Pagan Christianity, Acts, and Ecclesiology
April 25th, 2008I’ve recently been thinking about ecclesiology - odd way to start a blog post, perhaps, but in any case, it’s been prompted by the discussions that I had with Bob that were sparked by this this discussion over here and grabbing a copy of Barna and Viola’s Pagan Christianity. Both the discussion with Bob and the book by Barna and Viola are centered around ecclesiology, so it’s a happy coincidence that I ran into both of them at more or less the same time, as it results in more coherent thoughts about ecclesiology than I would otherwise have. Well, possibly the thoughts are more coherent . . . I’ll leave that for you to judge.
Let’s start with some conclusions (or at least observations) from that previous discussion and then jump into some of the ideas presented by Barna and Viola.
>> Although the book of Acts seems (for the most part) perfectly clear, applying the lessons from it have always left me a bit befuddled. Obviously the narrative tells us what happened (at least, assuming that it’s reported with any sort of accuracy, which we’ll assume for now), but what is less clear is if it is presented to us only as a record of what happened or if, in addition, it is meant to be taken as an example of what the church is supposed to be doing right now. The narrative doesn’t really say, and it seems pretty clear that not everything in scripture is meant to be taken as an example - “Judas went out and hanged himself,” at the very least, isn’t presented as advice. What I’ve since realized, though, is that asking the question in an either/or way seems to imply a false dichotomy where one doesn’t necessarily exist.
>> Another (possibly related) observation is this: If you look at what’s important to Jesus, and then look at an organization that would reflect those priorities, what you get is the church in the book of Acts. In other words, if we interpret this book to say that it’s only a record of what happened, and not an example to follow, it assumes that there’s a better example somewhere of what the church should be doing. At the very least, at least there could be one. This seems unlikely to be true - at least, if it exists, I haven’t found a record of it yet, and as far as I can tell, neither can anyone else. It seems a much more tenable position to hold that even if the church in Acts wasn’t perfect (and it’s pretty clear that it wasn’t), it’s the best example of that we’re likely to get of what the church is actually supposed to be.
>> A large part of my wanting to “toss out the systematic guys,” as Bob put it, seems to be a result of defining systematic theology in an incorrect way. Up until now, I’ve assumed that the goal of it was to provide tools to force everything into previously existing boxes - i.e., it’s primarily a tool that people who can’t live with ambiguity use to smash seemingly conflicting passages into previously existing philosophical constructs. This only rarely appears to me to be a worthwhile goal, and for some reason has always seemed like a way to make theology more boring and less alive, if that makes any sense. It’s akin to coming at Colorado with a big rolling pin with the goal of turning it into Kansas. (Just as a rabbit trail: this way of defining systematic theology, I’m guessing, is more common than we would think, at least - or especially - among the emerging church types, which is probably a big part of why they don’t like it very much. All sorts of fun unrelated stuff here that we won’t pursue now.) All that to say - if that is actually what systematic theology is, then I don’t like it. But that brings us to the next point, which is
>> Happily there’s a much more helpful way to define systematic theology, and that is this: our views on one thing can’t stand in complete independence from our views on anything else. As we’ll get into later in this post, our views on how church works - ecclesiology - will impact how we view sanctification, for example. If the goal is for views on one thing to help us along in our views (or actions) in an area that suddenly seems related, the idea of being “systematic” doesn’t seem nearly as bad. To reiterate, because this is a weird point: if the goal is for different parts of theology to influence and inform other parts of our life - be it theology or actions - then suddenly the idea of being systematic seems pretty good. This is only true as long as the point is to inform and help, not to flatten everything out, so to speak.
In any case, that’s all background, here. Now, let’s jump into a discussion of Barna and Viola’s Pagan Christianity - we’ll start with a summary of some of the points, and then move to observations about it. Eventually, this will all tie back in. (Really!)
Viola and Barna advocate a return to what is widely known as the “house church” model, although he proposes using the term “organic church” to describe what appears to be more or less the same thing. (Well, it appears to be the same thing from my perspective - i.e., someone that is outside the movement and just beginning to learn about it. There may be differences that I don’t grasp, I frankly don’t know.) According to Viola, this is more or less a return to the basic model that was presented in the book of Acts - obviously, changes have to be made for cultural shifts that have happened since then, and no one’s arguing that the church in Acts needs to be yanked out of the first century and dropped into this one, but the basic ideas should be all the same.
However, quite a few of the church traditions - paying the clergy, for example, or meeting in large buildings that have been built specifically for that purpose - don’t show up in Acts at all. The majority of the book is discussion about practices that Viola feels are both (a) hinder the headship of Jesus in the church, and (b) have their roots somewhere in pagan practices. This means taking on (and making hamburgers of) the sacred cows of the common conceptions of a church building, paid clergy positions, sermons, formal clothes on Sunday mornings, and Christian practices of music and education.
Viola and Barna are able to convincingly demonstrate that quite a bit of what we’ve got in church practices - the practice of dressing up for Sunday morning, for example - actually has its roots in paganism. What is less clear is why the model should be replaced.
(Brief side note: the following paragraphs will make more sense if you know what logical empiricism is - at least to the extent that it is referenced in The Abolition of Man, a work by C.S. Lewis that we’ll discuss in the next paragraph. If you haven’t read it, go read this summary over here, which is about all you’ll need to know about it to make sense of the next couple paragraphs.)
The assumption throughout the entire book - oddly, it doesn’t seem to be mentioned - is that apparently Barna and Viola feel as if they can trace the origin of something to paganism, this automatically implies that it should be tossed out the door. Paganism, in other words, is presented as something that is irredeemable. This is an interesting and rather unexpected position when compared to other Christian views of paganism, especially when compared to, say, C.S. Lewis. In The Abolition of Man, for example, C.S. Lewis argues for the existence of natural law, as opposed to the logical positivism that dominated intellectual discourse during his time. This isn’t, by itself, related to anything that Barna and Viola discuss, however, one of the main ways that Lewis argues for the existence of natural law is to contend that all cultures that exist have had a common set of values, which he terms the tao.
To briefly run down another rabbit trail, here, this series of common values shared by all cultures and religions leads to one of popular misunderstandings about comparative religion, and that is this: the observation that many religions have value systems that are, on the surface, similar is assumed to imply that all these religions say the same thing in everything that is important. In other words, religions that are superficially the same are assumed to be fundamentally the same. At least as far as I can tell, this observation has it backwards: religions aren’t fundamentally the same and superficially different, but superficially the same and fundamentally different.
Discussing whether or not I’m right about this is outside of the scope of what we’re dealing with here, but what is relevant to note is that Lewis isn’t proposing that paganism and Christianity are fundamentally the same. What he is saying (or at least implying, it’s been awhile since I read the book) is that a Christian view of paganism isn’t going to categorize paganism as being completely irredeemable. If we’re able, in our view of humanity, to balance humanity’s greatness and fallenness, it would imply that there are some things in paganism that are at least close to being true. At the very least, this helps explains why it has some sort of appeal. The fact that all religions resonate so deeply with people is because they’ve got an element of truth in them, and (at least as far as I can tell) a Christian view of the world would expect that to be true. (This observation would be an extension of these ideas in the first blog post if they were original with me, but they’re not, really.)
To be fair to Viola and Barna, this “unmentioned assumption” of tossing out anything associated with paganism isn’t really what they’re trying to propose, although that was not all that clear to me from the book. Viola has a list of answers to objections posted on his website that’s extremely helpful in trying to understand what the positions of the book actually are. He states that tossing out everything associated with paganism isn’t necessarily a goal, as it may not be all bad. If this is true, though, then it seems something of an omission that there are no examples of this given in the book. Thankfully, there are some examples given in Viola’s list of answers to objections, but when they’re things like “the Gregorian calendar,” it’s difficult to see how it’s relevant or meaningful.
On some level, this book is written in the same style as Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian, another book that has generated, um, strong reactions from some within the Christian community. Both of them are essentially deconstructive works that do not propose any sort of comprehensive solutions before you get to the back cover. At least some of the reactions to books of this sort seem to be frustration borne out of lack of immediate solutions - a book that tells you your boat is leaky doesn’t help much unless there are plans somewhere in there to build a boat with no leaks. Otherwise the previous boat won’t be abandoned, no matter how badly the water is pouring in.
The sequels to New Kind of Christian are already out, so it’s possible to come away with an impression of what McLaren is trying to build, instead of only what he had to tear down to get there. The sequel to Pagan Christianity comes out this coming August, so I’ll reserve any boatbuilding decisions until then.
Meanwhile, it would be helpful to me if you’d go get a copy of this book, so we can discuss it here . . .