Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Church Planting Body Count

    I regularly find myself surprised at how surprised some folks are at the unsurprising. We should, after all, expect people to be the people they are, and Mark Driscoll is Mark Driscoll. Shocking, isn’t it?

    Well, Mark Driscoll prepared a video for a conference on church planting in which he was very much himself, and some folks were shocked. They criticized the video, and they didn’t hand out copies as promised.

    I first saw this video on Adrian Warnock’s blog. Adrian comments:

    I am praying for him right now as I write this as I am sure this was the last thing he was expecting or wanting. Personally I love the video and I think he is right on with what he says. Well done Mark for standing for God and more power to your elbow!

    Well, it should surprise nobody that I don’t particularly like the video, and I think there are substantial issues there beyond the exclusively man-oriented view of the world. Driscoll comments repeatedly on the things Jesus is not, and often in fairly derogatory terms. I particularly noted “tell the lady with the tambourine who shows up to church to park it” though I’m sure we’ve all been there with people who are doing things that we’d prefer they didn’t. So I disagree with the clearly male authority dominated approach.

    But I’m more disturbed by the picture of Jesus that is presented. The picture of “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is not a terribly accurate one, and it does need to be balanced. But the rough, overbearing Jesus, the hunting buddy Jesus who despises people who drink herbal tea and aren’t masculine enough, is also a false and dangerous caricature. (Bias alert: I drink herbal tea. 🙂 )

    There is also a good message hidden in there, though it has been buried under mounds of extraneous junk. Church planting isn’t easy. And despite almost disparaging remarks in the video about pastors of existing churches, pastoring isn’t all that easy either. (I sincerely hope that Driscoll didn’t intend to be a dismissive of the ordinary role of pastoring as he seemed to be. I think he was just very strongly focused on the church planters role, but I would suggest more care.) There will be people one cannot help, and there are people who need to be told to find another place to worship. Often that is to their benefit as well as to the benefit of the local church. But that is hidden by the shock value of the tone and of the setting for the video.

    Nonetheless I would have told the leadership of the conference to have the video handed out. First, they should do so because they asked Mark Driscoll for a video, and they have some obligation not to make him spend money and then send his people home. Being people of their word should be important. Second, I don’t think moderate and liberal Christians should fear conservative ideas. That video provides me with more material to use in illustrating precisely what I don’t like about the complementarian approach and certain uses of the spiritual warfare metaphor.

    I do have to ask my complementarian brethren, however, whether they would give equal time to a video presenting the egalitarian position. Is this about an open exchange of ideas, or are you just offended that a video espousing your view was not welcomed?

  • Languages of Forgiveness

    Christianity Today has an interesting article on languages of apology (and forgiveness). There are a number of helpful thoughts in this piece that can be helpful. The author, Gary Chapman (The Love Languages of God, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate) relates this to couples, in which I think it has the most use, but it would apply in other contexts as well.

    I think there is a danger of one using specific language in apology to avoid apologizing at all. The political apology (if I happen to have done anything wrong, I apologize) in which no wrongdoing is admitted, or the apology for another’s weakness (I’m sorry you’re so thin skinned as to be hurt by what I said) are generally not languages of apology, but rather languages by which one avoids apology.

    At the same time, understanding that not everyone means the same thing by the same words will be helpful in building communication. It’s worth looking at.

  • Dave Warnock Reads PFOT

    …. Pierced for our Transgressions, that is.

    Taking his own advice about reading books with a viewpoint opposed to his own, he is working his way through this book. I’ve read other materials on penal substitution (Justification by Faith Alone, for example, which maintains that the forensic nature of justification is critical to salvation by faith), and thus will not punish myself in this way, but Dave’s notes promise to be interesting.

    Here are the entries thus far:

    I’m quite in tune with Dave’s statement in his starting point post:

    I value Penal Substitution as one theory of atonement within a range of theories that have been considered orthodox teaching within the Christian Church, while recognising that different groups within the Christian Church have different views on various theories of atonement and that there is not total agreement (and probably never has been). I do believe that there is potential for penal substitution to teach us something about the cross and about God.

    But I struggle with certain theological aspects of Penal Substitution. Particularly the concept of God’s wrath being on Jesus and the potential for the need for justice and punishment being more powerful than God. Most importantly for me are concerns that Penal Substitution enshrines violence (that I do not see in Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his teaching, his death, his resurrection, his ascension and his second coming) into the nature of God.

