Monologue, Dialog, Preaching, Listening, Anyabwile, Carpenter, Sido and Christendom

For those of you not familiar with the dialog that's been going on, I'll keep that part brief.  For those of you who do know, you already know it.  What I have to say about it I think can benefit those not involved in the dialog, so please stay tuned beyond this paragraph.  So, a quick summary first.  Eric Carpenter at A Pilgrim's Progress critiqued a section of Thabiti Anyabwile's book on Expositional listening, which I briefly touched on here.  Anyabwile responded to somebody's critique of it at the Gospel Coalition, and many are assuming it was Carpenter's critique.  Anyabwile's post generated some big exchanges in the comments, and others I know like Arthur Sido jumped in, and then blogged on his own about another GC post on preaching as an ordinary means of grace.  Whew.

So, the ideas in question are 1) what is the role of preaching, 2) should it be done in church to believers or outside to the unbelievers, and 3) what should actually be done in the Sunday meeting.  Many of Anyabwile's critics point to their observation that there isn't a single example of a monologue sermon preached to believers in church anywhere in the NT, and all preaching is done outside of church to unbelievers.  Our Sunday church meetings should be dialog in nature, with all belivers participating in edifying one another.  Okay, I get their drift, and I also understand Anyabwile's viewpoint.  So what I have to say here is that I see people talking past one another in Anyabwile's comments section, and I think I know why.  It's partly a matter of historical and cultural contexts of both the apostles going out into the Gentile world in Acts, and the Protestant Reformation in medieval Roman Catholic Europe.  I'd like to beg everybody's pardon in advance, as I'm not a historian, and would invite correction and comment here.

The Apostles' Method

I actually see two methods the apostles used in Scripture to reach the Gentile world.  One, they went into the synagogues of the minority Jewish communities.  Their religion was already shaped by the Scriptures, they knew the Scriptures, and they were waiting for the messiah.  The message to them was, "Hey, you're God's people, but your man-made traditions have prevented you from seeing Yeshua as messiah.  Ditch your traditions and the evil deeds that come from them, and embrace Jesus."  Two, they went into the culture of the ignorant Greeks.  Their method was different.  "Your system of polytheism is death.  There's only one God, the one you missed.  He is Yahweh, and his Son is the Jewish messiah, Jesus the Lord.  Caesar isn't Lord, Jesus is.  Good news here folks, you're included in on the deal.  So repent of your sins and evil deeds you've done in ignorance, and believe in him and you'll receive eternal life."  Those "out there" that received the word were included in the church, made up of believers.

The Reformation

The context of the Reformation was different than the context of the Greek world and Roman Empire of the first century.  By the time of the Reformation, Christianity had already "conquered" Europe.  It had reached it's cultural conclusion in one sense.  The church was a dominant force in all of culture.  It affected all of life.  If you were born, you were baptized into the church.  This was the result of the apostles going out into the Roman Empire to begin with.  For the Reformers, reaching the lost wasn't a matter of going out into a strange world to preach Jesus to a lost people.  It more closely resembled my first apostolic method above, going to the Jews who had already had the foundations of religion laid down.  The lost masses were already in church.  The Reformers believed that a corrupt and wayward church had prevented the truth from making its way to the masses.  It had prevented the truth from being known even to the church leaders.  So, for the Reformers, the logical strategy would be preaching the word to those in church.  That the church was everywhere, and everybody was already connected to the church in some way.  The cultural context was one of Christendom. 

Now, seeing their context, it would be easy for the Reformers to see a positive effect preaching would have on uneducated church attenders.  They were hearing truths they never heard before.  They were being greatly affected by the application of God's word directly to them and in their own language for the first time.  And this great affect spread out over large parts of Europe.  It would be easy for the Reformers to conclude that preaching to people in church was a means of grace.  It would be easy for them to turn this into a doctrine. It would be easy to see that since this was a widespread phenomenon, that it should be something that everybody should do at all times.  It would be easy to teach this down through their own generations, and it would be easy for those who were taught it to hand it down.  It would be easy to see the same affect in other situations with a similar historical/cultural context.  It would be easy to see all this as a timeless, eternal truth rather than a contextual strategy.

But...it may be easy to see this method not working as well with a church of already more mature believers.  It would be easy to recall the tradition and its most early effects without realizing the context from which it came, and apply the doctrine to this group of more mature believers.  It might be easy to see the lack of the same kind of response as a deficiency on the part of the listeners as opposed to the deficiency of the strategy.  This could easily lead to a doctrine or teaching of expositional listening and expositional note taking.

Now, please understand, I'm not against preaching in the church, or against good listening.  My concern is that we in the Reformed world don't see our own contextual history and have a tendency to view things as applicable to all cultures at all times, simply because we're Reformed.

Protestant Traditions Not Found In The Bible

I'm revisiting this from a while ago, so I'm posting the following again.  This should include comments as well.

Here is a list of Protestant traditions that I don't remember finding in the bible. I may be mistaken about some of these, and these are off the top of my head, in no particular order other than the order that I thought them in, so if I have goofed up this list, please let me know! I'm not suggesting any of these things are wrong in and of themselves. It's simply a list. [Update: Please add, subtract, comment or correct. I'd love to hear your input. I'd like to keep this running as long as anybody is interested. Any additions of my own or from your comments I'll add in red type.]

