God. Real. Right.

Doug Padgitt is an emergent church and postmodern Christian leader. His congregation is Solomon’s Porch in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Like most emergent leaders, he sees traditional Christianity as stuck and stifling. Like most emergent leaders, he values narrative over proposition and inclusion over division. He has recently published A Christianity Worth Believing.
There are some good things that come from leaders like Padgitt. For instance, when we see their success connecting to their surrounding communities, we have to re-examine the lack of that connection in many of our ministries. Those who have sensed vibrancy in emergent communities often take a fresh look at just how vibrant our own worship still is, or isn’t. In other words, it’s always a good thing for churches and ministries to take another look at just how effectively we are living out our faith in the world.
But those who remind us we ought to be willing to change where change is necessary also accidently remind us that change without mooring can result in the loss of the very purpose for which change would have been worthwhile.
Here’s where I have an issue, then, with Padgitt. While it seems he would certainly deny that his change is without mooring, he also embraces “open-ended” theology. It may not be obvious why those two views are if not contradictory at least incompatible. But they are. Here’s how the contraries play out in his book.
On the one hand Padgitt does a notable job of arguing for a more context sensitive theology. He’s pretty loose with exactly how far theological change should go. But there is no doubt he views the orthodoxy of Christianity’s most recent fifteen hundred years as a Hellenistic contrivance. In his view, one such contrivance is the notion of an entirely perfect God. To him, concepts like that one are too Greek and too out of touch with contemporary questions to bear theological significance in a community defined by authenticity and narrative rather than historical assertions and propositional facts. Briefly put, Padgitt believes theology should relate to contemporary culture rather than the dead culture in which Greek words described and defined it.
But on the other hand Padgitt claims that proper theology needs to return to its Hebrew origins. He writes confidently that the Hebrew mind is more comfortable with the imminent, gritty, affected, human-becoming God necessary for a redemptive narrative. Those words are not his, but the ideas are definitely the same. He also sees Hellenistic culture as corrupting Hebrew theology with mythological and philosophical ideas and ideals by the Fifth Century AD (or CE for the au courant.)
He is mistaken in quite a few ways. He is mistaken on the Hebrew understanding of God. The Hebrews were so concerned with maintaining transcendence that they would not pronounce the name YHWH. The first two commandments and the creation narrative are written to impose a hard line of division between the creation and the Creator who actively chooses nonetheless constantly to maintain that creation. And he is mistaken about Hellenizing influences as well. He in fact confuses Heroic Greek ideas about Zeus and the pantheon with later classical Platonic and Aristotelian ideas. The reality is that the things he wants to say about the Hebrew God are more descriptive of the Heroic pantheon than of the God of the Old Testament.
But his main problem is the inconsistency of his overall goals. He wants a more relevant theology. But he wants a more Hebrew theology. Now, unless American culture happens to have taken a turn toward Hebraism, those two goals are not the same. And, in fact, there is no doubt that even in its most skeptical and pragmatic state American culture is still much more Greek than Hebrew. So his goals are incompatible. Whence come they, then, and how can they seem compatible to him? The Old Testament is more narrative and descriptive and less analytical and prescriptive than the New Testament. So when someone wants to change and challenge traditional theological claims which are in fact inescapable in the New Testament’s Hellenistic rigor, the smartest thing to do is divide and manipulate: that is, divide the Old Testament from its New Testament fulfillment and manipulate the newly freed Old Testament to fit the interpreters revisionary theology. And it looks like that is exactly what Padgitt has done.

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Tags: Emergent, Postmodern

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under Culture, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.