 |
| Addressing closing gathering. |
I can’t stand the way time flies, or else maybe time stands still, or just ticks over, and it is we who fly! Anyway, it does feel as if the year is racing to a conclusion and time is constrained as so many little things rush in, some of them apparently urgent, so that they can distract us from the important. In fact the Urgent is an almost perennial enemy of the Important. Even so I try to register Alvin Toffler’s dictum which I have on the front page of my daily diary which says: “You have got to think about Big Things while you are doing small things, so that all the small things go in the Right Direction.”
Anyway, before November slips through my fingers I want you to have my report Number Two on the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation held in Cape Town from October 16th to 24th.
This Congress was, as I said in my last letter, a First Order experience which none of us who attended will ever forget. But part of the problem was that such a Mount Everest volume of material and happenings came at us that it is exceedingly difficult to do more than just pick up the headlines in a report like this and then leave interested people to chase down the details via the internet and via the Congress website which is www.lausanne.org. Or if you are wanting to get the content of the major papers as submitted in advance of the Congress itself, then you can also google ‘Lausanne Cape Town 2010 Papers’, and select ‘Advance Papers/The Lausanne Global Conversation.’ There you will see quite an overwhelming array of material, some of which undoubtedly will capture your attention and be worthy of your study, scrutiny and application. You will see there many of the different subjects treated during the Congress and you can single out those of special interest to you or your church. All the Congress material is also at AE Leadership Training Centre and can be obtained by emailing Marius, Verna or Noeline at: registrar@ae.org.za or phone 033 3477050.
Now let’s get on with this report.
***
I. Another Overview, Another Perspective
In my last letter I gave my own overview. But because we all see things through our own presuppositions and tinted spectacles, there is probably value in getting another overview from another perspective. So here is my friend Dr Jurgens Hendricks, theologian and missiologist, of Stellenbosch Theological Seminary, reporting. Space forbids giving his whole statement, but here’s a chunk of it:
“Many voices from many places shared, told stories; women and men. Nobody tried to manipulate the audience. The typical, rational academic theology was largely overshadowed by the authenticity of those who shared from the heart and experience. The testimonies of the power of the Bible and Spirit to sustain the faithful in the most trying of circumstances gripped everybody every day. The perseverance of the saints was suddenly stories of real people. Tears were real too. The injustice suffered by so many of our brothers and sisters is heartbreaking. Suddenly evangelism was portrayed not as a method but as a lifestyle in which the cross was clearly visible.
“The way the conference was structured exemplified the new era. For table discussion we were seated, six diverse people to a table, 700 tables in total. Morning sessions were in the big conference centre with its astonishing technology. The first 1¾ hour was ‘Celebrating the Bible.’ Ephesians was our text, divided into six themes that flowed from the text: truth, reconciliation, world faiths, priorities, integrity and partnership. We dwelled in the Word, gave feedback of our table discussion and views, listened to testimonies and presentations, and looked at videos and performing art presentations. By 13h00 we reported back again. During the afternoon session one could attend one of four presentations / discussions related to the theme of the day, and that was followed, after tea, by small group dialogue sessions, regional gatherings or special interest group sessions. Music, song and prayer meetings were always available. The evening sessions were all labelled ‘God at work in the world through His church’, followed by a late night film session.
“The fellowship we had at our table was to me the most precious of the meeting: Bethany was from Washington DC (with her baby) working for a justice mission; Philippa from London working for Tearfund; Farri came from Iran. His family lost 17 members since the 1979 revolution. He is at the head of about 3500 growing house churches; then Jack, from Jerusalem, an Arab, pastoring a congregation of ex-Muslim and other Palestinians. Having been imprisoned by the Israelis seven times, he put violence aside after discovering the Gospel. The third Arab was Fouad from Cairo, Egypt, a businessman, electronic engineer who learned to discern what want God wants him to do and is now involved in a wide range of Christian ministries. Six perspectives on Ephesians, six views on what was happening in the world and, for me, a learning experience about the Arab world and the Muslim religion.
