Sat 3 Jan, 2009
Two books dominated my Christmas thinking this year. The first set the stage for the next. First, I read Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon and Schuster) by A.J. Jacobs. It’s a great book for preaching illustrations, but it also represents the fundamental faith of modernity … the faith in reason. The author sets himself the task of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Afraid? Anxious? Beset? Burdened? (Notice how I cleverly mirror the author’s “A-Z” approach to comprehensive understanding?) Continuing education is the answer. Hope lies in knowledge. It is the enlightened agenda of the 20th century. The last sentences in the book are so reassuring:
“I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning. And I know that I’ve got my life back and that in just a few moments, I’m going to have a lovely dinner with my wife.”
Salvation is at hand! After all, what is more important than knowledge, health, family, and a good investment plan? Or maybe not?
It is that “maybe not” that drove me to read Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination (Paternoster) by Colin Greene and Martin Robinson. This is one of the best books on postmodernity yet available. However, be warned! It is steeped in very profound, but highly nuanced language. It wrestles with the history of ideas, not a catalogue of facts. My doctoral degree is in philosophical theology, and I found a refreshing challenge. If you are a pastor, this is a book best read in a classroom or discussion group.
The title reveals the intent. This is not about describing a new meta-narrative of religious perspective, nor about defining a new metaphysic of reasonable orthodoxy. It is about discerning a new “vista” that is partially hidden and partially revealed. It is a “meta-vista” … a vista that is “on the way” … as if people emerged from the cultural forest into a sudden clearing and saw things differently for the first time, and were not sure what to make of it.
The authors call this experience “radical cultural engagement”. It is the intersection of societal imagination, cultural icons, and the encounter with the Bible as scripture. It is what lies beyond the subjectivity, selfishness, and opportunism of modernity; but also beyond the preservation of heritage, intellectual curiosity, social action, and ideological cant that represents 99% of Christian thinking in postmodernity. What happens when we emerge from the cultural wilderness to discover that both conservative and liberal fundamentalists are wrong, and both modern rationalism and postmodern willfulness are wrong, and God is weirder than expected?
The Bible becomes a means to grapple with the weirdness of God. Unfortunately, Greene and Robinson seem most interested in just one aspect of that wrestling match, namely the “political” implications of the storylines of scripture. Scripture interprets the “metavista” by pointing toward the righteous Kingdom of God, curbing our proclivity to violence, modeling a moral alternative to rampant capitalism, and establishing the church as proclaimer of the good news of [social?] reconciliation. I’m not convinced that is sufficient, but it is a darned good start.
The authors began the book by sounding the alarm that the irrelevance of the church is accelerating (despite evangelical claims), and that this irrelevance is rooted in the church’s inability to discuss anything meaningfully with anybody. I think this is accurate and powerful. The book finishes positively by focusing on the “cosmic significance of incarnation” as the thread that connects past, present and future in an unfolding narrative. This is not about a relationship with a cool dude named Jesus, but about experiencing the intersection of the infinite and finite.
In the end, there is a fourth circle intersecting with societal imagination, cultural icons, and encounter with scripture. That fourth circle is decisive. It is the peculiar kind of revelation through which the fullness of God is present, yet unexplainable, uncontrollable, and unexpected. It’s what makes a “vista” possible in the first place, and what renders every “vista” only a “metavista”.
That experience alone renders the church a counter-cultural minority. It is a paradox of escape from the world and encounter with the worlds. The one thing that surprises me most of all about this book is that the authors seem to assume this paradox has not happened before. I think it has … in the monastic movement of the 4th – 6th centuries that rejected Christendom from the very beginning.
Tom Bandy
