Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • Confessional School vs. Freedom to Explore

    Peter Enns’ post, “If They Only Knew What I Thought” struck a chord with me and at the same time called up one of my concerns, or perhaps I should say areas of conflict.

    I lived through this growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist and being educated in Seventh-day Adventist schools. In fact, I made a significant transition twice, once when I moved from schools in the self-supporting movement to those in mainstream adventism, and then out of the Seventh-day Adventist. Most evangelicals I’ve discussed this with have been quite supportive of my move. To many of them I moved from at least marginal heresy to a more orthodox form of Christianity.

    But the same type of issues came up as I tried to decide what to do with my life after graduate school (at Andrews University, an SDA school), as I hear from evangelicals who go to secular schools. There were certain elements of my belief system that had changed, and others that I was still exploring. Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist? Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist teacher? I remember one professor saying to me during this period, “You don’t have to teach everything you know.” He was someone I respected, and still do. Yet I didn’t like his answer.

    But what do you do when you not only see the boundaries of the permissible playing field looming, but think that perhaps you have crossed them? Is it right to continue to be a member of an organization you do not fully support? Is it right to teach for such an organization? Can you conceal what you actually believe in order to stay within the boundaries permitted?

    We hear two sides of this conflict. The first is from people like me who have experienced changes in their understanding of scripture and doctrine, and feel the need of freedom to explore and to follow truth as they see it. We also feel the need to be honest with others. On the other side we have those institutional guardians who want to keep the faith pure. The former see the latter as barriers to truth, real spirituality, and scholarship. The latter view the former as persons who don’t fully care for the safety of the souls who gather in the pews.

    I have a certain empathy with both sides. I recall a conversation with my uncle, Don F. Neufeld, associate editor at the time of the Review and Herald, of the SDA Bible Commentary, and editor of the SDA Bible Dictionary. Several of the issues I had (and still have) with SDA theology, and even with much evangelical theology, came up. In some cases he agreed with me against the common SDA position. In others, he didn’t. But he suggested to me a certain pastoral concern, a sensitivity to the people he served, and I was to serve. He told me how carefully he wrote at times, leaving the door open to exploration while not cutting the people off at the knees. Theology didn’t occur in a vacuum, according to him, it was something we did in service of God’s people.

    While I couldn’t follow his advice at the time, and imagine I still would fail, I do understand what he’s talking about. A church community has to have some form of definition, and that definition will involve beliefs that are acceptable and ones that are not. If there are to be such institutions as confessional seminaries, schools operated by a religious community to support their needs and their people, there are going to be boundaries to the playing field.

    If this were a matter of social clubs or of businesses, it would be easier. If you find yourself outside the boundaries of one, move to another. Such a solution can still work for someone who is raised as an Arminian, for example, and becomes Calvinist. I’ve known a few of those (and the reverse) and they usually just end up moving from one denomination to another to solve their problem. I think we would have little difficulty suggesting that someone who can no longer consider themselves Christian would do best to teach in a secular institution. Yes, this is not complete academic freedom. But it is also not deception. If the institution is operated by the Roman Catholic church, it is likely to have certain positions. If it’s Seventh-day Adventist it will have a different core perspective. (If it’s Methodist, of course, it will be whatever it turns out to be!)

    My prayer would be that we set those boundaries as far out as we possibly can, to allow those who study and teach in church-related academic institutions to explore and challenge as much as possible. I think truth thrives in an atmosphere where it is challenged. Stupidity does not. For both those reasons challenge is good. But at the same time I would hope that all of us in our various churches would be prepared to gently help and encourage those who might need to find somewhere else to go.

    I’ve managed to handle the “apostate” label before from those SDAs who see nothing but a rebellion against God that could get me out of the SDA church. I think most of them should be delighted that I left. I wouldn’t be making their lives easy from the inside. Perhaps a better approach would be to encourage someone to try their walk with God in another community. Don’t do this with the “left foot of fellowship.” Be welcoming, but at the same time don’t condemn the move to find someplace else. Encourage the exploration of other traditions.

    There’s always going to be a tension between the need of the community to have cohesion and the need of scholars to explore. I believe that tension can be constructive rather than destructive.

