Integrating Missionally

This continues our look at the discipline called epistemology, or the study of knowledge and how people acquire it. I am relying on introductions to epistemology from two authors: Richard Feldman and his book Epistemology in the Foundations of Philosophy Series and Robert Audi’s second edition of Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy).

What is required for propositional knowledge, then if it holds such a special status? This is the question we will try to come to terms with in this post.

It is easy to come up with two conditions for propositional knowledge. They are truth and belief.

Propositional knowledge requires truth. You cannot know something unless it is true It is never right to say, “He knows it but it is false!”. That lacks complete logic. You cannot know that George Jetson was the first man to step foot on the moon. The reason you cannot know that is because the facts indicate that Neil Armstrong was the first person to step foot on the moon. You know a proposition only if it is true. What we must now deal with is an understanding about what it is for something to be true. The simple and widely accepted answer to this is contained within the correspondence theory of truth.

Correspondence theories claim that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory attempts to posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on the one hand, and things or facts on the other. It is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined solely by how it relates to a reality; that is, by whether it accurately describes that reality. [1] Additionally, a “proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts. A proposition is false if it fails to correspond to the facts.” [2]

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Manifold Witness

Dr. John Franke is the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology at Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of having lunch with him just to talk about theology, faith, and the emerging church. He was a gracious host. In addition, he challenged me with a question regarding the Trinity that changed my whole perspective of ministry and of God. He asked me, “What does it mean to hold to a Trinitarian theology?” In other words, what are the practical implications of a trinitarian theology? That set me on a journey that ended in me looking at all of ministry through the lens of the character, nature and function of the Trinity. I have called that concept the MIROR.

Dr. Franke has written a new book called Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth (Living Theology). The title is quite provocative and alone causes concern for many. However, if people will take the time to read the book, they will find a treasure chest full of wisdom, theology, and insight that can help them understand God, Truth, and knowledge. It will also cause them to consider the gospel and how it operates in culture.

Franke’s thesis is this: “the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist. The diversity of the Christian faith is not, as some approaches to church and theology might seem to suggest, a problem that needs to be overcome. Instead, this diversity is part of the divine design and intention for the church as the image of God and the body of Christ in the world.”

His thesis is an attempt to deal with this issue: “if the Bible is the Word of God, given so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, and if God gives wisdom liberally to those who ask, and if the Holy Spirit is at work guiding the church into all truth, how are we to account for and make sense of the plurality of the church? Why is it that Christians from across time and around the world, seeing guidance and understanding concerning the mysteries of life, and the hope of the gospel, have come away from their study carrels and their prayer meetings with such different conclusions on nearly every aspect of the one faith?”

The word that gets everyone’s attention is the word plurality. Franke asserts that all human knowledge involves interpretation – that is is shaped by the conditions and situations from which it emerges. However, Franke also asserts that just because human knowledge and perceptions of truth are always formed in the midst of particular situations, this does not mean that ultimate truth does not exist. God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and thus the reality of ultimate or transcendent truth is to be affirmed despite the acknowledgment of the interpretive character of human knowledge. In this, Franke follows the line of contemporary brain research on how we understand ourselves and our world as well as frameworks in epistemology, though these disciplines in general ignore the metaphysical.

In the book, Franke develops this theme in the areas of church history, church tradition, and church mission. He also indicates that his view of plurality can be expressed even in the orthodox view of God. God is both plural and singular. He is plural as in the three persons of the Trinity and yet singular in the Godhead. Therefore, truth and knowledge hold in tension plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality. Diversity of belief is thus an expression of the Trinity.

The implications of this plurality are found in the various denominations that have developed throughout church history. It also finds itself in the very different expressions of theology within the church. Franke’s idea is that if there is plurality, the full expression of understanding about God can be found in learning and appreciating various theological constructs. This is because theology is not a universal language. It is situated within the the reflections, goals and culture of a particular people and community. White, Western, reformed people view theology from that cutlure. White, Western, arminian people view theology differently. Theology formation is born out of the experiences and stories of the people doing theology. A black man or women may have a different understanding of theology based on whether they grew up in the ghettos of New York or in the suburbia of the Midwest or the in the homes of those who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in South. And we can learn from their perspective. That doesn’t necessarily require agreement; yet at the same time, it may open us up to a different understanding of the heart of God.

