Learning Our Story

"Stories define who we are together, and the story of the Church is the gospel, which is the whole story of the Bible, which is the story of the totus Christus. By defining ourselves as "New Testament" Christians, we are attempting to define ourselves by a small fraction of our story. We have institutionalized amnesia; it is a form of insanity. Is it any wonder we do not know who we are?" - Peter J. Leithart

It isn't just the stories that define who we are either, it is the manner in which that story is written as well. What greater or better written story is there than that which we find in the totality of God's word? Leithart makes an important point here, perhaps the key point of this entire book (Against Christianity) in pointing out that Christians are uneducated when it comes to their own culture. Not only this, but we are taught this way in our churches. From a very early age we are taught the stories of the Bible but not the Story of the Bible that underscores them. We learn all about Abraham and Isaac and about how God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and how the angel stopped Abraham and God providing the ram in Isaac's place. We even learn that Abraham calls God Yaweh-Jireh and this will continue to be true of Him when He ultimately provides His Son for us. We are taught that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son because he had faith that God could even raise Isaac from the dead in order to keep His promise of establishing a great people through him. What we are not taught, however, is that we are the great people. That Abraham is the father of our faith because we, as Gentiles, have been grafted into the Vine and adopted into Israel. That we are Isaac, bound before God underneath the knife of His righteous judgment and Jesus is the substitutionary ram who receives the killing blow.

Abraham's story is my story and your story; Israel's history is our history and the culture of the Scriptures is our culture. The Greeks had their stories, so did the Romans and those nations before (Egpytians, Babylonians, Persians, etc.) where they played an important role in the peoples' understanding and experience of everyday life. Leithart explains, "Myths not only embodied a political and religious vision of the city, but somtimes had direct political cosequences." He offers the example of Alexander the Great associating himself with Achilles and aspiring to obtain such a heroic status; he goes on to conquer the world. America, also, has her own stories and the problem of Christianity today is that it has adopted a story that is not its own. Christianity has abandoned the stories which should be determining and affecting how we experience and interact with all other stories, i.e. the world's stories. I like Leithart's use of the word "embodied" here as this is precisely what we are called to do: embody our faith. Paul admonishes us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and that this is our spiritual act of worship (Rom. 12:1). What does this entail? Primarily it entails not conforming to the pattern(s) of this world and renewing our minds (v. 2) so that we are able to approve what God's will is.

Is this what Christianity does today? A quick browsing through you local Christian bookstore should be enough to answer this question. Sure we pay lipservice to "going against the flow" and being "counter-cultural", we've all seen the T-shirts and bumper stickers. The problem is that we aren't called to go against the flow or be counter-cultural; we are called to not be in the flow at all, we are called to reform culture and bring it to Christ by making it conform with the culture Scripture has already established for us in the story of the gospel. In other words, we are to bring the story of the gospel to the world, not bring the story of the world to the gospel. The story of the world isn't big enough to contain the story of the gospel. What we, as Christians, need to do is learn and know this gospel story as our identities in Christ are defined by it; we need to make this story our story.

Theology vs. The Bible

"Theology is a specialized, professional language, often employing obscure (Latin and Greek) terms that are never used by anyone but theologians, as if theologians live in and talk about a different world from the one mortals inhabit. Theology functions sociologically like other professional languages--to keep people out and to help the members of the guild identify one another. Whereas the Bible talks about trees and stars, about donkeys and barren women, about kings and queens and carpenters." - Peter J. Leithart

We take for granted the use of everyday language. Our lives are grounded in narrative so much so that we don't even really notice anymore. Scripture is also written in primarily a narrative format, and when it is not narrating a story, it is written as prophecy or prose. So where does our formal system of theology come from? What do we mean when we say that there are "timeless truths" in Scripture which fit nicely within a coherent set of doctrines? Some of us (myself included) use it to refer to the system of beliefs commonly called Reformed Covenant Theology while others refer to Dispensationalism, Catholicism, etc. The problem with such systems is that they tend to be gregarious to the extent that they breed exclusion. We are no longer a diversified body, we are, instead, a collection of body parts disassembled on the machinist's floor. Each part has the audacity to claim it is attached to something it calls a "body" while the other parts laugh at the utter foolishness of such a claim, undaunted by the reality that they are in a similar predicament.

So what do I propose? Well, I propose that my system is right but not to the exclusion of others. We should have open eyes and ears to see and hear God's truth no matter what "ism" it is attached to. The intellectuals among us should climb down from their ivory towers and mingle with the vulgar on a regular basis so they can see what their writing looks like. In other words, we should be living what is written in the Scriptures concerning goodness, righteousness, beauty, truth and love rather than systematizing it. Now, I have a degree in philosophy so I'm all about a good coherent and cogent systematization. What I, here, wish to combat is an intellectual following of that system at the expense of a physical and spiritual living out of that system. Theology has a tendency to confine God to an abstract box of natures and characteristics which are then hotly debated amongst the fragmented body parts. This isn't just true about God either; we see it in variations on the Lord's Supper, baptism, Scripture and even the gospel message.