    (And as a final commercial, let me recommend a book I publish, Crossing the Street by Bob LaRochelle. Bob grew up Roman Catholic, was ordained a deacon, and is now a minister in the United Church of Christ. No, he’s not telling all Catholics to follow him. Rather, he’s encouraging us to look across to other faith traditions, learn, and feel the freedom to explore.)

  • Adrian Warnock – Evolutionary Spectrum

    I always find it interesting when Adrian Warnock produces a spectrum on some topic. I almost always disagree with some point on the spectrum, but the exercise is worthwhile. After all, if I produce a spectrum, there will doubtless be people who disagree at some point.

    This time Adrian has produced a spectrum on beliefs regarding evolution. I think it generally covers the ground. At the same time, I think it skips over the majority of theistic evolutionists.

    The reason may seem subtle, but I think it’s important. Adrian divides the theistic evolutionists between “passive” and “active” equating the latter with intelligent design. I have a couple of problems with that. First, I think natural laws are an expression of God’s will. That a law continues unchanged, or a process functions and finishes (if finishing is appropriate) does not mean that God is less active than when (or if) there is some sort of intervention. Thus God is not less active when he designs a process that works without active intervention than he is with something that requires him to step in from time to time.

    Secondly, I think there is a problem with the concepts of intervention, active, and passive. God is. God is infinite (or something close enough we can’t tell the difference). In any case, in terms of interacting with the universe, God doesn’t have to prioritize. He isn’t less active one place than another. So the idea of God being active or passive is an effect of human perception. A process that continues consistently does not appear to require action by God, while one that varies or changes direction is more likely to seem to require such intervention.

    Resurrection seems interventionist. Birth and death seems natural. To us.

    The evolution of a new life-form seems “special” and perhaps to require intervention. The continued life of a single creature does not. To us.

    I just don’t think there’s a real difference from God’s point of view, insofar as one can catch God’s point of view (not very far, I fear). My breath stops without God (Psalm 104:29-30). Gravity stops without God. When all of this works, it appears not to require God’s intervention.

    I’m probably writing this too quickly (it’s Sunday morning), to be clear, but my point is simply that God is active whether the process he is using operates consistently and without identified points of intervention or whether (as in intelligent design) there are points at which God intervenes in some special way.

    Otherwise, I love the spectrum. I’m glad Adrian included the ruin and restoration folks, who are often forgotten. I’m also glad he distinguished some nuances such as young earth/old universe, and “the earth is young but appears old” vs. “the earth is young and would appear that way if you got the science right.” (My descriptions, not Adrian’s.)

     

  • Fervent Prayer and Praying in the Spirit

    Dave Black provides an extract from his forthcoming book on the Seven Marks of a New Testament Church. In it, he refers to praying in the Spirit, noting that some exegetes say this refers to praying in tongues. He doesn’t deny that possibility but says it is broader than that.

    While I believe that praying in tongues is praying in the Spirit, “praying in the Spirit” is not a category of prayer, in that one might pray “in” and “out” of the Spirit in some way. Rather, it describes something that should be a characteristic of all prayer. There are those who elevate or diminish praying in tongues. On the one hand nobody, even the person praying, necessarily knows what a prayer in tongues is about. Is it not better that people hear the prayer? On the other hand, prayer in the Spirit is most definitely not under the conscious control of the one praying. Is it not better to be fully under the control of the Spirit of God?

    Actually prayer, and any spiritual discipline can be verbal or non-verbal. I find I hear most from the Lord when I’m reading Scripture. But often it is not the words, or at least not consciously the words, that bring peace or direction. Sometimes I just study and come to some decision or other that I needed to. Sometimes I merely feel my anxiety relieved, even though I may not have been reading. This morning I was helped to a place of peace (I was worrying about something I had no business worrying about) while reading Leviticus 23 in Hebrew. I cannot think of anything in that text that related to my situation.

    I would suggest that bringing the words of one’s prayer, when those words are spoken aloud and consciously, under the power of the Spirit is more difficult. It is definitely worth doing. But you won’t do it yourself. You can only hope and wait for the Holy Spirit to do it. And obey when He does!

  • Letting the Holy Spirit Teach

    I’ve been meditating a bit on letting the Holy Spirit be the teacher. There’s an interesting corollary to letting the Holy Spirit teach—letting other people learn.

