Search This Blog

Monday, December 18, 2017

The Person at the Center

As I have mentioned periodically on this blog, I am a fan of centered set theology. To go a little further, I am a fan of centered set theology to a degree that quite a few self-proclaimed fans of centered set thinking have told me that I take it too far. I am pretty much cool with that. I have already talked a good bit about what centered set theology is in this post in my Blue Ocean Reflections series, but for those of you who don't want to fall down an internet link-hole, I have posted a summary at the bottom of this piece. Feel free to scroll down and come back.

Related image

Which Jesus?

One of the most common objections I have seen to centered set theology is the question "yes but which Jesus?" Quite a few people have argued that centered set is all well and good, so long as it is bounded (see what I did there) by the correct understanding of Jesus, that is to say, so long as it is the "right" Jesus at the center of the centered set. When this argument is developed it turns out that this idea of the "right Jesus" is often a Trojan horse which can be used to smuggle in nearly any degree of bounded set confessionalism. What "the right Jesus" means, it turns out, is a more or less particular definition of who Jesus is. It is Jesus "as defined my the creeds" or "as presented in the New Testament" etc... In fact, it is Jesus, stripped of his actual existence as a person and reduced to a series of propositions. So long as a real relationship with a real and interacting person forms the heart of centered set theology, the system (while never easy for us) works well and is not really susceptible to the "which Jesus" critique since the answer is clearly and obviously "Jesus".  

This is where I think those who make the "which Jesus" critique have inadvertently tipped their hand. The idea that the Jesus at the center of the centered set needs to be defined in order for the model to hold, presupposes not a living, relational center, but a dead propositional center. It assumes a center who is not known but defined. And once the center is defined it must inevitably collapse into a more or less broadly bounded set instead. 

The whole problem with the critique isn't that it fundamentally undermines centered set theology as such (though it does), but that it reduces the Divine Person to a series of doctrinal propositions—it isn't bad theology, it is idolatry. Of course once they have substituted God-in-Christ for a series of propositions-about-God centered set theology cannot long survive, the living stone has been rejected and nothing can last long built on a shell or a corpse. The "which Jesus" crowd don't fail to understand centered set because of its flaws (though it certainly has them—it is a model of reality not reality itself and as such is imperfect); they fail to understand centered set because they have not yet broken free of that enlightenment modernist way of thinking which must reduce truth to proposition and thinking to machine logic. They fail to recognize the human and relational logic which sees the other as real, knows the reality of relationship, and knows reality through relationship. 

There is, there must be, a knowing of persons (but never of propositions) able to endure the most distorting of factual inaccuracies. Change every particular about a person you love, lose even your love for them as it turns to hate, and it will still be the same person to whom you are relating. Let me be wrong about everything I know about God, and it will still be God about whom I was wrong. 

This is the mystery at the center of centered set thinking: the center is never a what—always a who

Summary of the theory


Image result for centered set theory
Centered set theology exists in apposition to Bounded set theology. The bounded set spiritual model views all people as divided into two camps (sets), in or out; and usually a person’s position in this model is determined by whether or not they have a sort of mental assent to some series of propositions. In usually means that the person will go to heaven some day and out means that they won’t.  The centered set approach denies the in/out distinction in favor of orientation. The important question in this model is whether or not a person is oriented towards the center (in my circles this means oriented towards Jesus). In this model it is not so important to get people to cross lines and form new mental assent lists as it is to get people to notice and love Jesus, to orient their lives towards Him.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

White Evangelical Politics are Less Christian than American Politics

Last night Alabama elected a Democrat to a statewide office for the first time since the 90’s. That is sort of cool in its own right I suppose, but what particularly struck me about it is the demographic breakdown behind Doug  Jones’ victory, specifically the religious breakdown, and most specifically the behavior of self-identified Evangelical Christians. 
Whatever else comes out of the analysis (Here is the original Washington Post Analysis). There are two trends which really strike me today. If we take Moore’s loss as representative of a decline in the strength of Trump-ism over the last year (Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight make that pretty clear) then it seems to me that Trump-ism is on the decline (huzzah) and that despite its overall decline, it is hanging on most stubbornly among white self-identified Evangelicals. Again:
  1. 1. Trump-ism is deteriorating.
  2. 2. Trump-ism is deteriorating more slowly among white self-identified Evangelicals than it is in the general population.
This leads me to conclude that white Evangelicalism as an institution and an ideology is a healthy environment for Trump-sim.
From the Washington Post
Now I have already made the argument that Trump is pretty thoroughly anti-Jesus, so the implication here is that white Evangelicalism is a healthy environment to a determinedly anti-Christian element in the world. But I don’t think it is prudent to let this fact sit in isolation; I also want to point out that white Evangelicalism claims to reflect, and encourage growth in, the Way of Jesus.
So now we have a movement/ideology which specifically claims to follow Jesus and is simultaneously acting as an incubator for anti-christian activity and behavior.
At this point I think the relevant question is not so much “Is Evangelicalism corrupt?” that it is seems obvious. The question is more “How long should good Evangelicals keep fighting for Evangelicalism?” I honestly don’t know what the answer ought to be. I know my answer was to take what was good, the “Egyptian gold”, and leave.

Some final caveats

  1. I don’t think this means that individual white Evangelicals are themselves anti-christian; they have accepted a doctrine or ideology which, if left unchallenged and uncorrected, is going to incline them in that direction but there are many influences in any person’s life — their own will and character not the least — so many can and do resist it.
  2. I am aware that there are many sub-strands of white Evangelicalism and that many white Evangelicals are fighting valiantly to change at least some of the many broken and damaging elements in this ideology. I wish them the very best and if I had not broken with some basic tenets of Evangelicalism a while back I hope that I would be right there with them. Unfortunately I believe that this last year is evidence that they are currently losing that fight.