Five Theological Words I Like and Five I Do Not Like

After D. W. Horstkoetter wrote a list of theological words that annoy him and a list of theological words that he really likes, I was inspired to draft my own similar lists. I have combined both lists together in this post.

Five Theological Words I Like

1. Missional. I firmly believe that theology has to be missional if it is going to be truly theological. Missional theology forces us to rethink all of the doctrinal loci around a center in mission. Missional theology grounds our understanding of the gospel in the triune mission of God (missio Dei)—actualized in the reconciling history of Jesus Christ—and the corresponding mission of the church, which witnesses to God’s reconciliation of the world as the contextual and inculturated community of God. The implications of this position are vast, capable of addressing many, if not all, of the theological debates we currently face today. In my opinion, theology needs to become missional or perish.

2. Apocalyptic. The word “apocalyptic” is perhaps on the verge of becoming a word that annoys people, but I still find it deeply useful and meaningful. The word is often paired with eschatological language, which is certain appropriate. However, the word is often limited in its semantic range to the eschatological future, when it has a wider meaning. The word comes from the Greek word meaning “to reveal,” the basis for our word “revelation.” The “apocalyptic” is a moment of divine revelation, a shattering of the old world and the in-breaking of the new, primarily in the eschatological present but also in the eschatological future—or, rather, the present moment is the in-breaking of the future.

3. Liberation. Here I agree with Horstkoetter in using “liberation.” I am both happy and sad that we have liberation theology: happy because we need to be reminded of the politically radical nature of the gospel, but also sad because they seem to have monopolized the word. Liberation is a far more rich concept than one might suppose from the writings of liberation theologians. I find it very helpful in connecting the Exodus event to the Christ event in the cross and resurrection. We are liberated from sin and death just as Israel was liberated from Pharoah and Egypt. We need to recover and explore the depth of this word.

4. Theological Exegesis. One of the happiest developments in recent theology is the emphasis on the theological interpretation/exegesis of Scripture. The notion of “biblical theology” is really problematic, for two main reasons: (1) it assumes that biblical interpretation forms the foundation for later theological reflection, and (2) it implies that other forms of theology are not necessarily biblical in nature. Theological exegesis, by contrast, understands that our interpretation of Scripture is guided by theological presuppositions. Theological reflection and biblical interpretation both condition and determine each other. While Brevard Childs is to be commended for showing the promise of biblical theology, we have people like Daniel Treier and Kevin Vanhoozer to thank for showing the promise of theological exegesis, but they are only the beginning.

5. Extra nos. Latin for “outside ourselves,” the phrase extra nos gained currency in Barthian circles, specifically in the work of Eberhard Jüngel. The term is used properly to speak of the reality of the gospel which both exists and comes to us from outside ourselves. The reconciliation accomplished in the cross and resurrection of Jesus exists extra nos, and is thus a reality for us independent of our acknowledgment of the event. As a result, we are disrupted by the grace of God which is extra nos, which comes to us as a word of death and new life, a word of interruption and redemption.


Five Theological Words I Do Not Like

1. Perichoresis/Perichoretic. The word “perichoresis” or “perichoretic” is not problematic in itself, but in practice, the word has come to be used (1) as a way of making three divine persons into one deity and (2) as a synonym for “relational.” The most crude form of the first type of thinking is found in Moltmann’s worst book, The Trinity and the Kingdom, where he throws around the word “perichoretic” in ways that are simply unacceptable, using it to do all kinds of theological work which it is not cut out to do. “Perichoresis” needs to be used in an analytic sense—describing the nature of the unity in the Trinity—rather than in a synthetic sense—establishing the unity among the triune persons. The second use of the word is epitomized by the work of Colin Gunton and other social trinitarians. In books like The One, the Three and the Many, he uses perichoresis analogically to describe human relationality: God’s eternal interrelatedness is analogically mapped upon human interrelatedness. Gunton thus defines “perichoretic” as “a dynamism of relatedness.” This kind of language about the Trinity is far too abstract and watered-down. It fails to acknowledge that perichoresis describes a reality proper to God alone.

2. Biblical. Again, I agree with Horstkoetter here. Applying the adjective “biblical” to something is less a mark of theological content than it is a power-play, an attempt to mark something as “right” over against other things that are “wrong.” The word “biblical” becomes a way to discriminate between what a person likes and does not like, regardless of whether it has any relation to Scripture. It’s sort of like the conservative evangelical counterpart to the liberal’s usage of “fundamentalist.”

