Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Atonement

  • Guilty of Pastoral Malpractice

    Thom Rainer posted an article on Lifeway’s Web Site claiming that pastors who did not preach penal substitutionary atonement (he didn’t use the term, he described the doctrine in very strong terms) are guilty of pastoral malpractice. He used the word “treasonous.”

    Will, a United Methodist pastor and blogger pleads guilty in that case. I know a few other United Methodist pastors who would join him in that. I was talking to one the other day who regards PSA as a serious heresy that leads in turn to a heretical view of the trinity. Not being as interested as others in just what “heresy” is, I won’t go there.

    A commenter on the Lifeway post cheers on Mr. Rainer, and comments on how people are tired of a “watered down gospel.” What I’m wondering is this: Why is it OK to water down God’s love, but it’s somehow “treasonous” to water down his wrath?

    I wonder which is more important.

  • PSA: Thoughts on Centering

    David Heddle commented on my earlier post, PSA: An Unbalanced and Ineffective View of the Atonement, in his post Penal Substitutionary Atonement: it’s not about Justice. I haven’t had time to respond until now, and I will only respond to a few points. One of the things I have noticed about debates on the atonement is that they tend to cover wide swathes of material, and bring on board large numbers of assumptions. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid.

    First let me note a couple of quotes to which I want to respond briefly and then get to the actually topic.

    Heddle says: “The scriptural support for PSA is impressive.” He then proceeds to cite Isaiah 53:5 and Romans 3:23-25. Of course both sides claim support from scripture–that’s required–but it seems to me that proponents of PSA find every verse that has both the words “redemption” (or salvation, or something similar) and the word “for” in them, and claim that they support substitutionary atonement as understood in a courtroom setting.

    That importation is certainly wrong in Isaiah 53, which quite clearly has the concept of substitution, but lacks the courtroom metaphor and doesn’t deal with someone being adjudged in one way or another. It is not good practice to interpret the substitution of Isaiah 53, in which the servant suffers for a group of people, without looking at the servant passages in general. In this case, we have a small group of people suffering as a result of the actions of the whole nation. There is substitution and representation, but there is no imputation or impartation going on. The more I study “clear” texts supporting penal substitution, the less clearly they support penal substitution. In particular, few can properly be read in a courtroom setting.

    (more…)

  • New Perspectives on Paul – Shifting the Paradigm

    I find myself commenting a bit on this topic before I really feel ready to do so, but there are certain things I’d like to insert into the conversation that is being generated from Adrian Warnock’s blog, through the discussion of John Piper’s book The Future of Justification. (Some preliminary notes on the new perspectives may be found on my participatory Bible study blog, category New Perspectives on Paul. All these are just my notes as I journey through some of this interesting writing.)

    Adrian has put a good deal of emphasis on what he sees as the gracious approach that John Piper has taken toward N. T. Wright’s work, and how accurately, in his view, Bishop Wright has been portrayed. I have no reason to believe that Piper is intending to be anything but gracious and accurate, and yet there are some things that bother me just a bit. (On these, see below.)

    I’m going to outline the points here, but much of my reading on the new perspective has been from sources other than N. T. Wright, so I want to emphasize two things. First, I am in no way trying to characterize Wright’s views on this. I think those who really want to understand him should read what he has written. I linked to an excellent paper he wrote in my previous post on this topic, Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism (PDF). Second, I am myself exploring these ideas, and my training was primarily Old Testament, though I did a considerable amount of exegesis in Greek in school, and afterward. But even so I think I can perhaps help clarify a couple of things.

    I started from Adrian’s post today, Legalism Versus Grace in First Century Judaism, in which he says:

    Anyone who has read anything about the New Perspectives on Paul will realize that one of the key arguments is that we have misunderstood the Pharisees through the perspective of the Reformation. The first century Jews were never legalists, we are told. . . .

    But there are a number of problems with this claim as well. First, it is not essential for the New Perspectives on Paul (NPP) that one assume that there were no Jewish legalists, or that there were no legalistic Pharisees. The key position is that Judaism was and is not a legalistic religion, and that in it favor with God was based on grace. I can find any number of legalistic Christians, plenty of whom would fit as targets of some passages in Luke 18 (cited by Adrian later in the paragraph), but they do not make Christianity into a legalistic religion by nature.