• Sunday School
• The pulpit
• Preaching of the gospel in church - isn't every example in the NT of preaching the gospel outside of the church and to unbelievers?
• Bringing people to church to hear the gospel
• Grape juice used for Lord's Supper instead of wine
• Christmas
• Church buildings
• Stained glass
• The Sunday meeting being called a "worship service"
• Choir
• Tithing to the church instead of in ministry to others
• Sunday meeting of the church without a meal
• Sunday meeting of the church without Lord's supper being part of that meal
• "Personal quiet time"
• A Sunday church meeting without considering how to stimulate one another to love, or how to stimulate one another to good deeds, or the encouraging of one another.
• Bringing your own bible to church
• Pews
• Giving a personal testimony at a baptism
• Church bulletins
• Ushers in the church meeting
• Dressing up for church
• Congregational voting

Protestant Traditions Not Found In The Bible - Followup

My recent post Protestant Traditions Not Found In The Bible received one of the highest site visit counts I've ever had. I'm wondering the reason. Is it because so many people are interested in the topics of church and tradition? Is it because I also happened to leave a higher than usual number of comments on other large readership blogs and gained clickthroughs from my comments? Probably a bit of both.

In any case, I created the list to make a few observations. One, Protestantism has its traditions, too. I often hear criticisms from Protestants about the traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Many of these criticisms are not necessarily about the specific traditions themselves, but that RC and EO have them at all. We should be careful about criticising others who hold to traditions if we ourselves do as well. Some of the Protestant traditions I listed are rock solid foundations of some people's faith, and to question them is to suggest one's own apostasy.

Another observation is that some of these traditions not found in the bible are so central to church that things that are found in Scripture aren't observed parts of those traditions. For example, I recently added "going to church" as a tradition (thank you, Judy). Hebrews 10:24-25 is so heavily relied upon as a command to go to church (funny, it isn't even in the imperative) that the other traditions like the Sunday meeting being a "worship service" crowd out what the passage actually says about what we're supposed to be doing in church, if in fact we take not forsaking the assembling together meaning we need to go to church. Where is stimulating one another to love and good deeds and encouraging one another as mentioned found in our worship services?

I don't have a problem with tradition as long as it neither contradicts Scripture, nor crowds out things that Scripture says we must do.

Belated Easter Week: Easter Sunday

Good Friday was the death of Christ. But Easter Sunday is the resurrection. It is one thing to have our sins dealt with (which is pretty major), but to gain newness of life is the better thing. What good is it to be released from prison if there's nowhere to go? I view the resurrection as central to Christianity.

Belated Easter Week: Good Friday

Good Friday is called such because even though Christ's crucifixion was brutal and bloody, our sins were laid upon Him. Our sins are atoned for. His cry of "it is finished" meant the deal was done. As good as Good Friday is, it is only part of the story. The other part is better. More to come...

Belated Easter Week: Maundy Thursday

I beg the pardon of those more liturgical than myself, but I really have no clue what Maundy Thursday is. Blame it on my non-denominational background, I guess, but some regard one day above another, and some regard every day alike. I think I first heard the term just last year. I gather that it has something to do with the last evening Jesus spent with His disciples before being crucified.

Belated Easter Week

I wanted to comment on the days of celebration for Easter week, but wasn't able to. I'm hoping to do a belated series of posts this week. I'd like to post on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and on the Sabbath in between, and maybe St. Patrick's Day as well, since it fell in Easter week this year.

Masters of Imputation

We Protestants love our doctrine of imputation. Our sins are imputed to Christ and His righteousness is imputed to us. But doctrine without "practice" - or practical application to the real world - is meaningless. So we become masters at imputation.

What I mean by this is that we take the formal, official doctrines of a given church - no matter how minute or how old or outdated - and impute them, all of them, to every one who attends that church. We don't like what the medieval Roman church had to say about justification by faith, or what they said about those who hold to the Protestant view (Trent)? Well, then, every Roman Catholic living in 2007 implicitly believes the same thing, and none of them can be saved as a result. Read some comments here about Francis Beckwith's "conversion" to Catholicism. We drive by a playground full of Catholic schoolgirls in their plaid skirts playing teatherball and say, "Yup. There's the Council of Trent in action right there, you betcha."

If we applied some of these ways of thinking consistently, then we should conclude that Martin Luther, who didn't want to leave Rome, but simply reform some things, didn't become saved until he was excommunicated. We should also impute the hellish religious doctrine of the scribes and Pharisees to Jesus and His band of followers. Some of his closest followers (the bible calls them apostles) continued to attend synagogue on Saturdays, even with the same rulers in charge, well after Jesus was crucified.

What I'm Giving Up For Lent

'Tis the season of Lent, when Christians who observe it give up something normal to their lives, patterned after Christ's 40 days in the wilderness without food. This is the 40 day period prior to the Resurrection (Easter). I've recently been reminded of Lent from the many blogs and websites I visit. Many discussions are going on about Lent, and many tell what they are giving up.

This year, I've chosen to give up the same thing for Lent as I do every year. In fact, it's become a tradition for me. I am so disciplined in giving up this thing that it has become second nature to me, even to the point that I'm not even conscious about giving it up!

This year, as every year, I'm giving up the observance of Lent.