“The reality of the missio Dei was overwhelming. God is at work, in many places all over the world. It happens “bottom up”. We have listened to testimonies of the mighty deeds of the triune God taking place at the fringes of societies. Humility, integrity and simplicity are becoming the marks of a true church. I heard ‘mission’ more often than ‘evangelism’. Honest introspection was done; there was brokenness over the disunity in the church, false motives and the prosperity cult. The economic and political systems and powers that lead to poverty, misery and injustice were seen as reality. The key role of women was acknowledged and the gender issue handled with integrity. Dogmatic fights were avoided. The time of missionaries going from the ‘developed’ world to wherever is phasing out. Mission is from everywhere to everywhere. The church is no longer linked to buildings and institutions or theology to an academic world. The true church is moving across boundaries. It is where there is injustice and pain, where ‘the other’ needs a neighbour. I think the Cross is again becoming centre stage in many arenas around the world. It is a sign of pain and struggle, but it brings peace and is announced and discovered as being the Gospel, Good News!”
Thus the perspective of a distinguished South African theologian and missiologist.
II. The Vital and Central Importance of Truth
The first full day of the Congress was devoted to this critically important theme of Truth and how vital it is in a day and age, even in the church, where truth is often minimalised, trivialised, or else “twisted”, to use a word which the Apostle Paul uses in cautionary and warning terms.
Introducing this particular day, the Congress handbook headlined the theme of the day – “TRUTH – MAKING THE CASE FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRIST IN A PLURALISTIC, GLOBALISED WORLD. (This forms the basis for our week of discussion. Everything rests on our clear grasp of Christ, eternal Son of God, Creator, and unique Saviour, in whom all things find coherence.) World views interact and clash in the public arena with new intensity. In our globalised and pluralistic world, we need to equip Christians for their proclamation, demonstration and defence of truth – as found in Christ, the source and embodiment of truth. He is the sustainer of the Universe, the one in whom all things hold together. Denial of truth brings denial of any higher authority. Humans construct gods of their own imagination or choose to believe there is no God. Christians are increasingly perceived as arrogant in their claim to know truth. …..How may the church more effectively ‘hold out the word of life?’, Christ Himself, in the pluralistic arena of public values, and in the globalised world of business? This must be done in bold humility.” Thus some extracts from the handbook.
Herewith, then, a couple of quotes from people who spoke that first morning:
1. Professor Michael Herbst, Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Professor of Practical Theology and Vice Principle of the University of Greifswald, Germany:
“The key reality which we are facing now is that for many people everything is now relative, except for this one new and ultimate truth, that there must not be any singular truth. This is the new divine perspective: ‘I can see everything, and I tell you the truth that there is no singular truth and this is most certainly true’! Herbst noted in his German, West European context that many say: ‘Truth is something from the past. At best, nowadays we can talk about personal convictions. But singular truth is unthinkable, harmful, dangerous, potentially violent and overpowering. Singular truth, many Germans say, and speaking out of their past, is not for us. No more people, please, who are always right. Never ever will we invest our life, our truth and our heart and soul in a singular truth. Singular truth will not set us free. Be it religion or ideology, it is always the same. At first there is a strong conviction. Then there is a will to win others. Then, it is arrogance. Then it becomes hatred.
Then it gives birth to violence.’ That is, one might say, how the German experience of the meta-narratives and truth claims of first Nazism and then Marxism (in East Germany), have led people to think. ‘Never again’, they say. Personal truth is fine. A plurality of personal truths is also fine. But more than that will not do us any good. Thus there is a loss of confidence in truth claims. So people affirm that those witnessing to a singular truth should be silenced in the name of tolerance!’ But for those of us who believe in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, keeping this faith to ourselves is completely implausible. We cannot stay silent and confine ourselves just to personal, privatised truth. That was not an option for Jesus.” Herbst then stressed the importance of “turning our eyes upon Jesus.” He is the One to be lifted up. We cannot discuss singular truth without looking at Jesus.
Otherwise, we easily get misguided and fall into the same traps as other aggressive owners of truth. Most importantly, Jesus is Truth in a person. He is truth not primarily in the sense of correct, compellingly logical propositions. I will find truth only if I put my trust in Him. …...Propositions are necessary but they follow when you encounter the Truth in Person…….When Jesus claims truth, He grants truth. And there is nobody for whom this Truth is not truth. It is to be a witness to everybody because God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the Truth. The tolerance of this truth is shown at the Cross. He suffers the Cross for God’s truth to prevail that there is forgiveness for the sinner, and hope for the hopeless. And at Easter we see that this is all true, for all, at all places, and for all times.”