3. Orthopraxy. How many times do we have to hear people talk about moving past orthodoxy to orthopraxy? I am sick and tired of hearing people blame orthodoxy for the church’s problems and claiming to solve them through orthopraxy. What this basically means in the end is that they want to toss out theology and doctrine in exchange for ecclesial practices and sociopolitical transformation. I heard this kind of talk repeatedly at the Envision Conference, and emergent types love it. If we’re going to use it, then use it in conjunction with orthodoxy, and always be sure to emphasize that “right action” must always correspond with “right belief” and vice versa. The two go together as a dialectical pair, never one to the subjugation of the other.

4. Doxological. Here I have to be careful: doxological is a perfectly good word. But I feel about this word the same way Ben Myers feels about the word “trinitarian”: that more often than not it “has become an obstacle to real theological thinking.” Doxological covers up a lot of bad theological thinking by ushering us all too quickly into the numinous realm of divine worship. In this sense, it functions similarly to “orthopraxy,” which brushes over the dullness of doctrine to get us into the sexiness of praxis. The word “doxological” often seems to sublate all theological thinking into the warm and mysterious embrace of the divine glory and the heavenly liturgy. Such ideas are trascendent in their aesthetic power, but all too often are superficial in their theological reflection. I’m looking at you, Halden—with a smile and a wink, of course.

5. Postmodern/Postmodernism/Postmodernity. Need I say more?

Problems with postmodernism

I recently criticized the so-called “emerging church” for its emphasis on postmodernism as one of its ecclesial starting-points. A few days later, James K. A. Smith—well-known for his work on postmodernism, philosophy, and theology—began a series on how “pentecostal spirituality is a uniquely postmodern expression of Christian faith.” The first post begins with the following words:

Beyond the epistemological emphasis which recognizes the fundamental role that faith and "control beliefs" play in knowing, postmodernism also has a more holistic understanding of the human person. Rather than reducing the human person to a disembodied thinking mind, postmodernism revalues embodiment, and in so doing it offers an account of knowing that revalues what, in the philosophical tradition, has often been referred to as the "heart." In other words, the "seat" or core of the human person is not identified with cognition or the mind, but rather with the affections and the heart. What most defines the human person is not what she thinks, but what she desires, what she loves. Thus it is no coincidence that one of the most formative influences on Martin Heidegger—who came to be one of the most dominant influences for what would come to be "postmodernism"—was the work of Blaise Pascal, who was himself retrieving a vision of knowing first articulated by Saint Augustine. As Pascal famously put it, "the heart has reasons of which Reason knows nothing."

This paragraph is indicative of why I find talk about postmodernism so exasperating: it quickly proves to be a vacuous term which reifies a conglomerate of ideas that has nothing to do with any particular period of time. Critics of postmodernism have noted in the past how postmodern enthusiasts are quite willing to define “postmodernism” in a non-historical way. As a result, that which goes by the name “postmodern” is no longer something which temporally follows “modernity.” Instead, “postmodern” becomes a label for ideas or notions which counter what we have defined as “modernity,” which is another way of saying that “postmodern” describes whatever we like over against that which we don’t like.

The problem I have just identified is readily apparent in Smith’s opening paragraph. “Postmodern” is here identified with whatever challenges the Aristotelian anthropology of mind/reason over body/desire. Already, in this first post by Smith, we have Augustine of Hippo, Blaise Pascal, Martin Heidegger, and pentecostalism all located within the ever-widening reach of “postmodernism.” But this only serves to undermine the utility of a term like “postmodernism.” If the word can describe anything which exhibits traces of ideas that we happen to like today—ideas like “embodiment,” “affections,” “perspectivalism”—then “postmodernism” simply becomes a cipher representing a conglomerate of things which we approve of, but which have no necessary placement in this present period of time. So Pascal or Charles Finney become representatives of the “postmodern,” even though they precede figures like Charles Hodge, one of the archetypal figures of modern Enlightenment Christianity.

This ahistorical “cherry-picking” eventually leads “postmodernists” to identify whatever they like about the Bible with postmodernity. For example, the “Song of Songs” becomes a favorite text of postmodern theorists, because of its emphasis on embodiment and sexuality. Pre-modern church fathers and mothers who challenge the philosophical tradition are treated like postmodernists, hence the almost entirely uncritical love of the medieval mystics. And since “Song of Songs” and the mystics are often on the margins of scholarship, we see postmodern theorists maundering at length about how the traditional canon of texts is representative of an oppresive, sexist, Enlightenment regime of orthodoxy that needs to be overthrown so that we can achieve true Christian liberty (toss in a verse or two from Paul to validate the point being made).