    I too see some value in Penal Substitution as a metaphor for atonement, but as I’ve commented before any time you get the metaphor put in place of the reality the remainder of your theology will begin to get off balance. Recent PSA advocates appear to me to place their particular metaphor in place of the reality of the atonement, a reality that requires many metaphors, and cannot even be described adequately by all the metaphors we have available.

    When I point this out, I am often told that yes, there are many metaphors, but penal substitution has to be there, or it’s more important. No, it doesn’t have to be there. All that has to be there is God’s love made manifest through the incarnation. No human explanation is essential. Helpful, yes; essential, no.

    I do, however, sympathize with the “other” Warnock, Adrian, when he says of Dave:

    I am often quite surprised that people who hold views like Dave’s want to self-identify as evangelical. In the past, I rather suspect they would have worn the label “liberal” and been quite content to do so.

    I am willing to wear the label moderate or liberal without complaint. Some try to label me evangelical, for reasons passing understanding, but if I ever claimed that label for myself, I’d have to spend all my time trying to explain how some of my views are actually evangelical, while they manifestly are not. So go ahead and color me liberal. 🙂

    And just so I’m not dodging the obligation to put my own views on the line, let me give links to two complementary essays I have written: A Fruitful Faith and Focusing the Atonement.

    Update: It occurred to me after I posted this that those interested in this topic might be interested in my review of J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians and related links to material I wrote during my study of Galatians using that commentary.

  • Anti Any War

    One has to wonder what some politicians are thinking, when one considers the following exchange (via MSNBC):

    It wasn’t so easy for Obama to avoid the firebombs from the two peaceniks on stage. Kucinich upbraided his rival for talking tough about the use of force against Iran. “I think that it’s important for people to reflect on the real meaning of that, that you’re setting the stage for another war,” Kucinich said.

    Obama replied that “it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran.” But that wasn’t enough for the former Alaska senator Mike Gravel. “Who the hell are we going to nuke,” he cried out. “Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?” The Illinois senator, who has placed his opposition to the war at the heart of his campaign, could only smile. “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise.”

    One of my major reasons for opposing the war in Iraq is that it ties large numbers of troops in occupation duty, troops that might be needed in place like, well . . . Iran. And I find it profoundly troubling that some people find a way to portray Barack Obama as trigger-happy. I’m afraid his record supports nothing of the sort.

    I also must confess that I certainly hope we will not end up at war with Iran, but being ready for such a war is critical, considering that unlike Iraq, Iran actually is developing nuclear weapons. There’s a tremendous potential for danger there.

    I’d like to add one note here on withdrawal. One of the problems one encounters on opposing Republicans in this country seems to be that one has to ally oneself with Democrats. Neither party seems to be able to do all that well wielding power. It is very hard for the party that does not hold the executive power to manage military activities. I am totally in support of congressional oversight. I believe congress should be involved, but conducting a war in Iraq by means of a war in Washington is unlikely to produce good results.

    In addition, those who are looking for withdrawal now should consider the long term. When we invaded Iraq, I believed the long term outlook was bad. There would come a time when we would be facing continuing casualties and the American people would tire of the war. I’d be willing to stand up to popular opinion on that on one condition–that the war was actually ever going to be finished. I don’t believe it will. Now people are speaking of withdrawal as though it is going to produce peace. There was no peace there before we invade, and there’s going to be even less peace left behind if we withdraw. Should opponents of the war succeed in forcing a withdrawal, especially one based on a timetable rather than a restatement of obtainable objectives, then you can expect that the news will be filled with stories of people dying because we withdrew.

    I think the war was sold to the American people on the basis of unreasonably happy expectations. To some extent withdrawal is being sold on the same basis. Iraq’s natural state is not peaceful–it never has been. Peace, joy, and brotherhood will not be the result of our withdrawal. This will also not be the last time that force may be used. Hopefully the next time it will be used in a precise and well-planned way. Probably not, but I can always hope.

  • Focusing the Atonement

    Peter Kirk has been involved in some extended debates about the atonement, and you can read about it here and here. Peter has written some good stuff on understanding the atonement. I have generally just been saying that we must recognize our ways of explaining the atonement as metaphors, and not as the reality. A metaphor is good, and is the only way we can talk about God, but when you place the metaphor above the reality, or make the metaphor into the reality, you get into a sort of doctrinal idolatry. I say that not to provoke, but simply because there is an important similarity. In the idolatry that involves the worship of a physical image, the danger is that one mistakes symbol for reality, and starts to give adoration to the created thing, rather than the creator. This in turn tends to get everything else out of balance. The same thing happens with a metaphor, which will better illustrate some things than others. If the metaphor replaces the reality at the center, then one’s entire vision can get skewed.

