The 25 Best Albums of 2008

1. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
The latest release from TV on the Radio is a sonic and lyrical masterpiece, one of the truly great rock albums of this decade. While I thought 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain was their high-point, here in Dear Science this New York-based group has refined their post-rock songcraft even further. Where their previous album died out somewhat in the last half, their latest grips you from beginning to end. Moreover, their two closing songs, “DLZ” and “Lover’s Day,” are perhaps their greatest achievements—a haunting and beautiful duo that solidifies TV on the Radio as one of the best bands creating music today.


2. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Cut Copy exploded seemingly out of nowhere this year with In Ghost Colours. For me, this is without question the catchiest pop album of the year, and unlike Santogold’s justly popular album, Cut Copy is able to sustain this catchiness from start to finish. Whereas Santogold is all about singles, Cut Copy has created a true album that refuses to be divided into individual songs.


3. Spiritualized, Songs in A&E
The return of Spiritualized after a five-year silence is a joyous occasion indeed. While Songs in A&E doesn’t break much new ground, J. Spaceman has proved once again that he is a consummate composer, capable of making songs that strike at the heart while overwhelming the ears in waves of orchestral rock. The notable feature of this latest album is the use of six instrumental interludes, called “harmonies,” which connect the album together and create a seamless listening experience.


4. Deerhunter, Microcastle
Deerhunter really broke onto the music scene with last year’s Cryptograms, but Microcastle (and its bonus disc, Weird Era Cont.) is their first truly great album. Singles like “Never Stops” and “Nothing Ever Happened” are deserving of their praise, but even the more mellow middle section of the album sparkles with moments of genius. Microcastle is proof that we can expect a lot of great things from this young band.


5. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
With their beautifully simple combination of art pop and folk rock, Fleet Foxes have been the talk of the town all year, and justifiably so. After releasing the Sun Giant EP early in the year to critical acclaim, they firmly established their mark on the American indie scene with their self-titled debut and its musical centerpiece, “White Winter Hymnal.”


6. Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
Everyone knows that Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) can sing, but no could have guessed that his voice, when combined with the “euphoric disco” of DJ Andy Butler, would be pure magic. Hercules and Love Affair, one of the many surprising debuts of 2008, has given new life to disco music. And while the band is really just Butler, Hegarty’s vocals almost steal the show, particularly on the brilliant single, “Blind.”


7. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver is my number one pick for music to listen to while studying. Justin Vernon’s latest project is the third debut album to make my top 10 list, and I can only hope he continues producing albums as poignant as For Emma, Forever Ago. Vernon has made his voice into an instrument all its own, more evocative than any guitar. If there’s one album I could have playing during a cold winter’s night, this would be it.


8. Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak
Critics may think I’m backwards, but this is the first Kanye album that has made it into my top 10. I certainly enjoy his other albums, which have marked him as our generation’s greatest hip-hop artist. But this latest album—which is more like an electro-pop album infused with elements of hip-hop (rather than the converse)—is completely different from his other records. Unlike past hits like “Gold Digger” and “Stronger,” the songs on 808s and Heartbreak are darker, colder, subdued. You almost wouldn’t know this was a Kanye West album. And while West has been criticized for using Auto-Tune for the whole album, he has transformed this gimmick into an instrument all its own.


9. Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster…
Los Campesinos!, an indie pop band from Wales, is the fourth and final debut band in the top 10, and like Fleet Foxes, they have been very busy in 2008. In February they released their debut album, Hold On Now, Youngster…, and then in October they released their second album, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. Los Campesinos! combine infectious pop-punk melodies with a large, almost anthemic, rock sound. While the second album is somewhat disappointing in comparison to the debut, the debut is so strong and so enjoyable that you end up forgetting whatever missteps they made in the follow-up.


10. Department of Eagles, In Ear Park
Department of Eagles is the side-project of Daniel Rossen, better known as the lead member in Grizzly Bear. Not surprisingly, then, Department of Eagles sounds a lot like Grizzly Bear, but there are distinct differences: more folk influences, electronica beats and samples, and a more experimental feel. The result is one of the most unique albums of the year. If you’re a fan of Grizzly Bear (which you should be), then this album will come as a welcome addition to your musical catalog.


11. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend

12. Santogold, Santogold

13. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals

14. No Age, Nouns

15. Grand Archives, The Grand Archives

16. DJ/rupture, Uproot

17. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive

18. Lykke Li, Youth Novels

19. Portishead, Third

20. Love Is All, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night

21. M83, Saturdays = Youth

22. School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms

23. Beach House, Devotion

24. The Bug, London Zoo

25. Subtle, ExitingARM


Honorable Mentions:

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Dig Lazarus Dig
• Sigur Rós, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
• Health, HEALTH//DISCO
• Hot Chip, Made in the Dark
  
• Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Lie Down in the Light
• James Blackshaw, Liturgy of Echoes
• Marnie Stern, This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That
• High Places, High Places
• Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
• Mates of State, Re-Arrange Us
• Dr. Dog, Fate
• Plants and Animals, Parc Avenue

Most Disappointing Albums of 2008:

• Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
• Ben Folds, Way to Normal

New blog: mental health and Christianity

My friend, Mark Licitra, has started a new blog that I commend to readers. As a social worker in the field of mental health, Mark will write about mental health issues and their relationship to Christianity and the church. As he writes in his introductory post, the purpose of this blog “is to start people talking about mental illness, and to re-introduce an ignored (intentionally or unintentionally) group of people to a Church who is called to care for the broken.”

Creation, Original Sin, and Genesis 1-3: A Response to George Murphy

This essay is the “extended edition” of my abbreviated contribution to the conversation regarding evolution and original sin at Steve Martin’s blog, An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution.

Response to George L. Murphy, “Roads to Paradise and Perdition: Christ, Evolution, and Original Sin,” in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 58, no. 2 (2006): 109-118.

I would like to begin by thanking Steve Martin for inviting me to participate in this dialogue. I would also like to thank George Murphy for writing such a compelling and interesting article. Let me begin by introducing myself and the perspective I bring to this conversation. I am a doctoral student in systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. While my work focuses on issues in the doctrine of God, christology, soteriology, theological exegesis, and cultural exegesis, I have long harbored a personal interest in the interaction between science and theology. I grew up in a home that emphasized the physical sciences above other disciplines, with a father who teaches high school chemistry and biology. At the same time, my parents are products of a particular era in American evangelicalism, and so I was schooled from an early age in the tenets of young-earth creationism. Even as a college freshman, I defended creationism on the first day of my geology class. My views on the matter did not change until I read Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which marked the beginning of a radical turn in my intellectual life. Today, while I am neither an expert in evolutionary biology or in the dialogue between theology and science, I approach the matter with great personal interest. And as readers of my blog will know, I am a passionate opponent of Intelligent Design.

Enough by way of introduction, it is time to turn to Murphy’s article. I have to start by confessing up front that I basically agree with what Murphy says in his paper. What I would like to do is pursue some of the points raised by the essay in more detail and attempt to offer some further theological reflection on the nature of sin and the narrative of Genesis 3. My comments will proceed by briefly addressing the following questions: (1) what is original sin?; (2) what is the relation between creation and the fall?; and (3) how ought we to read Genesis 1-3?