    You see, what we often want to do is to “let” the Holy Spirit teach other people what we already know, and what we think they need to learn. If they don’t learn that fast enough, or heaven help them, if they don’t ever learn what we know, we’re likely to start questioning which spirit they’re listening to. Letting the Holy Spirit teach involves not just trusting God, but also trusting other people to be able to hear from God. I think we frequently trust the Holy Spirit just so long as he doesn’t slip his leash. By which, of course, we mean that he has failed to keep other people in the proper order as we see it.

    So I’m going to tell a story. This happened in 1999 just before I married Jody. I traveled to England with Perry Dalton and a fairly stellar group of speakers. (I’ll name Perry, but not try to list all the others.) We were to offer pastors’ conferences at a number of Methodist churches. I was very easily the least famous person on the team, and I didn’t figure I’d be doing all that much talking. Yes, there was the moment of pride when I told myself I had plenty of notes to use in speaking and I’d love to use them, but I reconciled myself to just going along. That wasn’t hard. After all, I was going to spend three weeks traveling all over England and Wales. What’s not to enjoy? Just for fun, I should mention that not a few of our friends suggested that I was getting cold feet about the upcoming wedding and had fled to Europe! But I came back, and Jody and I are coming up on our 14th anniversary this November.

    The first conference—and no, I don’t remember the name of the town—was quite a rousing event as I remember it, though my expectations about not speaking were fully realized. Until, that is, it was time for the closing meeting of the evening. Now those who read this and know Perry will be unsurprised at this. As the singing finished for the final meeting Perry comes up to me and says, “Get ready. You’re going to wrap this thing up.” Getting ready involved something like 30 seconds. So I got up and wrapped things up. I don’t remember a thing I said, and I believe I can safely say that nobody else does either.

    Then I closed with a prayer exercise I use. I invite people to begin in silence and listen for the Holy Spirit to direct them to somebody else in the room they should pray for. This exercise tends to scare conference leaders. They’re afraid of the chaos that might result, the crazy things people might do. And this fear is not unfounded. We’ve all encountered crazy people doing crazy things and blaming it all on the Holy Spirit. “God told me,” is often an excuse for the worst sort of silliness and abuse. On the other hand, I’ve done this many, many times, and have never regretted it.

    It went well that time as well. People prayed for one another. There were the inevitable questions for me from people who are concerned about the rules. What if the Holy Spirit tells two people to pray for the same person? What if I’m supposed to pray for more than one person? What if I’m supposed to sit in my seat and pray for everyone?

    Then it was over. Nothing spectacular.

    As we were about to close, an elderly gentleman asked to give a testimony. (Knowing Perry, he may have been calling for testimonies. I don’t really remember.) The gentleman was grinning from ear to ear. He was fairly bubbling with joy and excitement. Then he started to talk.

    He pointed to the first speaker. “I was reluctant to come here this morning,” he said, “but I did. I listened to your presentation, and I just about left. It did nothing for me.”

    He pointed to the second and told him that his had done nothing for him either. He was so joyful, however, that nobody could really take offense. He said at lunch time, he had almost decided not to return to the conference. He went through the list of afternoon speakers and said the same thing about each one.

    Then he said, pointing to me, “And you, young man, yours was all just rubbish to me too. It did nothing for me. But then you called for prayer. I was certain nothing was going to happen. I had a particular thing I wanted to hear about from the Lord, and I was sure this was going to be a failure. Then I felt someone put his hand on my shoulder and start to pray. It was my own pastor! I was disappointed. But then he started to pray, and I heard precisely what I’d been waiting to hear all day today and for a long time. The Lord sent all of you here all the way from America just so my pastor could pray for me!”

    The question, of course, is whether those of us called to teach can handle having what we say called rubbish, and being sent on intercontinental flights so God can use other people to do his work.

    Or is there too much pride?

     

  • I Know Less about Prayer than I Used To

    Today I extracted a paragraph from David Alan Black’s blog (I have his blanket permission), just so I could comment on it. He notes:

    I often ask myself, How can I write anything about prayer? I’ve still got so much to learn about it!

