The Cultral Church

This is a prescient work concerning today's Post-Modern and New Age influences, primarily, on the churches of Christ. For a book published in 1992, Dr.Smith was far ahead of most in perceiving the dangers of the new hermeneutics that are based on faulty reasoning. He shows the error in relying too much on a narrative hermeneutic as well as pointing out some of the faults in the church of Christ's CENI hermeneutic. For anyone unfamiliar with that acronym, it refers to an application of Command, Example and Necessary Inference in the Bible. What I found most enlightening was Dr.Smith's proposal for a newer hermeneutic he defines as Purpose, Principle, and Precedent. The advantage to this approach is that it takes a more literal view of scripture than that of the narrative, but is less constrained by personalized inferences which end up causing so many divisive views of what some scriptures mean. That technicality aside, the author makes a very good case for CENI in that it is still very useful in things that matter, like scripture patterns of doctrine. What impressed me most, however, is his ability, at the time, to see the gathering storm of the Emergent and other Post-Modern influences on doctrinal stances. He addresses the futility of the New Age beliefs that promote the religion of human deification through self love and meditational practises that we now see presented as orthodox through "Spiritual Formation" or "Contemplative Prayer" movements. The Emergent and Missional movements have valid points regarding the evangelical church's abdication of it's role in outreach to the less privileged. However, they tend to throw a lot of doctrine out the window with the old bath water of stuffy "church religiosity". The denigration of sciptural authority incorporating a resurgent preference for "Age of Enlightenment" human reasoning is what Dr.Smith laments in this book. A well written brief on the dangers of wanting to change things for the sake of being "culturally relevant" at the expense of compromising on the truth of the gospel message.