AAR Panel - Part 1

There is so much work to be done in repairing the liberal/conservative divide. Poor information on both sides doesn’t help. Thank you Emergent Village for allowing the conversation to take place.

I was glad to hear Diana speak up when Tony misinterpreted Marcus Borg. Tony missed the point. Borg is suggesting a gospel that moves beyond simple belief in historical facts. He states clearly in many books that his own best guess is that the tomb was not empty, BUT he recognizes this isn’t the point of the story. We need to move past left v. right arguments about the historical facts and start asking the questions “what does the story mean?” and “why did they write the story that way?”

The answers to those questions are where we can find common purpose. Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. God’s kingdom of justice gives life while the unjust kingdoms of empire bring death.

The problem with Borg, from my humble perspective, is that he seems to reject miraculous events recorded in the gospels- simply because they seem implausible to a modern mindset. But with the emerging church we are attempting to move beyond a perspective beholden to the precepts of modernism. It seems to me that, many times, Borg is still thoroughly modern in his worldview- and he interprets Scripture with this presupposition in mind. Now, please understand me, evangelicals have plenty of modern hang-ups as well. But lets move on, letting go of both of our less than impressive ties to modern presuppositions.

Darren,

The notion of being “post-modern” doesn’t mean returning to pre-modern worldviews complete with flat-earth, virgin births and miracles. Instead, post-modern thinking is the acceptence of what modernity offered us in the way of knowledge AND THEN getting on with discovering the more-than-literal truths of our faith. It means ending the pre-modern v. modern wars that created fundamentalism. It means no longer insisting that our Christian faith is measured by our ability to believe unbelievable things.

It seems you are rejecting a persons scholarship because he doesn’t believe in miracles. What you are not doing is listening to him when he says “Believe what you want about if the story literally happened…now lets talk about what the story means”. That is how we could get past the old ways of fighting about the factualness/literalness of scripture and come together on its symbolic meanings.

It doesn’t sound like you are “letting go”. In this case, letting go means recognizing that belief (or non-belief) in miracles has nothing to do with following Jesus’ vision for God’s will on Earth.

Mike L,

Your definition of postmodernism is an interesting one, but it certainly doesn’t jive with my understanding, or many other Emerging types I would presume.

I think postmodernism’s most powerful role, as N.T. Wright has argued, has been to pronounce judgment on the overconfidence of the Enlightenment experiment and Modernism in general.

Honestly friend, your position doesn’t sound any different than what I’d expect from a theological liberal fully steeped in the assumptions of modernism.

Finding a faith that lets you refuse to “believe unbelievable things”- as you put it – is exactly the kind of modern answer that theological liberals have offered up in the 20th century and beyond.

Theological conservatives have answered those same Enlightenment inspired questions with a hyper-systematic reading of the Bible- where everything can fit inside nice little categorical boxes.

Both are responses to modern assumptions. And as such I think both have been proven to be bankrupt.

The emerging church is not the liberal, mainline movement reincarnated. It really isn’t. The EC conversation primarily revolves around asking questions that go above and beyond the assumptions of modernism.

Hi, thanks for this, I am really enjoying the conversation, it a great listen during my morning run!

Darren,

The difference between postmodern understanding of scripture and modern secular liberalism is that even though we recognize the stories are not “literally” true, we still value them. Unfortunately, secularism rejected the stories once the enlightenment proved they were not historically accurate. Post moderns have accepted modern science but recognize the point of the stories is not their historical accurateness. The real point is the deeper symbolic meanings which we can all agree on. We can get past our division if we stop forcing people to accept the details in the stories as facts in order to embrace their valuable meaning. We also have to make space for people who can’t to let go of a pre-modern worldview. There is a way out of our division.

Instead of asking if the resurrecton happened, we should be asking what it means that they told the story. The answer to that question is that people continued to experience and share Jesus. The church became his body. His inspiration continued to change lives. His teachings continued to give life. That is true no matter what you believe about the facts of the story. If you and I can agree on those meanings, then we will have moved beyond the old left/right divide.