    I am in sympathy with his comment. My wife and I have taught seminars about prayer, and we’ve both written about it as well, both on our blogs and in print. But the more I’ve taught about prayer, the more convinced I’ve become is that the most important thing to do is to unlearn things that I think I already know. Communion with God is not something that can be reduced to science. You won’t have a good prayer life because you follow a formula, however complex and all-encompassing that formula may be.

    This doesn’t mean that you never learn anything from others. I’ve learned many things from others about prayer. Yet in most cases, that learning has involved unlearning something else, removing the limits that I have placed on the way God can and will work.

    Abraham had a mighty interesting prayer life. He argued with God about Sodom. When asked to sacrifice his son, he didn’t argue with God, and I wonder if he was supposed to have done so. He tried to lie his way through various situations, and God worked with him despite that. Abraham, of course, had no concise printed guides to how to pray. Amazing how well that worked.

    I’ll keep teaching about prayer. I may even write more about it. But at the same time, I hope what we all do is clear away all the barriers we have to just getting in touch with God.

    I look forward to seeing Dave’s chapter on prayer. I know the furnace in which it is being forged, and I expect the Lord to do great things through Dave’s pen (and keyboard).

  • Syria: To Intervene or Not

    Religion News Service provides us with some comments by the experts on the ethics of intervening in Syria (HT: UM-Insight). Now I am neither a theologian nor an ethicist, so I wouldn’t claim to be able to parse all the issues in deciding whether an intervention is just.

    In fact, I find many of the comments by the experts substantially less than helpful. The final comments by Robert Parham of EthicsDaily.com.

    But even so my questions are simpler:

    1) Is it justified? Violence is so easy to justify based on someone else’s actions. In this case, innocent people have been killed. I don’t believe in initiating force, but I do believe one can use force to defend oneself or others. (Christians should consider deeply whether such action is justified on their own behalf or with the blessing of the church.)

    2) Will it be effective? In other words, will the situation that results be better than the situation in which one intervened? This is where I think that most attempts to justify violence fail. “He started it!” is a good playground excuse, even justification, for violence, but how often is the resulting situation actually better?

    I think it is on #2 that the Syrian mission fails. We may be able to make a point, but will Syria be a better place when we’re done? I simply don’t see how we can make Syria a better place through this action. We can justify it on the basis of saving innocent lives, presumably in the future, but what basis is there to believe that less people will be killed because we intervened?

    As an American, I will add one more question: Is it legal? President Obama is seeking the permission of congress though he has claimed, incorrectly in my view, that he doesn’t require that permission.  I think he does require such permission, but presidents have been eroding the war powers of congress, and congress has failed to defend their legal prerogatives. Are such legal issues important? I think they are. They allow us, as a nation, to take responsibility and make decisions. They limit the powers of the executive to make these unilateral decisions without adequate discussion. Now if congress will just ask, and duly consider, the ethical issues involved.

    I served in the United States Air Force. There were times when my government chose to go to war when I didn’t think there was justification. I expressed that view at the ballot box, and as an airman carried out my duties. I think the legal justification and procedure is extremely important. Our servicemen and women don’t (and in my view shouldn’t) make an ethical choice each time their government sends them into action. Those of us who are not in that position owe it to them to give thorough consideration to how justified and effective their actions will be before we risk their lives.

    In this case, I think there is good justification for action under my first question. I don’t think it’s possible for this intervention to actually be effective, i.e. to make the situation better. When I weigh my votes in the next election, I will count support for this action by my elected officials as a black mark against them.

    Note that I don’t think I’m expressing the Christian view. One can justifiably disagree, for example, if one simply thinks this can actually bring an end to the suffering. In the meantime, the church should be in the business of reconciliation, which I can support any time.

  • Welcoming Visitors

    Allan Bevere has some excellent notes. As someone who has visited many churches, and experienced just about all of what he describes, I can just say “Amen!” Don’t smother. Don’t ignore. Be helpful!

  • The Conclusion You Want

    It was one of those great days in seminary, and I was in a small class studying prophets from the Hebrew text. The professor favored following the consonantal text as written. (For those unacquainted with the Massoretic text, there are occasions when something is specified “to be read” [Qere] that is not as it is written [Ketiv] in the text. There are various reasons for this [Wikipedia], but those aren’t important right now.) I would tend to choose one or the other text in a rather eclectic manner, so we had an ongoing discussion.