1. What is original sin?

While it’s not stated as clearly as I would like, I think one could summarize Murphy’s thesis in the following way: instead of a doctrine of “original sin” with a corresponding doctrine of “original righteousness,” we should reconceive these concepts in light of the biblical witness by speaking of a “sin of origin” that affects each person from birth and a corresponding progression, by the grace of God, toward maturity, righteousness, and fellowship with God. Based on what we have learned from science, Murphy rightly rejects the idea of an original human pair that spawned the rest of the human race as well as a state of “original righteousness” in which death was not yet operative in nature. Instead of longing for some mythical past, Murphy argues that we should construct a teleological anthropology, in which the goal of humanity is not a recovery of a perfect Eden but the redemption of the new creation, in which “the tree of life is found not in a garden but in the middle of a city” (117).

Murphy’s insights are important, but some further theological development is necessary. First, we need to explore Augustine’s contribution a little further. Murphy discusses Augustine in the context of the debate with Pelagius. He says that Augustine argued “that all are sinners from the beginning of life,” whereas Pelagius turned Adam into a bad moral example. While certainly correct, this does not account for the true innovation in Augustine’s doctrine—viz. the idea of “original guilt.” It’s not just that all people “are born not only with a tendency to sin but actually as sinners”; rather, it’s that all people are born guilty of the original sin. That is, each person is born as if he or she actually committed the sin of Adam and Eve. We are all co-responsible for that sin, because in a sense we were there. This doctrine of “original guilt” constitutes a central divide between Western and Eastern hamartiologies. Jean-Claude Larchet (“Ancestral Guilt according to St Maximus the Confessor: a Bridge between Eastern and Western Conceptions,” Sobornost 20 [1998], 26-27) thus locates the distinction between Eastern and Western doctrines of original sin in the fact that the West connects guilt with the transmission of human corruption, while the East separates guilt from corruption so that only the latter is transmitted. Maximus the Confessor speaks of Adam’s “two sins”: the first and culpable sin was the free choice to disobey God, while the second and non-culpable sin was the “transformation of human nature from incorruption into corruption.” Those who come after Adam participate in the second “sin,” which is the corruption of our human nature, but not in the first. Adam’s descendents are not guilty of his original act of disobedience.

The Eastern doctrine of original sin is, in my estimation, an improvement over the Western doctrine, simply because of the absence of “original guilt.” Augustine’s construction of that doctrine on the basis of Romans 5 and Psalm 51 is deeply problematic, in part due to the very poor Latin translation of Romans with which he was working. However, both the East and the West remain far too mythical in their respective views on the transmission of this sinful corruption. On this point, the two sides essentially agree: the act of sexual intercourse is the agent by which the corruption of the parents is transferred to the child. In this, they were assisted by ancient views on sexuality, in which it was assumed that all the “material” necessary for the creation of a new human person is located in the male sperm. The woman is simply the passive recipient, the “oven” in which the “bread” bakes, so to speak. And so Adam’s guilt is passed from one person to another through sexual reproduction.

All of this is connected to the ancient debate over the origin of the soul. Very briefly, Origen proposed a Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of souls—souls which God implants into the human fetus as a unique moment in the creative process. This theory is known as creationism, not to be confused with the fundamentalist theory about the origins of the cosmos based on a literal reading of Gen. 1-2. Tertullian countered Origen by arguing for what is called traducianism, in which the soul is a material object replicated in the act of sexual reproduction. Obviously, Augustine adopted traducianism to explain his doctrine of original guilt and inherited depravity, whereas Pelagius sided with Origen, so that each person is a kind of tabula rasa, unaffected by the corruption of the past. While I do not have time to discuss later Protestant developments, I will simply mention that the covenant theology of Reformed Orthodoxy introduced the doctrine of “imputed guilt,” in which God imputes Adam’s guilt to us, not unlike the way the creationist position had God implanting souls into human bodies. This erased the difficulty over the sexual transmission of the soul, but only by introducing numerous other problems. It was an advance that was actually no advance at all.

As modern Christians, we no longer hold to this notion of sexual transmission of corruption, at least not in the ancient form presupposed by Augustine and Maximus. Moreover, as a theologian shaped by the later Barth’s actualistic ontology, I have serious problems with the traditional priority of nature over act. Whereas the tradition says that we inherit a sin nature first before we commit any actual sin, I would argue instead that in our entrance into history with birth, we intrinsically act as individuals “curved in upon ourselves” because of our social environment. “By nature” we act in opposition to those around us. And in this “original” act of sin, we actualize our “sin nature.” Sin as act precedes sin as nature. We do not participate in Adam’s guilt, nor do we receive a corrupt essence from Adam by virtue of reproduction. On the contrary, we enter into a corrupt environment in which sin as incurvatus in se is inescapable. We are born into corrupt social relations that make it impossible for us to achieve perfection through the force of will. Augustine and Pelagius were both right in their own ways: Augustine was correct to argue that we are slaves to sin who depend upon grace alone, but Pelagius was right to argue that sin is primarily an act before it is nature. Against Pelagius, though, I would say that such acts are inevitable by virtue of our historical situatedness. In a very real sense, therefore, history began with the fall, and history as we know it is the continuation of “fallen” acts.

(It’s worth noting, I think, that Maximus the Confessor leans in this very direction. He has no period of “original righteousness.” For him, the instant that Adam entered the world, he sinned. For Maximus, the corruption of humanity is located in human passibility—an attribute that we would identify as constitutive of what it means to be human. The moment that Adam did anything in the world of time and space, he became a passible human being—i.e., he sinned, and thus fell.)

To sum up this section, an actualistic ontology means that being is determined by act. This goes for both sin and salvation. As sinners, we are what we do, viz. “sin.” As those saved by God’s grace, we are what Christ did, viz. reconcile us to God through his life of faithful obedience, his death in God-abandonment, and his resurrection to new life in the power of the Spirit. Theological anthropology is grounded not in substances or essences which precede human action. Rather, theological anthropology is defined by human acts: the individual act of sin that defines us as those “curved in upon ourselves,” and the christological act of reconciliation which defines us as adopted children of God. Here and now, we are dialectical creatures: simul iustus et peccator. At the same time, however, we are in Christ what we will be in eternity. Eschatologically, the old humanity defined by sin will be revealed for what it is, namely, dead and destroyed in the cross of Christ. In its place, the new humanity defined by the life of Jesus will be revealed for what it is: the hope and destiny of every person in accordance with the gracious will of the triune God. The tree of life that thrives in the New Jerusalem thus represents the fact that while we presently live in the antinomy of life and death, of sin and righteousness, God has resolved this antinomy in favor of life. Our telos is clear: God has elected us in Jesus Christ to share in his resurrection, to reign as co-heirs with Christ, and to enjoy life everlasting in the glorious kingdom of God.

2. What is the relation between creation and the fall?

Murphy’s opening section on the “christological context” of creation is perhaps the strongest of the entire article. With Barth, he defines creation in relation to election, reconciliation, and redemption: “creation [exists] for the sake of this election [in Christ]” (110). This is an important insight with far-reaching implications. For starters, if creation exists for the sake of redemption, then sin and the fall do not take God by surprise. As Murphy notes, the incarnation is not “Plan B.” For this reason, he rightly locates his position in proximity to supralapsarianism. A word on that Reformed debate is in order.