2. Dr T Carver Yu, President and Professor in Dogmatics in the China Graduate School of Theology, Hong Kong:
In a fascinating paper entitled Truth Matters, Stand Up for Truth, Dr Yu presented an interesting perspective on contemporary religious pluralism:
“Those of us who live in Asia have for centuries lived with the reality of cultural plurality in general and religious plurality in particular. Yes, we have lived with plurality, but not pluralism. Pluralism has never been an option. Whether you are a Confucianist, or Taoist, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu, you have an unwavering conviction that what you believe and live by is truth leading to authentic humanity or eternal salvation, and that all other paths would lead at best to an unfulfilled life and at worst to perversion and suffering. Truth matters, for it has life consequences. While respecting others, you nevertheless see it as your responsibility to point them to the right and true path.
“But the pluralism in vogue today is entirely different. It is an ideology that proclaims that truth is a cultural construct valid only for the culture that constructs it. It has therefore no bearing on another culture or system of meaning. There is no truth that can claim to be truth for all. All truths are relative to one another. The pluralist pushes the point further from cultures to individuals. The individual is now presumed to be the ultimate ground of reality, the foundation on which meaning and values are created. The postmodern pluralist believes that each and every individual creates her own logic and makes her own rules in constructing her own world of reality and value. The individual is ‘autonomous’ in the sense that she is the law unto herself. As each individual constructs her own world, there can be, therefore, as many worlds as there are individuals, and each is merely a web of beliefs true only to the individual who weaves it. As these individually constructed worlds are each unique to themselves, they are therefore incommensurable to one another. So, despite all the rhetoric about dialogue, pluralism has rendered all dialogues to be unnecessary and futile.
“At the same time, as truth is fabricated, it can be re-fabricated at will. It is therefore tentative and fluid, and has no lasting bearing on anything. In condemning all truths to be radically relative and tentative, pluralism has in effect silenced any proclamation of transcendent truth, truth that is true for all human persons and cultures at all times. In the name of condemning dogmatism, pluralism is nevertheless the most dogmatic of all ideologies as it will frame without hesitation any anti-pluralist concept of truth as dogmatism and exclusivism, and reject it out-right. Pluralism as such is the most virulent kind of monism—; it is the monism of indifference. (Monism of course means that all is one, and one is all, and God is all and in all – a bit like pantheism. In fact any theory denying the duality of matter and mind. This also means that rather than separate God from human Soul, the Monistic or mystic position sees the two as being ultimately synonymous. God is not something external and separate from oneself, as in the Theistic religious position, but rather internal and the same as one's innermost self. – MC.)
“However, it does not take too much critical analysis to see that the pluralist is self-contradicting. In proclaiming pluralism because the pluralist tacitly claims that he stands on a vantage point towering above all cultures and individuals so that he can see and pronounce on their relativity. Yet, miraculously, the vantage point on which he stands is nevertheless declared absolute! How does he manage to do that? Purely by animal faith and dogmatic claim. Thus while trivializing truth and framing religious truth as oppressive, the pluralist unashamedly promotes the secularist version of truth, pushing the secular worldview to be true for all. Atheism is allowed to become the new religion and promoted as the embodiment of scientific rationality, objectivity, common sense and inclusiveness. It is now waging a war against religion in general and Christianity in particular with an unprecedented evangelistic zeal and hostility.”
Dr. Yu went on to talk about the enormous societal perils of what he called “the eclipse of transcendent truth.” For example, “Twenty-one years ago, just months before what happened in Tienanmen Square in Beijing on June 4, Liu Xiao Bo wrote an article about the tragedy of the Chinese people, in which he said, ‘The tragedy of the Chinese people is a tragedy of a people without God. When the light from the transcendent Other Side has become dimmed, the darkness of this side will easily come to be taken as infinite light.’ A society without the transcendent light would almost certainly absolutize itself and turn even its darkness into infinite light, as it has no recourse to resources beyond itself for self-critique.
Dr. Yu went on to stress that “if moral values are severed from their transcendent source, then the highest virtue will be nothing but pragmatic function. The value of a person comes to lie entirely as a function in a process, the value of which is measured by his function in a bigger process. In our context, the reality is the global market controlled by global corporations. The value of the human person lies in her marketability or functionality in a market. The person thus becomes a tool or commodity to others.”
