Review: The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church

The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church by Lesslie Newbigin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I greatly enjoyed this series of lectures by Newbigin later turned into a book (and one of his first) on the nature of the church. His primary foci are the unity of the church and its missionary nature. Newbigin makes strong arguments for the necessity of the unity of Christians as being an outgrowth of the Church's missionary task (a la Jn. 17). He takes a very interesting approach to the various emphases in differing Christian traditions, breaking things down into the Catholic (in which likely the Orthodox approach would also be implied), the classic Protestant, and the Pentecostal categories as emphasizing authoritative community, doctrinal teaching, and spiritual encounter respectively. While I cannot go as far with the ecumenical argument as Newbigin seems comfortable with going (one should not forget that he wrote these lectures in the 1950's), there is much that is positive to consider in his words. His argument that neglecting any one element (community, doctrine or Spirit) is devastating to the church and thus there is need to evaluate our own tradition (whatever it may be) in light of the others is on point.

At the root of this call to unity is the missionary nature of the Church. He quotes Brunner saying "The Church lives by mission as fire lives by burning." While Newbigin does give the caveat that the church does not exist only for mission, he sharply and rightly critiques the western church that too often (especially at that time) sees mission as merely a ministry department rather than vital to the nature of the church in the world. His thinking in this regard has been foundational for much of the more recent (and fortunate) turn towards the nature of the church as a missional community. While this was not my favorite book by Newbigin (that place would go to either "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" or "The Open Secret"—both better choices for an intro to Newbigin than this work), it is certainly packed full of much needed insights.

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Review: That Hideous Strength

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This final volume of Lewis's space trilogy was very different than the other two. To begin with, it was longer than both the first two combined. This is certainly connected with the fact that the pacing of the story was significantly slower than the first two volumes. In fact, it wasn't till around page 300 that some of the more extreme fantastic element began to show up. What it did have going for it was an incredibly insightful analysis of some fairly typical characters and what motivates them. This kind of raw and honest analysis that we would like to admit is not true of ourselves was present in the other books. However, here Lewis works it over. While I did very much enjoy the book (especially near the end), the pacing was a bit too slow for me. All the minute details of the life of a college don—something Lewis knew about intimately—lost their quirky attraction after the first 100 pages. That to say, it's hardly feasible to think of reading the first two books and not finishing out the trilogy, but this was my least favorite of all three (but still a pretty great book).

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A Brief Review of James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom

For a book whose conclusions I didn’t ultimately agree with, I deeply enjoyed this work. Desiring the Kingdom offers abundant grist for the mill, pulling from a rich variety of sources. With deep and insightful consideration and commentary on current cultural idols, it argues how a rich and well-formed ecclesiology might fight against them. It’s one of those books where I’ve filled ample margin space with my own replies or counterpoints to the arguments made. The best kind of book is the one that makes you think deeply, even if (and often because) you don’t agree with everything it says.

On the downside, Smith tends to be repetitive at times. This might be forgiven as his attempt to convey an approach to Christian worship which is foreign to too many Christians. He as much as states in the book that repetition is powerful, so maybe he intentionally employed his own theory in the writing? That said, despite the repetition, this is an academic book and the layman who is not a philosophy or theology student will likely find it somewhat hard to follow. He takes apart Enlightenment anthropology (justly so) and follows upon Charles Taylor’s anthropology closely. Smith has also written a somewhat more accessible version of this book for a broader audience called You Are What You Love, though some friends have told me it’s also not a simple read.

A Summary
To summarize briefly, Smith’s main ideas are the following:

1) We are primarily worshiping animals more than cognitive beings (i.e., “you are what you love”).
2) These desires are aimed at a particular end, though which end is not always explicit or clear even to us, the worshipers. The end/telos Smith refers to as the particular vision of the “kingdom” one desires, hence the title.
3) These desires are formed through habit, particularly physical, non-cognitive habits that impart an implicit vision of the “kingdom”. These habits are imposed on us not only in Christian worship, but in the culture around us. These Smith refers to as “cultural liturgies”.
4) Smith advocates a return to a more holistic ecclesiological practice (read high-liturgical) that he is sure will impart said vision for the Kingdom of God over time.

