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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Karl Tsatalbasidis

Emergent Theology: Overturning Sola Scriptura - Part 1

It's a privilege for me to be here and you're in fact part of my guinea pigs.

As Esther had mentioned, I'm finishing off a PhD in systematic theology where I'm looking at the interpretation of God's presence in corporate worship.

And so I'm going to be sharing some things about that as we go through our presentation this evening.

And part of what I study does have large implications for the emerging church, and so I'll just mention a few brief things about what I'm doing.

I am deconstructing, as they say, a view of God's presence in which the Eucharist, where the priest pronounces the words, this is my body, I'm criticizing that as the mechanism whereby congregations for centuries have received the presence of God.

And that statement, this is my body, has been interpreted on the philosophy of Aristotle.

Now I need to tell you that I'm Greek, and so I'm going to be picking on my forefathers quite a bit because unfortunately they have caused quite a bit of damage in how we understand God, how we understand humanity, how we understand the world and the ways in which that has impacted all of Christianity.

And so a sacramental model posits that we receive the presence of God through the wafer in which the substance of the bread has been transformed into the substance of the divine son of God.

The substance, which is the part that you can't empirically test or know that it's there, has been interpreted on the basis of Aristotle, which has caused a lot of problems.

The Reformation came along later, and the Word of God and preaching was the mechanism whereby congregations then experienced the presence of God.

And then in the 20th century, you have the charismatic movement and music now is synonymous with the presence of God.

In much the same way that the wafer was synonymous with the presence of God.

And that's why in the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church quickly, quickly supported the charismatic movement because in effect, the only thing that had changed is the mechanism whereby the presence of God has been experienced.

So in the sacramental model that mechanism was the wafer and in the charismatic model It's music.

And so God is inside the music in much the same way that he was actually inside the wafer.

What has never changed is the interpretation of his presence.

So, that's the deconstructing part that I've already done.

The construction phase I will be working with several passages in which I'll develop a framework for understanding what God's presence means, not exhaustively, and then how it relates to every single part of liturgy or worship.

And so with emergent theology, I'm grouping it into the charismatic movement because in emergent theology, the presence of God primarily comes through sacraments, like signs and symbols and art, and also music as well.

So it doesn't really belong in the Reformation phase where the presence of God comes through the spoken word.

As a matter of fact, Emergents, the only ones they criticize are really mainline Protestants who adhere to the authority of the Bible.

They don't criticize Hindus or their theology or anything like that, okay?

And so what would happen in Adventism if we began to accept emergent worship practices and spiritual disciplines?

And the thesis of the entire presentation, not just tonight, but it will be a two-part presentation, so the introduction tonight and then tomorrow morning, is that the sola scriptura principle, the authority of God's word as the final arbiter in right and wrong is ultimately neutered and nullified and set aside.

Now just a little description about emergent practices because we don't usually experience emergent theology at the level of theology.

We experience it at the level of practices.

And so in corporate liturgy, just a little bit of history here, you've had the charismatic movement, and in the charismatic movement, the music was of course a lot more different than what you find in traditional Protestantism.

So before the 1960s, Protestantism, they were predictable in their worship styles and so was Catholicism actually for the last, for the previous 400 years.

When the Charismatic movement came along, you had quite a lot of experimentation in the area of music.

So you have blues and rhythm and blues and jazz and so forth and rock and so forth and so on.

Now, the charismatic movement originally was not very fond of signs and symbols and sacraments.

And so after the charismatic movement in the 60s, you have the Jesus movement, then you have the celebration movement that came along in the 90s, in which it started affecting our church as Adventists, and we started experimenting with all kinds of music in our worship services.

But still at that time, there was a disassociation from signs and symbols and sacraments.

When the emerging church came along, the music got even more intense, I would say.

But emergents were dissatisfied with the, you know, have it your own way, you know, potluck, you know, how do you want the church to be?

Okay, you want it like that, you don't want hymns, you want this, you want that, okay, we'll do it that way.

So emergents have found that to be meaningless and not providing any spiritual depth.

And so what emergents do is they reach back to early Christianity, But unfortunately, they don't go back early enough.

They begin with, you know, after the death of the disciples, the early church after the death of the disciples.

And so in that church, you have symbols, you have signs, you have sacraments, and so they're looking for meaning there.

So in an emergent worship service, they combine all of the musical styles that you have in the charismatic movement and even more, and they'll combine that with the signs, the symbols, and the sacraments together.

So that would be 1 of the major differences in emergent worship services compared to just simply a charismatic worship service.