The polemical debate between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism concerns two different orders of divine decrees. Infralapsarians adopted a more historical order: (1) creation and fall, (2) election and reprobation, and (3) the provision of a mediator (Christ). In this case, human sin catches God “off guard,” so to speak, and thus reprobation is contingent upon human actions, even if only foreseen by God. Supralapsarians, by contrast, adopted a logical order of decrees: (1) election and reprobation, (2) creation and fall, and (3) the provision of a mediator. For this position, the fall is a necessary corollary of God’s eternal decree of election and reprobation. The infralapsarians charged the supralapsarians with making God the author of sin; the supralapsarians responded by charging the infralapsarians with creating an arbitrary disjunction between election and reprobation, so that election is a purely divine decision while reprobation is based on God’s foreknowledge of human sinfulness. Supralapsarianism makes both election and reprobation solely dependent upon God’s eternal decision. From Barth’s perspective, if one had to choose between these two positions, supralapsarianism would be preferable, because it is better to make election the central act of God and leave sin a mystery than to make election a secondary decision. Of course, Barth’s own position is a radical departure from both, in that his central critique of supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism is that both separate election from the provision of a mediator. Jesus Christ is just an afterthought. In contrast, Barth’s new order of decrees is: (1) the provision of a mediator, Jesus Christ, in whom all are elected, and (2) creation and fall. Election and reprobation are located in the decision to become incarnate in Jesus.

Now, Murphy’s position on the relation between creation and fall is mostly Barthian, except for a few key differences. First, he rejects the necessity of the fall, speaking instead of its “inevitability.” Similarly, he refers to “the decrees of creation and permission to fall” (110). While this is technically correct—God did not command sin—it still gives the impression that humanity might have acted otherwise and so prevented the need for a savior. While Murphy explicitly rejects the notion that “God was the creator of sin” (111), there is a certain (albeit mysterious) sense in which this is required by a supralapsarian position. If God created for redemption, then God created a world bound to sin; there really is no way to get God “off the hook” for this—nor should we look for one.

In his most Barthian statement, Murphy writes: “The emphasis, however, should be on God’s election first of Christ, and then of others in Christ, of creation for the sake of this election” (ibid.). The problem here is that there are now two elections, “first of Christ” and then “others in Christ.” Maybe he simply means there are two sides to the one election, but it’s unclear from the article. Barth rightly had only one elected person, Jesus Christ, in whom all humanity is elect. This follows from the fact that Christ is the one mediator between God and all humankind. Moreover, if the created cosmos is grounded in the act of election, then any secondary election would be superfluous. The telos of humanity is determined by God’s eternal decision, and what happens in time and space is simply the historical manifestation of that decision. The history of creation, inclusive of the fall, is necessary as a constitutive element of God’s mission of reconciliation. Creation thus has its ground of being in protology (election) and eschatology (redemption), both of which are located in the one person, Jesus Christ, the electing God and elected human, in whom God reconciled the world to Godself (2 Cor. 5.19).

3. How should we read Genesis 1-3?

Barth argues in Church Dogmatics III/1 that the “history-like” Genesis story should be read in the genre of “saga” as a “third way” beyond the binary opposition of myth and history. Against myth, Genesis recounts a truly historical event: the event of creation. Against history, Genesis recounts an event which, as the editors of CD III/1 state in their preface, “cannot be historiographically expressed.” The event of creation is not unlike the event of the resurrection, in the sense that science cannot penetrate what is a divine occurrence, an event in the historical life of God that cannot be read off the face of creation itself. As Barth himself says,

I am using saga in the sense of an intuitive and poetic picture of a pre-historical reality of history which is enacted once and for all within the confines of time and space. … It is to be noted at this point that the idea that the Bible declares the Word of God only when it speaks historically is one which must be abandoned, especially in the Christian Church. … We have to realise that … the presumed equation of the Word of God with a “historical” record is an inadmissable postulate which does not itself originate in the Bible at all but in the unfortunate habit of Western thought which assumes that the reality of a history stands or falls by whether it is “history.” … Both Liberalism and orthodoxy are children of the same insipid spirit, and it is useless to follow them. For after all, there seems no good reason why the Bible as the true witness of the Word of God should always have to speak “historically” and not be allowed also to speak in the form of saga. On the contrary, we have to recognise that as holy and inspired Scripture, as the true witness of God’s true Word, the Bible is forced to speak also in the form of saga precisely because its object and origin are what they are, i.e., not just “historical” but also frankly “non-historical.” (CD III/1, 81-82)

While I have no disagreement with Barth regarding the theological interpretation of Genesis as saga, I do not have the same aversion to the word “myth.” As C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien rightly argued, myth expresses the truth in a culturally specific form. The story of Jesus Christ is thus the true myth, i.e., the myth that penetrated human existence. At the same time, I think Bultmann was correct to describe these stories as mythological, in that they presume certain ancient conceptions of the world that we now know to be scientifically incorrect. There is nothing theologically necessary about the ancient understanding of the blue sky as water over our heads, so I have no compulsion to protect such narrative details by using the word “saga.” And, of course, some of Barth’s polemic against the category of “myth” is really a polemic aimed at Bultmann himself. At the end of the day, Bultmann was right to see that the two of them have almost no disagreement about how to interpret the Genesis story. The difference is really a theological one which could just as easily be upheld using Bultmann’s terminology.

Having said all this, I tend to speak of Genesis 1-3 (though not only these chapters) as an “etiological myth” (or “etiological saga,” if you prefer). “Etiology” refers to the study of origins or causes, and here I think the opening of Genesis was crafted by the Israelites over a lengthy period of time—in contradistinction to Babylonian cosmology—for the purpose of narrating the nature of created existence and the cause of human sin and suffering in the context of their covenantal relationship with Yahweh. The creation narrative serves the Israelite self-understanding as those brought into a covenantal relationship with God, which includes the self-understanding as those distinct from other cultures. Since these texts were most likely compiled and redacted during the Babylonian exile, there is an important polemical dimension to the Genesis story. What all this means on an exegetical level is the Genesis story has to be read as the mythological introduction to Exodus. This doesn’t mean that Exodus is not also mythological in nature, but Exodus would be the primary myth while Genesis the secondary one. The creation account provides the necessary prelude to the account of Israel’s deliverance and establishment as God’s chosen people. Historically, then, I would argue, following other biblical scholars, that the canonical Exodus narrative came first in the minds of the Israelites, with the Genesis narrative taking shape only in relation to Exodus. While various parts of Genesis might have pre-existed the Exodus story—hence the two creation accounts, two flood accounts, etc.—overall the final form of Genesis is an etiological myth which provides the background context for the story of Israel’s liberation.

What this means is that we need to read Gen. 1-3 with Exodus firmly in mind. The story of creation has to be read in relationship with the story of God’s de-construction of Egypt and re-construction of Israel. The story of Adam’s sin has to be read in relationship with Israel’s confession of sin, their promise of covenant fidelity, and their continual failures as a people before God. The story of Eden and “original righteousness” should be read as the mythological acknowledgement of creation’s disruption through human sin and the need for a covenant with God. The covenant is thus the restoration of humanity’s relation with God. The myth of humanity’s fall in the Garden of Eden serves as the narratival introduction to the story of humanity’s redemption in the exodus from Egypt. Egypt is the literary foil to Eden, just as Pharaoh is the literary foil to Yahweh: Egypt is a place of enslavement and Pharaoh the one who enslaves; by contrast, Eden (and later Sinai) is a place of freedom, and Yahweh is the one who liberates. Moreover, the affirmation of “original righteousness” is similar to our affirmation of the soul: both are logically necessary in a sense, though not historically or scientifically true, because each affirms that there is “more than meets the eye.” Just as creation is more than sin, suffering, and death, so too we are more than the sum total of bodily matter. Though we do not have access to this “something more,” the mythological accounts of “original righteousness” and a human “soul” testify to this theological truth.