    Jesus can encounter dozens and hundreds of legalistic Pharisees, and yet the essential foundation of Pharisaism need not be legalistic, nor does it have to carry over into modern Judaism in a legalistic fashion. Just how far one goes on this issue is another matter, and one which I am studying. I definitely believe that the religion of the Mosaic covenant, Israelite religion, was founded on grace expressed through the covenant. That has been my position long before I read any NPP material.

    I tend to see first century Judaism as both a bit more corrupted and also more fragmented, so that I find it questionable to make many generalizations about first century Judaism. One could make a few generalizations about groups. Having said that, the Pharisees were probably one of the less corrupt groups. I suspect that they often disputed with Jesus because they were able to connect more frequently, while still not agreeing with him.

    But this whole debate illustrates one of the problems I’m seeing with the online critique. (And again I must emphasize that I have not read The Future of Justification, and thus am not commenting on Piper’s own work, but only on Adrian’s presentation of it on his blog.) This issue of legalistic Pharisees as opposed to the legalistic nature of Judaism (or not, as Wright would maintain), illustrates the major paradigm shift that Wright and others are making. They are not seeing justification as dealing with whether an individual is “saved” or not, but rather as proclaiming/acknowledging that person’s entry into God’s people as a group. It is an individualistic perspective that, in answer to the claim that a faith position is based on grace, points out individuals who are legalistic.

    For the NPP, we have been reading Galatians and Romans from the wrong perspective, asking the wrong questions. This was drilled into me both as an undergraduate Biblical languages student and in seminary: The message of Galatians is that we are saved by grace through faith and not by the works of the law. Essentially, in that case, Galatians is written in opposition to legalism, and particularly Jewish legalism.

    Since first reading a bit about the NPP, I have worked through Galatians twice in Greek, using two different commentaries that at least partake of portions of the NPP. Each time through has been a bit mind twisting. But as I teach at the most basic level of Bible study methods, your questions often determine your answers, so it is very important to ask the right questions. In the case of Galatians, in the seminary classroom, I asked the question “How can I be saved?” I found an answer there–not by the works of the law, but rather by faith.

    The NPP suggests that Paul is answering a different question: How does one become a part of God’s people, i.e. how does one come under the covenant? Paul’s enemies say it is by becoming Jews, with the sign of circumcision; Paul says that incorporation takes place because of the death and resurrection of Jesus and through faith. We are looking here much less at individual salvation, and much more at the definition of community. Neither side believes that being part of the covenant people can be earned by works. The sign and the means of incorporation are different.

    This is over-simplified, partially because I haven’t incorporated the vocabulary myself, but after two passes through the book of Galatians trying to answer those questions I think I begin to see how the categories work. If you really want to try to understand the NPP, one good exercise is to ditch the “how does an individual become righteous in God’s eyes?” question, and replace it with “how and why does a person come under God’s covenant?” Then read Galatians looking for the answer to that second question. I’m not saying give up your view ahead of time. Just tentatively ask yourself how the book would work if you were asking a different question.

    Ironically, it looks to me like Piper might have erred in an attempt to be as gracious as possible. He attempts to read Wright as favorably as possible from his own perspective. In Adrian’s post John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?, he quotes Piper noting the areas in which Wright would agree with the reformed view, and then the single item on which he disagrees. From Piper’s point of view, making Wright agree in most senses with the reformed view appears gracious. But it looks to me like he is missing the point. It is not that Wright goes along with the standard view and then disagrees because he does not believe righteousness is imputed or imparted. Rather, he is defining righteousness in a different way, and therefore the declaration that one is righteous means something different. It is a paradigm shift in which almost all definitions are adjusted, not a minor alteration.

    I think we need to understand the NPP, and particularly Wright’s view of all of this carefully as a whole. Picking it apart in a point by point comparison with the reformed view, or any other for that matter, will not work well, because Wright is shifting the categories. Justification doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to a traditional reformed theologian.