In the city of God there is only one people; in the kingdom there is only one King. Here on earth, then, we witness and participate in what amounts to civil war. Why? Because we pit our theologies against one another. We like to test our intellectual mettle against our fellow Christians because it's too much work to pit it against the world. God has given us a revelation which enables us to topple empires and shape nations and we use it to tear down churches that don't agree with us according to every jot and tittle. I certainly don't mind the occassional spat and light-hearted sparring, but too often we (myself included) are guilty of kidney punching and not accidentally. It is cliche to recommend that we let Scripture shape our theology as a solution; that is what we all believe we are already doing. However, if we let Scripture shape our life then it will be obvious who has the right kind of knowledge. Let us pursue the divine as the divine pursues us: with a love that sets the heart of stone on fire.

Christian Ritualism

"Ritual reflects and shapes individual life and the order of a community. It is at the heart of Christian paedeia." - Peter J. Leithart (Against Christianity)

Ritual is, in fact, what defines a community. To understand a society's rituals is to glimpse the threads that hold them together as a people. Take, for instance, American Christianity; it, along with American culture in general, places a great emphasis on individualism and personalizing the Christian experience. We are to seek the truth for ourselves and whatever church we happen to be attending becomes our primary research facility. We ask our leaders great and forboding questions and they gives us their (in our eyes) opinion along with several reading recommendations. In turn, we pick and choose what looks and/or sounds good according to our peculiar circumstances (influenced largely by how we were raised as children) becoming more set in our ways with the passing of time. We come to favor a certain style and flow of worship, specific types of personal devotions, etc. and we ultimately end up with a brand of Christianity to call our own. This is the general process of ending up in First X of Chattanooga or Weeping Mother of Saint X, or whatever.

Never do we stop to examine whether or not Scripture has set forth rituals for us. Sure we have the Lord's Supper and Baptism (along with several others depending on your take) but don't those take place within our own pre-established framework? If you don't believe so, take a moment to reflect on how the Lord's Supper is celebrated in your church. Is it once a week? Is there enough wine and bread for everyone? Is wine even an option? Does the congregation celebrate together or within the individual "bubble" of their pew space? Today the American Church largely ignores her past and confusingly refers to a group of independent ritualists as a "congregation." Instead it should be the common rituals that bring us together, teach us how to interpret the world around us and train us how to live in that world as the people of God; it is also the common rituals that show us how to worship, how to be beautiful, how to be poetic:

"For individuals, Christian ritual trains the body and soul in suitable posture and movement. By moving us through a series of spiritual and physical postures, liturgical ritual imposes a choreography on us. Patterned by rituals of worship, we begin to live life before God as kneeling to confess, as standing to hear, as singing and clapping in praise, as sitting to eat and drink. Worship trains us in the steps for walking, for dancing rightly through life... For groups, ritual depicts the world as it ought to be, the real world as it is believed to be, especially the social and political realities of the world. Christian ritual displays the world as we believe and hope it one day will be. Ritual displays to public view who goes where, how each of us fits into the whole, how the members of the body are knit into one while yet remaining many, how the melodic lines of each individual life harmonize into a communal symphony." - Leithart (ibid)

In my previous post I requested that your individualism be left at the door and what I refered to is that individualism which has established its own personal rituals in addition to, or outside of, the realm of Christian ritual. It was not a request to leave your individuality at the door, as that is what makes you a unique citizen of the kingdom. God has not yet brought us, as individuals, into His presence though we experience it vicariously through the Holy Spirit. Jesus has taken humanity, i.e. human being, into the presence of God and we have the promise of a similar glorification. Jesus didn't just bring humanity into God's presence, He brought a perfected (through Himself) humanity into God's presence. That is the reality, weight and the truth of His ascension; a truth that is known through the ritual of the written word. Learn the rituals of the gospel and live life abundantly in the one who holds and continually presents those rituals for us.

Salutations!

In this inaugural post I would like to make a singular request: leave your individualism at the door. Why? Because your autonomy is a vain deceit that blinds your ability to correctly understand Truth. I use a capital "T" here not to indicate some vague amorphous and abstract comcept of absolute truth, rather I use it to refer to being. Specifically, I use to to refer to God and particularly I use it to refer to the Second Person of the Trinity. What does this have to do with individualism and autonomy? A lot, actually. Man is created in the image of this Triune God and because God is a Trinity we can be certain that Truth, also, consists primarily within this interpersonal relationship amongst the Father, Son and Spirit. The gospel truth, which comes as a manifestation of Truth, is not a private truth; it is not a private system of dogmas, creeds and confessions like modern Christianity portrays it. It is, instead, a public interpretation of experience. The kingdom of God is this experience and the city of God is the only place understanding can be found.