Sola Scriptura Challenge

This is a nice post criticizing the theology of sola scriptura. I was once an advocate of this proposition, but I agree with this other writer now. While Scripture is wonderful, and we need to take it seriously, we cannot rely on it alone. There is so much more that God uses to speak to us and frankly to help us interpret Scripture that we cannot ignore it.

This is one theological area I strongly disagree with Luther on, as I have described earlier. We cannot simply look at the plain meaning of the Bible, and when we realize we interpret and look for the intended meaning, we are not only using scripture...

Liturgical v. Contemporary Church

As my wife and I moved a few months ago, we have begun looking for a new church community closer to us. In the places we have visited, we went to one that is a pretty traditional contemporary service (nice oxymoron, huh?) and one that is a pretty traditional high church, liturgical service. Both Laci and I have had much more experience in the former, so that feels more comfortable.

However, we noticed some key distinctions between the communities, which led me to think about differences between liturgical and contemporary communities in general. The thing I noticed (which is not an amazing or new insight) is that liturgical communities tend to be more liberal politically and theologically, focusing on communal issues and social justice at large. In contrast, contemporary communities tend to be more conservative politically and theologically, focusing on individual experience and personal responsibility. Now there are obvious exceptions to these rules, but often they do characterize churches as a pattern, I believe.

That got me to wondering why this is the case. And here's my conclusion:

Liturgical churches are by their nature communal. They focus on the whole community, not individual's reactions. Liturgy by its nature is participative. It is also not focused on creating a conversion experience or a deeply moving personal experience. Again, it is focused on the group coming together. As a result, it would make sense that these churches would focus more on the whole community and larger social justice issues.

In contrast, contemporary churches developed out of the Protestant Reformation and a focus on personal relationship with Christ, personal conversion, and personal conviction. The service is therefore focused on moving each individual. Hence, you can get a more performance-driven service that is non-participative, but leads to touching, emotional experiences. As the emerging movement has emphasized, these services have usually lost the participative quality. When that is lost, then it makes sense that politically and theologically they would ignore the social justice issues and instead focus on personal morality and responsibility.

Interestingly, I saw these two blog posts with similar ideas. Maybe I just had my eyes out for these concepts. What do you think about these patterns? Have you seen them? Have you seen a successful mix of the two? That's one of the strengths of the emerging church, I believe: It attempts to merge the strengths of both while cutting out the weaknesses of each.

Religion Definition

One of the things I advocate for is widening our use of the term religion, as we often use it in too narrow of a way (i.e. for only theistic perspectives).

Anyway, this is an interesting article looking at identifying science as a religion. I would agree with that assessment under certain circumstances.

Priorities

So often in so many churches, we fight about little things. This post by Dan Kimball really emphasizes that we need to live out our priorities. What do you think the priorities of the church should be?

I am not always convinced we should pay attention to eternal lives while neglecting current lives, as I alluded to in an earlier post. However, life in any form is more important than carpet... :)

Ambiguity and Faith

So I'm on a run of science-related posts. :) This is a fascinating discussion on stress and uncertainty leading to religiosity. It's quite relevant to this blog, as it empirically shows how ambiguity is not at all the enemy of faith. At least that's one of my interpretations...

God of Gaps

Now, this is a really cool post explaining how a lot of our religious traditions are based on filling in our gaps of understanding with theology, sometimes inaccurately. Then scientific discoveries come and help elucidate these gaps, which challenge a lot of people's faith at the time, but later (when we get used to those ideas), do not challenge our faith at all today.

Perhaps this could address some of my own questions and struggles about recent scientific discoveries. What are your thoughts and reactions?

Scientific Misunderstanding of Religion

I really like this blog post about how scientists misunderstand religious people. I particularly like and agree with the comment that the problems is that "scientists lack a spirit of dialogue." Now, many Christians do, too, but that can be particularly true and problematic in the scientific arena. In many ways, this is the case because the ultimate goal of objective findings is something that cannot be disputed. In other words, there's no dialogue. And based on the nature of this blog, I obviously think dialogue is really important. :)