Of course, I am being hyperbolic and cynical, but there is a serious point I am trying to make: viz., that those who speak so fawningly of postmodernism undermine their own project by locating “the postmodern” in any time and place where they find something that appeals to them. People like Brian McClaren and others in the “emerging church” like to identify the start of “postmodernity” with the 21st millennium (McClaren even has a chart which identifies the year 2000 with the start of the “postmodern world”). But the same people will then appropriate a person like Augustine or Pascal as a postmodern. Are there ways of making sense of this? Sort of. One can say that there were hints of postmodernity throughout history, but that only now has this perspective become dominant. The problem is that the evidence for the growing dominance of modernism is just as available (see below). And if the term “postmodern” has no grounding in history, then it simply becomes an arbitrary description of whatever we dislike about what we call “modernity.” Even our understanding of “modernity” is manufactured, just as the postmodern understanding of pre-modernity is manufactured.

My point is that postmodernism is really just a symptom of modern Western ahistoricism. It has nothing to do with any actual break with modernism. On the contrary, it arises from our forgetfulness and/or fearfulness of the past: we are fearful of things we think we understand but often don’t, and we are forgetful of the things about the past which we might like or dislike that would disrupt our oversimplified characterization of history. There is certainly much more to be said about the phenomenon of postmodernity, but these are just some brief reflections on the quote from Smith.

I said above that I would discuss ways in which modernity is clearly still with us. What follows is a selection from an email that I wrote on this issue, following the rule: when in doubt, always quote yourself!

The issue of postmodernity is complex. Several years ago I was infatuated with it. My thoughts changed dramatically when almost every aspect of what I thought characterized the “postmodern condition” was either greatly lessened in its significance or wiped away altogether. What does it really mean to be “post” or “after” modernity? The classic definition of postmodernism as a rejection of metanarratives (i.e., the universal, transcendental norms of Enlightenment rationality) sounds intelligent, but it’s an illusion. We are seeing the rise of new metanarratives all the time in place of the old. The clearest examples are globalization and late capitalism, which Hardt and Negri identify as the new form of empire in the world today. Empire is often viewed as a mark of modernity, but it’s still with us today.

There are other metanarratives as well. The “new atheists” (Dawkins & co.) use evolutionism (to be distinguished from evolution) and other ideologies that claim to have universal explanatory power. The list goes on and on. Certainly, there are shifts in, say, architecture (where the term postmodern was first coined) and certain literary styles. But the differences are slight shifts within an overarching framework of modernism; there is no clear break by any means.

Moreover, in theology, the continuity with modernity is even more apparent. The central issue raised by modern theologians — Schleiermacher is the highest example, of course — is the doctrine of God. In the late medieval era, it was ecclesiology-sacramentology and soteriology. (We could keep going back in time and identify the key issues, but that’s not important right now.) In the modern era, the being of God is the question under discussion. What do we see in the era of “postmodernity”? The doctrine of God. See the debates over the impassibility of God, for example, or the debate over open theism in evangelical circles. The point is: the doctrine which characterizes the debates of modernity remains the doctrine characteristic of our present time.

But if all that remains unconvincing, I think we find the most solid cultural sign of modernism in the fact that our culture has become more scientistic, not less. Scientism is the ideology of the scientific Enlightenment, the notion that modern science will provide the answers to our problems. Postmodern theorists heralded the end of the Enlightenment hegemony. But we see just the opposite. Take, for example, the “new atheists,” like Richard Dawkins. This group of people turn to modern Enlightenment science to reject God; theirs is simply the outworking of the atheistic ideas that began in the scientific revolution. Or take the Intelligent Design camp. Here we have a movement which seeks to claim validity on the basis of Enlightenment standards. They are seeking the legitimacy of modernity. Or take the culture’s almost unlimited hope in science to solve all the world’s problems, from energy to cancer to replacement organs to genetic mutations. Our culture, more than ever, sees the scientist as the hope for humanity. If there was ever a more convincing sign of our culture being solidly modern, it would be the modern religion of scientism.

PET VIII: Emerging church—heretics or heroes?

