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From the i-monk:

If you want to see genuine worshipers, I’m not sure your local evangelical “praise and worship” service is necessarily the right place to go. Maybe….maybe you might want to stop in that 8 a.m. mass over at St. William’s.

This is a nice companion to something I wrote a while back. Someday soon I’ll write about why I’d consider rejoining a Lutheran church… if one (in the original sense of the word) still exists.

Michael Spencer’s post today at his blog, internetmonk.com, prompted a good little discussion on the nature of blogging, fisking and the discussion of theology, which often (usually) trespasses into areas of personal faith and belief. Because theology (man’s attempts to understand God) impacts in a very real way how we interact with God and accept how God wants to interact with us, discussions about theology should never be thought of as purely intellectual exercises.

As I pointed out in a comment on that post, when we are confronted with some different thinking on a theological issue, it provokes us to think the issue through in light of our own theological framework. Often that process appears as a challenge or a critique, which of course it is. From the standpoint of the reader, you can choose to critique something based on a theological framework (e.g. “it’s not Reformed, so it’s wrong”), or you can challenge yourself and your theology in the process. Often my responses to things start out, “I don’t think so, because…” This could sometimes be seen as being “critical,” which is a no-no in some circles, or it could be understood as thinking out loud from another perspective. When I think of it, I do try to indicate that’s what I’m doing. Sometimes.

This week I have been provoked in a good way by a couple of posts on i-monk on the localization of Jesus. The first post was titled Where’s Jesus?: Thoughts on a Locally Available Christ (a brilliant title) and asked the question, “Where can you get your Jesus?.” As the title implies, the post discusses the concept of trying to make Jesus - or see Jesus as - more present in one place than another. Examples include the “Real Presence” at Communion and concepts like God “showing up” at a certain church. While not denying that there is truth in some of these concepts, Michael proposes:

Presenting Christianity as a system of localized appearances of Jesus distorts many things that we want to continually affirm: Jesus as the one mediator, Jesus as the ascended Lord of the universe, Christ who is in the midst of his church and present with all of his people. Maintaining the Biblical balance between “Jesus on the table,” “Jesus in my experience” and “Jesus at the right hand of the Father is a crucial task for worship leaders, pastors and teachers.

In a follow up post, he discusses what he calls a sacramental view of reality. While not everyone would agree with his thinking or his language, what he presents is a great tool for examining how we see God’s presence in our lives, and how we function as churches. It would be nice, would it not, if we spent less time in church talking about how we could make our lives better, and spent more time recognizing the presence of God around us?

My friend Ken writes a couple of posts dealing with similar issues here and here.

On that note, I’ll sign off. Stay tuned for an upcoming post discussing another of the i-monk’s thought-provoking articles, this one on transactionalism, entitled Out of Business With God.

In keeping with prior posts on hermeneutics (that is, how to read and actually understand the Bible in some reasonable fashion), more hermeneutics, discovering the nature of God, and too many posts to link to directed at shaking a bit of sense into mindless pop Christian culture, check out Ben Witherington, once again, as he provides a great post on how we should read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.

The “old dude” I’m referring to is “Saint” John Chrysostom, one of the gems of the Early (4th Century) Church. We don’t hear too much from Chrysostom, and some may never of heard of him. It seems as though many people assume that there were no brilliant theological minds between the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther (or Calvin, for you Reformed folks). Born in 349, Chrysostom was actually a contemporary of Augustine, who was 5 years younger. Chrysostom became the Archbishop of Constantinople, while Augustine joined the Church in Italy after being converted in Milan. Of course, at that time there was still only one church, although Rome always seemed to always claim a higher status. While both men are considered saints in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, the West seemed to follow Augustine’s thinking, while Chrysostom seems to carry more clout in the East. But, enough history.

The point that Witherington & Chrysostom make concerning the reading of the Old Testament is that since the coming of the New Testament (basically, I think, the appearance of Jesus) the Old Testament must be read and interpreted in light of the New Testament. Here’s a quote that Mr. W quotes from Chrysostom:

Now when you see these things merely sketched out you neither know everything nor are you totally ignorant of everything, but you know that a man and a horse are drawn there, though they are indistinct. But you don’t accurately [or fully] know what sort of emperor or what sort of prisoner it is until the truth of the colors comes and makes the face distinct and clear. For just as you don’t ask everything of that image/portrait before the truth of the colors, but if you receive some indistinct knowledge of what is there, you consider the sketch to be sufficiently ready , in just that same way consider with me the Old and New Testaments , and don’t demand from me the whole fullness of the truth in the [OT] type…For as in the painting, until someone draws in colors it is a shadowy sketch.

Much weirdness comes from reading the Old Testament separate from the New, and as a consequence confusing how the testaments fit together. Witherington says:

Now what is so interesting about this whole hermeneutical approach is that it believes that one must do justice to the history if one is to do theology and ethics right. Christianity was a religion grounded and founded in history, and so theology proper was a reflection on God’s mighty acts in history which had a before and after to them. It was not an abstract science or philosophy where one took ideas and simply linked them together without them arising out of historical events and their substance. In the end, Chrysostom’s hermeneutic mirrors that of Paul and the author of Hebrews. It would be my view that we should go and do likewise.

Good stuff again from Mr. Witherington. Go read the whole article.