Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Mark Olson on Pelagius and Eastern Orthodox Theology

    The one devastating charge that is leveled frequently at Arminians is that we are Pelagians.  Since the teaching of Pelagius was condemned well in the past, this is supposed to either shut us up or send us into a spasm of defending ourselves from the charge. As far as I’m concerned, call me pelagian or semi-pelagian if you want.  I’m not going to fight over the possession of labels.

    But Mark Olson, who is Eastern Orthodox and not Arminian, responds to Frank Turk in a post titled Free Will, Pelagius, and the East, and I find his reasoning particularly interesting.  The more I read of the eastern church fathers and of Eastern Orthodox theology, the better it sounds.

    Mark makes another excellent point regarding Christian debates, however, which is:

    … Different traditions, as part of their growing apart, develop their own terminology. Even where they use the same words, they don’t often have the same meaning. Thus the first step of any ecumenical discussion is to find a common language for communication. …

    Just so.  It’s very easy to misunderstand the terminology used by folks in another tradition.  Consider “sola scriptura,” as an example, which is often thought in popular terms to mean that you can’t allow any other human to help you understand the Bible, but meant no such thing to the reformers.  A little time spent in understanding the terms goes a long way.

    Go check out Mark’s complete post.  I think it is educational.

  • Teaching about Tithing (or Stewardship)

    Kris again asks an excellent question, and I’m making my answer into a new post rather than extending the previous discussion.

    Can I just see what your answer would be to the specific question of how should a pastor/ lead presbyter teach disciples of his to tithe?

    I’m assuming the question really applies to stewardship and giving generally, since I previously stated that I do not believe tithing is a New Testament command.  But there are two major objections to this in my experience.  First, that we won’t be able to support our churches without teaching tithing and second that we have no framework for teaching stewardship without the basic rules of tithing.

    These are both good issues, and I’m going to try to respond to the second one first.  Without tithing, what do you do for teaching on stewardship, for stewardship sermons, and so forth?  When and how do you talk about money?  I think one text expresses a gospel oriented approach so well we can make it paradigmatic:

    For it is by grace that you are saved through faith, and that is not from yourselves.  It is God’s gift.  It is not from works, so that no one can boast.  For we are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good worsk which God prepared for us ahead of time so that we make them our way of life. — Ephesians 2:8-10 (slightly paraphrased)

    Stewardship, and any other aspect of behavior, should be taught starting from grace.  I think Paul uses this same framework in many places in his writing.  We tend to read it a piece at a time, either looking only at the part of the text that talks about being saved by grace, or only at that portion that speaks of works.  But Paul doesn’t separate the two ideas.  He never talks about salvation by grace except that he goes on to talk about what this means in the believer’s life; he never talks about action except that he roots it in the gracious work of Jesus in providing our salvation.

    My feeling is that many of us don’t really believe in the power of the gospel.  If we did, we would spend more time on it and we would depend on it for much more in our lives and society.  But when we want finance our churches we do fund raising and try to teach tithing, and when we want to change our society we set up campaigns to accomplish particular legal, and we hope moral, goals.

    I believe that the best thing is to teach God’s all-encompassing grace and the power of the Holy Spirit and let God do the work (those good works he has prepared ahead of time) in people’s lives.  If we truly believe in the power of the gospel, I believe this is the only paradigm to follow.

    Yes, by urging people to do certain things and making it more socially acceptable for them to take heed, we can certainly modify behavior.  This is the practice in many churches where it is expected that people will be tithers and say that they are.  This same process works for other types of behavior as well.  But it is not the approach that should characterize the gospel.

    On the other hand, we have the approach that talks only about grace and salvation and fails to continue on to Jesus Christ as Lord.  As my own pastor said recently, it’s quite easy to say that Jesus is my savior, but much harder to say he’s my Lord.  On the other hand, when Christians speak only of ethics, of ethics independent from salvation, I think we reduce our system to a fairly ordinary set of ethics, especially when we consider how little of it real people can actually accomplish.

    So once it is rooted in grace we do need to teach about stewardship, and here we can look to some extent to the Old Testament for some guidance.  This is not to provide us with a precise checklist so that we can determine just how much we are legally obligated to do.  Rather, it gives us a sort of outside check to prevent self-deception.  In her comments Kris has pointed us to Numbers 18 and Deuteronomy 12.  These chapters can give us some help.  They show a high level of support that was provided to priests, Levites, and tabernacle or temple services.

    Amongst other things they suggest that giving was systematic, that it supported both the religious (and at one time political) establishment, and that the poor were provided for.  It also indicates that some was spent in seeing to the worship time of the families involved.