    So what do I believe must be at the center of our view of the atonement? Since we are always short of speaking absolutely correctly about God, there is a danger in defining this, but if I can grab something from all of the metaphors and all of the Biblical writers it would be this: God did it. That is the focus of scriptural statements. Protecting that one fact is the focus of many Biblical rebukes. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul didn’t say that it’s OK for you to do a few extra works, just so long as you also trust in Jesus. He said that putting your trust in those works meant that you were denying Jesus (Galatians 5:2).

    Elsewhere, however, he said that he would become “as one under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20) to reach those who were under the law. The circumstances were different at the church in Corinth. There was even a party there (“I am of Christ” – 1 Cor. 1:12) that made a special point of pride of being followers of Christ. What’s wrong with that? Well, if you set yourself up as superior to others because of your status, then there’s very much wrong with it. The whole first epistle to the Corinthians stands against the notion that any physical, temporal thing about us makes us superior to others.

    A key fact about the “foolishness of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1) is that I don’t get to be at the center any more. I’m saved by grace, pure grace, and I am not superior to anyone else spiritually. I can know more about some things. I may be able to do some things better, but as far as being God’s child, I have nothing whatsoever to boast about.

    The very human temptation, however, is to make me feel superior. This temptation comes in many ways. Doctrines of holiness can easily become means of making a superior category of believers. I’ve encountered churches where the intercessors were an exclusive club of superior believers. These folks had made their call to pray for other people into a badge of superiority. But our desire to be superior for any reason has been eliminated, because God broke past the barrier between infinite and finite in the person of Jesus Christ. That profound thought led Paul to say,

    (26) You’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. (29) For as many as have been baptized into Christ are wearing Christ as a garment. (28) There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (29) For if you belong to Christ, then you’re Abraham’s seed, and according to the promise–heirs! — Galatians 3:26-29 (my translation)

    Our distinctions have been wiped out in the incarnation. We want to revive them. We want to feel more special than others. But all our versions of “special” have been torn apart, bulldozed, leveled in the cross of Christ. We are all equally recipients of grace. I teach a doctrine I call infinite ignorance. God is infinite, there is an infinite amount to be known about him. I know something of God, but when you subtract any finite amount from infinity, infinity still remains.

    The same thing goes for grace. Infinite grace has been poured out on us. My brother or sister in the faith may have required more grace than I, but when you subtract that difference from infinity, infinity remains. Our distinctions are meaningless under the infinite outpouring of grace.

    Now if we can keep focused on that one point, I think we will get less out of balance. It doesn’t mean that right and wrong doctrine don’t matter for anything. It doesn’t mean that right or wrong behavior don’t matter. It’s just that they don’t matter for salvation, because that is God’s business. It means that they don’t make me or you closer to God.

    We try to escape this in so many ways. For Paul in Galatia it was folks who thought that Gentiles needed to become Jews first in order to be Christians. They had to keep Torah, be circumcised, obey the food laws, keep feasts, and so forth. Paul had no problem with Jews being Jews. He had a problem with that distinction being made important for God’s salvation.

    The individual believer pursuing holiness is placed in danger of seeing that holiness as a way of earning God’s favor. The fact is that holiness is part of the grace that God gives. It is a result of God’s favor, unearned by you, and not a badge of distinction.

    We can try to make our position superior by means of doctrine. Doctrine learned and taught as our best efforts to understand and receive from God is wonderful, but when we try to make our doctrinal knowledge a badge of superiority over someone else than we have fallen short of the reality of grace. That includes my own doctrine. These words are just my stumbling way of trying to express the experience of the grace of God, and I can recognize how poorly I express it even as I write it. But even when I think the words are flowing beautifully, when I feel my writing is inspired, if I believe that makes me superior to the person who teaches a view of penal substitutionary atonement that makes my blood boil, I have fallen short of the mark set by God’s grace.

    I can’t earn it by spiritual discipline, I can’t earn it by theological knowledge, I can’t earn it by a life of ethical decision making. I can only receive it by grace, with no point of pride left to me whatsoever.

    There’s the scandal of the cross. Christians are confronted at various times with the dilemma of a mass murderer who, with his final breath, accepts Jesus Christ as savior. “Will that man go to heaven?” we are asked. Too often we stumble. It’s too hard to accept that the mass murderer might find himself in heaven next to a saint who spent a lifetime giving and suffering. But such is the reality of grace. Such is the scandal of the cross. God is about redemption, not about punishment. This doesn’t mean there are no consequences, and no punishment. It does mean that in God’s view vengeance isn’t in the driver’s seat; grace is. If that person sincerely seeks God’s forgiveness and receives God’s grace with his last breath, no matter how horribly evil he has been, he receives. Infinite grace always trumps finite evil. If that’s too scandalous for you, you need to spend some more time at the cross.