“Thus can a society without the illumination of transcendent truth sink into the darkness of its own corruption.”
“Indeed, right before our eyes we see the moral fabric of our social life being torn to pieces, and the human person being depersonalized into a commodity or a set of functions. The exile of transcendent truth will exact a heavy price on us leading to socio-cultural chaos and therefore immense suffering. We cannot but stand up to turn back the tide. We have to preach the truth of the Christian Gospel at all costs.”
3. Dr. Os Guinness (USA/UK – Apologist and Scholar)
These two initial statements, in my view, paved the way that morning for the excellent summary statement by Dr. Os Guinness, social critic, international speaker, author and co-founder of the Trinity Forum in USA.
Guinness’s paper was entitled People of Truth (Why truth matters, and matters supremely). Guinness made a number of telling points in these terms:
“We follow the One who declared that He is ‘the way, the truth, and the life.’ We therefore worship and serve the God of truth, whose Word is truth, and who Himself is true and to be trusted for his covenant faithfulness.
“Only a high view of truth honors the God of Truth. Too often, truth is considered merely a philosophical issue. For us, the philosophical issues are crucial and always to be taken seriously, but truth is primarily a matter of theology. Not only is our Lord the God who is actually, objectively, really and truly there, so that what faith believes corresponds to the reality of what is, our Lord is also the True One, in the sense that He is the One whose covenant loyalty can be trusted, and the entire weight of our existence staked on Him. Thus it is that those who weaken their hold on truth, weaken their hold on God.
“Only a high view of truth reflects how we come to know and trust God. Jesus is the only way to God, though there are many ways to Jesus as people who come to Him….. we come to faith because we are convinced that the claims of Christ and the Gospel of Christ are true. It is because of truth that our faith in God is not irrational. It is not an emotional crutch. It is not a psychological projection, or a matter of wish-fulfillment. It is not the opiate of the masses.
“Faith goes beyond reason because there is more to us as humans than our reason, but our faith is a warranted faith because we have come to the firm conviction that it is true.
We are those who think in believing, and who believe in thinking.
“Only a high view of truth empowers our best human enterprises…… Without truth, the great enterprises of science and all human knowledge collapse into conjecture….. Without truth, the worlds of politics and business melt down into rules and power games….
“Only a high view of truth can undergird our proclamation and defense of the faith.
If our Lord is the God of truth, then we gladly affirm with the early church that ‘All truth is God’s truth.’
“We are therefore ready to welcome and affirm all ideas, arguments, and claims that pass the muster of God’s standard of truth. But we also know that all humans, including we ourselves, are not only truth-seekers but truth-twisters -- and that because all unbelief ‘holds the truth in unrighteousness,’ we have the grounds as well as the duty to confront false ideas and false beliefs with the assurance that they are neither true, nor are they in the best interests of those who hold them – and we therefore do them a service when we challenge them.
“And never forget: our stand for truth today must start in the church itself, and resist the powerful seductions of those who downplay truth for methodology, truth for activism, truth for entertainment, truth for seeker sensitivity, and above all those who put a modern and revisionist view of truth in the place of the biblical view. Let there be no mistake. Whatever the motive, all such seductions lead to a weak and compromised faith and end only in sorrow and a betrayal of our Lord.
“Let the sorry fate of Protestant Liberalism be a warning to us all. To abandon truth is to abandon faithfulness, and so to court decline and commit spiritual suicide.
“Our task is not just to believe the truth, or even to know and defend the truth. Our task and privilege is so to live in truth that we are shaped by truth in our innermost beings, until by the grace of God, we become people of truth.
“So shame on those Christians in the Western World who scornfully deny or casually dismiss what our Lord declared, what the Scriptures defend, and what our sisters and brothers die for rather than deny – that Jesus Christ our Lord is ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’
“Thus if our faith is not true, it would be false even if the whole world believed it. And if our faith is true, it would be true even if the whole world and the entire cosmos were against it.
“That is why we do not just believe the truth. We do not just claim to know the truth, and to defend the truth. But we also worship ‘the God of truth,’ whose Spirit is ‘the Spirit of truth,’ whose ‘Word is truth,’ whose Gospel is ‘the message of truth,’ and whose Son our Lord is ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’
“All the more reason why we ourselves therefore are committed, humbly but resolutely, to becoming a People of Truth.”
