I'm just now getting back into the swing of things with email, facebook, and blog readers...

Here are a few things worth looking at:

5 Books to pick up on Paul and Biblical Interpretation

Ben Myers on Blogging as Theological Discourse

Review of Cross-Shattered Church

BBC Interview about St. Paul with John Barclay and others

Some books on Romans to pick up

Eugene Peterson Audio

Are the Elderly worth anything?!

How are we to understand 'Mission'?

Jesus Loves You: How NOT to do evangelism

Sermons by Greg Boyd

10 Good books to pick up

Upon coming back to America, I've had my chance already to be in a few church services and step into the christian cultured bible belt. I haven't been away for all that long, but long enough to feel like an outsider and raise my eyebrow at a few things. I picked up two books recently that I believe should be read together. One diagnoses a symptom in our churches and the other suggests a theological remedy.

1. Jim & Casper Go To Church: Frank Conversation About Faith, Churches, and Well-Meaning Christians

The guys at ChurchRater.com put their observations about the most influential evangelical churches in America into this great little book. Jim has been a pastor for 30 years and Casper is his atheist friend. Together they travel and Jim asks for honest reactions and interpretations to what Casper sees going on. People who are used to the christian subculture in America may get offended at some points in this book, but I have to say that the insights and descriptions in this book are not exaggerated. Jim and Casper try to come to terms with what they are seeing in church services across the country. This book is not written to make fun of Church but instead invite the reader to hear what outsiders think about insiders, their theology, and their church services.

As I read this book with April, we found that it made us talk about things that we typically do in church services that would come off as inauthentic and off-putting (even excluding) to our friends who aren't steeped in the christian subculture. I really want to encourage pastors and church leaders to read this book and reflect on how what they are doing on Sunday morning does or does not point people towards the mission of Jesus. I believe that this book's approach helps underscore and diagnose an epidemic in evangelical churches across America, which in turn export it to the rest of the world through their "mission work."

If the first book that I've recommended points out the problem, what's the solution?

2. Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision - N.T. Wright

It might seem strange to combine both of these books but I really do believe that this book here points us in the direction of what's missing in our churches. This  book is more academic than the first one, but it does reveal what is missing theologically in each of these churches--and it's not non-christians, but a robust understanding of paul's vision.

N.T. Wright is responding to attacks in this book launched by guys like John Piper, whose reformed theology and preaching has influenced the majority of evangelical churches. But in responding to Piper's attacks, I began to make connections between this book and the first one mentioned above.  

This book is not for the weary, but it does touch on alot of what's wrong with evangelical preaching. In Christian love, Wright steers the rudder of the flagship back into a direction that won't lead the Church over a waterfall:

"Justification is more than simply the remitting and forgiving of sins, vital and wonderful though that is. It is the declaration that those who believe in Jesus are part of the resurrection-based single family of the one Creator God. Any preaching of justification which focuses solely or even mainly on Jesus' death and its results is only doing half the job. Justification is not just about 'how I get my sins forgiven.' It is about how God creates, in the Messiah Jesus and in the power of the Spirit, a single family, celebrating their once-for-all forgiveness and their assured 'no condemnation' in Christ, through whom his purposes can now be extended into the wider world" (248).

Make sure and pick up both of these books for your summer reading. You won't regret it.

Christian music over the past few decades has really come into its own niche and market. Some of it is decent, most of it isn't. As I was watching this short clip with Ken Burns talking about how he sees the importance and influence of music in film, I began to wonder if the Church could benefit from thinking along the same lines when it comes to Sunday morning.



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What if the Church began to think in such terms about the choice of music that it uses to compose Sunday morning? When I was at Durham last month, N.T. Wright took a segment of the class to play Bach's Passion According to John. He explained that what we now hear in this classical piece, is just classical music. But back then, what Bach was doing as a composer for the Church, was much more than that. Bach was trying to portray the Gospel in terms that would allow the Church to hear once again, the Gospel for the first time, and re-cover it's potency.

Now, the contemporary evangelical landscape may not have the genius that God gave to the Church through Bach, but it does make me wonder why this way of composing songs for the Church has not been considered in our churches. The artistic caliber that Bach represents makes contemporary christian artists look quite silly.

So how could the Church begin to encourage Christians in the arts? Recently, there have been many evangelical institutions like Regent College and Fuller Seminary that have been trying to forge this unknown territory for evangelicals. There have also been several evangelical publishing houses that have published books on this topic recently as well. These are hopeful signs that Christians may be taking the arts seriously once again, but only time will tell.

What are some ways or ideas that you have seen in which you or your church has tried to bridge the gap between the arts and the Church?