    In Turkey recently three Christian workers were brutally murdered. The widow of one of them has expressed forgiveness in an interview on Turkish television (source – scroll down to bottom or search text for April 20, 2007). That’s grace in action. That’s not easy. Humanly, I suspect it’s not even possible. But there it is.

    The cross is a scandal. Live with it!

  • Christian Carnival CLXIX

    . . . has been posted at Imago Dei.

    I’ve resubmitted my post, which I sent to the wrong e-mail address, under the generous “submit by Friday” note. Thanks to Mandi Kaye for hosting.

  • Ministry and Porn

    After yesterday’s post on Moral Choices when Viewing and this follow-up that I wrote for my wife’s devotional list, I found this post via Imago Dei. I get Donny’s regular ramblings via the Moderate Christian Blogroll, but I don’t regularly read XXXChurch.

    There are a number of points in here that are worth noting, and I want to give you a couple of quick quotes:

    And despite what many Christians might think, pornographers won’t be legislated out of business. They’re too smart to just sit back and allow such things to happen. Besides, legislation will NEVER change the hearts of anyone. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me to hear the ramblings of groups such as the Family Research Council, which seem to think we can pass laws to improve “morality” in our country. That’s just not the case. God himself gave us the choice to make our own decisions. Which of us is above God?

    Donny speaks largely about the pornography industry, but I think we need to get our focus as a church on reaching and healing people, and not so much on making laws. I do fully believe Christians should be involved politically and should live out their Christian principles in their involvement. But as a church we have been given the gospel message and the task of using it to be witnesses and to make disciples.

    We don’t like that process because it takes time and effort, especially the effort of keeping on running the race and living a life of Christian witness. But going for legislation instead is a fast food approach. Sure, if I can legislate a piece of moral action, that legislation will influence more people at once than my personal witness, and it will do so more quickly. But it will not change people’s hearts. That’s the function of the gospel message.

    I must note that I don’t think it is impossible to legislate moral behavior. Obviously we do so all the time, and in many areas we must do so. In many other areas, we should recognize that such legislation will not be effective. It’s just practical stewardship of resources to apply legislation where it’s going to accomplish its goals.

    Let me close with something I read in my devotional time this morning:

    (38) And he said to them, “Let us go elsewhere into the nearby country towns, so that I might preach there as well. Because it was for this that I went forth. (39) And he went into all of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out the demons. — Mark 1:38-39

    It is a characteristic of Mark’s gospel that the proclamation is followed by the defeat of evil spirits. It’s interesting also to note that Jesus was often running away from the crowds who wanted to hear him. Do you have to turn people away from your church because there are more seeking the message and healing than you can accommodate?

    It doesn’t happen at my church. Perhaps we all have some work to do–on ourselves! 🙂

  • This I Abhor

    I believe I have established here that I like tolerance, but I have also noted that tolerance is a value for me, not an absolute. In other words, I don’t have to tolerate everything. I just believe it’s good to be as tolerant as possible. (You can find some previous comments here.)

    Ed Brayton has written a post, American Imam Calls for Death of Hirsi Ali, in which he cites this article:

    Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali’s appearance.

    “She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

    Ed comments:

    Let me explain something to you, Imam. Religions don’t have laws, governments do. Religions have rules which are followed voluntarily by those who choose – note that word – to be members of that religion. If they choose no longer to follow those rules, you are of course entirely free to kick them out of your religion. What you cannot do – and this is a real law – is threaten them or harm them. Period. This is not negotiable, it’s not optional and if you insist on doing so you’re going to find yourself in prison where you belong.

    To which I say, Precisely.

    I go further, however. It is only illegal if the Imam actually threatens Hirsi Ali or takes some actions that lead to harming her. But I personally can abhor whatever I want to, and I abhor the very idea that a religion can threaten a defector with death. It was evil in the Middle Ages when many Christians felt this was acceptable, and it’s evil today. This is not something I tolerate out of respect for someone else’s religious beliefs; it is an evil that I do not tolerate. I condemn it.

    I urge Christians to distinguish moderate Muslims from extremists and not to smear an entire faith with the actions of some members. At the same time, any gain in power by Islam as practiced by Imam Fouad ElBayly would be a tragedy for the world. No matter what religion we espouse, or if we espouse no religion at all, we need to be clear on this.

