Today's post wraps up our brief series on Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. The last several chapters of the book, and in fact various passages throughout the book, present some of Cox's thoughts on the future of faith - and more specifically his hopes for the future of the Christian faith. Today I would like to focus our discussion on the future.
Cox notes - as have many others - that the future of the church is moving out of the western world, into Latin America, Africa, and the East. While churches stand empty in Europe, the faith is flourishing and growing elsewhere. Notably charismatic forms of the faith are growing fastest.
The bottom line seems to be that faith is relevant for life in many parts of the world and that the Christian faith in particular meets a very real need. Faith simply is not relevant in much of the secular west. But in the global South ... liberation theology and the power of people in small house church groups play an enormous role. Faith flourishes when it is not micromanaged from the top, but grows from the bottom through the power of the Spirit.
Lets look at a bit of what Cox has to say:
First, for centuries Christians have claimed that the Holy Spirit is just as divine as the other members of the Trinity. But in reality, the Spirit has most often been ignored or else feared as too unpredictable. It "blows where it will," as the Gospel of John (3:8) says, and is therefore too mercurial to contain. But some of the liveliest Christian movements in the world today are precisely the ones that celebrate this volatile expression of the divine. ... By far the fastest growth in Christianity, especially among the deprived and destitute, is occurring among people like the Pentecostals, who stress a direct experience of the Spirit. It is almost as though the Spirit, muted and muffled for centuries, is breaking its silence and staging a delayed "return of the repressed." (p. 9-10)
Are we entering an Age of the Spirit? And if so, is this a good thing?
Cox is ambivalent about the growth of Christianity in the global South - even in the rapidly growing Pentecostal churches. Frankly, it is too conservative for his taste. For the most part Pentecostals actually insist on belief in God and in Scripture, and they don't find all faiths valid. Some more of Cox's observations and thoughts:
Fundamentalists are text-oriented literalists who insist that the inerrant Bible is the sole authority. Pentecostals, on the other hand, although they accept biblical authority, rely more on a direct experience of the Holy Spirit. Fundamentalists consider themselves sober and rational. Pentecostals welcome demonstrative worship and ecstatic praise, which they call "speaking in tongues" and which they regard as the Spirit praying within them. ... Fundamentalists insist on a hard core of nonnegotiable doctrines one must hold to unquestioningly. Pentecostals generally dislike doctrinal tests and reject what they call "man-made creeds and lifeless rituals." (p. 200-201)
Are Pentecostals contributing to the shift from belief to faith, or are they among those holding out for a belief-defined Christianity? Are they heralds of the Age of the Spirit? The answer is that there are, after all, 500 million of them, and they vary widely in their theologies and practices. Some Pentecostals, especially white North Americans, have been heavily influenced by fundamentalism. But in the global South, they are more informed by an ethic of following Jesus, and a vision of the Kingdom of God. They have recently become increasingly active in social ministries, but the hostility they sometimes show toward other faiths limits their ability to cooperate. (p. 202)
The Age of the Spirit - and the Spirit of God. If we are entering an Age of the Spirit, and I rather hope that we are, it will be the work of The Spirit. It will not be a laissez faire, anything goes spirituality favored by western liberals. It seems to me that while Cox recognizes shortcomings of a hierarchical authoritarian faith (the RC church) and the intellectual legalistic rationalism at work in conservative American Christianity, he can't actually see past the secular materialism and humanist rationalism at work in liberal western Christianity. Perhaps all three of these vest too much authority in the wrong thing - be it institution, text, or brain - and don't trust enough in the Spirit. So lets ponder it a bit.
Do we take the Spirit seriously? The Spirit spoke to Peter and Paul - and guided their mission. Does the Spirit provide guidance today? If so, how?
Where do you see the future of the faith?
If you wish to contact me, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
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RJS @ 16... Great insights. I think your question: "and how do we discern real leading from wishful thinking and fallen human weakness?" is a critical one. Certainly one that has perplexed me as I have tried to move into a more deliberate "missional" way of being.
i.e. "If we are to assume that God is on mission and already moving ahead of us, how do we discern that movement?" In some ways, the answers to that seem pretty clear. I assume that any act in our community that opens the door to feeding the least of these, etc. is move of God because that just seems like something God would be doing.
However, I wonder how that works when God undertakes what to us is a "paradigm shift", e.g. when the Spirit showed up in Samaria or told Philip to "go stand next to that chariot" on the Gaza road or even at the home of Cornelius. Ironically, for many of us, that a "stranger" (or one who is to us a 'non-believer' for all we know) would go to speaking in tongues would cause us great theological/doctrinal concern more than anything. Had I encountered such a thing 20 years ago, I would have immediately begun to argue with him as to why that is no longer appropriate "after the age of THE apostles."
I have long compared "the Jews" who looked for a sign and the "Gentiles" who looked for "wisdom" to baseball players. One stood in right field and one stood in left field. Each expected the ball to come to them where they were. However, God threw a watermelon from the stands.
i.e. we have this problem that they had: the Spirit blows where it will but we will only receive the Spirit if he comes in the way that we expect...