  • A Question of Ecumenism, Theology, or Exegesis

    Over the last few days Adrian Warnock has been posting excerpts from John Piper’s new book on justification, The Future of Justification. His latest seems to represent an escalation, with its title John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?. Adrian has maintained throughout that Piper is being gracious to Wright and is accurately representing Wright’s views.

    Other than to note the escalation, however, the grace (or lack thereof) of Piper’s book (which I have not read) is not my topic. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, so to speak, because I am not nearly as concerned that one gets justification precisely right. This topic is, in my view, very susceptible to “doctrinal correctness”–a tenseness about precise terms that makes it difficult to explore. Reformed theologians in particular seem to want to make one’s precise understanding of justification they anchor point of their theology. They equate it with the gospel. I couldn’t possibly disagree more. The gospel is not a precise understanding of esoteric points of theology.

    Which leads me to the actual purpose of this post. What is driving the discussion? Piper is criticizing Wright’s view on justification, and I’m not going to criticize him directly, but there is a clear tendency in Adrian’s quotes from Piper, and that is simply define what reformed theology has been up until now, demonstrate that Wright disagrees, and leave the obvious impression that Wright must be wrong.

    Elsewhere, there are some who claim that Wright’s theology is driven by ecumenical goals–bringing Catholic and protestant views together. I’m not sure how well that is going, if it is true. Certainly the hardliners in the reformed camp aren’t feeling the ecumenical spirit in all of this.

    But when I read Wright himself, I get a different impression entirely of his driving force. Now I need to place a caveat here. I am only a small part of the way through my own preliminary studies of this New Perspectives on Paul, and I probably won’t try to express my own opinion on some of the key issues for months. Right now I can simply say that the work of Wright answers some questions about Paul for me and raises others. I’m tempted to simply fall back to the notion that Paul was a complex character, and does not willingly fit into our theological boxes.

    When N. T. Wright goes about doing his own writing he appears to me to be driven not to find or produce a particular theological result, but rather by exegetical concerns. He seems to be more careful to follow the text where it leads than the majority of writers. I’ve read. For an example of his exegetical writing, see On Becoming the Righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). For a more theological view, with Wright expressing his own view of justification, see Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism.

    In response to this, we need more than theology. I have no doubt that there are reformed theologians making theological arguments, yet there are also many who are simply happy to point out that Wright fails to meet their standards of “orthodox evangelical theology” and thus can be dismissed out of hand.

    But wasn’t one of the features of the reformation going directly back to scripture? At this point it looks to me like the Bishop of Durham is behaving like a reformation theologian–digging through the texts and trying to come to the best understanding possible, while the purported defenders of the reformation are left to point out just how orthodox their teaching is–by their standards.

    If I’m given the choice between defending theological turf and wrestling with exegesis and trying to understand Paul in his world and mission I’ll choose the latter every time.

  • Morning Reading – 11/6/2007

    I read a large number of blog entries each day, and I never have time to comment on everything I’d like to. Considering how many posts I do write, this may be a good thing. One way to comment without having to write is by linking to extremely good posts, and this morning provided me with some excellent material.

    Responding to Torture

    First, I have been trying to get a handle on writing a post on torture, with the Mukasey hearings, but I haven’t gotten beyond “torture is evil.” After that it feels odd to be explaining that torture is bad. It’s so much a part of me, that I have a hard time taking it seriously as a debate, but there it is, being debated by presumably serious people.

    But Joe Carter has saved me on this point, by writing a 100% on target, excellent post, Our Tortured Silence: The Shameful Response of Christians to Waterboarding.

    All I would add is that our fear sometimes makes us waffle on our moral convictions. We must fight terrorism, but we must be sure to maintain our integrity while we do it, or the terrorists win even if we physically defeat them. Let’s be sure we like who we are when we’re done.

    Dividing the Denominations

    Through an unrelated comment, I found a post on the division of the church, Happy Reformation Day/Hallowe’en. This relates to my own previous post, Setting Doctrinal Priorities. I’m not concerned about their being denominations, or at least accountability organizations that bring congregations together, but we very often do not see the unifying factors, and thus splinter further and further.

    What is the Gospel?

    Again, relating to two earlier posts, Adrian Warnock has posted on justification again, and after quoting a description of forensic justification, and details of imputed righteousness, he says:

    That, my dear reader, is the Gospel. What better explanation of it have you ever read?