My observations here are assisted by the fact that the Jewish canon identifies the Pentateuch as the Torah, the Law. There is no independent historical record here; rather, every aspect of the Genesis narrative serves the elaboration of God’s law. Just as I remarked above how the doctrine of creation serves the doctrine of redemption, so too the text of creation serves the text of redemption. Genesis serves Exodus; creation serves the covenant. When we read Genesis, then, we have to interpret the text in a threefold context: (1) the theological context of the doctrines of creation, sin, and redemption (the first two serving the third); (2) the literary/textual context of the Torah as the history-like narrative of God’s covenant; and (3) the historical-cultural context of Israel as a people living in exile from the land promised to them by God.

Finally, while these three contexts are primary, as a Christian interpreter of Genesis, we have a fourth and determinative context: the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The creation account must be read with the prophetic and New Testament witness to the new creation, and the exodus story must be read together with the story of the cross as the final and definitive event of our liberation. Christians have long interpreted Gen. 3.15 as the “protoevangelium,” the first annunciation of the gospel. Whether this is a good reading of the text is certainly debatable. Where a specifically Christian interpretation of Genesis is quite helpful is in the interpretation of Gen. 2.17: the promise of “death” upon the eating of the fruit of one particular tree. As Murphy correctly notes, this has long been understood as the threat of “spiritual death” resulting from alienation from God (117). Christians then connect this to the cry of dereliction in the Synoptics (Matt. 27.46; Mark 15.34) and the “second death” described in Revelation (Rev. 2.11, 20.6, 20.14, 21.8). The conclusion one reaches from this kind of canonical-theological exegesis is that in his death on the cross, Jesus dies the second death destined for all people because of our sinfulness, the death in which we are definitively separated from God for eternity. Jesus enters into solidarity with humanity by throwing himself into the lake of fire, so to speak, so that we might receive new life instead of eternal death. In Christ, God takes upon Godself the punishment promised Adam as a result of his disobedience, and so freeing us for the enjoyment of communion with the triune God.

4. Conclusion

I have sought to reflect on the ideas and insights touched upon by George Murphy in his fascinating article. My disagreements are all rather minor and mainly have to do with theological consistency. Further exploration of this topic could be pursued many different lines, but two in particular stand out. The first is the account proffered by Daryl P. Domning and Monika K. Hellwig in their work on Original Selfishness: Original Sin and Evil in the Light of Evolution. While I have not yet read this work, it seems to me that their project has the possibility of being a very interesting theological proposal, one that retains continuity with the tradition while incorporating the scientific insights of evolutionary biology. I would like to see future discussion of this topic engage this particular study. The second is a theological reappropriation of Schleiermacher’s theology. Though he is often dismissed as a 19^th century liberal who is no longer worth reading, such an attitude is greatly mistaken. Schleiermacher is a profound thinker of the highest quality, and his theology, particular his doctrine of creation, offers substantial room for incorporating the insights of evolutionary science. It would be exciting to see what a post-Barthian appropriation of Schleiermacher and contemporary science might look like for a doctrine of creation.

This concludes my essay. I wish to thank Steve and George again for the invitation and the article, respectively. I look forward to reading the dialogue that follows.

David W. Congdon

Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton, NJ

Evolution and Original Sin: Update

I mentioned earlier that Steve Martin is hosting a conversation regarding evolution and original sin on his blog, An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution. The debate focuses on George Murphy’s paper, which is available online. My contribution to this debate has now been posted. Because of space limitations, I submitted an abbreviated version of my response to Murphy’s essay. The full version will appear tomorrow here on my blog.

Creston Davis: universality of Christian politics

One of the other highlights about AAR was the chance to talk with Creston Davis over pints. It was actually a rather random meeting. While talking with Ry Siggelkow, Creston came over to our table. We started talking and pretty soon we were deeply engaged in discussing liberalism, Barthianism, Milbank, liturgical theology, and Christian politics. I really enjoyed the meeting, and I look forward to reading his future works.

Davis has edited the forthcoming volume by Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ. (According to my discussion with him that night, a volume will come out next year by Brazos, with essays by Žižek, Milbank, Davis himself, and a special guest chapter by Antonio Negri.) Davis will also be coming out with his dissertation at some point here, which connects issues of liturgy and politics.

In an article with The Other Journal, Davis writes about “the politics of Christian nihilism.” He narrates his own personal journey from Republican politics to Christian theopolitics. He then discusses his vision of a universal Christian materialist politics. In addition to talking about Nietzsche and Hegel, he provides a robust vision of an ecclesial theopolitics rooted in the cross of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is a cruciform and pentecostal theopolitics. He writes:

Christian politics must be universal: it announces the bright light of liberation for the poor and the oppressed. Creation order is not removed from this universal Christian liberation wrought in the Incarnation and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; to the contrary, as St. Paul tells us, ALL creation moans for its full restoration. We are living out this universal politics of liberation for the entire world and all material history. Yet, because the fullness of time has yet to arrive, this universal cannot be employed as a totality or an epistemological foundationalism, rather, as we shall see the Christian universal is always eschatologically constituted—always here, but not yet.

If Christian politics is universal, then politics, as God’s act of liberating the earth from sin through the Church is grounded in the very foundations of creation itself: Politics is infinitely more than the delimiting power of legislating, executing and maintaining law and order in a human-made polity. Yet because politics is universal it is inescapably intertwined to the particular, and so it has something to say on all levels of existence, not only in the “invented” politics of the United States of America, but also on the level of a cultural and economic logic of the world. ...

A Christian materialist politics is the persistent faithfulness of the Church in the sanctification of the Spirit bearing witness to the depths of the love of God all the way down to the deepest depths of the cosmos, Hell, to the point where nothing can be out of reach of God’s outstretched arms on the cross. . . . The poor become the real witnesses of Christ suffering in the world that the Church (as the community of the Spirit) must side with in order to be in tune with eschatological time. Christian politics must therefore be a universal politics of absolute love requiring us to reside on the threshold of nothingness as the mending work of the Spirit. We must infinitely reside between the Crucified Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Highlights from AAR

• Spending time with Roger Lundin and Wayne Martindale (both English professors at Wheaton College) on Thursday afternoon. These two professors were absolutely central in my academic and spiritual development as an undergraduate. I owe them both more than can be expressed in words. It was sheer joy to speak with them again.
  
• The papers given by Keith Johnson (Wheaton College) and Kevin Hector (University of Chicago) for the Karl Barth Society of North America meeting. Johnson gave a summary of his dissertation on the analogia entis, rejecting the view that Barth got the analogy of being wrong. Hector weighed in for a second time on the Trinity-election debate that originated with Bruce McCormack’s essay, “Grace and Being.” The two papers were very stimulating and they were certainly the highlight of the weekend.
• Listening to PTS President Iain Torrance give brilliant comments in both the T.F. Torrance Theological Fellowship meeting and Karl Barth Society meeting. His historical knowledge is a wonder to behold.
  