    That day we came upon a passage which was very important to this professor theologically, and the reading that best supported his theology was Qere and not Ketiv. He looks at me and says, “Henry, now’s your opportunity. You can finally accept the Qere!”

    I’m a contrary fellow, and it turned out that in this case, I thought a perfectly good translation of the Ketiv could be produced and that it was the better text. I don’t know whether I was right. I’ve been wrong about many things. But that isn’t the important thing here.

    As he said that, I was thinking, “You are just accepting that text because it suits your theology.” And as I was thinking that, he said, “You just reject that text because you want to undermine my theology.” Of course, neither of those accusations moved any discussion forward.

    I’d heard that accusation before, and I’ve heard it many times since. I do believe people often arrange evidence to suit their preferences. We should all avoid doing that. It’s important to look at your reasoning and see whether it will stand up to scrutiny from someone who disagrees, who would prefer a different conclusion.

    As an accusation, it doesn’t prove anything, nor does it advance the argument. In fact, it’s a way of avoiding the argument entirely. I know someone is wrong. How? Because he desires a particular conclusion and has so arranged his evidence as to make that conclusion plausible. But isn’t that what we do when we arrange evidence? We arrange it to point to a conclusion. It’s going to look like we did that. Ah, but the question is whether we came to that conclusion with an open mind by studying the evidence or whether we came to that conclusion prior to a study of the evidence. We would do well to watch for this problem in our own work.

    But there is a use of this accusation that troubles me, and my professor’s and my own mutual accusation illustrates it. It’s quite possible for the more progressive among us to assume that all conservative conclusions come from producing evidence to support a foregone conclusion, and for conservatives to think that progressives come to their conclusions for the very same reason. At the same time, each group looks at their own camp as truly following the evidence where it leads.

    Traditionalists can use this argument: You only say that because you want to undermine tradition. Progressives can use it: You only say that because you want to uphold tradition.

    One of the things I teach regarding Bible study is that we should learn to point the scripture we read and study first at ourselves. It’s easy to read scripture to find all the things other people ought to be doing. It’s much more challenging to read scripture to find out what I should be doing and how I should change.

    Similarly, it’s easier for us to see the bias in other people or other groups. Demonstrating that bias is a bit more work, but unless you do that extra work, you’ve done nothing worthwhile.

     

  • Cessation and Continuation

    Dave Black posted some notes on the difference between being a cessationist and a continualist (his term). I agree with his comments.

    Most commonly when we talk about “cessationism” we are talking about the gifts of the Spirit. Do these gifts, particularly the more spectacular of them, continue to operate in the church today? (I know that people divide these gifts differently, but in general, the question winds up whether the more spectacular of them, however, grouped, continue.)

    The fruit of the Spirit is much less controversial on paper, but do we show the evidence of the Spirit working in our churches? I maintain that the sign of the Spirit’s work that Paul was looking for in 1 Corinthians 12-14 was not the gifts, but rather the one Spirit under which those gifts operated. The gifts of the Spirit put some power behind the fruit of the Spirit, but without the fruit, they are not a sign of the functioning of God’s Spirit.

    In my experience, when people are looking for a gift of the Spirit they’re not that interested in gifts of helping or administration. What they want is miracles or prophecy. That is quite often a sign of a very wrong spirit, a spirit that seeks to dominate and stand out rather than to serve.

    So I like Dave’s list of things that need to continue. How many continue in your church? In your life? In mine?

    It leads one to pray, no?

  • The Problem with Eschatology

    The Problem with Eschatology

    I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is very interested in eschatology. We didn’t learn the term all that early, but we were subjected constantly to sermons about it. SDA eschatology is one of the key reasons I’m not SDA any more, but when I first joined a United Methodist congregation, I was surprised to discover that nobody really thought that much about the end times. One pastor I know had even invited an SDA to come in and teach on Revelation. Why? “SDAs know something about eschatology.” Of course, the corollary to that was that Methodists did not.