    But we have to make sure that we can flesh out these principles from the teachings of Jesus and of the early church.  Matthew 5:21ff has a number of commands prefaced with the statement: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times.”  This is followed by a command to which Jesus contrasts what he has to say on the subject.  In each case I find the command of Jesus more demanding, and specifically demanding something that comes from within.

    Acts 4 & 5 give us some idea of how the first Christians lived.  Paul gives us an example of generosity in 2 Corinthians 8 & 9.  I think that each of these can be taught easily when grounded in grace.  Amongst other types, Wesleyan theologians like to talk of prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace.  Whether one likes the names of these various divisions of grace or not, they do tend to emphasize that grace works in every aspect of our life.  If we truly believe the gospel, I believe we will emphasize this.

    In answering the second, I think I have partially answered the first.  How can we support churches if we do not teach tithing?  This is one of the problems I have with numbers based assessments of how well a church congregation is doing.  A church can be very successful in terms of numbers and be a total failure in terms of the gospel.  It has been said that a living church will see that life reflected in numbers, and I think this is quite frequently true, yet I have to wonder what report the conference dashboard would have given on Jesus’ ministry after John 6:66?

    I would suggest that the way to support a church is by making it truly be the body of Christ, a group of committed believers who are putting themselves at God’s disposal for ministry.  Such a group, I believe, would likely give more than any congregation fully whipped into shape through teaching on the requirement to tithe.

    Will it work?  I think so.  But only by the grace of God!

  • Christian Carnival Posted

    … at The Point Blog.

  • Rebuking in Community

    I get into more trouble with the word “rebuke” than with just about any other.  Perhaps I could find a bit less loaded of an English word to translate this concept, but it’s an important one.  I mentioned teaching about “the skills of rebuking and being rebuked.” This tends to disturb people.

    Why?  I think it is because we associate rebuking in the church with the high and might leaders getting up in their seats of judgment and telling all the lesser mortals in the pews how wrong they are.  But that concept of rebuking is neither the Biblical pattern for a church congregation, nor is it the sort of thing I’m trying to teach.  It’s expressed well in Proverbs 27:5 – “Open rebuke is better than secret love.”

    Let me illustrate this first gently based on my experience with marriage and business partnership.  My wife is also my business partner.  When we first got married, she was slow to criticize my writing.  She felt that being too negative when I gave her something to read would annoy me.  But when I give an unpublished paper to anyone to read, I like to get it back all marked up.  I may not agree with all the suggestions, but I like to have a chance to consider them and make the final product better.  It is very hard to convince me that a first draft is really good.  (Blog posts only get a couple of passes, and I usually find annoying errors in them if I read them again later.)

    So the first step was for Jody to realize that I didn’t mind having the page marked up.  The next step was for me to express properly my desire to discuss some of those points without criticizing her for making the corrections, but still discussing them in detail.  I remember one story I wrote in which she suggested a change in the name of one of the characters.  I didn’t get it at all.  Then she explained that I had painted an excellent picture via my use of names of a multi-ethnic group, and that this one name change rounded out the picture.  I changed the name, re-read the scene, and she was absolutely right.

    Now she is quite merciless on my writing, and totally unconcerned with what I accept or reject of her suggestions.  That combination is tremendously helpful.  It means she’ll make even marginal suggestions, things she isn’t sure are better, but are options I should consider.  This kind of iron sharpening iron is extremely valuable to both of us.

    Now when she’s writing and I’m checking, I have to reverse that.  I have to be willing to make suggestions while she makes the final decision on what she’s going to include in her own final work.  There’s no one sitting in the high judgment seat issuing edicts as to the right and wrong final result.  We check one another.

    We have a similar situation in science and scholarship when they are working well.  Scholars write papers and expect criticism.  They don’t expect never to have to revise a viewpoint.  Very few scholars I know will accept the word of one expert as the final answer on any particular topic.  If they disagree, they’re willing to do so.  Often this debate does get acrimonious, but at it’s best, it’s vigorous and direct, yet done without anger.  (Annoyance is natural, I think, when one finds one has been caught out on some point!)

    In my view, however, church rebuke has been formalized to the point of uselessness.  If we could go back to 1 Corinthians 14 on the conduct of the worship service, or the gathering of believers, we would see that the intention of that activity was not for the general body to gather and be instructed by the one knowledgeable person.  Rather, it was a time of exchange.  Multiple people would speak.

    Amongst the prophets, concerning whom I wrote yesterday, Paul said, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge” (1 Cor. 14:29).  If you or your congregation can’t do that I would first suggest that you have no business having prophecy in the congregation, because you will not be able to hear and discern the word of the Lord from amongst the noise.