Mike L,

I certainly agree with you that meaning is essential. However, I don’t think you can so easily separate events from meaning. Sometimes you can, but certainly not always.

Also, I know your definition of postmodern means realizing “the (biblical) stories are not “literally” true, (but still valuable)” but that – as I said before – is an understanding of postmodernism that doesn’t line up with what (I humbly suggest) most of us would say.

Postmodernism questions the confidence placed in certain forms of logical positivism during the modern era. Most of us 40 or younger have no problem believing (as Tony said in the panel discussion) that God can work around the usual laws of physics. Some of us have even experienced events that can only be described this way.

I’m quite surprised to hear you say that you “know” that certain events didn’t happen as described in the gospels. That sounds like the kind of hyper-confidence that many postmoderns are trying to deconstruct.

However, I certainly recognize the difference between your response and that of a secular humanist. You recognize the meaning (even if you question the historicity of certain events) and you live life accordingly. Wonderful. I sincerely see the difference here- and, as you say, it matters.

All I’m asking you to do is question some of your certainty around the supernatural gospel accounts.

By the way, have you read much of N.T. Wright’s work? In the Resurrection of the Son of God Wright paints a very compelling portrait of a young Christian community that suddenly grew in boldness – despite severe persecution. Wright’s argument is that only the experience of the supernatural (i.e. the resurrection event described in the gospels) could account for this sudden shift evidenced in the lives of the earliest believers.

Wright also does a very thorough job of examining just how different this understanding of life after death was from surrounding perceptions and myths. In other words, he’s arguing that if the later Church were to make something up, they probably wouldn’t have argued for resurrection of a physical body. It would have been much more convincing to say Jesus rose to some disembodied, post-bodily state. But as you and I know, that’s not what the gospels say.

Darren,

Insisting on the historical accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the details is counterproductive and divisive. In fact, a fascination with accuracy of the stories can often cause us to miss the more than literal meanings. Instead of falling into the trap of modernity, let’s ask why these early Christians told the stories and what they meant. Modernity simply asked the wrong questions.

I like some of what Tom Wright says even though I disagree with his modern argument on this issue. The gospel authors themselves prove the varied sets of details. As you know, none of them agree. For example, look at the road to Emmaus story that seems to imply something other than a literal bodily resurrection. The “stranger” was not even recognized until he “broke bread”. Then he vanished. As a historical account, that story has plenty of flaws. As a parable, it is very accurate. They seem to be telling us that Jesus is in the stranger among us and then he is identified in the breaking of bread. The story explains the truth that when these Christians continued to walk the way of Christ and broke bread together, they experienced the spirit of Christ in their midst. Historical or not, the parable is true.

History is true just once. Parable is true over and over. The resurrection story is a parable. It may have also happened. The important point is that you and I also have that experience of Christ today when we break bread together and share these stories. I hope our conversions will emerge past an argument over the history and toward life changing meaning.

Mike L,

I concur with everything you said. And I appreciate that you are now admitting that it would be modern over-confidence to be able to say with certainty what did, or didn’t, happen in the life of Christ and the earliest Christians.

For the record, I never demanded that you (or Marcus Borg for that matter) agree with one particular position on historicity. I simply asked that you (and he) not dismiss the gospel accounts outright, simply because they seem to defy the “spirit” of the modern age.

Thanks for the conversation Darren. I hope you will not continue to assume I/we “dismiss the gospel accounts” when I say they are not historical accounts. Please don’t walk away from this discussion with the idea that there are only 2 choices: A) the stories are literaly true or B) the stories must be dismissed. That false dichotomy is modernism in a nutshell. I don’t think anyone in the conversation is “dismissing” the stories.

Agreed Mike. Like I said earlier, meaning matters- regardless of historicity. I certainly don’t see only two options. But, likewise, I hope others don’t dismiss one of the options merely becuase it seemd implausible according the assumptions of modernism.

Peace brother.

-Darren