• Meeting Paul DeHart (Vanderbilt University) for the first time in person on Sunday night and having a passionate discussion with him about Barth, Jüngel, and the analogy of being. He gave a wonderful and brilliant rejection of Radical Orthodoxy, and he was very gracious in our conversation afterward. I look forward to talking with him more in the future.
• Drinking Scotch and talking theology with Ry Siggelkow (aka R.O. Flyer from rain and the rhinoceros) and David Horstkoetter (flying.farther). It was great to finally meet these fellow theo-bloggers in person. I had a really good time hanging out with them. It made me thankful once again for the blogosphere, if only for the chance to get to know people like Ry and David.
• Watching John Milbank and David Bentley Hart make fools of themselves—and Milbank twice! Honestly, I don’t care what moments of brilliance these two thinkers have, their arrogance, egotism, and pomposity are, for me, the final verdict on their value for Christian theology—which is, I must say, virtually nil.
• Hanging out in downtown Chicago again after so many years.
• Hearing a really brilliant paper on Sunday afternoon about Harry Potter. Seriously. It was very, very good.
  
• Giving my first AAR Annual Meeting paper in the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture session. It went really well.
• Seeing my wife on Monday night after getting home in one piece.
  

AAR in Chicago: A Fire and Rose Guide

Tomorrow I leave for Chicago to attend the 2008 AAR Meeting. I love Chicago, so I’m glad the conference is being held there this year. What I don’t love is the stress of traveling. In any case, the main reason I am going this year is to present a paper in the session on “Religion, Film, and Visual Culture.” My paper is entitled, “A Beautiful Anarchy: Religion, Fascism, and Violence in the Theopolitical Imagination of Guillermo del Toro.” The only difference from the original proposal is that I will not be discussing Hellboy in the paper due to time and space constraints. If you are attending AAR this year and are interested in hearing my paper in person, here is the relevant information:

Religion, Film, and Visual Culture
Saturday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
CHT-Boulevard A
Theme: Visual Imageries of Reality and Fantasy

There are some other sessions well worth attending. Here are a few that I recommend:

Karl Barth Society of North America
Friday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
CHT-International Ballroom South

• Keith Johnson, Wheaton College: “The Invention of the Antichrist?” Reconsidering Barth’s Rejection of the Analogia Entis
• Kevin Hector, University of Chicago: Election and the Trinity: How My Mind Has Changed

North American Paul Tillich Society
Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
PH-Clark 1
Theme: Evangelical Responses to Tillich

Wildcard Session
Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
CHT-PDR 2
Theme: On the Relation between A/Theism and the Political; or, The Political Theology of the Void, Parmenides, and St. Paul
NB: Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek have both withdrawn from this session.

Theology and the Political Consultation and Theology and Religious Reflection Section
Sunday - 3:00 pm-4:30 pm
CHT-Marquette
Theme: Evangelicals and Empire: Engaging Hardt and Negri

The Centre of Theology and Philosophy
Sunday - 6:45 pm-9:15 pm
CHT-Waldorf
Theme: The Return of Metaphysics: A Dialogue on the Occasion of the Publication of Belief and Metaphysics

• John Betz, Loyola College
• Sarah Coakley, Cambridge University
• Paul DeHart, Vanderbilt University
• David Bentley Hart, Providence College
• John Milbank, University of Nottingham

Christian Systematic Theology Section
Monday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CHT-International Ballroom North
Theme: The Torah and the Continuity of Scripture in Jewish Christian Dialogue

Evolution and Original Sin: A Blog Series

A new series is beginning at Steve Martin’s always fascinating and educational blog, An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution (one of the most straightforward and accurate blog titles in the entire blogosphere!), which will discuss George Murphy’s paper “Roads to Paradise and Perdition: Christ, Evolution, and Original Sin.” Murphy is a physicist, theologian, and pastor, and his paper is part of a growing field of literature which brings evolutionary science and Christian theology into conversation. Martin has asked three people to write responses to the essay (I happen to be one of them). Murphy will then respond to our responses before answering questions and comments from readers. Here is the order of the blog series:

1. Introduction
2. Summary of the 2006 PSCF article (George Murphy)
3. Response #1 (Terry Gray)
4. Response #2 (Denis Lamoureux)
5. Response #3 (David Congdon)
6. George Murphy replies to the three responses
7. George Murphy answers readers’ questions
8. Conclusion

Since my full response is too long, I will publish a longer version of my response on this blog sometime after my post appears in the series.

NB: Comments will be closed throughout the series! If you want to leave a comment or ask a question, you must email Steve Martin. Here is what he says:

If you would like to pose a question to George to be answered in Post#7, please submit it to me via email. You can do this at any time up until 2 days after post#6 is published. Please keep questions relatively short – ideally 3 or 4 sentences maximum. Blog comments will be open on this post – consider it the after-lecture reception where informality (and sometimes heated discussion) is the norm.

I am really looking forward to this dialogue regarding evolution and theology. I found Murphy’s paper very interesting and full of good insights. I highly recommend that you read it in full, even though he will provide a summary of the essay as part of this series. And my sincere thanks to Steve for putting this blog series together. I expect this to be a stimulating conversation.

Princeton Theological Review: Analogy of Being

The Princeton Theological Review—the student-run journal I helped to run for two years—has a call for papers out for their spring 2009 issue. The issue will be on the “analogy of being” (analogia entis). It is an especially pertinent theme, considering the renewed interest in von Balthasar, Erich Pryzwara, and Catholic-Barthian relations in general. The topic was chosen primarily in light of the recent ecumenical conference held in Washington, D.C. this past spring. At the 2006 Karl Barth Society meeting at AAR, there was a debate between George Hunsinger and David Bentley Hart over the analogy of being. And Hart, along with John Betz, is translating Pryzwara’s masterpiece, Analogia Entis, due out sometime in 2009.

If you are interested in submitting an article for publication, please send your submissions to the editors of the PTR at ptr-at-ptsem-dot-edu. You can find submission guidelines on their website. Articles should be between 5000-7000 words, though exceptions will be made. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2009.

Romero on YouTube

This is amazing news. Someone (a saint, really) has posted the entire Romero film on YouTube in eleven clips. D.W. Horstkoetter of Flying Farther alerted me to this in his recent post. I first watched Romero as an undergraduate in a class on systematic theology taught by Mark Husbands. The first thing I did was show the film to the rest of my family back home. I was astounded by the film’s ability to tell Archbishop Romero’s story without backing away from the profound theology that grounded his subversive theopolitics. The film is really necessary viewing for anyone in the church, anyone who claims to follow Christ. Romero is the closest thing to a sermon on celluloid. If you haven’t seen it yet, then take the time now to watch it all in the clips below.

Video 1:


Video 2:


Video 3:


Video 4:


Video 5:


Video 6:


Video 7:


Video 8:


Video 9:


Video 10:


Video 11:

Review: P. H. Brazier, Barth and Dostoevsky

P. H. Brazier, Barth and Dostoevsky: A Study of the Influence of the Russian Writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky on the Development of the Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, 1915-1922 (Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2007), xix + 245 pp. $39.99 (paperback)

In his forward to Paul Brazier’s new book, Stephen Holmes begins by stating, “The book you have before you might surprise you” (xvii). Holmes was apparently skeptical about the prospect of a book looking at an historical period in Barth’s life already thoroughly covered by Bruce McCormack. Holmes goes on to say that he “expected little more than a conversation with, and perhaps some footnotes to, McCormack,” but that Brazier had convinced him that there was “extraordinarily interesting data” still waiting to be explored. The result of this exploration was Brazier’s dissertation, originally entitled “Die Freiheit in der Gefangenschaft Gottes”: The Nature and Content of the Influence of Dostoevsky on Karl Barth, 1915 to 1922, now published in the line of Paternoster Theological Monographs under the title, Barth and Dostoevsky. While the book illuminates and examines certain dimensions of Barth’s life that have been ignored by most Barth scholars, the data is not always as surprising as one might expect, nor is the data presented in a very accessible manner.