    But even if your congregation does not allow prophecy as such, I don’t think a congregation can function effectively without this capability.  Even the pastor needs to be able to hear rebuke in this sense.

    Often it’s the fear of being wrong that makes rebuke so difficult.  At other times it’s the “high and mighty rebuke,” either formally or informally.  Don’t assume that just because your church doesn’t formally divide the leadership that such a thing is going on.  I have observed many, many supposedly free worship services, in which the activities were supposed to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit rather than a prescribed order of service, and in almost all cases I can very quickly identify the human leaders of the group.  The Holy Spirit may be leading, but He had better talk only to the right people, or the instruction won’t get through.

    Rebuking in community involves both learning how to give rebuke and how to receive it.  Giving it requires an attitude that allows the person receiving to make their own choice.  Receiving rebuke requires not putting down the one giving it if you believe you should not make the change suggested.  It’s a matter of community, working together to build one another up.  “Edify” or “build up” is another key word from 1 Corinthians 14.

  • Christians and Tithe

    In a comment to a previous post, Kris asks whether Christians are required to tithe.  That was one of two questions and I divided them into two posts to allow for separate discussions of the question.

    I don’t find tithing in the New Testament.  Now I’m not a purely “New Testament” believer.  I believe that principles God puts forth in the Old Testament can remain applicable, provided that they fit within the great change of the covenants.  It’s very easy, however, to misapply such commands when one doesn’t truly look through the Christological filter.

    Tithing is such a command.  I believe that with the new covenant, God’s claim is upon all that we own, and that we are to be guided by the Holy Spirit in how much of what we retain for our use.  I prefer to express it that way over how much we give, though it is very scriptural to express it as God’s guidance to give (see 2 Corinthians 8 & 9).  Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian believers is a terribly neglected book.

    There is a second point about tithing that I would like to address briefly:  Where do you give?  I don’t think we have a direct command on this, though the New Testament pattern of the church would suggest that we do all of our service, whether in labor or in finances, through our local “church of Christ” or our congregation.  I personally make it a spiritual discipline to give a certain amount through my local congregation, trusting that body to use it wisely to build the kingdom, even when I may have doubts.

    In preparing to answer this question I found an essay by David Alan Black, author of two books from my company, who makes some similar points and provides more scripture.  Though I was already convinced of essentially what Dr. Black says on the topic, I was glad to find it laid out in a compact, scripturally supported fashion.

  • Say No to Prophecy Before You Say Yes

    Advent Week 3 in The Mosaic Bible includes 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, which is a wonderful passage to use with regard to to prophecy.  For those who may be following my use of The Mosaic Bible with the Revised Common Lectionary let me note that two passages, Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-20 either are the same as those in the RCL for Advent 3C or overlap.

    I’ve just written a post on my Threads blog that explains, amongst other things, why I use the label “charismatic.”  It’s because I believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available today.  This must, of course, include the gift of prophecy.  I have always had a problem in that while I believe the gift of prophecy continues in theory, or perhaps I should say I have no theological reason why it should not, I have been loathe to point to someone and say, “That person is a prophet.”

    Of course, there is little reason I should set myself up as some sort of judge of prophets, a rather arrogant thing to do, but it is certainly a question I get asked.  If I believe in prophecy, I should believe in prophets, right?  So where are they?

    I suggest that while there is no theological problem with the continuation of prophecy, there is a practical problem, and that practical problem is illuminated by 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22:

    19 Do not stifle the Holy Spirit.
    20 Do not scoff at prophecies,
    21 but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.
    22 Stay away from every kind of evil.  (NLT)

    I recall two experiences that I think help illustrate my point.  The first was when I was jointly teaching a seminar on the gift of prophecy, and the person teaching with me, who was well acquainted with the charismatic movement (as I was not at the time), told the audience that if they had been involved in the charismatic community over the previous few years, they had been awash in false prophecy.  It was interesting that the statement did not elicit any outrage from the many charismatics and Pentecostals in the room.  They were not unaware that false prophecy had been going on.

    The second was after another class I taught, in which I had discussed the skills of rebuking and being rebuked, when I was informed that informed that in their church they only allowed encouraging prophecies to be spoken.  They didn’t do rebuke.  Apart from the odd idea that one can decide just which “words from the Lord” one will receive, most of the prophetic writings of scripture involve rebuke of one sort or another.

    In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul makes several points.  I’ve heard the first part preached quite frequently.  Don’t quench the Spirit, don’t despise prophecies.  Often the point made from these texts is that people should not forbid or deny the modern gift of prophecy.  But one should read on.

