Emmet’s blog….Jesus and the rest of us in real life

The countercultural model is a dangerous one to embrace, but I believe is also the most important. It embraces the offensive nature of the gospel but recognizes the need to offend for the right reason. The gospel confronts postmodern individualism and points to the life and teachings of Jesus stating, “This is a truth that is foundational to life; believe and be transformed.” It is this transformation that is the greatest tool Christianity has to impact culture. What is scary about it is that “we” as Christians don’t control it, this is because it comes from participating in God’s mission. The countercultural model doesn’t “offend” by standing against culture, but by agreeing with God and standing against the evils that are in culture. I imagine that the hardest aspect of embracing the countercultural model is accepting that the greatest change comes first in the believer, and second in aspects of culture that the believer initially had little interest in.

I may not have understood it perfectly, but the fourth foundation stone that the transcendental model rests on seems flawed. No doubt there are similarities in the human mind’s cognitive function regardless of culture and time, but to say that “it is the same” seems unrealistic. I recently took a Myers-Briggs test and found that I placed in a category that makes up about 1% of the population. This may be more of a personality test, but its mechanics reveal the differences in how people think, which I’m guessing transcend  culture and time. If this is true, does it reveal a fatal flaw in the transcendental model or just an issue to be aware of?

“The ordinary Christian believer is a theologian” I believe is a true statement. As they interact with God within the unique aspects of their environment and experiences each believer does participate in theology, it’s just that they may not be right (this is also true of trained theologians). Paul’s interaction with the Corinthians is a prime example. Was God present? Yes. Were they reacting, interacting, and thinking about God? Yes. Was having sex with your father’s wife a good thing? No! Theology is not just about right answers, it is a search for understanding and an expression of identity, but at the same time, no amount of “feeling” is going to change the fact that 2+2=4. There are still principles and basic truths that underline God’s interaction with us. We may not know all of them, but they do exist.

The Synthetic model is the most useful one yet. I think that on the surface this is because it picks and chooses from the other models as needed and in a demand driven culture who doesn’t like a salad bar mentality. On a deeper level I like it because it places the emphasis on the gospel/Jesus, with point the being the effect rather than abidance to a model. In a world infested with type A’s it is easy to become program/model/rule oriented and become so focused on doing thigs ‘right’ that you lose sight of what matters. I think that the Praxis model avoids this to an extent, but even then it doesnt seem to embrace the rich resources that it has available to it.

With the key presupposition of the praxis model being “the highest level of knowing is intelligent and responsible doing”, an interesting paradigm is set. I like the concept of faith seeking intelligent action and the grounding of theology in the reality of practical application, but does that place an unhealthy qualifier on what is deemed right theology? On the one hand, your actions should be influenced by your faith and represent the ultimate mark of your belief and there should be interaction and reflection between the two, but is there a point when the right thing to do, even though it brings about negative results, is still the right thing and represent right theology? Is there a time when obeying God and trusting in the principles of “established” theology is the right path, even though the practical information from life has something else to say? Does the praxis model make us the judges of right and wrong, or is it just a healthy inclusion of reality?

The Anthropological model scares me. It’s not because I think its a bad model, but because I think it has so much potential for both good and bad. The statement that “Christianity has not been presented as a system that solves problems that Africans really have.” highlights the necessity to risk the control and safety of Westernized frameworks in order to ask the riskiest of questions, “Where is Jesus in this place?”

It’s going to be interesting to see how I respond to the different models, especially since the ‘Translation Model’ connected with me right away. I like the stability of being connected and true to the heart of the gospel, yet at the same time having the flexibility to adjust to the surrounding context. The challenge of this model, aside from agreeing on what the “heart” of the gospel is, is keeping in mind that we ourselves are interpreting and determining what is flexible and what is fixed from a culture and context that we can only read about. That said, the translation model makes sense and seems helpful in informing our perspectivs and relationships with different cultures.

I’ll be honest, I liked this chapter because it was short and because it offered a moderating perspective on the use and applicability of models. On the one hand they are useful because they reveal truth, but at the same time they do not perfectly nor completely reveal all truth. Stepping away from the theological applications for a moment and going back to my comments on Marxism from last week, this moderation is what was lacking in Marxism. There was value in Marx’s perspective on the relationship between economic structures and social dynamics, but what Marxism lacked was the desire to step away from the ‘model’ and reevaluate information through different models. Instead it stuck to its one way and, rightly or wrongly, floated down the river of 20th century public perspective as associated with communism and its horrid failures. What scares me is the potential for this to happen to the proponents of any model, the church is not immune from this reality.

I felt a bit “set up” by this chapter. I was tracking and agreeing with the first couple pages when all of a sudden I came to pg. 19 paragraph 3 and was completely thrown off. In response to the statement that non-participants (people who haven’t experienced all of another culture) can’t contribute to that cultures theology. While I agree that a man can’t write a definitive feminist theology, the concept that he cant at least contribute to it is offensive to me. Even though a “foreigner” can’t know all of the experiences of a foreign culture, that person can still know God and see people through God’s eyes. If that person can be known as a friend within that foreign community then they are able to walk with them through the contextualizing of their faith. That person can provide stability through outside affirmation as well as the diversity of different perspectives. The visitors participation only distorts if it is not recognized as that of a visitors. The presence of outside influences are inevitable in any culture and therefore become part of the ever changing face of that culture. By simple exposure, either directly or indirectly, outsiders are already participating in the contextualizing of theology.

After my response to this paragraph I continued reading and found that Bevans perspective wasn’t that far off my own, he just voiced it using a different format.

I love the line on pg. 13 “This is the continuing task of theology: to reveal God’s presence in a truly sacramental world.” Bevans recognizes an aspect of theology which most historians recognize about history. There are real events that took place, but their current significance and portrail  depends on the the current situation and the perspective of the witness. God and ultimate truth may not change but the world which acts as their stage certainly does. In order to accurately represent God/theology in a constantly changing environment we must interact with God just as we are today without forgetting the lessons of the past.