Liminal Christianity

When I asked about complementarianism, my pastors offered me Kathy Keller's Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles as giving basically their position on the matter. It is a very small little pamphlet, easily read in a single sitting. While the first part of the book is (in my view shaky) exegesis, the second half addresses "personal journeys." The exegesis might be weak simply because of the lack of space, so, between that and my not being a bible scholar myself, I'll leave the responses to that to others. Instead, I want to examine whether the text successfully presents complementarianism as good. So, let us begin, where Keller winds down the exegesis section and begins transitioning to personal journeys, on page 29: Earlier I raised the question, "Why did God arrange things this way, with a gender-based division of labor?" At the end of the day, I still don't know. I could speculate, but speculation often leads to error. I will follow that ancient divine who...

 The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a set of four sources of legitimate theological knowledge. They are: 1. Scripture 2. Reason 3. Tradition 4. Experience They are not co-equal sources of knowledge. Rather, they are ranked in the order I have just listed them. This does not mean that the lower sources are only legitimately consulted when the higher do not give a verdict, but rather, that, if there is conflict, we defer to the higher-ranked sources. Our experiences do affect how we pick up on traditions, how we reason, and how we read Scripture. Similarly for the other three sources of knowledge. Deconstructing Christians are sometimes criticized for relying too heavily on experience. Part of my goal in this post is to push back against that. For one thing, over-reliance on experience lies behind much discounting of what has been called the deconstructionist literature. The dismissal of critiques as inapplicable to *my* church because *I* don't experience those harms there is very much a...

There is always another way of interpreting things. However you argue things are going in some culture, there is always some way of spinning things to argue that things are going another way. That doesn't mean that neither interpretation is right or wrong. In fact, it should make us wary of a move which simply notes the possibility of an alternative interpretation in order to dismiss an uncomfortable interpretation. When we have competing interpretations like this, we must weigh the plausibility of each. In some cases, there are many layers to the interpretations. In the especially heated cases, where we are arguing about how someone's milieu is, we are often dealing not only with interpretations of events at, e.g., a local church or a denominational meeting, but with the narrative by which others live. This is part of why deconstruction is unsettling: it requires us to revisit how we interpret our whole lives in light of how we interpret those cultures in which we have been fo...

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb 10:19-25) This passage has been used to argue that Christians must  go to church (every Sunday! Or nearly every Sunday). In other words, it has been used to impose a new law on those who were supposedly freed by Christ's blood. So, what ...