Synthesis and Synchretism

I see a powerful movement for synthesis happening in the church, as churches of many denominations and none rediscover spiritual practices from other streams of Christianity, and also absorb ideas from psychology, from sociology, from popular culture, even from physics. There is excitement, but also danger, in this movement. And sometimes it is difficult to decide whether what we are seeing is synthesis, or synchretism - a corrupting of the gospel with alien elements.

My church holds an Easter art exhibition each year. One year, one of the artists used an obscenity in her piece which some people (including some within the congregation - including me) objected to. Part of a church service was spent discussing the issue, openly and (as much as possible) avoiding personalities. Not only did this bring the issue out of the shadow into the light, and prevent conflicts among "parties" formed around differing viewpoints, but it helped us to grow in our understanding of each other and of the issues.

Many of us came out realising that the perennial problem of the church - where gospel ends and culture begins, where synthesis ends and synchretism begins - was alive among us. The discussion also helped us to realise that sometimes there are no right answers. People held different opinions, for well-thought-out reasons that we could all understand. The important thing was to ask the questions - not to give answers. Struggling with the questions is always our task as the church, and if we close the discussion off artificially we have failed both our culture and our gospel.

We have failed our culture, because we are no longer listening to it when it asks us questions. Dave Tomlinson, in meetings I attended while he was in New Zealand, talked about evangelicals being very good at learning the language of a culture in order to engage in monologue with it, and he's right. If we are going to engage in genuine dialogue with the culture, we have to listen to the questions it asks us - even if we suspect it isn't listening to our reply.

But we have also failed our gospel, because we have ceased to move forward in our understanding of the gospel. We have frozen our understanding at a moment in time, ceasing to learn, ceasing to grow. We have declared the finality of our understanding, and our independence from the Holy Spirit, whose grace and guidance and dynamism we no longer need. Our struggle is no longer to understand but to convince, to impose upon others our vision of the truth.

Not that I oppose communication of our vision of the truth, or think that it is inferior to others' or unimportant or even much of a muchness with all other visions of the truth. I think that we, the Church in the most universal sense, have important truths which are not available elsewhere (which is one reason I have not gone elsewhere, as Peter remarked to Jesus in John Chapter 6). But I do not think that we have all the answers, or that we never need to listen, only speak.

See also:

Absolute Truth

Post-Christians and Post-Evangelicals

Back to main Index page

Back to Index of Digressions

Mail me - but don't spam me.

I love . Do you? Click here.

You are visitor number to this page since 31 May 1999.