A Different Deconstruction

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but deconstructing one’s faith has been the rage for a hot minute.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, deconstruction is the process by which a person takes apart the edifice of one’s religious belief system, usually formed in upbringing, in order to reassess its value. This often results with the individual leaving evangelicalism (e.g., becoming an “exvangelical”) or the faith altogether.¹ There was a season where it appeared everywhere I turned, this or that well-known believer had publicly decided to “un-believe” (i.e., apostatize) as a result of their deconstruction journey. The cost of deconstruction can be high. At the risk of being misunderstood, I’ve also been walking the path of deconstruction the last couple of years as I seek to reexamine the belief system of my upbringing. However, my aim wasn’t to run away from the faith but to hold to it more fast and cherish it more deeply. This led me to a different strategy.

I decided if I wanted to know the origin behind my Christian faith and its practices, I needed to journey backwards, not forward. And by backwards, I don’t mean retreating to the start of modern evangelicalism, or the Baptist denomination, or even the Protestant Reformation. I needed to revisit the early church and see how they apprehended and exercised their faith. Think about it, who would have a better understanding of the apostolic command of Jude 1:3 “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints”: 21^st century North Americans or 1st and 2nd century believers whose parents and grandparents were the literal audience of Jude? What’s crazy is we can actually read extra-biblical documents written by individuals who were within a generation or two of the apostles. Some even knew and were personally discipled by them! This nascent chapter of church history is known as the Patristic or Church Fathers era.² And in my deconstruction journey, this was where I was going to begin: Ad fontes!³ It was back to the early, original sources in the foundational years of Christianity and the church.

What I’ve discovered is the process of looking to the Church Historical for guidance is known as theological retrieval.⁴ The hopeful aim for those who undertake retrieval isn’t to leave the faith, but to be renewed in it!⁵ It’s to witness the Holy Spirit’s work amongst God’s people throughout history, and see how the church understood Scripture, Tradition, sacraments, offices, and a thousand other Christian beliefs. So, while many an evangelical runs after the latest hot-take exvangelical influencer to tell them what faith is really about (or not), I’ve gone the opposite direction, trying to listen to the ancient voices of Clement, Ignatius, and others, as well as modern-day scholars who can help me responsibly engage the Church Fathers concerning the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”

In addition to numerous podcasts, debates, videos, and online articles, I’ve read several helpful books. Last year it was Jaroslav Pelickan’s five-volume The Christian Tradition: The Development of Doctrine, Gavin Ortlund’s Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals and his What It Means to be Protestant, Kenneth Stewart’s In Search of Ancient Roots, and Timothy Ware’s The Orthodox Church. This year it’s The Apostolic Fathers in English, Yves Congar’s The Meaning of Tradition, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, and most recently, former Baylor patristic professor Dr. D.H. Williams’ Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants.

Williams’ book was outstanding. I found myself nodding in violent agreement throughout reading. In fact, I’m taking this blog post to inform all three of my readers that, similarly to what I did with Pelikan, I’ll be posting my reflections on Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism. My hope is to show how the patristics should prompt evangelicals to deeper reflection on the things we should believe more deeply…or maybe not believe at all. For me, this journey into the Church Historical has been (and continues to be) a deconstruction + reflection + reconstruction process that has left me a little (or, at times, a lot) disoriented but ultimately more devoted to Christ and his church, including being thankful not only for the Spirit’s work through the centuries but in our day as well. Stay tuned.

1. I recognize exvangelical has many working definitions. I’m using the term for an individual who deconstructed their faith for whatever reason and left evangelical Christianity.
2. Technically, the Patristic or Church Fathers era encompasses the 1st through the 8th century.
3. Latin expression meaning “[back] to the sources
4. Kevin Vanhoozer defines retrieval theology as “theological discernment that looks back in order to move forward” (Biblical Authority after Babel [Brazos Press, 2016], 23)
5. Dr. Lucas Stamps writes, “Retrieval theology asks the question, ‘How might the theological and spiritual insights of the past help to illuminate theological questions and answer ecclesial needs in the present?’” (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/baptists-need-theological-retrieval/). See also Timothy George’s Retrieval for the Sake of Renewal: Timothy George as a Historical Theologian