    But SDAs were not the primary source for the congregation. Most of them picked up what eschatology they knew from television and other popular media, which meant some kind of futurist interpretation including a seven-year tribulation, usually a pre-tribulation rapture, and a pre-millenial second coming. This eschatology, while built on a dispensational view of biblical interpretation and theology, was held without necessarily accepting, or even knowing, its theological foundations.

    Most Methodist pastors that I encountered during this time didn’t really teach or preach about eschatology. They preferred to avoid it. They might say that Methodists weren’t really committed to a particular eschatology. Some accepted the “left behind” eschatology themselves. But in general there was, and is, a void in this area of theology.

    Let me warn readers at this point that this is one of my posts reflecting on a book I have published. There won’t be much of a commercial, however. I’m just giving some of my thoughts on eschatology and why we should pay attention to it in the church.

    I believe the reason many pastors and teachers don’t talk about eschatology is that it has a bad reputation amongst those theologically trained. There is so much craziness that goes on, such as setting dates for the end of the world, that people just don’t want to go there. The “left behind” theology and the futurist view of the interpretation of Daniel, Revelation, and other apocalyptic literature is popular because it is proclaimed almost in a vacuum. If people hear only one view proclaimed, they can perhaps be forgiven for thinking it is the way to think about eschatology.

    And I believe that groups with even more peculiar views of the last days find an opening amongst Christians simply because pastors and teachers haven’t addressed the issues at all. I recall a comment by my uncle on a sermon which he called “fearfully and wonderfully made.” He didn’t intend it positively. Most systems or programs about the end time are, in that sense, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” They are also houses of cards, to be blown over if anyone studies the texts themselves without the guide. I find the SDA interpretation of the seals and trumpets of Revelation to be ridiculous, and rejected them while I was still a college student in an SDA school. But if you hear just that view, and look at just the texts (and the emphasized portions of texts) than an evangelist or other presenter wants you to see, it can sound very plausible.

    But even more importantly, eschatology is critical. It’s where we’re going. It’s why we are the church. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of now, and there are views of eschatology that do not diminish that importance. That’s something to consider. But when you’re making a decision as to what to do and how to do it, knowing where you’re going is important. One result of bad eschatology is the idea that because Jesus is coming soon (and just what does “soon” mean?) we don’t need to take care of the planet we’re living on. Why bother, when it’s all corrupted by evil and about to be destroyed in the fires of hell?

    The answer is to take this subject on directly, and as frequently as necessary to counter popular Christian culture. It is also important not to just teach some alternate scheme of the end times. Too often we teach conclusions in the church (and even in seminary), and not how to come to those conclusions, and yes, how to challenge them.

    9781938434105mThat is what Dr. Edward W. H. Vick does in his study guide, Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide. Interestingly enough, Dr. Vick is a Seventh-day Adventist. But he isn’t teaching the SDA evangelistic message. He’s surveying the field of eschatology and teaching readers and students the terminology and the ideas they need in order to understand the discussion of this field. It isn’t a simple book, but it is direct and straightforward. You’ll need to study it carefully, lesson by lesson. You can’t jump in somewhere in the middle. It won’t tell you what you should believe about eschatology. It will provide you with the tools to study the topic and to understand what others are saying.

    I accepted this manuscript for publication because I think we need to think, study, and teach more on this topic. I am also convinced that on every topic we need to let people know not just what we conclude, but how we came to those conclusions. It builds on what Dr. Vick has already said in his books From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully, and The Adventists’ Dilemma. The latter volume will be of particular interest to SDAs who often wonder just what “soon” means when you’ve been proclaiming that Jesus is coming soon for a couple of hundred years. Don’t worry. The church has been doing it for 2000 years. But perhaps we don’t know what “soon” means.

    There are those who may be concerned about using a book on this subject written by someone from a group that has peculiar views on eschatology. Let me assure you that Dr. Vick treats eschatology as an academic subject. I’m not going to try to characterize his view of SDA eschatology. I’ll simply say that in this book he presents an overview of this topic that is broad, intense, and extremely helpful.

     

    (If you’re interested in pursuing a study of basic eschatology in that manner, this will be the book for you. If you’re considering this book for use in your church, remember that you can request a free evaluation copy simply by e-mailing Energion Publications with a note telling us your intended use and the size of the group you intend to use it with.)