Problems in Ecclesiology Today VIII:
Emerging Church – heretics or heroes?

The Emerging Church (EC) continues to be the hot topic of discussion within American evangelicalism today, having displaced open theism as the object of conservative ire. Back in January of this year, there was an incident in which Cedarville University canceled a lecture by Shane Claiborne scheduled for Feb. 11. The event was canceled, according to Christianity Today, because “a small but vocal number of bloggers saw the lecture as a step toward liberal theology.” These bloggers “labeled [him] as belonging to the Emergent community.” The central blog referred to in the article is Slice of Laodicea, by Ingrid Schlueter, which represents some of the most reprehensible theology on the internet today. Here is only the most recent example, from a post decrying both Brian McClaren and Barack Obama supporters:

I am not a Republican. I am a Christian, and no Republican or Democrat who wars against God’s moral law and defends gay marriage, child killing or using human embryos for experimentation will get my vote. You can take that to the bank. McLaren has no moral compass because he rejects God’s Word as his only standard. You will notice a distinct correlation between those who reject God’s Word and their support for pro-death, pro-gay marriage candidates, and every other cause that is a revolt against heaven. That’s why the emerging church leaders and followers are up to their armpits in Obama campaign materials. When God’s Word gets thrown out, it affects every aspect of our lives and ethics. Ideas have practical consequences for men and nations.

I have no desire to dwell on this blog or the substance of her criticisms. Suffice it to say that I do not share her opinions. Those who call the EC leaders heretics who reject the Word of God are at best ignorant, and at worst, guilty of transgressing the law of Christ in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7:1). There is quite a bit of judgmental, disparaging, even violent language coming from those who claim to be following God’s Word—a Word which demands that we love our enemies. I think it’s worth asking who’s actually throwing out the Word of God here.

That being said, I am also a strong critic of the EC. I may not view them as heretics, but I certainly cannot view them as heroes. In what follows, I will outline the reasons why I reject the EC. I embrace them as brothers and sisters in the Lord, but I cannot embrace their vision of the church and theology.

1. The Illusion of Postmodernity

Recently, Damien at Christians in Context wrote about the ecclesiology of the EC in dialogue with John Hammett. Hammett notes that the one common theme connecting the various leaders in the EC is “postmodernism.” I agree with this assessment, except that I view this as a reason why the EC is so deeply problematic. Brian McClaren and others in the EC basically take the reality of postmodernity for granted; they assume it has significance for the church. I strongly disagree with them on this. Postmodernism was fashionable for awhile, but it has since faded from view—and for good reason. It was an illusion from the beginning. What went by the name of “postmodernism” was really just a late form of modernism. If there really was any difference between the two, it was a difference of degree, not of kind. And so we see, at Envision for example, McClaren speaking about the “post-colonial church.” A more cynical critic might say that he’s just found a new fad to join. I would be more sympathetic: I think he’s finally recognized the failure of postmodernity to provide any lasting basis for change in the church. In retrospect, I would say these leaders got overexcited about the possibility of some new intellectual paradigm because they saw it as a justification for reconceiving church altogether. I may agree that there are things which the church needs to think differently about, but the way the EC embraced postmodernism is an unfortunate part of their history—not because postmodernism is somehow anti-Christian (as ignorant conservatives like to assert), but because postmodernism is a chimera, an empty cipher.

2. The Relation Between the Church and Culture

The relationship between church and culture is tricky business. Obviously, you cannot have a culture-less church; that would be equivalent to a human-less or world-less church. But the relation between church and culture is a controversial matter. All of the churches which, in different ways and to varying degrees, bear traces of the Constantinian heritage represent a general confusion between Christianity and culture, usually—as in the cases of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches—identifying Christianity with culture. Catholic and Anglican missions, for example, replicate the same Christian culture around the world, which is just a baptized form of cultural imperialism. For churches which engage in cultural replication, preaching is equivalent to propaganda, because what is being sown is not the gospel but a cultural and political institution. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Anabaptist communities seek to exist as an alien presence within the particular culture. They neither adopt the surrounding culture nor create their own, but live as “resident aliens,” as those who witness to a kingdom that stands over and even against culture.

