sunday 1.5 is the easy part…this is a great discussion…thanks
I stopped identifying with Evangelicals first for their eager approval of Trump. Then came an exploration into evolution, documentary hypothesis, biblical criticism that made the rigid view that Christianity is held together by an infallible bible untenable for me. I eagerly disavowed the PSA view of atonement. Left Paul for the gospels. They made so much more sense when forgetting the reformed view of atonement that ignores the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about ceaselessly. I cannot accept the doctrine of eternal conscious torment or even annihilationism. I lean toward a David Bentley Hart view of christian universalism. But also who knows. I will never make the mistake again of needed to be certain to enter into spiritual practice. I take a mystic approach. I love the Christian faith tradition but also know that other religions have valuable spiritual knowledge within their own traditions as well that can enrich my faith.
While the church is based in a building that people drive to for worship services and education programmes, the church is not equipped to bring justice and social relief to local communities, because it can only do it by offering programmes that come in from the outside and to give people what the church thinks they need.
To achieve what deconstructed people are looking for, the church will need to go back to the communities where people live and become the body of Jesus there. I have described how this can happen in my book called Being Church Where We Live. http://amzn.to/1JiN4Lp
Scot, this material is so good. I really appreciate it and resonate deeply with all of this as. Thanks
Yes yes yes yes yes. I feel like this entire series has been ME. Thank you for this. I’ve felt alone and crazy and even heretical at times. It means so much to know that my restlessness is part of a bigger movement.