    Now I don’t have a problem with Adrian seeing the gospel there, but that is simply one way of expressing it; it is not the only one. When we divide along such detailed lines, I see many problems ahead for Christian unity.

  • Am I an Evangelical?

    [Reflective rambling alert, to those who prefer more substantive stuff.]

    I’ve answered this question before, but it was brought back to me over this past weekend when someone who knows me well enough to know better described me as “a solid evangelical.” Say what? He definitely intended it as a compliment, but I was somewhat surprised.

    Then I was reading Adrian Warnock’s blog, on which he has begun to work through Piper’s new book The Future of Justification. Adrian says:

    That infamous quote from N. T. Wright and his framing of thousands of years of debate about the imparting or imputing of Christ’s righteousness as ‘muddle headed’ is breathtaking. Either Wright is as much of a lone figure reformed as say Martin Luther himself, pointing back centuries before him to another lost truth that makes Luther as much in error as the Pope of his time, OR Wright, however bright a scholar he is, is very wrong. I believe Piper has shown how very wrong Wright is. Join me over the next few days as we explore how he does this.

    When I read something like this from Adrian, surely an evangelical, I have to doubt whether I want the label. It’s not that I think Adrian or Piper are being discourteous. It is just that they split doctrinal hairs down so many times. To me, N. T. Wright is conservative. I understand the differences between him and other evangelicals. I just don’t see the critical importance of the difference in the way Adrian states it. (I will certainly be following Adrians comments, though I doubt that I will read the book.)

    In fact, I don’t think the Bible itself manifests anything like the unity in describing human sin, redemption, atonement, and God’s expectations of people that appears in this very tense reformed evangelical theology. N. T. Wright is not, in my view, all that opaque. He’s extremely thorough with impeccable scholarship. And as for Martin Luther, while I appreciate some of his reform efforts, I truly do not think he said the last word on understanding Paul.

    Reformed interpretation of Paul has gotten muddle headed and it has done so simply because theological propositions have been given preeminence over an exegesis of the text. In addition, an assumption that the Bible teaches a single theology tends to paper over the differences.

    Labels are such slippery things. Any label that manages to acquire a positive connotation will also tend to spread, as people want to claim the label, even when they are not in the center of the definition. “Fundamentalist” has had a bit of a negative connotation, and so it hasn’t become nearly so diluted. The label “orthodox” (lower case ‘o’) is generally very positively perceived in Christian circles. It’s definition started with those who toed the doctrinal line put out by the church councils, and these days very few Christians want to be called “unorthodox.” I like to say that being “orthodox” means you can say the apostles creed without crossing your fingers. Trouble is, of course, that people have very different tolerances for reinterpretation before they feel obligated to cross their fingers.

    In my previous answer to this question I mentioned the evangelical commentators on Daniel I have found, including Earnest Lucas who wrote the Daniel volume in the Apolos Old Testament Commentary series. Lucas maintains that one can assert Biblical inerrancy and also a 2nd century date for the book of Daniel. When I mentioned this to an evangelical friend, he said, “Well, that series is published by InterVarsity Press and they’re pretty much just another liberal publisher any more.” Note that Lucas does not exclusively affirm a 2nd century date, but simply asserts that either is possible for one who believes in inerrancy.

    So an evangelical commentary on Daniel can assert a 2nd century date, and InterVarsity press can be considered liberal. Such are the wanderings of labels over the conceptual landscape.

  • Creation, Fall, and Redemption: Three Views

    Yesterday I wrote about the significance of the theory of evolution for the view of evil, particularly whether physical death is the result of human evil. Understanding Christian views on this topic requires some knowledge of the doctrines of creation and the fall, and secondarily of redemption.

    One of the most contentious issues in the creation-evolution controversy amongst Christians involves specifically the creation of human beings. When surveys ask whether humans were specially created by God recently (6-10 thousand years), they may get skewed results because of this. There are a number of Christians who believe the universe and the earth are old, and that life on earth is old and may well have developed via evolutionary processes, but believe that human beings are specially created. Thus, they would affirm that all life is related except for human beings.

