Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life

Foreword by Scot McKnight

Scot McKnight, PhD

Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies

North Park University

Chicago, IL

I recently lost a bet to one of Ed's seminary professors, John Franke. I don't even know now what we were betting on – I think it was a Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings football game, but my punishment was to read John Calvin's defense of infant baptism in The Institutes for Christian Religion. When it comes to punishments, Franke's assignment doesn't get much better. But, besides being unconvinced by Calvin's arguments, I was overwhelmingly unconvinced by Calvin's style of conversation. Truth be told, I was a bit embarrassed by how Calvin berated his opponents as he blasted away at them from his bully pulpit.

Then I did what Ed is encouraging us to do in this book: I gave Calvin a break, I set Calvin in his context, and I realized that Calvin's theology was for Calvin's time. Calvin's theology, in other words, was contextually-shaped. It was what Calvin heard God saying in Calvin's time and in Calvin's ways. God used Calvin to burn a hole of holiness in Switzerland and to construct a contextually-shaped theology that, while clearly revealing a 16th Century style, has endured the test of time. In many ways, then, Calvin provides for us a model of Ed's Coffeehouse Theology. The best way to read Calvin is to sit behind him as he speaks, to watch how his contemporaries responded, and to see in Calvin a model of how to do the same in our world.

Which is what good theology really is. Far too often preachers and teachers find a classical theologian they love – say Athanasius or Augustine, Luther or Calvin, Wesley or Edwards.. Their enthusiasm for the theologian is matched only by the dull looks they get from their congregations or classes when the teacher does whatever he or she can to teach that theology as the best form of theology ever. Which it isn't – why? Because there is no such thing as the best form of theology ever. (Not even Calvin's, I remind my Reformed friends.) Theology is an expression of the biblical gospel and message in a specific time and for a specific time.

This kind of contextual theology is a bit like what I learned from a really good Anglican preacher. I had never heard this preacher, but I had heard what his listeners said about his sermons. So, one day a British pub I asked him, Can I have copies of any of your sermons? His answer shocked me just a little less than it taught me: I don't keep my sermons. When I leave the pulpit and enter into my study there is a dustbin. I toss the sermon in the dustbin before I begin to pray and prepare for next week's sermon.

Which also means contextual theology is so targeted that it is missional. That is, what Ed is telling us is that our reflections on God and our attempt to speak those reflections into our context are missionally-shaped: they are God speaking through his Word through his Spirit and through a theologian who is sitting at coffee in a particular place, at a particular time, with someone listening who needs to hear that age-old biblical message in his or her way for his or her day. Once the theologian finishes his coffee, it is time to go home and let someone else sit in that same seat and talk to someone else – and do what the previous theologian did but this time for a new day and in a new way.

Which is a way of telling us that theology is a conversation – of God with the biblical authors, of the biblical authors with one another, with the early fathers with the biblical authors, and so on and on up to our own day. Most importantly, since theology is a conversation, when we pull up to the table we must invite many others, even those with whom we differ and those from global Christianity, so that together we can discern God's voice for our age. And God's Spirit hovers over all of this and does what God's Spirit always does: pierces with that Word into our heart of hearts. But only God gets the Final Word, which is his Son, and that Word has been uttered once and will be uttered even more completely at the Final Day. Until then we utter words about the Word, but our words are only words – they must not be mistaken for the Final Word.

Which leads me to a final point that I like about Ed's fine book – Coffeehouse Theology seeks to introduce us to where we are in history. Ed knows Calvin was a man of his time, and he knows he, too, is a man of our time. Call our time postmodernity, or if you prefer call it late modernity. It doesn't matter what you call it. What matters is comprehending it, and Ed can help you do that. Once you know where you are in history, you are invited to pull up to the coffee table, pull out your Bible, pray for God's Spirit, know your world and discern what God would have you say to our world.

Good theology then is like good ol' Crosley Field in Cincinnati. That historic baseball field had an outfield that sloped up to the home run fence. No one makes ball parks like that anymore, and it's a good thing. Crosley was a good field for its time.

INTRODUCTION

Contextual Theology: Understanding Ourselves, Understanding God

When was the last time you mentioned God in a conversation, said a prayer, or read the Bible? Perhaps you were helping a friend through a rough time, asking God to protect a loved one, or studying about Jesus' ministry on earth.

God has a way of showing up in everyday life, and just about everyone believes something about God. For example, just try suggesting in a crowd of people that you think there's only one way to get to heaven. You'll hear a wide variety of opinions, often with a high degree of passion. In fact, we say all kinds of things about God, such as the Bible being God's Word or expressing godly views on moral issues such as poverty, war, and the protection of the unborn.

Some people believe that God acts frequently in this world, bringing peace and justice. Others see God as very angry, on the verge of raining down judgment. Still others think he set the world in motion and then walked away.

I want to know one thing: Where do these beliefs about God come from?

As a Christian, my beliefs come from the Bible--and I do believe it is God's inspired Word--as well as from traditions handed down from other Christians sharing the same background. Many Christians would agree with my list.

Even if we agree that the Bible and our traditions guide our beliefs about God, we still don't have a clear consensus about many of the particulars found in the Bible and within these traditions. Disagreements cover a range of issues such as the place of sacraments, the extent of God's control over the world, and how exactly salvation through Jesus happens. Even when we share the same sources regarding our beliefs, we have enough disagreements to drive us into thousands of different denominations.

What causes these deep divides when we try to understand God?

Maybe hidden influences change the way we read the Bible and talk about God. In fact, could our culture have a lot to do with our beliefs? People in the United States, just to name one example, have much to learn from Latin American theologians (and vise versa).

For example, think about how Christians from the U.S. and Latin America tend to read the Beatitudes (Matthew 5; Luke 6). Most of us in the U.S spend a lot of time reading the Matthew's Gospel, especially 5:3 where Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. When we read these words, we think Jesus' primary concern is humility, and so we think of the poverty mentioned here as a spiritual matter. This fits well with our experience of relative wealth, power, and prosperity. Because our culture focuses on image and pride, we read Matthew and think that Jesus wants to counter our culture, teaching humility and poverty in spirit as opposed to pride.

Something very different happens when Latin Americans read Luke's account of the Beatitudes. In Luke 6:20 Jesus said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Here, Jesus speaks directly to the people, instead of about them as Matthew recorded. He also drops the words in spirit. Latin American Christians, who live amid poverty, injustice, and political turmoil, connect with these words. Here, he seems to say that blessing comes from being physically poor, which is very different from the spiritual poverty in Matthew. The wealthy see blessings for the humble, while the poor see blessings for the destitute.

In these two different readings, we gain a glimpse of what happens when we read the Bible: Our local settings and cultural values--in other words, our context--influence how we read the Bible. When we read the Bible, we can't help but see God through a unique local lens.

The Bible presents a deep and rich message about God's concern for both our spiritual and physical worlds. Both interpretations are rooted in Jesus' teachings and both are correct. However, when Christians in the United States focus solely on the spiritual message or when Latin Americans focus only on the physical part, Jesus' message loses some of its depth and richness.

Understanding Seekers of God

The lesson here is pretty simple. Beliefs about God change depending on context. So as we seek information about this God we want to know and to make known, we need to understand the often undetected influences of cultural context. The inescapable conclusion is that we're products of our times and locations, and these influences create a lens for our study of God.

All is not lost. In fact, culture is a good thing to understand. Christians in the U.S. do need to hear Jesus' teaching about humility, and Latin American Christians do need to hear the hope of Jesus' message about the blessings promised to the physically poor. In this case, we can easily see how context becomes a valuable tool. And as we understand the values and challenges of our contexts, we can study the Bible with a greater willingness to hold our culture up to the scrutiny of God.

Of course, the danger occurs when we mistake our biblical interpretations from an isolated context as the definitive word. So we need to challenge ourselves to learn about God with an awareness of context--what we can call contextual theology--while at the same time making sure we value different insights from other cultures where Christians are learning about God in their own particular situations.

In brief, that's where we're headed together in this book. Coffeehouse Theology will help us form and live out contextual theology by understanding who we are and by including perspectives outside of our own in the midst of our study of Scripture. Together, we'll explore where our beliefs about God come from: our context, the Bible, our traditions, and Christians from other cultures.