It also finds its expression in the gospel. The gospel is an enculturated story. Franke agrees with Leslie Newbiggin who says, “Every interpretation of the gospel is embedding in some cultural form”. (118) The challenge for faithful Christian witness is not to arrive at some form of unenculturated gospel or theology but to be able to discern between legitimate and illegitimate enculturations of the gospel and theology.

The church engages in the task of theological reflection through the development and articulation of models of Christian faith. The sources of construction for these models “are the Bible, the thought-forms of the contemporary setting, and the traditions that make up the tradition of the church. The intent of this constructive process is to envision all of life in relationship to the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ by means of biblically normed, historically informed, and contextually relevant models and articulations of Christian faith that communicate the Christian story and its invitation to participate in the reconciling and liberating mission of God.” (120)

I do have a couple of criticisms of the book. First, I would have appreciated Franke giving us some examples of legitimate and illegitimate enculturations of the the gospel and theology. I understand that this was not primarily a practical theology book, but some practical expressions of this thought would have been helpful. I appreciate that he may want us to do the hard work of figuring those out for ourselves, but an example or two would have been nice.

Secondly, Franke notes the following:

The Spirit engages in the ongoing work of speaking to the church in its varied setting through the appropriation of the text. This does not eliminate the importance of exegesis in an effort to engage the voice of the author, but it does point to the idea that the speaking of the Spirit is not bound solely to the original intention of the biblical authors. Literary theorists note that one an author writes a text, it takes on a life of its own as it is read and interpreted in new and constantly changing situations. The speaking of the Spirit through the texts of Scripture means that while the intention of the author is an important concern, it is not the only concern. It does not represent the fullness of the speaking of the Spirit, since this always involves the response of the reader. (77)

I find this statement discomforting. In part because I have been taught that it can’t mean today what it didn’t mean when it was written. That was the mantra of my New Testament professor. I would have appreciated Franke unpacking this further, providing some practical expression of this that would enable me to get a more complete picture of what he was trying to communicate.

Overall, I think this book has great value.

Note to the FTC: I bought this book myself!

Popularity: 18% [?]

From the foundation of the world, God had a plan in place to see that we could journey back to that wholeness that humanity found in the Garden. Christianity calls this the Gospel. Embracing the gospel—the person and message of Jesus—allows for the journey towards wholeness. If sin has produced brokenness in our lives, the restoration that occurs from embracing the totality of the Gospel would enable a journey towards wholeness, towards the Garden where God met every need, our relationship with God was in perfect order and sin would no longer impact our lives.

Unfortunately, some people today preach an overly simplistic gospel: Jesus died for the sins of humanity, and if we place our faith and trust in Christ, we get to stay out of hell and live in heaven when we die.[i] However, the gospel is bigger than that. It transforms the whole life, not just one aspect. The word for salvation in the New Testament, sodzo, which is associated with the gospel, is the same word for healing – total physical, emotional and spiritual healing. It other words…wholeness.[ii] The Gospel is more about experiencing a sense of God’s shalom – wholeness and wellness[iii] – than escaping the clutches of hell. The gospel also announces a life lived under the reign of God as depicted in Isaiah.[iv] Thus, our desire to be God will no longer be necessary.

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Popularity: 24% [?]

The sin of the one, namely Adam, introduced sin into the heart of us all, what is termed original sin.[i] In the Old Testament, the most often used word for heart is leb, which meant the seat of one’s intellectual and spiritual life.[ii] It is also the seat of a person’s emotional life and is the origination point of the will.[iii]  Therefore the word heart encompasses multiple, interrelated aspects.[iv] It is the person with all of his or her urges. The overarching meaning is that of the totality of the person. It is “a comprehensive term for the personality as a whole, its inner life, its character.”[v]

In the New Testament, the word kardia is used to refer to the heart. Kardia frequently describes the place of intellectual and spiritual life.[vi] However, a striking feature of the word is its interconnectedness to the word nous, or mind. These two terms can be used in parallel (2 Cor. 3:14ff) or even synonymously, depending on what aspect of the meaning the author is trying to emphasize.[vii] “The element of knowledge is more heavily emphasized with nous than with kardia, where the stress lies more on the emotions and the will. Thus [the heart] is the person, the thinking, feeling, willing, ego of man, with particular regard to his responsibility to God.”[viii]

The heart, then is the totality of the person. It includes the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of a person. Based on this, we could deduce that the injection of sin into the heart of humanity has introduced brokenness into the totality of humanity. With the mind, will, and emotions of human beings laid bare from the ruinous impact of sin, the now-destructive nature of mankind would lead them to choose to sin, thus producing broken and hurting people who long for wholeness and hope.