Read the rest of the review at the Center for Barth Studies website.

Lyceum 2008: spiritual consumerism

Right after AAR, another conference will begin in Unity Village, Missouri, on Nov. 3-6. The conference is Lyceum 2008, an “annual educational symposium open to teachers, writers, and students of spiritual and theological studies.” This is the first year of the conference. I’m not mentioning this conference in order to recommend that people attend it. On the contrary, it might just be the biggest waste of your time. That’s because the theme of this year’s conference is “Culturally Christian, Spiritually Unlimited.”

This kind of nonsense just makes my stomach turn. Lyceum 2008 epitomizes the entire I’m-spiritual-but-not-religious bullshit. What’s fascinating is what this theme actually says, so let’s look at each phrase. First, Christianity has become cultural. This could mean a variety of things. On the more religious side, it could mean that one still attends a church, but only because this is what people have always done and it constitutes a major part of one’s history and identity. On the non-religious or less religious side, it could simply mean that Christianity forms a kind of cultural backdrop within countries like Great Britain, France, Germany, and the USA, among others. To be “culturally Christian” might be something as banal as observing, consuming, and enjoying the cultural artifacts of Christianity—precisely as things to be observed, consumed, and enjoyed. However you take this phrase, the clear implication is that Christianity has nothing to do with one’s true existence. Christianity is part of the landscape—maybe even part of one’s history—but it has no relevance, no existential significance, for the present. It is just one cultural artifact or attribute among others. Maybe more important than most, but cultural nonetheless.

Second, as a cultural Christian, Lyceum 2008 encourages us to be “spiritually unlimited.” Here the conference makes it clear that it has capitulated entirely to the Western capitalistic voluntarist conception of the religious person as a consumer of “spiritual goods.” It’s only appropriate that one of the three keynote speakers is Bishop Spong, who is giving two lectures, the second of which is entitled, “Beyond Christian Limits, but Not Beyond Christianity.” That basically summarizes everything that is wrong with Spong and this conference. In an interview with Thomas Shepherd of the Unity Institute, which is hosting the event, Shepherd discusses the conference. While talking about Bart Ehrman, who is also giving two keynote lectures, he says, “We’re learning that early Christianity had lots of options, from the prosaic to the phantasmagoric. Did you know one sect of early Christianity believed in thirty gods?” The implication, of course, is that there are “lots of options” outside of orthodoxy—that old dry and stiff religious straitjacket. With these unlimited spiritual options, I only have to discover the kind of spirituality that suits me. I can have my pie and eat it, too: I can call myself “Christian” but believe whatever the hell I want to.

This stuff makes me sick. I’m hoping Lyceum dies off after this first year. Maybe the $299 registration cost will ensure that it does.

The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Definition of Evangelicalism

Definitions of evangelicalism are almost a dime a dozen. It seems like everyone today has an opinion on what counts as truly “evangelical.” Some find the term so ambiguous that they argue it should be dispensed with altogether. Others seek to find a new definition. Most people just don’t care.

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, a center of research established at Wheaton College by Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch, outlines the definition of contemporary evangelicalism in the following way:

There are three senses in which the term “evangelical” is used today as we enter the 21st-century. The first is to see as “evangelical” all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases. British historian David Bebbington approaches evangelicalism from this direction and notes four specific hallmarks of evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. A second sense is to look at evangelicalism as an organic group of movements and religious tradition. Within this context “evangelical” denotes a style as much as a set of beliefs. As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella—demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is. A third sense of the term is as the self-ascribed label for a coalition that arose during the Second World War. This group came into being as a reaction against the perceived anti-intellectual, separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Importantly, its core personalities (like Harold John Ockenga and Billy Graham), institutions (for instance, Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College), and organizations (such as the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ) have played a pivotal role in giving the wider movement a sense of cohesion that extends beyond these “card-carrying” evangelicals.

This statement provides a very helpful “lay of the land.” Evangelicalism is used in each of these three senses: type, style, and movement. In what follows, I am going to look at a few different ways of defining evangelicalism, most of which fall in the first category of type, but some which blend these together. The question I will pursue is whether a “universal definition” of evangelicalism is desirable and even possible. My main focus will be on John Stackhouse’s new definition of evangelicalism, which seeks to combine type and movement together. That is, he wants a definition of evangelicalism which specifies a very particular group of people that all share a very specific list of beliefs. First, however, let’s look at some other definitions.

A brief look at some “popular” definitions of evangelicalism is illuminating. The Evangelical Theological Society, for example, has a very simple approach: define what is absolutely essential in terms of doctrine (“mere evangelicalism”), and ignore everything else. So their definition is very basic: “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.” For the ETS, scholastic metaphysics + Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy = evangelicalism. Everything else is adiaphora.

By contrast, the National Association of Evangelicals (founded in 1942) claims to represent the broad “evangelical” constituency, and they do so by leaving out the more controversial particulars while at the same time providing a lengthier list of “mere evangelicalism”:

• We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.

• We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

• We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.

• We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.

• We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.

• We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.

• We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The problem with this list is that it is too broad to count as a description of evangelicalism, unless we reduce “evangelical” to “orthodox” or “traditional” Christian. Any conservative member of a denomination, including most Catholics and Orthodox, would probably be able to sign on to this statement. We might call this statement “mere traditional Christianity.”

The most widely-used academic definition has to be that of David Bebbington, who drafted what is now known as the “Bebbington Quadrilateral”: crucicentrism (inclusive of christocentrism), biblicism, conversionism, and activism. Evangelicals are centered on the reconciling work of Christ on the cross, the authority of Scripture, the necessity of a changed heart, and active works of love in the world. George Marsden came along and quite rightly added a fifth term: transdenominationalism. While “biblicism” is often taken to exclude Catholics (who uphold Sacred Tradition alongside Sacred Scripture), the addition of transdenominationalism more explicitly limits evangelicalism to a particular movement within Protestantism, one that is not denominationally “fixed.” That is, evangelicalism views denominational boundaries as dispensable; they are unnecessary demarcations which can and should be ignored when it comes to the work of the gospel.

Most recently, John Stackhouse of Regent College (Vancouver, BC) has written a new definition of evangelicalism that takes its bearings from Bebbington and Marsden. Stackhouse is an evangelical theologian and the senior advisor for the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism (CRCE), an initiative of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC). Stackhouse views the attribute of “transdenominationalism” to be essential because it “helps to mark off evangelicals from the more generic category of ‘fervent orthodox Protestants,’ a category that would include, say, conservative Lutherans or conservative Anglicans, who generally have little to do with any other kind of Christian.” Consequently, he finds the term “evangelical Catholic” to be at least oxymoronic, if not entirely nonsensical.