    This may seem very odd from a scientific point of view, but I’m dealing here with theological objections to evolution. While I’m primarily presenting this material as background for understanding the previous objection, there is also the simple objection that because of their special place in God’s plan, human beings must be a special creation. This objection is often misunderstood, and is also often misstated. The major theological problem is not whether the first human was directly formed from dust rather than developed from a prior form, but more that the development must be special and a direct intervention of God. (Note that this is not my view, but rather I’m trying to represent a range of views that require a separate, special creation.)

    There are three elements here. First is the creation of human beings, however accomplished. What was the moral state of these creatures, and how did they attain “the image of God?” Second is the fall. Assuming that humanity original carried God’s image and was on good terms with God (as presented in Genesis), what happened and when? Finally, these two elements will combine to impact one’s view of redemption. The result of redemption depends on what the original state actually was.

    I’m not going to try to name these views. I’m going to describe them and present them in three columns. These views range from a fairly literal one (but not necessarily young earth), to a completely evolutionary view.

    Element View 1 View 2 View 3
    Creation Human beings are specially created, either separately or individually, or on a plan similar to existing apes. They are formed precisely according to a detailed, divine plan. Human beings evolve physical, but receive or become a soul through action of God at a specific point. At that point they are morally innocent and what God would want them to be, even though their bodies are the result of evolutionary processes. Any self-aware, intelligent creature should be regarded as “in the image of God.” The means of forming such a creature are irrelevant. Such a creature would be innocent, but also morally limited based on heredity and environment.
    Fall The fall resulted from a specific violation of a specific, known command of God. Eating the fruit may be symbolic, but it is symbolic of a particular event that occurred chronologically after the creation of human beings, i.e. it is not a part of their state as physical creatures. As a general rule, similar to the first view, though the specific nature of the rebellion may not be specified so precisely. The fall expresses something inherent in the state of a finite creature. There may be a moment of stepping away from innocence, but this is more a matter of recognizing and consciously making moral choices than specifically violating a specific command or even rebelling generally against divine authority.
    Results Physical death resulted from the fall. Young earthers will generally hold that all physical death results from this act. Old earthers may believe simply that human beings suffer death because of the rebellion. Physical death is simply part of the state of being a physical creature. Creatures die; humans are creatures. There is inherent in our condition a separation from our spiritual home with God.
    Redemption Involves return to the originally created state via God’s creative power. (The first two views will overlap here. Involves a return to the original state, only better, with a spiritual body. Redemption allows the spiritual side of humanity to connect with the creator in eternal life, which is a gift given by God. What is meant by “eternal life” varies in how it will be interpreted and what that state of being will be.

    I believe that almost any actual theologian will vary from any single column. My hope is that you will think of a continuum starting with the first view and ending with the third for each element and realize that some mixing and matching will occur. These are just summaries of some of the possibilities. I’m trying to keep this short and thus have not provided all the Biblical support for each position.

    If I generate enough interest in my own mind or on the blog, I may write some more on the Biblical and theological implications of each of these points.

  • Fighting the Devil or Suppressing the Mind

    Today I went on a sort of odyssey through a couple of theologically conservative blogs. My journey started at Adrian Warnock’s blog, where he has another quote from somebody supporting penal substitutionary atonement (PSA):

    While not denying the wide-ranging character of Christ’s atonement, I am arguing that penal substitution is foundational and the heart of the atonement. — Tom Schreiner, quoted by Adrian Warnock

    I quote this because I have been misunderstood on this point. My objection to PSA as I see it taught is not merely that there is more to the atonement than PSA, but also that PSA is simply one among many metaphors by which we discuss the atonement, and is not central. That, however, is not my topic.

    Following a link from Adrian’s blog, I read this interview with Tom Schreiner on Against Heresies, in which, after being asked how he would approach a student or professor who disagreed on this topic, he said:

    I would be patient with a student and try to persuade them of the biblical standpoint. Patience is initially the right stance for a professor as well. But if a professor comes to a settled conviction against penal substitution, he should be removed from his position in my judgment.

    In other words, accept penal substitionary atonement as the basis of forgiveness or get out. (You can find Dr. Schreiner’s quote on this in the interview itself.) Two additional recent posts, not to mention the name of the blog–Against Heresies–support the same approach, and I would hardly regard it as a particularly virulent form of the species. The blog’s mission statement says it’s a “thinking blog” and I note that the tone is much more constructive than some organizations and sites I encounter.