III. Conclusion
Friends, I have majored with this particular mouthful of report back on the question of Truth because there is probably no issue in our time of comparable importance. Whether Lausanne 3 grappled with it adequately could be open to question, although in putting this issue at the front end of the Congress there was a genuine attempt to highlight its fundamental, basic and indispensible importance. But I suspect much more needs to be done, and for my money, I was frustrated that someone of Os Guinness’s extraordinary caliber and expertise would end up with only 20 minutes on such a subject rather than letting him have his head and give the subject a full go. There was certainly more that could have been said.
There was in Lausanne 3, to be sure, a lot of heart, and that is all to the good, provided we do not forget the mind. In many ways the church right now is caught up in an intellectual war of ideas, worldview understandings as well as definitions of the nature of truth. The fact is that if our Gospel is not theologically, historically and objectively true, and in coherence with the facts as they are, then there is no News, good or bad, which we have to share in a relativistic, postmodern world.
In other words, Christians in our times who would be biblically faithful have an intellectual challenge which needs to be integral to the process of taking up the evangelistic challenge. One Asian apologist and intellectual has sent me a DVD of his entitled: Let My People Think. Pretty key, I’d say.
Interestingly enough, my longtime high school and university friend Ranald Macaulay, son-in-law of the late Francis Schaeffer, has written a paper entitled Lausanne and the Polemical Imperative. Looking back to Lausanne 1974 and now at Lausanne 2010, Ranald writes: “If 20th century evangelicalism had to pause in 1974 and take stock of its neglect of the socio-political aspects of biblical mission, 21st-century evangelicalism now needs to face up to what was even then, 36 years ago, a more serious neglect – and which today could be described, with only slight exaggeration, as a matter of life and death. The pressing need is for an intellectual challenge to western, scientific materialism – to the very thing in other words which undermined Western Christianity in the first place and which still holds many enthralled. Simply it is the need to stand firm on ‘truth’ and that the Bible is objectively true – not just ‘religious truth.’ This is the fundamental assertion of the scriptures upon which all else rests. Francis Schaeffer coined the now famous expression: ‘Christianity is true truth’—or it is nothing.”
Ranald adds: “The challenge of a naturalistic view of reality remains one of the greatest challenges before us at this time.” And what needs most to be challenged around us is “the naturalistic epistemology undermining all religious claims”, epistemology of course speaking of those mechanisms by which we gain knowledge. In other words, if all knowledge comes from Nature without the intrusion of Super-Nature, then our knowledge of reality will inevitably be radically and tragically incomplete, or just plain wrong.
So what we all face and what the Lausanne Movement faces and was teaching and what all Christian ministries and organizations need to face is the challenge of 1 Chronicles 12:32 which speaks about the men of Isachar who “had understanding of the times and knew what Israel ought to do.” I gave a talk on this theme to several hundred young leaders in Cape Town a couple of months ago. You see, we also need to understand the times so that we too will know what needs to be done. While I was speaking primarily into the South African context, it just might have some wider relevance. So if there are any of you out there who would like to get that talk on CD, then let us know. Or go onto the internet at: ae.org.za and look for the link onto MC talk Understanding the Times.
Finally, it would be great if churches in many places, could consider emulating the line of action proposed by Rev. Alan Bester of the Metropolitan Methodist Church here in Pietermaritzburg where my PA Dave Rees attends. They are planning next year to take the Cape Town Commitment, as a declaration of belief, as well as the Call to Action (which is due out soon) and disseminate the contents of this to the whole congregation through a sermon series based on the 10 main affirmations. Alongside that will be a teaching series in small home groups. Other Congress material can be downloaded off the internet as well for this purpose. This I am sure will be a very effective way of reinforcing the affirmations, decisions, and theological commitments of the Congress, plus its plans of action (these latter will be ready by mid December). This I see as a course of action which many churches in many places could well follow and emulate.
Well, that’s it from me for now. There will, I trust, be one more report from me of the Congress which will reach you in a couple of weeks.
Many blessings and warm love in Christ,
Michael Cassidy
(AE Founder)
No comments:
Post a Comment