His revised definition of evangelicalism is an attempt to identify a very specific group of people. He was motivated to attempt a redefinition because of the inability of pollsters and academics to specify who they mean when they refer to “evangelicals.” (He cites Ron Sider’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience as a particularly bad example.) As a result, he offers six attributes and he insists that all six are necessary in order to identify an “evangelical”:

[T]his set of criteria functions properly only as a set. There is nothing peculiarly evangelical about any of them singly, of course. It is only this set that helps scholars, pollsters, leaders and interested others “pick out” evangelicals from Christians in general or observant Christians in general or observant Protestants in general, and so on. Thus it must be employed as a set, without compromise, as in the common polling practice of counting as evangelicals those who score “highly” on some scale derived from such criteria. No, evangelicals do not compromise on any of these values.

So what are these values? Here is Stackhouse’s universal definition of evangelicalism:

• Orthodox and Orthoprax: Evangelicals subscribe to the main tenets—doctrinal,
ethical, and liturgical—of the churches to which they belong.

• Crucicentric: Evangelicals are Christocentric in their piety and preaching, and emphasize particularly the necessity of Christ’s salvific work on the Cross.

• Biblicist: Evangelicals affirm the Bible as God’s Word written, true in what it says and functioning as their supreme written guide for life.

• Conversionist: Evangelicals believe that (1) everyone must trust Jesus as Saviour and follow him as Lord; and (2) everyone must co-operate with God in a life of growing spiritual maturity.

• Missional: Evangelicals actively co-operate with God in his mission of redeeming the world, and particularly in the proclamation of the gospel.

• Transdenominational: Evangelicals gladly partner with other Christians who hold
these concerns, regardless of denominational stripe, in work to advance the Kingdom of God.

Of all the available definitions of evangelicalism, Stackhouse’s version is probably the best one available, though it has its problems. It’s about as close as one can get to a “universal definition” of evangelicalism, though as I will argue in a moment, it demonstrates the final impossibility of any such universal definition.

Stackhouse’s definition is obviously a reworking of Bebbington’s definition. Stackhouse has added Marsden’s transdenominationalism, changed activism to missional, and added an extra term to emphasize the orthodox and orthoprax nature of evangelical faith. Not all of these changes are positive, in my opinion. Marsden’s term is crucial, since it captures the nature of evangelicalism since the so-called neo-evangelical movement of the 1960s and 1970s, spearheaded by the likes of Carl Henry. Nothing defines American evangelicalism more, in my opinion, than its willingness to disregard denominational affiliation to get something done. This is embodied in the non-denominational/non-conformist movement within American Christianity, a movement in which I was raised. The independence of American evangelicalism is partly why a universal definition is an impossibility.

Stackhouse’s two major changes to Bebbington’s quadrilateral are both ambiguous, with mixed results. First, the change from activism to missional is misleading and theologically questionable. Stackhouse has distinguished between conversion and mission in his definition in order to highlight the importance of making a decision for the gospel before actively engaging in the work of the gospel. Certainly, this is a standard evangelical distinction. But we could just as easily make the case for changing conversionism to missional and leaving activism. The reason for this is that conversion cannot be distinguished from mission; we are converted to the gospel as we are converted to the work of God’s in-breaking reign. Our initation into God’s kingdom has to be identified with our participation in this kingdom. There can be no gap between conversion and mission, because our being is located in act. Like the church, our being is constituted in our mission of evangelical witness to Jesus Christ.

I am also drawing somewhat upon Stackhouse’s own writings on mission and evangelism, particularly his Books & Culture essay. In that essay, he talks about how our notion of mission has to expand beyond simply preaching the gospel. He writes:

To confine the scope of salvation to those who have heard certain facts about Jesus and who come to accept him on this basis, therefore, is not necessitated by the Bible, and in fact is not even the best way to understand the Bible. . . . God is not interested in saving merely human souls. He wants human beings, body and soul. . . . The Christian gospel therefore is not a narrowly spiritual one, but literally embraces everything, everywhere, at every moment. Every action that brings shalom—that preserves or enhances the flourishing of things, people, and relationships—is the primary will of God for humanity. . . . And our mission to the world extends far beyond evangelism. Yes, evangelism is the special work of the church, for only we Christians have been entrusted with the great good news at the center of God's redemptive plan, at the heart of which is the life and work of Jesus Christ. But our evangelism itself issues a call to “life abundant” that embraces everything good in the world, not just the spiritual.

Here Stackhouse includes evangelism within the scope of God’s mission. Certainly, he would still want to identify a distinct moment of conversion, but that moment has to be understood within the larger framework of mission. Our conversion to God is a conversion to God’s missional shalom. We are converted to the kingdom of God, and thus to a life shaped by that kingdom. While our participation in the mission of God demands that we make a decision for Jesus Christ, to separate conversionism and mission as Stackhouse does in his definition of evangelicalism is misleading. It also runs against the changes within evangelicalism in recent years. The emphasis on mission captures the transformation within evangelicalism away from the narrow form of conversionism made popular by people such as Billy Graham toward a broader understanding of conversion—one that encompasses all of life, cannot be reduced to a “moment” of conversion, and is translatable into other cultures.

Stackhouse’s use of mission also presumes that people are in agreement about what “missional” means. But even on that point we find a plurality of views, all of which could claim the word “missional” without being disingenuous. Personally, I find Stackhouse’s definition above to be highly problematic, though I assume unintentionally so, based on the very fine discussion of mission in the article I mentioned above. The problem with his definition of missional is located in the language of cooperation, which he uses twice. In defining conversionism, he says that believers “must co-operate with God in a life of growing spiritual maturity.” And then—somewhat redundantly, since it isn’t clear that the second aspect of conversionism is really all that distinct from his definition of missional—he says under the rubric of “missional” that believers “actively co-operate with God in his mission of redeeming the world.” For both, cooperation with God is a deeply misleading notion. We never cooperate with God in the sense that our action is somehow independent of God’s action. Rather, our action takes place entirely within the prompting, empowering, preserving, and sanctifying action of God. But this participation with God is entirely asymmetrical: we are dependent upon God, but God is not dependent upon us. The language of cooperation disguises this asymmetry, and theologically it leans in a non-evangelical (i.e., non-Protestant) direction. Perhaps Stackhouse is more of a semi-Pelagian than I originally thought, but for now I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume by “cooperation” he merely means “participation,” which is a very different word.

Let me recap what I have said about conversion, mission, and activism. By collapsing activism and mission, Stackhouse wants to underscore that our activist involvement ought to be placed within the scope of God’s mission of reconciliation. He also wishes to locate evangelism within this missional framework. The advantage of this move is clear: evangelism and activism are no longer separated into separate categories, but they are now integrated into the larger umbrella category of God’s mission in which we participate as God’s covenant partners. The disadvantage is equally clear: there is now a separation between conversion and mission, between being and act, which I have argued elsewhere is fundamentally at odds with what missional theology proclaims. A second option that I mention above would involve collapsing conversionism and mission. This rectifies the being and act problem, but it leaves activism hanging out by itself. One advantage of this move is that it highlights the sociopolitical impulses of evangelicalism as something distinct and worthy of mention besides their missional impulses (always recognizing that these go together). Bebbington’s use of activism was, in part, an effort to acknowledge the significance of evangelical social engagement. That is disguised somewhat in Stackhouse’s definition, unless you are aware of the semantic depth of the word “missional.”

