This one is from Christian Post, along with this interview.

On the 7th anniversary of the Iraq War, a Truth Commission will investigate moral conscience in war at The Riverside Church, where The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "Beyond Vietnam" speech.

Five veterans - including two who just returned from visiting the countries where they fought - will reveal what they felt, witnessed, and came to understand about fighting in war. They will be joined by a group of experts, including nationally recognized scholars and clergy. Press release is below and at Website.

WHO:
Testifiers Include:

Tyler Boudreau, former US Marine Captain, Iraq War veteran, and author of Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine.

Joshua Casteel, former US Army Interrogator at Abu Ghraib, attended West Point, featured in the documentary, Soldiers of Conscience.

Jacob C. Diliberto, OEF and OIF US Marine veteran, Founder of Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan, M.Div. Fuller Theological Seminary. Recently returned from trip to Afghanistan as a civilian.

Logan Mehl-Laituri, US Army veteran with service in Iraq during OIF II, and co-founder of Centurion's Guild. Recently returned from trip to Iraq as a civilian.

Camilo Mejia, US Army veteran and first service member to publicly refuse to return to Iraq, author of Road from Ar Ramadi, featured in the documentary, Soldiers of Conscience.

Plus eight experts, including:

Dr. Jonathan Shay, VA clinical psychiatrist, national PTSD expert, Macarthur "Genius" winner, and author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America.

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, and author of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

Chaplain Herman Keizer, Jr., Colonel, U. S. Army (retired), Vietnam veteran with 34 years of military service, and former chair of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces America.

WHAT: Truth Commission on Conscience in War brings together veterans and over 80 national religious, academic, and advocacy leaders to honor and protect freedom of conscience in the military. It features testimony from recent veterans and national experts on moral, psychological, and legal dimensions of conscience and war.

The event is free and open to the public.

WHEN: Sunday, March 21, 2010, 4:00-8:00 p.m.

WHERE: The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Dr., New York, NY

The Truth Commission on Conscience in War is co-sponsored by a diverse coalition of over 50 religious, academic, advocacy and veterans groups.

The March 21st public hearing will launch the Commission's eight-month campaign to bring national attention to decisions of moral and religious conscience facing American service members, culminating with the Veterans Day release of the Commission's Final Report.

For details, including a complete list of testifiers and commissioners (including bios), and co-sponsors, visit www.conscienceinwar.org.

The Commission is organized by Faith Voices for the Common Good, Luna Productions, The Mission and Social Justice Commission of The Riverside Church, Starr King School for the Ministry, and Union Theological Seminary.

Here's a two-minute video introducing the event. If you're a media professional, please be sure this event gets the attention it deserves ...

I really enjoyed reading McKnight's review of ANKOC and your response. I think its the kind of debate that we see so little of in Christianity today; opposite viewpoints which are nonetheless capable of engaging each other with civility. What struck me about McKnight's review is he goes back to orthodoxy as the focal point for evangelicalism. Fair enough, but there's something I've always found strange about the evangelical emphasis on orthodoxy as a fixed truth throughout the ages. Obviously, evangelicalism is itself an offshoot of the Protestant Reformation of the 1500's. The Reformation wasn't just about problems with the Catholic Church, but about a new way of understanding our relationship with God. Luther's true radicalism wasn't his break with the Catholic Church but his revolutionary teachings about grace and our relationship with God. When evangelicals talk about "a personal relationship with Jesus" they owe this to the spirit of revolution and upheaval of the Reformation. The Reformation shook the orthodoxy of the previous 1400 years in the same kind of way the "emerging" church is currently doing. So it strikes me that evangelicals can't talk about a consistent orthodoxy, because what Christians consider "orthodox" is always changing and evolving, and they themselves are a part of that.

I just wanted to say a big thanks for A Generous Orthodoxy, Everything Must Change, and A New Kind of Christianity (the three books you have written which I own and have read). Thanks for being brave enough and passionate enough to stand in the face of criticism, cynicism, and all sorts of opposition and writing and teaching and inviting into conversation as you do. I appreciate it immensely and always find your work full of grace, life and hope. I don't agree with everything you write about but I certainly don't disagree with everything you write.

Without a shadow of a doubt the issues you raise are indeed issues that need serious conversation. Having grown up in a Pentecostal environment (which to me is praxis heavy but theologically light) many of these issues have never been discussed. As the answer to these questions ground praxis though the conversations are essential although not easy at times, welcome, or appreciated. Thanks for getting the conversation started for us though.

If you have time to answer one question I'd appreciate it. Living in NZ I am not terribly familiar with Reformed churches. It seems to me though that the two sides of most arguments going on (involving the 'emergent' church) in the 'blogosphere' are between the Reformed thinkers on one side and Emergent thinkers on the other. Most everyone else seems to kind of sit in the middle. Is this simplified conclusion accurate? Not really the case at all? Only true in some cases?