    I believe that there is a cultural conflict arising. It’s not between Christianity and Islam, but rather between tyranny and freedom. Each of us, irrespective of our religious beliefs, need to decide which side of that one we’re on.

  • Book: J. Louis Martyn, Galatians

    If you read this blog at all regularly you will have seen a number of posts that reference J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians in the Anchor Bible Series. I have just completed a study through Galatians, using the Greek text and Martyn’s commentary. It’s very hard to rate commentaries, because there are so many possibilities for use, and if you describe a commentary as “good” you have to specify “good for what?”

    In this case I’m going to put this in my top five. Those are: Leviticus (3 vols, Anchor Bible) by Jacob Milgrom, 1 Corinthians (NICNT) by Gordon Fee, Isaiah (OTL) by Brevard Childs, Exodus (OTL) by Brevard Childs, and now Galatians by J. Louis Martyn. Fee’s 1 Corinthians I regard as the best commentary I’ve found that is usable for a teacher/preacher who teaches non-scholars. Milgrom’s remains far and away the best scholar’s commentary that I’ve read. To place Martyn’s commentary in this group I would say that it is not as overwhelmingly thorough as Milgrom’s. To manage that it would have to carefully cite the history of interpretation starting with the church fathers and moving to the present. Martyn takes the history into account, but doesn’t
    give you everything. To match Fee’s commentary, there would have to be more direct application. Martyn provides plenty of fodder for devotional use, but I found that when I tried to find a quote, I either couldn’t find any at all, or what I found had to be translated for a lay audience. That will make this commentary less useful for a working pastor or Sunday School teacher.

    Having said all of that, the key benefit of Martyn’s work is simply that he provides a good cross section of his excellent insights on Pauline theology throughout, fitting Galatians into a pattern of Pauline thought, and suggesting avenues of interpretation that are creative, and very often quite convincing. If you can translate some of his thinking into comprehensible terms that can be used in a sermon, you’ll find them quite useful and profound.

    Some of the key themes include:

    • The Jerusalem of today (Gal. 4:25) is the Jerusalem church in that it either supports or does not suppress the circumcision mission to the gentiles
    • Closely connected to that, Martyn refers to the teachers not as Judaizers, but as a circumcision based gentile mission
    • Paul sees the death and resurrection of Jesus in apocalyptic terms, an invasion of this world that invalidates old categories and creates new ones
    • Galatians is earlier in the sequence of Paul’s letters than often thought

    With 577 pages of solid commentary, a study of Galatians with this book is not for the faint of heart, but it is worth the effort. If you then write sermons or lessons from it, you will get valuable training in explaining profound but difficult theological concepts to lay audiences. You may regard that as a penalty, but perhaps it is a benefit, a good spiritual discipline.

    Those who accept inerrancy, and even those like me who don’t, may find the historical approach a little difficult to manage. Martyn espouses the idea that Paul’s letters are better sources for Paul’s life than Acts, relegating Acts to a supporting role (I discuss that here). My impression is that with a little bit more attention much of the Acts material can be reconciled plausibly and should be. I would accept that the Jerusalem conference as reported in Acts and as understood by Paul may be somewhat different. Paul’s discussion of the topic of food offered to idols in 1 Corinthians certainly makes it appear so, but I think that a good historical outline can be taken both from Paul’s letters and from Acts, and that those outlines are not too far apart. The “spin” is a bit different, but the bones match.

    Obviously, I enjoyed my study of Galatians, and I wrote a number of notes, both here and on my wife’s devotional list, for which I’ve been writing quite a lot lately. Just to provide the flavor, here are links to the posts over the last few weeks that were inspired by Martyn’s commentary:

  • God Doesn’t Forgive?

    OK, this is shocking.

    Peter Kirk reports that:

    I interrupt my normal programme to bring you this shocking quote. Yes, the news is going round that Richard Cunningham, director of UCCF, said

          God never forgives – he punishes.

    Apparently he said this during a talk at the recent Word Alive conference, the same one which is separating from Spring Harvest.

    Go to Peter’s blog and read his discussion on this.

    This looks to me like an example of the problem we get into when we regard a metaphor as the actual core of the truth. Substitution, even penal substitution is a good metaphor, but it remains one metaphor. When you put it at the center of your doctrine of the atonement and then build everything else around that, oddities like this result.

    At the center of our doctrine of the atonement should be the amazing love of God who became human in order to redeem us, and made such a complete and thorough job of it that he died like one of us. Then you can build on why with various metaphors, but perhaps keep a better balance.