    “Test everything.”  If you test, there will be success and failure conditions.  Paul doesn’t miss those.  He says to hold fast what is good.  You know, I’ve heard sermons from this passage that cut off right after that point.  But Paul goes on to tell us to keep away from every form of evil.

    There are two results from the test–good, and evil.  If we are unwilling to identify what is wrong, we will not be in a position to identify what is right.

    I would suggest, in fact, that one can just as effectively “quench the Spirit” and “despise prophecies” by accepting everything as a valid prophecy or shying away from correcting problems or abuses as one can do so by denying all forms of prophecy.

    Discernment involves the test itself along with a willingness to accept or reject what is said.  Without the ability to say “no” to prophecy in the church, we cannot say “yes” with any safety.

    (Note:  I wrote on this issue a few months ago under the title The Advantages of Stoning False Prophets.)

  • Liberal, Charismatic, Moderate, and Passionate

    My blog subtitle reads: Thoughts on Religion in the World from a passionate, moderate, liberal charismatic Christian. One common response to this line is to tell me that it’s impossible to combine those four things into one, so I’d like to provide a few notes on why I use these four labels when self-identifying.

    First, let me note that I did not take any of these from the subtitle of Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN. Much as I appreciate Brian McLaren’s writing, I use these labels to identify specific elements of my theology, not to indicate breadth. That characterization may be mildly unfair to McLaren, but I’ll have to live with that.

    I must also note that these terms came to me in two parts, and I usual use them that way. Liberal charismatic was an epithet used of me by an opponent in an online debate, which was accurate enough that it has stuck. When I was considering using it in the subtitle of my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic, even my wife said, “That’s you, honey!”

    Passionate moderate is a label I created for myself. I discuss this combination in my post On Being a Passionate Moderate. Those two previous posts go into more detail than I plan to do right now. I’d just like to define how I connect these four labels with myself.

    1. Liberal. This is the one label many of my Christian friends would like to avoid. Because they are kind people, they also want to resist applying it to me. “I don’t see you as a liberal,” said one. “You’re really just a very open evangelical.” My main concern is just the opposite. There are things a liberal is expected not to believe by many. I can’t count the times someone has assumed that I deny miracles and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Instead I affirm both. In politics it’s often assumed that I will favor government intervention in various economic activities. Actually, I lean rather strongly toward laissez faire capitalism.

    In what way am I liberal? In terms of my Christian faith I am doctrinally open. I do have those doctrines that I believe, but I do not assume that if you disagree on any of these that you are not right with God. In fact, I don’t assume that I can know the spiritual state of any other person. I lean more toward concern about practice than about belief, though I would maintain that real belief generally results in action consistent with that belief. In studying the Bible, I use the historical-critical method, and I don’t always come up with conservative results. On the other hand, sometimes I do.

    2. Charismatic. I call myself a charismatic for one reason: I believe that any and all gifts of the Holy Spirit are still available to the church. I do not believe they ended after the apostolic age or at any other time. I differ from many charismatics and Pentecostals in that I do not believe that speaking in tongues is a necessary sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I believe that every Christian “receives” (I really dislike the word, thus the scare quotes) the Holy Spirit, and that every Christian is gifted.

    3. Moderate. The term on this list that I like least is “moderate” yet I have not found a good alternative. It is too often used for a centrist or for someone who does not feel strongly about anything and thus lives by compromise. I use it to indicate two things. First, I don’t believe that doctrinal choices are binary in nature; there is a range of options. Second, I believe in examining the entire spectrum and recognizing the actual extremes. I have found that I also end up not being at the extremes, but sometimes I do. For example, I am a strictly orthodox trinitarian. I am careful to keep my view of the trinity in accord with the church councils that formed the doctrine.

    4. Passionate. When all is said and done I pursue that which I believe passionately. My moderation does not involve not caring or simply taking a compromise position in order to avoid having to defend a more extreme one. One could almost say that I hold my moderate positions in an extreme way.

    I hope that helps explain my subtitle. Again, for a more detailed explanation, see my previous posts on liberal charismatic and passionate moderate.

  • Essentials of the Faith – or Not

    C. Michael Patton has written a post on doctrinal essentials which is quite interesting. James McGrath responds.

    I find this a very useful discussion even when I disagree on what is essential. For example, while Patton states that he is writing about doctrine, and that another post could be written on essential practice, I would suggest that whether or not the primary essential of salvation is belief in doctrines or certain practices, a combination of the same, or indeed none of the above, is itself a rather important doctrinal question. And since the question is on just what, doctrine and/or practice, is essential for salvation, it is doubtless an essential question, at least.