I think the best solution would be to collapse both conversionism and activism into missional. I would then define missional in the following way: Evangelicals believe that (1) everyone must respond to the word of the gospel that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior with heartfelt trust and faithful obedience, and (2) that obedience must take the form of active participation in God’s mission of reconciliation through the ecclesial “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). This ministry of reconciliation necessarily includes the proclamation of the gospel, but it also encompasses the whole range of active witness to Christ’s Lordship, including all manner of social, political, and economic engagement. Having this kind of fulsome definition of mission is a more theologically sound alternative to both Bebbington and Stackhouse.

In addition to the change of activism to missional, Stackhouse added a section on orthodoxy and orthopraxy. But this, too, is problematic. For some, the term might seem unnecessary, even redundant, yet it emphasizes the fact that evangelicalism accepts the central dogmas of the Christian faith and seeks to abide by the commands of God in our daily lives. However important this may be, there are major problems with including “orthodoxy” as part of one’s self-definition. Quite simply, whose orthodoxy, or which orthodoxy? Who or what defines what is “orthodox”? Even if we accept the first four ecumenical creeds (though even that decision is rather arbitrary), which is about as far as most evangelicals are willing to go, how do we interpret those creeds? Do we simply adopt the philosophical-metaphysical substructure? Most evangelicals reject the doctrine of deification, but that is at the heart and center of the Chalcedonian Definition. The problem with a term like “orthodox” is that it invariably involves power relations. The term itself has very little content, because apart from the churches that claim to have the definitive interpretation of these creeds, people are left to interpret them in various ways, not unlike the interpretation of Scripture itself. So without a definite content, the term “orthodox” becomes a way to distinguish who is “right” and who is “wrong,” who is “in” and who is “out.” The term functions like a gate or even a weapon. Its usage generally involves some kind of arbitrary exclusionary violence. And what’s most problematic is that the term is used among evangelicals (take the whole “open theism” debate as a case in point), in which both sides feel that they can abide by the label. In such cases, who is the judge? Without an evangelical magisterium, the term “orthodox” becomes more or less what the terms “evangelical” and “Christian” have become today—anyone who wants to claim the word can. At the end of the day, while I understand the reasons for including it in this definition of evangelicalism, I have to wonder whether it results in simply more confusion and damage.

Finally, we have to ask, who is excluded by this definition? Well, pretty much anyone who defends a particular denomination or tradition as intrinsically superior to all other traditions and would thus avoid or seriously delimit ecclesial partnership and ecumenism. This would include most Roman Catholics (except on sociopolitical matters, such as pro-life and anti-gay marriage agendas) and Eastern Orthodox, but it would also exclude, for example, the Reformed orthodox (such as the OPC, aka “Reformed fundamentalists”), as well as many within the mainline denominations, including Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians. A few anabaptists/baptists might be excluded if they see themselves carrying on a tradition which excludes transdenominational cooperation, but I suspect that is rarely the case.

Personally, I think Stackhouse is correct to make transdenominationalism a central ingredient in the definition of evangelical, only because, like him, I feel like the word loses any real meaning once it becomes an adjective applicable to any tradition—so long as those within that tradition emphasize things like Scripture, mission, and orthodoxy. I would be willing to argue that transdenominationalism is the key characteristic of contemporary evangelicalism, more central even than the emphasis upon the authority of Scripture, which is common to conservative Christians of all traditions. However, I want to be clear: by defining evangelicalism in this kind of narrow way does not mean that the word cannot have a secondary, more general application. The point here is that if we are trying to identify a particular subgroup (even subculture) within the Christian church, Stackhouse is correct that we have to be as specific and narrow as possible so that we know what we’re talking about. When we water down definitions so as to include the widest possible range of people, it ends up rendering these terms completely useless.

Yet there is a sense in which a term like “evangelical” will always be useless, and necessarily so. And this is the point with which I want to close. I have titled this (very long) post “The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Definition of Evangelicalism.” (Readers who are knowledgeable about Barth should immediately notice that this is a reworking of a 1925 essay by Barth titled “The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Reformed Creed.”) I have briefly examined definitions by ETS, NAE, Bebbington, and Stackhouse in order to chart the pursuit of a universal definition of what it means to be “evangelical.” While I support the attempt to specify as carefully as possible this particular group of people, I remain unconvinced that any definition will ever actually suffice.

The basic problem is that even the most seemingly straightforward terms—such as “orthodox” and “biblicist”—remain irreducibly complex and diverse. These terms resist any singular meaning, and they are certainly not self-evident. There are very few evangelicals who actually agree on what these terms mean. Stackhouse recognizes as much when he says that one has to abide by his definitions of these terms for the overall definition to work. But that just underscores the problem. The attempt to formulate a universal definition which will result in “accurate” polling data (as if that were even possible) requires that someone assume the role of evangelical magisterium. Someone has to determine what these words actually mean in order to specify who is in and who is out.

But it is my conviction that evangelicalism, at its heart, resists precisely this kind of magisterial power. If it is anything, evangelicalism is the rejection of any singular form or tradition in favor of a concrete, personal, and anti-institutional faith. I suggest defining evangelicalism not as a type or movement but rather as an attitude, as a particular disposition. Evangelicalism is not a substance whose attributes can be examined; it is rather an actualistic mode of being which resists any definitional foreclosure and instead bursts open our concepts, pluralizing and multiplying the dimensions of Christian faith—though always under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This helps to explain why evangelicalism is marked by transdenominationalism, and why talking about “evangelical Catholics” is a problematic use of the word.

Certainly, there are many self-proclaimed evangelicals who seek to pin down a very narrow definition of evangelicalism in order to apply the label to themselves and to very few others, if any. But I contend that this kind of semantic violence is what constitutes fundamentalism—the redefinition of terms to validate one’s own ideas over against the ideas of others. That’s not to say that people like Stackhouse are fundamentalists. By no means! Rather, it is to suggest that the attempt to locate a universally applicable definition of what is “essentially” or “truly” evangelical is itself an anti-evangelical project.

In the end, even Stackhouse’s own definitions are far too ambiguous, as I have already explained above. Words like “orthodox” and “missional” simply do not carry a fixed content, even when defined by Stackhouse. The ambiguity cannot be explained away; it is irreducible. The diverse range of meanings belongs to the words themselves. Any pursuit of a universally fixed meaning is an act of exclusionary violence which runs counter to the truest impulses of the evangelical spirit.

I am not suggesting that we dispense with these definitions. They may be quite necessary and helpful in certain contexts. But we have to remember that these are contextual definitions which serve very specific purposes. They cannot and must not be used to “define” evangelicalism, as if one could specify who is an evangelical and who is not on the basis of these definitions. Evangelicalism is not a tradition like Roman Catholicism or Reformed orthodoxy, both of which are grounded in specific creeds and confessions, carried on by specific catechetical instruction. Evangelicalism is not a quantifiable entity that can be scientifically objectified and examined. On the contrary, it is, as I have suggested, an act. It is an attitude or disposition. Evangelicalism approaches the Christian faith in a non-conformist manner, tearing down the walls of division and the barriers of tradition in order to facilitate the establishment of a personal, missional faith.

Evangelicalism is thus, in a very real sense, anarchic in nature: it resists attempts to universally fix or define what is truly Christian. Instead, it remains radically open to redefinition and recontextualization. Its missional character flows from the fact that no institution or tradition or culture can possibly be the sole bearer of the truth. In its best forms, therefore, evangelicalism is simply the openness of the church to the radical interruption of the gospel of Jesus Christ.