So that's how most of us are gonna come in contact with it.

And so we're gonna get this, what appears to be an eclectic choice of music, and then the ritualism and the sacramentalism of the early churches together.

Now, if you're talking about spirituality, then you're talking about different methods of prayer, methods of coming in contact with the divine presence, like the rosary, like Lectio Divina, which is a way of reading the Bible or reading text in such a way that you're not ascertaining the meaning of the words that are there, you are pronouncing those words in such a way that ultimately the analytical part of your brain begins to shut off, and that becomes the process whereby you can connect with the divine presence that way.

So you're reading texts, whether it's biblical texts or not, in such a way that you're not really thinking and analyzing or drawing meaning out of the text because to be quite honest, God never spoke in the text according to emergence and so it becomes a medium for communicating with the divine presence that's stripped completely of meaning.

And so there are a bunch of ways that you can pray that allegedly put you in contact with the divine presence that are based in that.

So most people are going to be introduced to emergent practices, either through spirituality or through corporate worship, as I mentioned.

And so, okay, so emergent theology overturning sola scriptura.

What will happen if we begin to incorporate some of these practices?

So 1 fundamental question tonight, is emergent theology as expressed through emerging worship compatible with fundamental belief number 1 that we have as Adventists on the authority of Scripture.

That the Bible and the Bible only is the repository of truth and we ought to use it in order to test everything.

That we don't have multiple sources of revelation for the purpose of establishing doctrine.

We don't have the Bible and tradition, or the Bible and philosophy, or the Bible and experience, or the Bible and science.

That's what fundamental belief, number 1, says.

Can we as Adventists, as Seventh-day Adventists, continue to uphold fundamental belief, number 1, if we choose to incorporate emerging practices into our worship services?

Can we really say that we're upholding this principle that we've inherited from Protestantism, which by the way, Protestantism has not been very good at consistently applying, and the intellectual Protestants are leaving Protestantism and basically they're not going toward postmodern, they're going back to Rome, as far as their theological structure is concerned.

And if you study systematic theology at the doctoral level in any other university, you are running headlong into the Greeks.

And so Protestantism is in many ways dead.

They're at a fork in the road, intellectually speaking.

They're either going to become Adventists or they're going to go back to Rome.

So can we continue to uphold this if we incorporate these practices?

So how are we going to answer this fundamental question?

Well, this first presentation deals with Jeroboam's violation of the Sola Scriptura principle with its inevitable results, and we'll get to the story of Jeroboam in just a minute.

The second presentation, which I'm going to make tomorrow morning, outlines how emergent theology relates with the Sola Scriptura principle.

So I'm kind of setting up a template tonight in which we can get a biblical view of how the Sola Scriptura principle works in light of worship, actually, and then be led to draw some conclusions.

Turn there with me to 1 Kings 12 and we are going to read verses 25 verses 25 to 33.

Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein, and went out from thence, and built Penuel.

And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David.

If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.

Whereupon the king took counsel and made 2 calves of gold and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.

Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And he set the 1 in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.

And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the 1, even unto Dan.

And he made a house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.

And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah.

And he offered upon the altar, so did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made, and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.

So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which He had devised of His own heart, and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel, and He offered upon the altar and burnt incense." So what is this sin?

If you've read the book of Kings, you know that each and every successive king that came after Jeroboam, the Bible had this commentary.

It basically said, neither did he depart from the sin of Jeroboam, wherewith he made or caused Israel to sin.

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Emergent Theology: Overturning Sola Scriptura - Part 1

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Emerging Church Symposium

Overturning Sola Scriptura - Part 1

1h 13m

Emergent Theology: Overturning Sola Scriptura - Part 2

59m

Revelation Made Simple

18. Revelations Spiritual Revolution for a New Millennium

57m

Vatican II: Cultural Worship Invades Adventism

54m

Identity Theft

4. Lessons From 1888

1h

Why Am I a SDA?

1. Does the Truth Really Matter?

35m

The Power of Perspective

Two Covenants

57m

The Godhead

3. The Godhead: A Historical Narrative

46m

Karl Tsatalbasidis ~ The 'Rock' and Worship: Music and Worship at the End of Time

If the Foundations Are Destroyed, What Can the Righteous Do? Part II

42m

Egypt, the Exodus & Moses' Quest for God's Destiny

6. The Last Word from Moses

1h

How to Read The Bible

2. Case Study #1 - Why Did God Kill His Own Prophet?

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine