Well, we attempted to take Phil seriously this morning, but ended up getting moderated again.  Since it will take at least 12 hours before Phil decides whether or not to release the latest response to his allegations, we hereby give the enquiring public first crack at viewing the latest developments.  Is this a real news site, or what?

Well, I’m usually not a conceited guy.  However, I have to think that when someone threatens to sue me, they must like me a lot –  perhaps even inordinately.  In this case, though, I was un-flattered to awake this morning to read a brand new post by Phil Naessens, in which he flusters and blusters about people ’slandering’ him. 

  “OK. Here’s something I’m struggling with. I have two professing Christians who are unhappy with my methods in dealing with heresy. Because of this both of these two have begun to make accusations about me that are untrue, some within an email chain and now publicly both here and here.”

“I’ve asked them both privately to validate their claims and not a peep from either. Its doubtful that either of them serve in a church anywhere so I can’t go to their pastors to file charges for a hearing like they did in the early church. I don’t think they are going to stop so how should I deal with these two?”

“At this point I’m about to turn it over to the lawyers. These two need to be taught a lesson and I’m awfully tired of dealing with their lies and deceit. They obviously think 1Corinthians 6 is a license to say and do whatever they like which includes making baseless accusations without validation and as I said before these two are most likely accountable to no one so what would you do with these two?”

  Although I felt the urge to write a quick response, I decided to hold off.  I wanted time to think this over.  Needless to say, I was not quaking in my shoes.  I had an enjoyable day, dined out with a family member, spent a few hours in Bible study, and did some writing for my main blog at which I post theological articles –  from a layman’s perspective, so please don’t perspire. 

  Well, during my random meditations, I came to the conclusion that there are in this world contentious men whose business it is to teach everybody a “lesson.”  They are in fact so busy ‘policing’ everybody else that they cannot see the utter assininity of their own situation.  In my opinion, Phil Naessens is one of these men.

   Regardless of what people may think of me, I’m not a total dud. For someone to want to sue me they must like me a heck of a lot.  In Phil’s case, a lawsuit would mean leaving Greece and flying to the U.S. to initiate process against me.   Such a procedure can be expensive, though one may keep the costs low by lodging at Super-8 motel, eating Papa John’s, and drinking bottled water.

   Then there is a little matter called “tort reform,” which means that people can’t initiate frivolous cases as they did years ago.  If Phil wants to blow $200 to send me a “cease and desist” by registered letter, let him jolly well do so.  But I don’t have to sign for anything.  

   All humor aside, here’s how I see the situation: Phil Naessens is a control freak who has set out to “expose” everyone whose opinions he doesn’t like.  When people fail to truckle to his agenda, Phil loses his nerve and often takes a radical course to regain control of the situation.  He moans, he groans, he thrashes his weight around.  In this case, he threatens to call his lawyers.

  Is Phil Naessens behaving any better than a thug?  His invocation of 1 Corinthians 6 is lamentable, considering the fact that Paul explicitly asked the Corinthians why they initiated lawsuits rather than suffer wrong?  1 Cor. 6: 7.  If Phil wants to be “biblical,” why doesn’t he just go the whole hog and let it slide?  If he feels he’s been wronged, methinks he should be offering me his hat and his coat.  Instead, he acts as if he is being pushed to initiate a lawsuit against individuals, who happen to be doing what he ostensibly refuses to do: expose Hyper-Preterism without patting H.P.’s on the back or kissing up to them for a piece of web exposure.

  There!  I said it.  Nothing libelous in this post, is there?  Of course, if Phil were really a dishonest rogue, he could lie to me about doing jail time for allegedly ’slandering’ him, and then call me privately by phone offering to publish my ’slanderous’ remarks as an appendix to a new book he’s working on.  But Phil isn’t that kind of person, nor does he run with that type of crowd.  I know he would NEVER, ever, ever in a million, zillion years affiliate with people like that. 

  Within the past couple months, alarming new developments have occurred among those opposed to the doctrines of Hyper-Preterism.  The compromising faction, led by a renowned seminary professor, is reportedly trying to synthesize Hyper-Preterism and orthodoxy into a new system of eschatology.  To this end, numerous concessions have been made, even to the extent that certain Hyper-Preterists have been allowed a place at the orthodox table.  The compromisers are now loading the conservative H.P.’s with flattery that smells like cheap perfume.  While the chief string-puller maintains an official position of orthodoxy, the step-n-fetch-its take all the heat.  The tactics of the compromising faction are sure to backfire, however.   Hyper-Preterists are not looking for ‘kudos’ and ‘props’ but for wholesale validation of their heresy.  They will not rest content until they are acknowledged as “brothers in Christ.”  Apprently, the string-pullers and tacticians don’t yet realize this.

  The worse thing about this debacle, is that some of the foremost compromisers are assaulting those who choose to stand their ground.  Phil Naessens, a man who is somtimes thought to have bedded the H.P. cause, recently issued two scathing ‘exposures’ of apologist Roderick Edwards, a man whose knowledge of the H.P. movement and tactics is unequalled by any.  Naessens has sunk so low that he resorts to name-calling, while at the same time being ‘nice’ to Hyper-Preterists who started this whole controversy to begin with.  It is reported that Naessens was warned months ago, about flirting too much with Hyper-Preterists.  Folks, does not this seem much like alchol, drug use, or pornography?  A little flirtation often leads to much abuse.  And that seems to be what is happening with the compromising faction of anti- Hyper-Preterism!

A few more thoughts related to the post a few days ago, reading the bible as one story 1. I’ll probably trickle along with thoughts on the Theology Today essay I mentioned previously, “The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story,” by Michael W. Goheen of Trinity Western University. So, I’ll only share a little bit here, content that this is not my only chance to share these thoughts…

On the modern press away from narrative as an overarching category (rather than only as a literary genre), Goheen has the following to say:

“We have fragmented the Bible into bits—moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, historical-critiqual bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits. When the Bible is broken up this way, there is no comprehensive grand narrative to withstand the power of the comprehensive humanist narrative that shapes our culture.” (64:4, p. 472)

Quoting NT Wright’s essay, “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” he presses folks holding the “conservative view” of Scripture. Wright “notes that Christians have often found the authority of the Bible in timeless truth and principles, or as a witness ro primary events, or in its timeless function.” Add to this:

“The problem with all such solutions as to how to use the Bible is that they belittle the Bible and exalt something else. Basically they imply–and this is what I mean when I say they offer too low a view of Scripture–that God, after all, has given us the wrong sort of book and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book.” (64:4, p. 474)

Thoughts?

My friend Rick and I got together as we regularly do to talk shop (we’re both 30-something Methodist associate pastors) and such over lunch last week. Conversation mostly happens around items like the younger clergy experience and issues of church leadership. On this occasion, the topic was the significance of narrative in contast with statistics. Some researchers found that people will choose a narrative as true in the face of data to the contrary because stories are more compelling. The implications for this are many, especially and obviously related to preaching and public speaking. But this is definitely true for leadership as well, with tremendous implications.

For example, we all make sense of the data we take in by fitting it into the bigger Stories that interpret that minute data. Think about diagnosing diseases and conditions and such (like the TV character House does famously). Same deal. Take the raw data, draw connections between them, and fit them into a larger story that makes sense of the individual parts. Only there are often several potential interpretations (see Acts 2:1-17 for an example of this–one interpretation is that the disciples are drunk–v13; Peter has another interpretation, that this fits into a larger story about what God is doing–v17 and following). Some are better grounded than others. The TV show (and character) House features a team of doctors under the direction of Dr. House whose job it is to diagnose the most difficult cases to diagnose, that is, the cases that are most challenging to connecting the raw data with one another and therefore into a larger cohesive story that makes sense of things.

The January 2008 Theology Today carried a wonderful essay by Michael Goheen, a professor at Trinity Western University in Langly, British Columbia: “The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story.” In it he raises up the following from Bob Webber and Phil Kenyon from their 2006 “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future“:

“Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: who gets to narrate the world?” (vol. 64:4, p. 469)

Certainly there are many stories that claim to be The Story, like on the show House their are many diagnoses, or stories, that seem to make sense of reality. In the show, they all fall short somehow until the truth is discovered. That, too, is a good sketch for our lives. We try out a variety of stories that we suppose make sense of “reality” as we experience it. Hopefully, from my perspective, we find them all wanting until we listen to the Christian Story and discover there God’s True Story that makes sense of our lives and that more and more grafts us into its unfolding plot today.

In the January 2008 Theology Today, Marian Maskulak writes about Edith Stein’s image of the cross as a seed planted in the Christian disciple. According to Maskulak, Stein “understands the process of the seed’s growth to be formative.”

Maskulak writes:

For Stein, it is “a well-recognized truth–a theology of the cross–but a living, real, and effective truth. It is buried in the soul like a seed that takes root there and grows, making a distinct impression on the soul, determing what it does and omits, and by shining outwardly is recognized in this very doing and omitting.” Shifting to another metaphor, Stein relates this formative truth with life-giving power to the “word of the cross,” the title she gives to “Paul’s gospel.” God’s redemptive power entered this word of the cross and is available to all who are open to receive it. However, despite its formative character and life-giving power, the cross symbolizes “all that is difficult and oppressive and so against human nature that taking it upon oneself is like a journey to death. And the disciple of Jesus is to take up this burden daily.”