I posted this back in 2006 - but I think it is relevant to the Driscoll discussion, so I'll give it another run:
In his (in other ways very annoying) book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross Joel Green asks what I think is very good question: what would happen if theology took the mission of the church seriously?
It’s a good question because it inverts our expectations. We ordinarily imagine that mission ought to take theology seriously: if only we get our thinking about mission right, we say, then we will mission more effectively. We believe I guess in a priority of theory over praxis. The problem with this view is ineffectiveness: revivals are not usually begun in the academy, you may have noticed. There is a tendency for theory to be closed to the questions people are actually asking; to be abstract and unrelated. There is a resulting insensitivity to the different cultural contexts in which mission takes place.
On the other hand, I guess there are some of you who can already sense the artificiality of this: you have already been out there presenting the gospel and living it, and seeing lives changed and people won for Christ. Having to come and sit and think about it seems quite futile: it’s already going on! The problem with this view, I suggest respectfully, is pragmatism. Pragmatism means that we become like advertisers hawking products: we will do anything for a sale, including distort the message out of shape, perhaps casting aside or hiding uncomfortable parts of the scriptural teaching in order to fit in with the culture of context. Perhaps, rather than be insensitive, we may even accommodate our culture so that we lose our Christian distinctiveness.
This is why Green’s question is a good one: because theology needs to realize the urgency of mission! Theology must not be indulgent or merely speculative. It bears the responsibility of explaining a gospel which is for everyone to everyone. And on the hand, those engaged in mission have the weighty responsibility of speaking and acting in and with truth. Mission needs to heed the voice of theology!
And so, from both perspectives, there needs to be a turn back to the sources of theology in the scriptures. Mission must remain faithful to its source in scripture or it will be unable to address cultures - it will only reflect them. If theology takes the mission seriously, not only could theology be forced to rediscover its own deep scriptural resources, so also mission could be reinvigorated by the work done in the thinking about it. We need to trust our Bibles perhaps more than we do: there is more in them of more universal relevance than perhaps we realize. We need to trust perhaps less our ability to read cultures: remember this is a notoriously difficult art. Paul’s method in Corinth is perhaps instructive: he determined not give the Jews the miraculous signs they claimed, not the Greeks the sophistry they demanded: but determined to know nothing among them but Christ crucified no matter how culturally insensitive this may have seemed.
3 comments:
Thanks for reposting that. Here's a quote I found the other day. Not what we are used to but food for thought:
"The Bible was written by warriors and by men engaged in warfare. It was not written by academics. The academy is not the right context for understanding the Bible.
I am not saying that academics are unable to put themselves into the shoes of warriors. Quite the contrary, in fact. Human beings have the marvellous ability to put themselves into the shoes of others by means of imagination. The Spirit enables this in a fulsome way. What I am saying is that academics must endeavour to do this or they will misread the Bible.
Abram? A warrior who led 318 fighting men, part of his sheikhdom’s army, to rescue Lot.
Moses? Clearly a trained warrior, son of Pharaoh, who led his people in conflict after conflict.
Joshua? A warrior.
The Judges? Warriors.
David? A warrior, and the psalms of David are all about warfare, especially the warfare of slander and “troublemaking” (mistranslated often as “iniquity”).
Solomon? Ah, not a warrior in the physical sense, but a man whose wrestling is revealed to us in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and if he wrote it, Job.
The priests? Dressed as warriors. The Nazirites when under their vow were the same as priests, which is why David and his men, when under the vow, were given priestly food (1 Samuel 21:5-6). Priests killed animals that represented people. The activities at the Temple were the activities of Holy War.
The prophets? Warriors of the tongue. Read them and see how tough they were!
Paul? Twice took the Nazirite Holy War vow (Acts 18:18; 21:24).
Now, this warfare context is very much different from the academic context, and rightly so. Paul did indeed come apart for three years before entering into his ministry (Acts 9:22-26; Galatians 1:18). At the same time, academic training for the Christian ministry should be training in holy war. Boot camp. By the time they graduate from seminary, men should pretty much know all 150 psalms by heart and be able to chant them. If they cannot do so, their teachers have grievously failed them."
James B. Jordan, How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays, Part 5.
Biblical Horizons No. 196, www.biblicalhorizons.com
I kinda got you up to the bit where we should know by wrote all the Psalms and chant them...
I think the Warrior point is bizarrely overstretched here. The point is better made if we say that the bible authors were men of action, real people who lived in the real world. Having said that, the Jews were quite good at academic training... they had quite a tradition of nerdiness going.
I dunno. I've been listening to Psalms sung by Westminster Abbey Choir, and I reckon we'd all be better off. It would certainly clear us of the "church is for women, children and little old ladies of both sexes" charge.
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