    The current dust-up over PSA, however, leads me to think just a bit. I’m quite certain that these folks believe they are fighting the devil. One must guard the standards lest false brethren come along and derail the faith. But it’s interesting just how frequently these false brethren seem to turn up, and how many of them are dedicated Christian workers, and even missionaries and evangelists. I have wondered once or twice why I bother responding to issues of the atonement, considering how far I am from the position of these reformed scholars. And yet I care about this issue, I care about the Christian faith, and I care about those in ministry who may pay a higher cost for marginal disagreements than I ever will.

    I am not suggesting that the Christian faith, or any community within it, should not have any boundaries at all. Community requires commonality, and commonality will require some definition, especially when the community is larger than a handful. At the same time, there is a level of doctrinal tenseness that can easily become destructive. At the congregational level, it can manifest itself in a critical attitude toward the less theological church members, such as those who might read the wrong books from time to time, or who listen to preachers from a different tradition.

    Here in Pensacola, I experienced it in connection with the Brownsville Revival. I personally have a number of theological issues with some things that occurred in connection with that revival. I could certainly debate quite a number of those points. But frequently new believers, or people who were becoming involved in church life for the first time, were cut down by the doctrinal watchdogs of their various congregations without a chance to work into fellowship. This sometimes came from fundamentalists. One student of mine was told he wasn’t saved because he had heard the preaching of the gospel from something other than the King James Version. But more commonly criticism came from evangelicals and even mainliners. There the issues were sometimes social. The behavior of people at the revival was embarrassing, and their theology lacked intellectual rigor. Thus rather than disciple people that came to them, other churches filtered people doctrinally and drove them out by criticizing the experience that had led them that far.

    On the congregational level, I think this type of speaking can be much more destructive than the errors it proposes to expose and root out. Rather than learning by studying and listening to the Holy Spirit, people are expected to jump through the appropriate doctrinal hoops, get their house in order, and then join a church. New members are looked upon as a threat, rather than as a blessing. Who knows what doctrines they have brought? Perhaps we should keep them from taking any position in the church until we have thoroughly checked them out!

    As an illustration, let me continue with the next post from Adrian’s blog, this one from C. J. Mahaney:

    . . . very small errors in a person’s understanding of the Gospel seemed to result in very big problems in that person’s life.”

    What about small errors in the presentation of the character of God? Are they important as well? If someone presents PSA in such a way as to display God as a vengeful tyrant rather than as the author of the plan of salvation, should I be just as worried about that? What if your terror of legalism results in someone believing they have permission to behave as they wish, ignoring ethics, again something I have personally encountered?

    Frequently, I see people who are very concerned with the most minor detail of the atonement who are completely unconcerned with the picture they give of God, yet this doesn’t seem to be a major issue for many who are very rigorous about doctrine in general.

    Mahaney continues, still as quoted by Adrian:

    . . . legalism is essentially self-atonement for self-glorification, and ultimately for self-worship.

    But in vigorously combatting their concept of legalism, it seems to me that this same group has gotten into a new variety of salvation by something other than God’s grace–salvation by correct doctrine. That is the notion that in order to be saved, one must understand some detailed set of doctrines with precision. In fighting legalism, I believe some have introduced this as a new form of legalism.

    I had such a person come to my house once. He concluded that he was concerned for my salvation. Why? Was it because I did not confess Jesus as Lord and Savior? No. It was because I failed to express the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross (in which I do believe), and repudiate works in vocabulary which matched his. That person was the product of destructive theology, and while repudiating works as a means of salvation, he was completely comfortable substituting intellectual understanding for works.

    Now C. J. Mahaney, who talks about the need to understand this precisely, is one of the authors of the Together for the Gospel statement, which, in Article XVI, somehow seems to make rejection of women in teaching roles an essential of the gospel. Is this also a boundary to be enforced? Actually I don’t need to ask that question. It already is a boundary enforced in many places, and is itself a travesty on the gospel, a denial of one of God’s purposes in it.