Make sure and pick up N.T. Wright's new book on Justification. It's a breath of fresh air in an evangelical climate that's been saturated by John Piper.



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H/T: Halden

The Pope and The Papacy 

By José M. Castillo Theologian and ex-Jesuit. Former professor of theology at the University of Granada, where he was expelled during the 80’s by Ratzinger. He is considered among the great men of modern theology

    
       There is no doubt that the exercise of the papacy is extremely difficult. Benedict XVI said he was alone. And years ago, Paul VI and John Paul II had asked for help from bishops and theologians to find new ways to exercise “the ministry of Peter”, i.e., the papacy.

       And the fundamental problem is not motivated primarily by the person as pope (whether conservative or progressive), but rather by the position as such, i.e., the mode and manner in which the Papacy has come to be organized.

       It is clear that a global institution like the Catholic Church requires a supranational authority that can coordinate the activities that go beyond borders and resolve problems that cannot be solved locally. But as true as that is, as an authority, they can organize themselves in many different ways.

       It can be either a democratic or monarchical authority. The most ancient form in the Church was democracy. The same word "Ecclesia" was taken from the technical language of Greek democracy and means the "assembly" of free citizens gathered to make their own decisions. So the church worked for over a thousand years with this kind of organization until the eleventh century.

       In those centuries, the popes were precisely the great defenders of democracy in the Church. To quote the text of St. Leo the Great (s. V): "He who must be placed at the head of all, should be elected by all" (Epist. 14, 4).

       Moreover, in those centuries, the bishop of Rome did not have the role you have now. Since Justinian (sixth century), the Church was ruled by five patriarchs: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem ( "Novella" 109). Rome always aspired to the presidency, based on the tradition that St. Peter was buried there.

       But it is remarkable that St. Gregory the Great always resisted being designated as the "universal pope." In addition, even in the West (Rome) the government was not concentrated in any patriarch but was rather shared in the local synods by all the bishops, doctrinal decision-makers and government.

       We also know that throughout the Middle Ages the text of Matthew 16:18-19, which now applies to the primacy of Peter, applied to the twelve Apostles and was read as “Gospel” in the Mass of the ordination of bishops. It was realized that the Apostles had received the same "honor" and "power" as that of Peter (Yves Congar).

       Starting from 1073, Gregory VII made the worst decision in the history of the papacy. The pope decided to concentrate all power into the bishop of Rome. A decision that would be reinforced in the following centuries, especially after Innocent III (1196-1216) whose theologians invented the theory of plenitudo potestatis, which in practice, made the pope the absolute master of the world—a madness that could not even balance the Great Schism in 1409 when the church found itself with three popes, none of them willing to relinquish power.

       The Council of Constance (1415) said that the council was above the Pope, which was equivalent to making sure that the episcopate had authority over the papacy. This decision was ratified by the Council of Basel (1431). However being short-lived, the council of Florence (1439) defined that "the Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold primacy in the entire universe."

      Things remained the same until the Second Vatican Council, when the Constitution on the Church (No. 22) stated that the pope is the subject of supreme and full authority in the Church, but immediately added that it also has this power with the bishops worldwide. It was, however, not resolved how to harmonize these two powers.

       The recent Code of Canon Law resolved this enormous theological problem by affirming the pope's supreme power over all of the bishops and the Church (Can. 331 and 333). So the whole Church has been at the mercy of the decisions of one man. This is something that can be proved neither from the New Testament, nor from the previous twenty centuries of Church tradition and history.

       This situation, over all, has three grave consequences:

             1) While the papacy continues “as is”, the union of all Christians is impossible. This is because the other Christian confessions know very well the history that I have just condensed into a few words. And these Christians do not feel, nor are they able to feel, motivated in conscience to submit to a power that is not justified from the Christian faith.

             2) When the Papacy is organized as an absolute monarchy, it also makes it impossible to endorse and integrate Human Rights within the life of the Church (and in its international relations). The problems and conflicts with pop culture and public power is and will be relentless as we live every day and everywhere.

             The papacy will continue exhorting others to implement human rights, but the Church will continue on without practicing them. This involves violent assaults to individuals, human groups and public institutions.

             3) So, the Church lives and will continue to live in constant contradiction with the Gospel. Jesus never allowed any of the apostles to claim to be the first, the most important, or the one who positions himself over the other.

             This fundamental fact, is insistently repeated in the Gospels, and is not integrated into the theology of the papacy. And that is more or less serious than that of "You are Peter ..." You cannot take from the Gospel that which is suitable and leave out that which is uncomfortable.

       I agree that Benedict XVI has taken a wrong path. It is a path of decline, not progress. But the problem is not the pope, but in the papacy.

José M. Castillo 

Translated by Josh Furnal