Sin introduced brokenness into the emotional, cognitive, and physical aspects of humanity. As fallen beings, humanity, therefore, has an identity crisis.  Humanity’s relationship with God is broken, and it does not understand who it is.[ix] Emotional brokenness deprives a person of emotional health, which affects how he makes decisions, reacts to experiences, and lives in relationship with others.[x] It also creates unhealthy and destructive behaviors that can wreck relationships as well as the human experience.[xi] It can lead a person to damage and destroy his or her body physically through addictions to food, sex, and legal and illegal drugs. These behaviors are an attempt to bring comfort resulting from a lack of emotional health.[xii] It also damages the person’s relationship with God, the One who created humanity for relationship and in whom true identity and wholeness is found.

So what’s a God to do?

NOTES:

[i] Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (New York: Paulist Press, 2002) , 5.

[ii]  Colin Brown and David Townsley, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (4 Volume Set). (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Regency Reference Library, 1986)., 2:181.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Brown and Townsley, 2:182.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1986), 104.

[x] Leslie S. Greenberg and Sandra C. Paivio, Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy (The Practicing Professional). (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 14.

[xi] Daniel Goleman, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), 9, 14.

[xii] Greenberg and Paivio, 15-17.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Hyperbolic discounting refers “to the empirical finding that people generally prefer smaller, sooner payoffs to larger, later payoffs when the smaller payoffs would be imminent. However, when the same payoffs are both more distant in time, people tend to prefer the larger outcome, even though the time lag from the smaller to the larger would be the same as before.” [1]

Most of us continue to make choices that will be detrimental to our future, despite the fact that we know the implications of our decisions. This is called temporal myopia. “[T]emporal myopia causes clarity to decrease with distance.”[2] Instead of inspiring caution, our brains’ typical response to this uncertainty is to “sharply reduce the importance of the future in our decision-making” [3], an effect known as hyperbolic discounting. Consequences which occur at a later time, good or bad, tend to have a lot less impact on our choices the more distantly they fall in the future. This occurs even when one’s life is at stake.

Here is an example using money. If someone were to offer you the choice between $50 right now or $100 tomorrow, taking the $100 tomorrow would seem the clear choice. However, as the delay gap widens, the importance of the extra $50 quickly diminishes for most people, despite the constancy of the actual value. For instance, “confronted with a choice between $50 today or $100 one year from now, would you still wait for the $100? Statistically speaking, the vast majority will take the $50. But the pattern follows a hyperbola, so once a certain time threshold is crossed, the devaluing effect of time diminishes; for example, most will opt to take $100 in ten years over $50 in nine years.” [4]

In essence, hyperbolic discounting is the human tendency to prefer smaller payoffs now over larger payoffs later. This leads a person to largely disregard the future when it requires sacrifices in the present. This “tendency may be the bias behind our temporal short-sightedness, causing many people to make decisions which lead to short-term happiness and long-term disaster.” [5] This is one reason that heart patients continue to have trouble with destructive behaviors after a heart attack. The long-term gain, which is potentially a longer life, is not as important as the short-term payoff of a piece of chocolate-peanut butter cheesecake. The uncertainty of the future is overcome by the immediate satisfaction.

What does this have to do with the Gospel? Well, how is the Gospel often presented? If one accepts now, we can enjoy eternity at some later, unknown, and abstract point in time. This is a reasoned attempt at getting someone to accept the Gospel, yet the human brain is not wired to accept and adopt this supposition. It is logical. It makes sense. However, it is too abstract and too far ahead in time. We need to address the short-term impact of the Gospel message in concrete terms that the brain can process.

How would you change the focus of how you present the Gospel?

NOTES:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting
[2] http://www.damninteresting.com/hyperbolic-discounting
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.

Popularity: 14% [?]