*For some reason I left this post in draft status. It is a post, as you will see, that I wrote at the passing of, Pastor Chuck Smith in October of 2013. I might state things a little differently if I were to write a similar post now, but the general gist would be the same.
I earlier wrote a more personal and reflective post in regard to the death of (my former) Pastor, Chuck Smith, today; this post will also be in honor and memoriam of Pastor Chuck, but from a more theological vantage point.
It is no secret that I have been constructively critical of some of the things attendant to all things Calvary Chapel, and in keeping with my own predisposition, not surprisingly, this criticalness has been in regard to materially theological things associated with the informing theology (classical Dispensationalism) and hermeneutic that Pastor Chuck imbibed as his mode for engaging with the Scriptures (in English: the way he, put simply, interpreted Scripture). But one primary thing, and this is the thing that takes center-place today as we reflect back on the life and witness of Pastor Chuck Smith, that that Chuck actually worked from what is ironically, a rather sophisticated, but simple and refreshing, theology; what I would like to call (with others), a theology of encounter.
I know some would wonder how, or why it is a guy, like myself, with the background that I have (ecclesially and theologically) might be predisposed toward the theology of Karl Barth. And further, how in the world I might claim that in fact, this predisposition comes from the kind of theological vibe I began to experience as a young child (when I came to Christ), but more profoundly in and around the time I began attending Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa with Pastor Chuck (and their Bible College for a year). This theological vibe wasn’t something manufactured by Chuck Smith, or Calvary Chapel, or even Karl Barth; instead it is a vibe, of course, that finds its ground and impulse from God in Christ Himself. But, it is a vibe that I think Chuck Smith, maybe unknowingly, or naïvely fostered and promoted in the sub-culture of the evangelical Church that is known as Calvary Chapel. That is a theology of encounter.
This kind of theology of encounter, given its most salient voice (in my view) by Swiss theologian par excellence, Karl Barth emphasizes a personal (but not subjectivist or experientialist) encounter, a fresh and continuously given contact with the God of the Word, who is the Word, the viva vox Dei, the living voice of God. This kind of encounter is not something manufactured up from our bellies, but it is something that moves towards us in unidirectional freedom from the very belly or bosom of God Himself; it is this encounter, this eternal Logos, that exegetes God’s life for us (cf. Jn. 1.18), and showers us with the eternal life spring that is God’s life Himself, in Christ. There is something very un-apologetic and naïve about this kind of theology of encounter. It presumes upon faith, as if faith represents the living trust that has always already been [co]inherent in God’s triune life of love; as if we have been invited to participate in this eternal bond of filial life, as if faith has nothing to do with a blind leap into the dark abyss of our self-dominated selves projecting life toward an idol we hope can liberate us from ourselves. But this kind of faith, this way of knowing and encountering God is objectively grounded in God Himself, in His dearly beloved Son; it is a trust that the Son has in the Father, of which its integrity is underwritten by the sweet smelling aroma of the Holy Spirit’s co-bonding life of koinonia and fellowship that He Himself underwrites as He finds this orientation within the shared and triune life that He co-grounds and brings us into through the homoousial humanity of Jesus Christ.
It is this kind of faith relationship, this kind of theology of encounter, without the particular and critical kind of grammar I just sketched above, that I was already opened up for because of the Lord’s personal work of encounter and contradiction in my own life, and what I continued to experience at Calvary Chapel under Pastor Chuck, that I was predisposed toward and just waiting to find a grammar that would help articulate what in the world this kind of devotional Christianity was all about. At the end of the day, even with Pastor Chuck’s own idiosyncracies in tow, I believe he fostered this kind of theology of encounter within his own ministry and witness.
requiescat in pace.
This is a very interesting analysis of Chuck Smith alongside Barth. Just a few thoughts…
1. One reason its interesting to make this comparison is because Barth’s ‘theology of encounter’ is precisely the door that neo-fundamentalists walk through to accuse Barth’s neo-orthodoxy of really being liberalism. It there tactic for accusing Barth of subsuming too much on experience and dividing the written word from the Living Word. This is what is behind various critiques by the likes of D.A. Carson, Page Patterson, etc when the accuse Grenz of capitulating to a Barthian doctrine of Scripture. But of course the neo-fundamentalist reading of Barth is paper thin.
2. But its interesting here again, because it seems Smith’s version of theology of encounter, while not subject to the liberal critique, is still subject to critiques of an expressivism and the heir to a revivalism that does subsume too much in individual experience (I grew up with these types in my back yard, and evangelicalism in general is shot through with this). Now we immediately have to qualify, there are legitimate expressivisms and pietisms (remember Grenz is a pietist with a PhD), and I think Barth can get a long way down the road of valuing encounter and experience without subsuming everything therin (in fact that is one of the tasks of narrative theology as I see it, to articulate a way to take ‘story’ seriously without making my story determinative of everything).
3. Building on the above, all this to say, I can see how you personally would be attracted to Barth after your experience with Calvary Chapel. But it seems to me this would be precisely because of the thin theological grammar of Smith and Calvary Chapel. And while Smith and Calvary Chapel perhaps provided an initial framework, it seems to me that Barth and Torrance provided a substantial rewriting of the theological and experiential grammar here. So, while not wanting to discount those that a Chuck Smith introduced to the faith, I am concerned about the thickness of his theological grammar and I’m wondering if perhaps I’m seeing more discontinuity between his grammar (if we can even call it that) and Barth’s than you do. To me they seem almost wholly dis-similar.
Russell,
3. Yes, you are right, in the end, it is quite dis-similar. Barth’s theology of the Word makes sure of that!
My comparison was prompted more out of sentimental reflection on some of the grammarless themes present in the ethos provided by something like Calvary Chapel, but in reality, yes, you are right, Calvary Chapel’s idea of encounter, in the end, is much more abstract (theo-anthropologically), and even pentecostal than the Reformed orientation provided by Barth.
So this post really requires a follow up. But I wrote it really just out of a personal and reflective moment … i.e. not all that critical.