Concerns about Theology and Culture

We'll start with a long and hard look at who we are as theologians and the way our cultural contexts influence how we understand God. I'm not taking this approach because culture is more important than God. Rather our culture--who we are and our values--becomes both our greatest strength and largest obstacle in theology. Culture can be a strength because it serves as a tool when we use our understanding of culture to study God. Think back to the Beatitude's example: Christians in the U.S. tend to spiritualize the message of Jesus because we understand the pride so prevalent in today's culture. Yet, every culture has weaknesses, too. God is so much more than what we can see by ourselves. So while addressing the pride of our culture in the Beatitudes, we can easily miss out on God's concern for the poor and the blessings he sets aside for them.

You might be concerned about the amount of time we'll spend exploring the interaction of culture and theology, especially in Chapters 5 and 6 on the influences of postmodernism on culture and on the church. You might already be asking, Can't we just study the Bible and leave culture out of this? In fact, don't we just mess up the Bible by considering culture as a part of theology? The truth is that whether we acknowledge it or not, we constantly deal with the influences of culture on theology.

Whatever philosophy dominates our culture, we can't afford to simply ignore it as we form our theology. If we do, we risk allowing the dominant philosophy and culture to covertly influence our thinking about God. At the same time, Christians should never embrace a culture or philosophy. Instead, we need to see our culture as a setting that we need to understand. Then we can either seek to overcome it or put it to use.

In fact, I want to make clear that I'm mostly ambivalent toward culture in that I don't believe one culture or philosophy is right or wrong. In Chapter 3, I'll outline a number of ways we can approach the mixing of culture and theology.

Of course, this is difficult and messy work that requires practice and the input of a Christian community. However, letting an undetected culture or philosophy infect our theology can be more dangerous. Here's the bottom line: If we truly want to study God, we must first understand the cultural lens that we view God through.

Theology: Reflecting on God

In light of the challenges posed by context, let's ask the question again, Where do our beliefs about God come from? We now understand that context plays a role, but we also need to consider specific ways we learn about God. If we want to understand where our beliefs come from, we need to understand theology (which literally means the study of God) and the role theology plays in our everyday lives.

I like to think of theology as reflecting on or thinking about God. Reflecting is a helpful word because it not only addresses the act of seeking an understanding of God, but it also implies the act of reflecting who God is as a result of seeking him out. In other words, theology--the act of reflecting on God--should change both how we think and how we live. We seek not to merely know about God, but to know God in a personal and life-changing way.

Further, if we take the mission of Jesus seriously, we also reflect him for the benefit of others. Jesus instructed his followers to complete his mission, to spread the good news that God isn't just present in our world, but that everyone has an opportunity to know him. In this way, reflecting on God is not only essential in our own relationships with God, but in our ministry to others around us and around the world. Understanding theology's place in our calling to know God and to make God known is a good place to start.

Theology in Everyday Life

Christians face tough questions about God all of the time. One morning I walked in to work and made my usual stop in the kitchen to start brewing coffee. With that essential piece in place, I walked upstairs to my office. On the way down the hall, two of my co-workers were discussing a recent interview on a popular talk show. Joyce Meyers, a popular Christian writer and conference speaker, had said on this show that she believes God forgives her father for abusing her during childhood. If Jesus forgives this child abuser, then the way is clear for him to go to heaven. And that was the sticking point for my co-workers.

After sharing the main points of the interview, Stephanie asked me, How could God forgive a child abuser but send a morally good atheist to hell?

Grace is a curious thing. We love receiving it, but we really don't like seeing it given out so lavishly to others.

I don't know if her father was sincere, but if he really did repent of his sins, change his ways, and ask God for forgiveness, then it is a very real possibility that God will save him, I replied.

But will God send good people to hell? she persisted.

It's hard to say, I said. There's a wide variety of perspectives on heaven, hell, and who goes where. Jesus did say that he is the way, but I can't speak for what's truly in another person's heart and whether or not that person has chosen to receive God's grace. God clearly offers forgiveness to all who repent, but we can't always figure out who chooses to be with God and who rejects God.

I just can't believe that God will forgive such a creep.

What a tough spot. I did my best to explain grace and the cross: I agree that it's hard to believe. But we're all separated from God by our sinful choices, and that's where Jesus came in to conquer sin and make new life possible.

The conversation continued along similar lines. By the end of the conversation I believe that Stephanie had a clearer picture of God's grace and forgiveness, even though she kept it at a theoretical arms length.

I'm not bringing up this incident to show