    I note with interest that so many people who come from a tradition that called for “the Bible only” now find it necessary to write length confessions, and then to enforce those on other people studying the Bible. It seems as though the Bible may not be quite as good a guide to faith and practice as they thought. One has to fence in the seminary professors lest they wander from the pasture, a pasture defined not by the Bible, but by doctrinal statements. Is this a problem with the Bible? Is it not rather a problem with over-defining Christian doctrine so that honest seekers after truth can no longer truly explore all the possibilities opened up by God’s multifaceted word? I firmly believe it is the latter.

    You see, when I read the comment by Dr. Tom Schreiner about removing a professor from his post for disagreeing on the issue of PSA, two words came to my mind: Academic freedom. Now a number of people will find it quite inappropriate that I bring this point up right here. Academic freedom, after all, is for secular institutions, not seminaries. In this country, we push academic freedom primarily for institutions that are government supported in some way. And let me be clear: I don’t question the right of private institutions in general, and religious institutions in particular, to set their own standards. I’m not suggesting that the government come in and enforce some kind of academic openness on seminaries. I don’t questions their right to do so, but I do question whether it is right.

    But in my view academic freedom is more principle than policy. When I read the works of a scholar who works at an evangelical school that requires endorsement of a particular doctrinal statement, I have a certain potential discount. It depends, of course, on the detail of the doctrinal statement. An institution might, for example, simply require that professors belong to their particular confessional group of churches. The more detailed the statement, however, the more I question. Could a professor at a college that accepted the affirmations and denials of the Together for the Gospel statement discover an egalitarian meaning in Galatians 3:28? (In practice I think there are a large number of evangelical scholars who do not merit such a “discount.” There are, however, a number of others who do, in my view.)

    I have previously discussed this in relation to the doctrine of inerrancy. Acceptance and rejection of inerrancy are not two equal platforms. In each affirmation from a Biblical writer that I consider I have the option of determining that it is without error–or not! A person who has signed a declaration in favor of Biblical inerrancy is restricted to discovering the explanation that supports inerrancy. I do not mean that nobody can both do good scholarship and accept inerrancy. There are many who do. The question is whether their belief in inerrancy is a conclusion they have adopted, or an external standard imposed on them.

    As a result, in trying to fight off the devil and “maintain standards” I believe that Christian institutions frequently fall into the trap of suppressing the mind. They are more concerned that the theological ducks line up in a row and quack in unison than that the ducks survive and grow. It’s a distinction that is difficult to maintain in theology, which lacks the empirical testing of a scientific field. I would suggest coming down clearly on the side of tolerance. Jesus reserved his most vigorous criticism for those who upheld the doctrinal orthodoxy of the day.

  • Theological Blog for my Blogroll

    I found Theo Geek via Peter Kirk, and it was a very worthwhile find. Peter links to a number of posts in Andrew’s review of Pierced for our Transgressions. Having read them all, let me commend them to you. (I must disclose that I have not yet read PFOT. I do intend to as I can make the time. I think these review notes are worthwhile on their own account.)

    Well, the first (most recent) one isn’t precisely in the series, but it’s very interesting!

    Theo Geek goes on my blogroll.

  • Salvation Quote for the Day

    I spent a little bit of time today reading Eastern Orthodox material after some comments on previous posts caught my interest. So here’s an interesting quote that I found. I wonder how this sounds to other western ears?

    That Augustinian conception about a compulsory salvation or damnation is something inconceivable for Greek Patristic thought, something offensive to God; because it presupposes abolition of man’s self- conditioning ability,???????????. Westerners seem to have disregarded it so much that they did not care to coin a Latin word for translating this term, though ??????????? is the greatest gift of God, for it is the power which enables man to become man.

    Personal renewal is impossible without personal participation, without the contribution of that personal being who needs it. Before it becomes the aim and the task of human existence, it cannot become its property. Salvation is not a toy given to a spoiling child; it is a prize gained by an athlete. — Panayiotis Christou, from Myriobiblos Library: Notes on the subject of salvation

    To accompany that, it would be great to read this article by the same author on Gregory Palamas. I am claiming no more than my mornings searching as far as knowledge on this material, but I have found my reading thus far quite fascinating.