The Cross Is Not Enough by Ross Clifford & Philip Johnson

Author:Ross Clifford & Philip Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067030, REL012000, Resurrection
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Conclusion

Woodhead’s typologies of forms of self are best understood as a broad generalization concerning the religious and spiritual orientation of many people in European and North American cultural contexts. As with all generalizations, one must guard against making reductionist conclusions. Human beings are complex in their identities and personalities, and our societies encompass diverse and complex ways of living. Streeter remarks:

Most of us find it necessary or useful to adopt roles, to think and speak of ourselves in various established ways, at various moments in our lives. We often have to think of ourselves, for example, as alternately passionate and as administrators, one moment as caring individuals, and the next as self-interested rational actors in a marketplace and after that as competent professionals with resumes. . . . [T]here are typically several forms available to any given individual in any given context, and it is possible, and probably sometimes necessary, to move between them.[516]

Although the problem of sin cannot be downplayed, Christians need to wake up to the sociological and psychological barriers that deter people from joining churches. We suspect that in theologically conservative churches both the dominant style of proclamation and the message’s content are only speaking to a particular kind of personality type that has accepted a narrow and limited understanding of the bestowed self. But we are concerned that today the bestowed self is less grounded in the resurrection and more a reflection of particular personality types that we discussed in chapter 3—particularly, the constricted yet dominant types who share similar attitudes about how gatherings should be structured, governed, and operated; what controlled, predictable worship-styles are preferable; what cognitive styles of preaching are accepted; and where the boundaries between the church and external world should be.

Christian assemblies that emphasize the rational self also attract participants who share similar attitudes about ecclesial structures, what forms of teaching and preaching are preferred, and how the external world is understood. Conservative and liberal churchgoers broadly speaking hold to two different models of understanding selfhood—the bestowed and the rational, respectively. Perhaps it is not surprising then that the two groups hold different attitudes concerning the resurrection. Arguments from actors on both sides about the resurrection reach different conclusions: historical-literal versus spiritual-symbolic. Often the debates legitimately center on questions of facts, history, mythology, logic, and cognitive approaches to textual hermeneutics. These debates about the miracle of resurrection and its accompanying theology raise valid questions.

Broadly speaking, assemblies that cater to either the bestowed self or the rational self fail to enter the wider world where the boundless self, effective self, and expressive self are found. Both forms of assembly tend to adopt positions that are self-reinforcing. The very ethos in which they organize, administer, foster relationships, devise their missions, and proclaim messages is a reflection of these differing models of self, and more bluntly of personality types. Some slight exception to this can be found in the Pentecostal churches. Pentecostals have inherited the bestowed self because of the role of scriptural authority, and

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