    I use a different method of dividing these issues in my post Unity, Diversity, and Confusion. There I am not trying to state what beliefs are necessary for salvation. In fact, I find the idea that someone must successfully believe certain propositions to be a form of salvation by works. But in creating a community, one must define what it means to be in the community and not in the community, even if one does not assume that “in the community” is equivalent to salvation.

  • Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament – Isaiah 7:14 and Hosea 11:1

    With a recent flurry of posts regarding the way in which the Old Testament is used in the New, at least peripherally, I wanted to call attention to one written from a different perspective.

    The post is Isaiah 7, Nativity, and the Theotokos, written by Mark Olson, who speaks from an Orthodox perspective.  He discusses quite accurately the difficulties involved with interpreting Isaiah 7 either from the Masoretic text or the LXX, the first based on language, and the second (or either) based on context.  Let me extract one paragraph from his post:

    But there is a problem for the modern western (protestant?) Christian who has decided the typological/allegorical hermeneutic is to be abandoned. For it seems if you do so, you need to abandon Isaiah 7 as a prophecy which points to Christ. Yet, noting that modern translators of texts such as the ESV, which primarily use the MT documents for their basis use the less proper translation term “virgin” over “unmarried/young girl” in this case. Why? Because they are Christian and the traditional Christian interpretation of this text is that it is in fact pointing to Christ and the Nativity. Yet that does violence to a consistent hermeneutical method.

    I think Mark is right.  If we stick with the historical-critical method, or even the historical-grammatical method, we really have no way to bridge the gap here.  We can say that Matthew prophetically reapplies the passage when he quotes it, and we can give special privileges to early Christian interpreters–they get to take things out of context while we don’t–or we can ask whether the historical meaning taken in context is always the controlling factor.

    As an aside, let me note that I don’t think the LXX is a translation of a different strand.  The TDNT article on parthenos implies that the word may have overlapped the word ;almah more than is normally thought and thus it is neither a mistranslation, nor a different strand, but simply a case in which the semantic range of the two terms overlapped at the time of translation, but less so at the time of quotation (Matthew).  In any case, I don’t think the translation issue will solve the problem completely, and this becomes even more difficult when one considers the syntax of Isaiah 7:14 which could quite easily be translated as “is pregnant” as well as “shall conceive.”

    But laying all that aside we’re stuck with the likelihood that those who first heard Isaiah speak the words of Isaiah 7:14 would have understood it differently from the way in which Matthew applies it in Matthew 1:18-23.

    I see this as an excellent case requiring typological interpretation, but also inviting us to do such typological interpretation within the bounds of church tradition, i.e. as part of a community.  One of the great problems I see with allegorical or typological interpretation is that it lacks controls.  My early inclination, during graduate school and for a time after, was to require the historical/contextual meaning as an anchor point for one’s typological understanding.  To a certain extent, I think that is still good plan, but it doesn’t really cover everything.

    First, the historical meaning doesn’t necessarily make much of a suggestion as to what typology might apply.  One is stuck with a sort of subjective guess as to how far one has deviated from the historical meaning.  Second, and as a result of the first, this idea really provides very little control.  The easy answer from a western protestant perspective, is to try to drop typological and allegorical interpretation entirely.  But if we do that we cut ourselves off from both much of the interpretation of the early church, and also most of the interpretation that scripture does of itself.  Thus any allegorical interpretation we may do will be rootless.

    If I might illustrate from another text, Hosea 11:1 as quoted in Matthew 2:15, I think there is an even greater contextual problem here, based on purely historical-grammatical or critical exegesis.  Yet there is an excellent typological reason to connect the birth and mission of Jesus to the exodus.  In fact, I think it is important to see the shaping of the story of Jesus from the exodus and then the exile and restoration if one is truly to understand redemption.  I don’t think I’m terribly out of line with Christian tradition on that point, but what I want to underline here is that such a view involves a typological interpretation, not a contextual view of a text.

    It seems likely to me here that Matthew, rather than interpreting a specific text loosely or contrary to context, is using a piece of phraseology from the exodus to draw the broader body of the exodus/redemption story into our understanding of the story of Jesus.  To view it as a misappropriation of a phrase is a distinctly modern error, one of which I have been guilty in the past.  Rather, Matthew takes advantage of the fact that his readers will know the broader story, and uses the one phrase as a tie-in to connect the stories together.

  • Another Cautionary Note on the Manhattan Declaration

    This time it’s from my former community, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, though from the Spectrum Magazine blog, which doesn’t follow the church HQ drummer. It’s The Manhattan Declaration: Approach with Caution, and it’s worth a read.