Deconstructing and Overcorrecting Descartes
Let me start with what I think are the important take aways. First, Christianity is more about what you love than what you think. Here Smith follows in the tradition of Augustine and takes Descartes to task. One might have the right Christian doctrinal ideas and still have a heart that loves something else: a functional idol. Smith does a fantastic job of presenting how the physical practices and habits of modern American culture form our desires without us much thinking about it. His criticism of the “military-entertainment complex” is particularly poignant, especially in the current climate of rising nationalism. It might have been my favorite part of the book. Smith’s proposal to think deeply about and become aware of the implicit visions of the “kingdom” (telos/highest good) presented to us in culture and adopt a more holistic anthropology is worth the price of the book.

That said, I think he oversells his case. While he is right to criticize an Enlightenment approach to Christianity that puts most of the emphasis on the head, I felt he went past the heart in a reactionary stance and put most of the emphasis on the body. To be sure, habits—including physical ones—do play a part in shaping desire that we probably don’t often think about. At the same time, Smith leaves one with the impression in his early arguments that the cognitive does not play much of a role in determining the desires of the heart.

The emphasis on considering desire/love as primary over the rational/cognitive for what determines worship is a valid point. Nevertheless, Smith does not make much of a case (certainly not from Scripture) that the physical plays as much of a role as he claims it does. In my opinion, he makes a needless bifurcation in pinpointing the practices of desire as physical, rather than considering the holistic nature of the human being. The biblical use of the term “heart” (kardia, which Smith also refers to as primary) is neither merely cognitive, nor merely primal/physical. It seems to me that Jonathan Edwards did a much more balanced job of parsing the balance of imagination/heart.

An Overcorrected Ecclesiology
This over-corrective anthropology becomes problematic when Smith arrives at its application for the church. I personally have nothing against a “high liturgical service”—at least one higher than most American Evangelical churches. However, I live in a land where Eastern Orthodoxy is the primary default religion. It’s highly liturgical—possibly in some ways even more so than Roman Catholicism. While Smith is busy touting the praises of the power of this sort of “holistic anthropology” for its power to form desire, I found myself wanting to ask, “Have you spent much time in a society with a high liturgical default church?” The reality is (as many in Europe will know) that man has an incredible ability to go through the motions and have it affect very, very little of his desire. At one point, relegated to a footnote (pg. 167), Smith candidly admits that he believes that “going through the motions” can be a virtue in itself—though not an ideal one. I’m happy to agree that there may be ideas implanted via such practices that can later come around to haunt the lapsed in a good way. Nevertheless, to say that these things are forming “desire” by themselves in a very meaningful way is a bit of a stretch.

I can imagine the argument that most people in historically high-liturgical societies today are too inconsistent to have the effect Smith is claiming they will have. I’d counter that, first, there are still some quite religious countries of this kind around—though it has not led to them being particularly receptive to the Gospel. In fact, one might argue that their high-liturgical performance often becomes a kind of barrier to their reception of deep, biblical truths. Second, Smith alludes to times in church history when liturgical practices were more regular in the life of the community, for example, Italy in the Middle Ages (again relegated to a footnote, pg. 211). My immediate thought was, “This was not a particularly healthy period in church history. Why would we want to go back to that?” Yes, iconoclasm has taken steroids in much of the American evangelical landscape (itself being an overreaction). And while Smith is right to criticize that mistake, surely another overreaction back to the original is not the solution.

The other odd point about his application of the over-corrected anthropology is that his book was, in practice, what he was railing against: a primarily cognitive discourse on the theological meaning of various elements of a traditional, high-liturgical service. In that, he seemed to betray his own hypothesis. The reality is that man is both cognitive and physical. Both are components of desire and work together to form what we might call the imagination. Again, Smith’s attempt at correction of the predominant cognitive-heavy model is valid and to be commended, but it is overdone.

Deconstructing Christian Colleges
There is a very short closing chapter on the implications of this anthropology for the “Christian liberal arts college”. Being a professor at just such a college (Calvin College), this is surely something Smith has much first-hand experience with. The reformation Smith calls for at such institutions looks like something of a mix between a monastery and a seminary—perhaps something L’Abri-esque, though longer-term and slightly more structured. And certainly it would be less transformationalist in leaning. Smith’s counterculture approach to ecclesiology comes off heavy at certain points where he lays into the more Kuyperian approach. Smith quotes Hauerwas heavily, so this is no great surprise (though for his being a professor at Calvin, perhaps it is surprising).

While there are obviously conclusions I disagree with, I did genuinely enjoy the book and found myself not being able to put it down at times for all the stimulating debate it produced in my thinking. This is also part one of a three part series on cultural liturgies, the final volume of which just came out in 2017. I’m looking forward to engaging further with Smith’s thought in the next two volumes.