Great question. Here in the US, the term Reformed covers a wide span of understandings - from people who appreciate Karl Barth to people who can't stand him, from people who believe wholeheartedly in five-point double-predestinarian Calvinism to people who don't but who emphasize the Lordship of Christ over all areas of life, from the "Truly Reformed" who hold strictly to traditional formulations to the always-reforming who see the need to question those formulations at times. To complicate matters, there are also Reformed Pentecostals, so categories overlap. Many on the conservative end of the Reformed spectrum tend to critical of the work my friends and I are involved in, as they often are of Pentecostalism. More moderate and progressive Reformed folk are active and engaged conversation partners.

I'm encouraged to see dialogue among folks in the emergent conversation and Pentecostals ... which Tony Jones has been blogging about for several days, most recently here. Worth checking out! Also worth checking out - Sam Lee's blog.

A lot of friends are asking how I'm dealing with this kind of whiplash. I tell them I'd hate to have one kind of response - whether negative or positive - without the other, because either way it would be dangerous for the soul. But handling them both together has its own challenges too.

One of the keys to survival for me is solitude ... having time to be alone with God, to escape from the swirl of human praise and blame and seek to still and quiet my soul in the presence of God. Sometimes that solitude comes on an airplane, of all places, or sitting in an airport. Far better when it comes walking along a beach or along a trail under trees. This morning it has come in a few quiet hours reading, and soon, in going to church. Of course it will be great to experience fellowship and be among friends, but these days, it's the quietness and stillness, the slowness and intentionality of public worship that means more to me than anything. In the presence of God, we can rise to a higher perspective, see things from a new altitude and in a new light, rest in God's gracious and holy presence, and so the soul is restored. Whatever you're going through, may that be your experience today.

My friend Tony Jones recently posted about his experience at a recent gathering of Pentecostal theologians.

And another friend, Samuel Lee, shares his unique insider perspective on the movement in a recent blog post ... For those who are critical of Pentecostalism whether as insiders or outsiders, listen to Sam Lee. If voices like his gain a hearing, the movement will be even more vibrant in its second century than it was in its first.

Mike Clawson's last installment of our interview is available here. I'll reply to a follow-up question about Plato and Aristotle after the jump.

The Jazztheologian offers an interview about the book here, and here.

Bishop Alan Wilson from England reviews the book here.

Nic Paton from South Africa focuses on the issue of "the fall."

More after the jump ...

And of course I would take exception to several of his or his commenters' asides - such as a) suggesting that I'm pitting consultants against seminaries, and b( that I'm doing so to earn money as a consultant.

Just to clarify - b) any consulting I do is pro bono, informal, and incidental to being invited to speak various places. Consulting is an important skill I have benefitted greatly from as a client, but don't see myself in that role as a provider. And a), when it comes to questions of academic theology, of course seminaries hold sway. But when it comes to organizational leadership, that's a separate area of expertise some but not all seminary professors would have. I hope that it's possible to respect each area of expertise without pitting one against the other.

In these and several other cases where Nathan and some of his commenters tend to assume the worst about my motives or the book's meaning, I wish I could have better anticipated and clarified the concerns they raised in advance, so as to preclude the misunderstanding.

But putting those matters aside, let me offer these more specific replies.

1. I would encourage people who are critical of the chapter (4) dealing with Plato and Aristotle to be sure to read the lengthy endnotes for the chapter, especially notes 1, 2, 3, 5, 14, and 17, where I address some or maybe most of their concerns. I noticed how some of the criticism paraphrases exactly the kinds of provisos and qualifications I offer in notes 1 and 2, which made me think the commenters hadn't seen those notes. Perhaps I should have included these provisos in the text itself. At any rate, in the notes (and at points in the text itself) I try to make it clear that I'm dealing with some of the popularized "isms" associated with these great philosophers, not with their rich and nuanced thinking itself, which I also acknowledge could never be reduced to a simple or formulaic summary. If someone is seeking a thorough understanding of these philosophers themselves, I imagine Nathan would be a good source of information. My purpose was to offer some explanation for how a certain narrative alien to Jesus and his gospel may have come to frame Jesus and his gospel. Whether my proposed explanation is valid or not, this narrative still arose from somewhere, and still deserves some attention, and, I think, questioning.

2. I didn't include a detailed bibliography of the sources that formed my understanding (or misunderstanding) of Greek thought. I won't try to do that here, but will mention a few resources that come to mind. Of course, I read the basics of Plato and Aristotle that were required in my undergraduate and graduate liberal arts/literature curriculum, especially as they informed English and American literature - from Plato, the Republic and the Dialogues, and from Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Poetics, and On Rhetoric. I haven't kept up with contemporary scholarship on them, so if what I was taught in the 1970's has been discredited, then I'm correspondingly out of date and would be happy to be re-educated. I also read Boethius (The Consolation of Philosophy) and was repeatedly made aware of the literary influence he and others like him had in embedding what my professors called "Platonism" or "Neoplatonism" in popular spirituality along with more formal theology.