The EC rejects the institutional structure of traditional denominations and so rejects the notion that the church is itself a culture. It also rejects the view of Anabaptists that the church should be an alien presence in the world. But because of its rejection of Constantinianism, the EC could never endorse a national church model, as we see with the Orthodox Church. Instead, the EC says that the church always takes local, particular forms in accordance with the local, particular culture. The church, according to the EC, must be relevant to the concrete culture in which it exists. Like the Anabaptists, the EC rejects the idea that the church should be a culture in itself, but unlike the Anabaptists, it is not an alien but rather a welcome presence within the local culture. If the EC has a motto or slogan, it is that the church needs to be relevant to people in the 21st century. And since each generation has its own kind of culture, we can see why the EC is primarily a movement of white people between the ages of 18 and 35.

Conservatives who attack the EC for capitulating to the tide of relativism miss the point. It’s not that the EC itself embraces relativism; it is rather that the culture within which the EC exists is relativistic. Conversely, people within the EC movement are quite right when they accuse the traditionalists for being bound to a culturally formed idea of the gospel and the church. But that only means the traditionalists and the EC are equally defining the church on the basis of the local culture. Having said that, even if they are often just as unsuccessful, the conservatives do have a point when they inquire as to the norm for the EC’s understanding of the gospel and the church. And here we get to the heart of my critique of the EC.

At the end of the day, because the EC has defined the church on the basis of the local culture, it makes the local culture the norm for how it reads Scripture and understands the gospel. This is the fundamental mistake of the EC: it embraces a form of contextual theology that is essentially religious ideology. Of course all theology is contextual; not even systematic/dogmatic theology denies that. The difference is not whether theology is contextual but whether one’s context is the central norm for theological talk about God. Dogmatic theology takes the witness of Holy Scripture as the final norm for all theological statements. Contextual theology subordinates Scripture to one’s personal experience or socio-historical context. And so we have a feminist christology, a womanist christology, a black christology, etc. These can all be very helpful and worthwhile, but at the end of the day, you have a God made in your own image. What you do not have is a God who can stand over against your particular context—a God who remains Lord and Judge, a God who can actually reconcile the world to Godself because there is an “infinitive qualitative distinction” between God and the world.

The problem with contextual theology is that it ends up identifying one’s context with revelation, rather than allowing God to transcend and thus judge our context. We end up placing God in our “contextual box,” and that allows us to manipulate God to serve our own interests. In short, contextual theology all too often is indistinguishable from pure ideology. And lest we forget, it was contextual theology that German Lutherans employed to justify Hitler’s fascist imperialism. Just because contextual theology is often done by oppressed groups does not make it any better. Once you allow a contextual theology for blacks, you open the door for a contextual theology of white supremacists.

It’s no surprise then that a lot of EC leaders and advocates have embraced process theology or panentheistic conceptions of God. These theological positions seek to identify God with the world itself, or at least include the world within the being of God. The consequence is that one’s socio-historical context is then able to define God, the gospel, and the church. The final result is that God looks just like me. God is what I want God to be. Once I have reached this point, there is nothing to guard me from joining the German Lutherans who made God an antisemite, or joining the KKK in America who made God an anti-Catholic racist. And I am not at all surprised that young evangelicals are flocking to the EC. As a young evangelical myself, I remember singing songs about Jesus being my best friend. American evangelicalism is deeply infected with the notion that God is just like you and me. “Jesus is my homeboy,” as the T-shirt states.

My point is that the EC has no way of combatting the devolution into ideology—and, thus, idolatry. By making cultural relevancy the starting-point and norm for all their thinking about the church, they have subordinated Scripture and revelation to their own particular cultural framework. It should not surprise us that the EC is almost entirely white, and made up of mostly one generation. Nor should it surprise us that the EC is primarily an American phenomenon. Nor should it surprise us that the EC is primarily bourgeois middle class. The fact that Doug Pagitt used his iPhone to give his presentation at the Envision Conference kind of summarizes the whole problem.

3. The Relation Between Christ and the Church

All of this goes back to how Christ relates to culture. EC leaders are fond of saying that the church should be “incarnational” in a way analogous to Christ’s incarnation. This is problematic for a number of reasons. For starters, the incarnation is sui generis, i.e., it is wholly unique and unrepeatable. In short, the incarnation is an event, not a idea that can be applied or a process that can be completed or a reality that can be replicated. What EC leaders mean is that the church takes root in a particular culture the way the Son of God is born within a particular culture. Not only is this a major oversimplification of the incarnation; the analogy simply does not work. In the incarnation, God relates to culture in a way that only God can: God elects culture (humanity) and takes on human nature by a sovereign act of divine freedom. As a result, the fact that Jesus is Jewish does not mean that God is Jewish, just as the fact that Jesus is male does not mean that God is male. God is wholly other than humanity so that God can be wholly for humanity. But God is only for us in that God is the Lord. God is our Judge, the one who cannot be possessed or confined or manipulated by any creaturely reality. Yet God is our Judge as the one who chose to be judged in our place.

