N.T. Wright, who is much more important to people who've never heard of him, I think, than he is to many who have, is famous for being the marquee voice of the "New Perspective" school of Biblical scholars.
I'm not going to write about that. I like the idea though; a new perspective.
I've read reviews, blogs, facebook posts, tweets, heard sermons, podcasts, Hillsdale-lunch-table addresses refuting recent Biblical scholarship, theological pondering, self-reconfigurement, when such things flew into the face of "tradition." Tradition, ancient dogmas, long-held beliefs, it seems, gain credence because they are such.
I may have been an English major, but I guarantee that's an indefensible defense in any lab or law room.
Other things that have long been established: forced prostitution. Slavery. Bigotry. Homophobia. War-mongering. Ethnocentrism. Toxic patriotic worship of the nation-state.
How long something has been around is a part of something's facticity, and nothing more. I've been around for 24 years. Does that mean I'm inherently more trustworthy than a 22 year old guy? How old was Benedict Arnold?
I am the biggest proponent of post-modernism as an ideology that you'll ever meet, so perhaps I'm biased.
But I didn't adopt it because it was the thing to do. As I learned and read and continue to read, I've realized that Foucault, Derrida, and Fanon weren't just flying in a face for the sake of the impact: they truly believed that their way of viewing the world improved upon the old way.
In that same vein, let me get a big arrogant for a minute: I don't choose to view the world through a post-modern lens: I do so because I believe it's the lens that best allows us to understand it (whatever there is, that is, that can be understood).
So if that's true, then I've got to ask, once more, once more forever over again, what happens when I hold to that belief while I hold to the belief that the Bible is the inspired world of God? I can't put my trained, cultivated lens on hold just because of what I'm reading. That's not possible and I've learned that, time and again.
And what does happen, what happens indeed? Things I'll never stop learning, never stop writing about for one. Today, I've been thinking about a few in particular: structures, systems, well, they're put on hold when you're looking through the post-modern lens. Face-value is the only value. So when Jesus says that the things you bind on Earth are bound in heaven and vice-versa, He meant it. What does that mean for me? It means Nietzsche and Jesus had a lot more in common than anyone would have ever guessed. This isn't an essay, and I don't feel like explaining that, but I will, for a moment: Nietzsche (about whom most Christians know little other than "he's a really bad guy who hated God!") considered morality a state of personal preference: we hold ourselves to what seems right and wrong based on our upbringing and perspective. The philosophy textbook I had called this individual perspectivism. It's not quite saying nothing is objectively right or wrong, but it comes close. Jesus doesn't say anything like that, but he does say, quite plainly, that God honors the things we establish as right and wrong on Earth.
What, wiggle room? That can't be Christian, can it? Well, why not? Even with a lenient, nearly-non-existent take on morality, who would ever say they've never done anything wrong? It's an experiential slippery slope to a tabula rasa, sure, but let's be realistic: do I have to acknowledge my sin based on someone else's rules or my own to come to confession? Be careful with your answer. If you're talking to someone who doesn't believe smoking is a sin and you do, but to humor you, they repent of it in asking Jesus into their heart, have they actually confessed anything? In my mind, smoking is a disputable matter, to use Paul's words. To use Paul's arguments, that means if I do it and think it's sin, it is....if I do it and think it's not, well, I'm in the clear. In other words, Jesus and Paul (who usually stand at odds in the traditionalist mindset; systematic theology is, far too often the study of how to be an exclusionist, racist, bigot and feel good about one's self) agree on something and it's something most American Evangelicals don't even believe.
That's just a bit...I could say more. I don't have time. I'll never have time. In any event, in any case, keep pushing forward...someday we'll find the river.
-Zack
"314 soldiers died in Iraq; 509 died in Chicago"
-Kanye West
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