Concerns about excessive Greco-Roman influence on early and medieval Christian theology certainly are not unique to me, often expressed in terms of the old "Athens versus Jerusalem" debate, which I don't find very helpful. They're widely expressed by scholars or teachers from a wide variety of backgrounds - Anabaptist (John Howard Yoder), Reformed, Mainline Protestant (Harvey Cox, whose most recent work I reference several times), and Roman Catholic (Richard Rohr).

And of course there are many scholars who lean in the opposite direction - that the fusion of Greek philosophy with the Hebrew Scriptures is a good and providential thing. (Read, for example, these endorsements for a recent book on the subject.)

Some of these latter lines of argument are being marshalled to defend the idea of Christendom and hope for its resurgence, sometimes playing into a "clash of civilizations" narrative against Islam. The strongest expression of the conflation of Western Civilization and Christian faith I've ever seen came from William F. Buckley. I remember reading - but can't remember where - him saying something like this, in the early 1980's, referring to Communists: What they don't understand is that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Western Civilization. (If anyone can reference that quote for me, I'd be most grateful ...) Obviously, this isn't my vision for a new kind of Christianity.

I should add that a few years ago, as I read (or tried to read) some of the Radical Orthodoxy authors (Milbank, Pickstock, Ward), I could tell that their reading of Plato was very different from the readings I had been exposed to, although I wouldn't claim to understand the differences. So I'm sure that in this field, as in many others, there is a range of approaches by highly dedicated scholars.

As for other formative texts, Chesterton's biography of Aquinas impacted me many years ago, helping me see how Aquinas made use of Aristotle to rebalance the more neo-Platonistic temper of the church of his day (see Note 3). If Chesterton's reading has been discredited, then my understanding would be correspondingly skewed. The same would go for Curtis Chang's IVP book "Engaging Unbelief," which looked at the rhetorical strategies of Augustine and Aquinas. I know that many criticize Thomas Cahill for a similar kind of popularization for which Nathan criticizes me, and I confess to have found his books helpful (How the Irish ..., Gifts of the Jews...) , even though I remember differing on a couple of finer points. Where's he's considered dead wrong in his general understanding, I would probably be as well.

More recently and probably most importantly, I am especially indebted to Kwame Bediako's Theology and Identity on this subject (referenced in note 12). Again, to the degree the work of these scholars is not respected, my work will be weakened for dependence on them.

3. I am suspicious about attempts to reframe Jesus in terms of the political structure that crucified him. But I am NOT saying Plato and Aristotle are bad, or that those who translated the faith into philosophical terms are "bad"! Consider this from note 3 (p. 264): "Their [the apologists'] instinct - to save and embrace the great philosophers rather than condemn and exclude them - was, I judge, a Christlike one." I think I'm quite consistent in identifying the negative consequences of their engagement as "unintended," and in my experience, almost everything we do has unintended negative consequences.

4. It's important to remember that I'm writing for a general audience, not specialized scholars. I try to read and learn from the specialized scholars, but I certainly don't consider myself qualified to teach them. But I should repeat that in my experience, specialized scholars often don't agree with one another - and that the deeper you go into scholarship, often the more pronounced and vigorous the disagreements are between schools of interpretation. I imagine I've stumbled naively into some of these arguments at some turns, and Nathan and others have strong views as specialists in those fields. At any rate, when I read Nathan Gilmour's comments, I'm eager to be taught in all areas where my thinking is deficient.

5. It's not fair to put on Nathan the responsibility to summarize my views as accurately as I would. So I would hope that people who haven't read the book would let the book speak for itself rather than expecting Nathan's summaries to stand in for my own.

6. If in the end readers like Nathan decide the whole Greco-Roman argument is unhelpful, they could easily put it aside; the book in no way depends on it. They might look at note 7, where I mention an entirely different approach (drawing from the work of Jeffrey Bineham, Sally McFague, James Chesbro, and Walter Ong) to the underlying problem of what I call "excessive confidence" or the western "superiority complex" - which have fueled many good things, but a number of pretty horrific things as well.

If on the other hand, they don't think there's any problem of a western superiority complex or excessive confidence, or if (as some other reviewers have been happy to suggest), they actually like the Greco-Roman narrative, I wonder how they would respond - for example - to Jesus' contrast between the ways of the "rulers of the Gentiles" and the ways of his disciples?

7. I hope that people won't problematize this one issue in such a way as to miss the bigger questions raised by Chapter 4, and the book as a whole: are we allowed to question the standard Western pre-critical narrative through which the Bible is commonly read - whether it's described in Greco-Roman terms or otherwise - based on a reading of the Bible itself aided by historical understanding of the first century setting? Or must fourth-century (or whatever) concerns forever determine the ways we can read the Bible itself? Another way to pose this question would be the way Mabiala Kenzo does in a book called A New Kind of Conversation. His chapter alone is well worth the price of the book.

A point by point response to Nathan's questions would require something longer than my book itself, I imagine. I hope someday I can meet Nathan in person, benefit from his obvious intelligence and expertise, and talk this over further, as neighbors and - I would hope - friends. I'm sure I have a lot to learn from him, and might even be able to improve a future edition of the book with his help.