While all this is true of God, it is not true of the church. The church does not transcend creaturely reality the way God does. Nor does the church elect culture the way God does. The church is not wholly other than culture, and thus the church cannot be wholly for culture. At best, one might say that the “invisible church”—the spiritual community of those who belong to Jesus Christ—transcends culture. But the “invisible church” is not an active subject; if anything, it is a metaphor which represents just our ontological bond to God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the people in the EC talk very little if at all about the “invisible church.” Their concern is almost exclusively with the visible, embodied, enculturated community. The ecclesiology of the EC begins from one’s individual cultural context. It begins with the axiom of relevancy: only the church that is relevant to me is a church of which I can be a part. But God has no such axiom. God did not choose to be relevant to humanity in assuming flesh. God did come to meet our needs and our interests. On the contrary, God came as an alien presence: as the friend of sinners and the antagonist of the religious, as the suffering servant who had no beauty that we should be attracted to him, as the lamb whose self-offering on the cross was an act of radical submission to God and radical defiance in the face of imperial power, as the one who interrupts and disrupts our lives as an alien Word of new life in the midst of death.

The church must seek to be the witness to this alien and disruptive word. When a church seeks to be “relevant” to society, this only reveals that the church has abandoned the truth that God came as the radically disruptive reconciler of the world. There is no intrinsic analogy between Jesus Christ and the church. There is only a unique event to which we must faithfully bear witness. We must jettison talk of “incarnational ministry,” which is just a platitude about being involved in the lives of others. The incarnation was not just the ultimate form of “incarnational ministry”; it is laughable even to talk this way. The event of the incarnation was an event of divine judgment for the sake of reconciliation. God did not assume flesh to become our friend; God came to be our Lord and Savior. When we remember that point, we will learn to subordinate our cultural context to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ as attested in Holy Scripture. Unfortunately, by emphasizing a relevant church and a relevant God, the EC has essentially lost its grip on the Christ event itself.

4. Conclusion

Is the EC the worst form of the church? By no means! It is no more problematic than other forms of Christianity. While I think the EC represents a very bad way of approaching the relationship between gospel and culture, it is really only a concentrated form of what we find dominate throughout American Christianity, evangelical or mainline. Moreover, as we learn from Barth and the Protestant tradition, we have to realize that all forms of the Christian church are sinful. Luther called the Catholic Church the “greatest of sinners,” but we have to apply this to all churches everywhere. We cannot let any form of the church escape the judgment of God upon all religion as the manifestation of human sinfulness. To paraphrase Paul, “There is no church that is righteous, not even one.”

Is there any hope for the EC? Yes, there is. Here are some brief suggestions for redeeming the EC and providing a true renewal of American Christianity:

1. Jettison the language of postmodernity. There is nothing helpful to be found there, and it only serves to create barriers where no barriers need or should exist.
2. Jettison the language of “incarnational ministry” or the church being the “hands and feet of Jesus.” All such language represents a superficial and erroneous christology, which in turn leads to an erroneous ecclesiology.
3. Reject all notions of relevancy, whether in christology or in ecclesiology or in any other area of Christian thought.
4. Similarly, stand under the judgment of God by standing under the judgment of Holy Scripture. Allow the witness of Scripture and life of Christ determine the proper shape of ecclesial existence. Remember that God is “wholly other” and calls us to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds, so that [we] may discern what is the will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
5. Read and engage with the work of missional theologians such as David Bosch, Lamin Sanneh, Darrell Guder, Andrew Walls, Christopher J. H. Wright, and others. There are important resources here not only for rethinking central doctrines of the faith, but for rethinking how Christ and the church relate to culture.
6. In addition to missional theology, read Barthians and Anabaptists on the church, the former to articulate the relation between Christ and the church and the latter to articulate the relationship between the church and culture.
7. Pray for forgiveness for the way that the church in all times and places has compromised its witness to Jesus, desired to control and manipulate God, and sought to appease one’s cultural context rather than the Holy Spirit.

Update: Those interested might wish to read my much earlier discussion of the EC after listening to McClaren speak at Princeton Seminary.