Maybe we just don't like surprises as much as we might claim OR maybe we are so ill-prepared that what appear to us as 'surprises' are really embedded in the story that God is telling and we, like the disciples, are shaped so as to not see those embedded truths.
If Cox's treatment is largely descriptive (and I'm not certain that I even employ his categories or definitions vis a vis Spirit), I would turn to Amos Yong for a normative treatment in response to what limits we would place on such authority per RJS' question:
Per Amos Yong, the coming Christendom will be radically pluralistic, centered not in Rome or Canterbury but variously in Seoul, Beijing, Singapore, Bombay, Lagos, Rio, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.
The emphases in dialogue will be: 1) postmodern theology that hears the voices of the marginalized 2) postpatriarchal theology 3) postfoundationalist theology that values methodological pluralism 4) postcolonial theology that privileges local traditions, languages and practices 5) posthierarchical that embraces dialogical and democratic processes 6) post-Cartesian theology that gives recognition to the inductive, lived, existential and nondual character of reflection alongside deductive, propositional, more abstract and dualistic forms of theologizing 7) post-Western and post-European theology open to engaging the multiple religious, cultural and philosophical voices of Asian traditions and spiritualities
A pneumatological approach to revelation will then be 1) transcendental - Spirit breaks thru human condition from beyond ourselves 2) historical 3) contextual, concerned w/real lives, real real histories, real societies 4) personal, both interpersonal and intersubjective 5) transformational 6) communal 7) a verb not just a noun 8) progressive & dynamics Spirit calls us to interpret, respond and act 9) marked by love, an unmistakable criterion for discernment 10) received by humble faith seeking understanding 11) propositional and resisting our fallen interpretations 12) eschatological
I commend Amos' The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh (2005 Baker Academic). Therein he employs the semiotic approach of Charles Sanders Peirce and discusses the work of Don Gelpi, SJ, breaking open new categories and eschewing the old (such as natural and supernatural). Amos is leading a new generation of pentecostal scholars into a credible dialogue with modern science, modern philosophy and modern theology.
I bring this up in the context of suggesting that these approaches have profound implications for ecclesiology. What is emerging is nothing less than an ecumenical pneumatological ecclesiology. It criticizes our Western approach, which is largely discursive theology. It emphasizes that Life in the Spirit is also an experience.
Great post and comments.
I'm a strong believer from what I've seen in the need we have to let the Spirit have its way among us. I view it from the perspective of "charismatic" believers who are in various "noncharismatic" churches, and who at one time were part of a fellowship in which openness to the Spirit and the Spirit's moving were more or less emphasized. With wisdom and not with the old divisiveness the initial charismatic movement ironically brought among believers, such believers need to live out this new life in Jesus, quietly and without show and fanfare, and really in natural ways, "supernaturally natural" as John Wimber taught.
And I think we have to be open to new ways not always spelled out in Scripture, but certainly in harmony with it, to how the Spirit may move. But just to think of our Christianity with this mindset, "How is the Spirit moving?" And, "Am I/Are we really open to the moving of the Spirit?" is where we must begin, and what I need to get back to. Everything needs to flow from that.
A problem lies when we codify how the Spirit moves, or what the organization or experience of it is, so that we think the Spirit surely will do in exactly the same way what he did in earlier days. I think that was a problem with the Vineyard movement of which my wife and I were once a part. "I don't know" is essential if we're to really be led by the Spirit.
I also want to affirm the Spirit's moving in those believers who are not of this mindset to encourage them and myself in growing in dependence on the Spirit, together.
I feel presumptuous with this comment, but thanks again for the good posts, and thoughts on this, RJS, and others.
Another thing we need to get away from is that the move of the Spirit is opposed to the intellect. If we mean that we're not dependent on our intellect, but on the Spirit, I think that's right. But if we think the outcome of this will be a disdain of the intellect and of intellectual pursuits and hard work in Christ's Body, this is a grave error. Some are especially gifted this way, like you, RJS, and others here. And the rest of us have to see this as an important part of our full humanity and aspect of our Spirit-led witness of Christ and the truth as it is in Jesus, to the world.
RJS,
To me this is one of the most important discussions we could have. Life in the Spirit is what defines the Body of Christ, it's what separates us from all other communities, breaking down divisions maintained by the world. I've often thought, if we could see the Spirit like Paul did--he was convinced that the only way to explain the neither male/female, slave/free, Jew/Gentile communion was the work of the Spirit--then we would rediscover the "age of the Spirit."
Where do we find it? In the life of the mind, in the sacrifice of believers for others, at the table of our Lord, in our dreams and visions, in the communion of worship, in the imitation of Christ, in the pursuit of his kingdom.
One more thing: the Spirit will work, whether we like it or not. He is irrepressible. Like water, he will flow through, around, in spite of impervious barriers. So, in some respects, no matter where we live (east, west, north, south), we've been seeing the age of the Spirit since Peter delivered his sermon on Pentecost.
I've been inspired by all the comments posted here. This has been a blessing to me.
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