Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Doctrines

  • St. John Chrysostom Quote

    I’m reading the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Volume X, Hebrews, and I found this interesting quote from St. John Chrysostom:


    St. John Chrysostom

    We ought to receive all things with faith and reverence, and, when our discourse fails through weakness and is not able to set forth accurately the things that are spoken, then we ought especially to glorify God, in that we have such a God, surpassing both our thought and our conception. For many of our conceptions about God we are unable to express, and many things we express but do not have the strength to conceive. For instance, that God is everywhere we know, but how we do not understand. There there is a certain incorporeal power, the cause of all our good things, we know, but how it is or what it is, we know not. We speak and do not understand! I said that he is everywhere, but I do not understand it. I staid that he is without beginning, but I do not understand it. I said that he begot from himself, and again I know not how I shall understand it. And some things there are that we may not even speak–as, for instance, that thought conceives but cannot utter. [p. 13]

    Perhaps we could all (me especially) do with a bit of humility regarding our knowledge of God and divine things.

  • 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.

  • Being Other Worldly or Being Christian

    The Evangelical Ecologist has an excellent post titled Closing Credibility Gaps. I think that I’m in a good position to underline his post, as a member of a congregation of the United Methodist Church, one of those declining mainline denominations. Just so the error seekers know that I saw it, I will quibble slightly over the use of an example statement from the Anglican Church (UK) followed by an example of decline from the Episcopal Church (USA). The Anglican church does indeed have its share of problems, but it is a beast of a different color from the Episcopal Church. They fall under a larger umbrella together in the Anglican communion, but that doesn’t make them of the same denomination. Nonetheless, I don’t think that vitiates the overall point of the essay.

    I commented tangentially on this issue, though not in direct relation to ecology, in my post Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center:

    Christianity can’t retreat into being simply a system of ethics. It involves ethics, but it also involves redemption and empowering, the means of creating ethical people by redemption, but even more the means of bringing people into touch with God.

    I could rephrase that as Christianity cannot retreat into being a system of politics, or of science, or of any similar thing. Whatever positions we may take as Christians on anything at all, it has to start with being Christian. Why is this so?

    Christianity takes a good deal of work. Even if you drop most of the doctrines, take away the servant leadership and the discipleship, and make it essentially a social club, you still have to maintain the club house (the church), pay the leadership and staff, and people have to go to meetings. Now if the church is merely a social club, why wouldn’t one find a cheaper way to accomplish those goals. I guarantee you that church architecture is not the most economical way out there to construct a clubhouse.

    Now if you’ve been a member of the club all your life, you may feel inclined to remain a member. But what about new people? If your selling points on your church are entirely made up of political and social goals, why should somebody join the church? What you’re telling the potential new member, or the person you are trying to keep as a member is this: “Come join our social and political movement. We cost more, we’re less effective, but we have the traditional label ‘Christian’.”

    I believe this has been the major failing of Christian liberals. We (I’m called liberal often enough to use an inclusive “we”) have kept all the social goals, but in order not to put anyone off, we have been afraid to pursue any sort of spiritual or doctrinal standard whatsoever. I commented in an earlier post that when I first decided to join a United Methodist congregation I checked out two different ones. In the first one the pastor kind of chuckled at my interest in the church’s doctrinal positions and said, “We don’t really worry that much about what you believe. If you enjoy fellowship with us, you can join.” The other pastor asked me about my experience and relationship with Jesus. I joined the second.

    Being inclusive can eliminate the barriers to people entering the congregation but at the same time it can remove all identity from that congregation and thus any positive reason to join.

    The Evangelical Ecologist is absolutely right. We can talk and talk about this as churches, but why is it that anyone should listen? Are our councils of clergy more knowledgeable about climate change than various scientific groups? Do we have some extraordinary expertise in administration so as to help implement all this legislation? If you’ve participated in church councils, I suspect you already know we have neither of those elements. What the church could have, and should have is the moral impetus to challenge and empower people to implement change. But that moral impetus can only come from conviction that is part of an active spiritual life.

    Though I believe there are particular doctrines that are better than others, I don’t think the primary problem of mainline denominations is that we believe the wrong things on specific doctrines. It is that we don’t, as denominations, believe anything at all enough to care about it. As Christians I believe the incarnation should be at the center of all we do, but that doctrine has to be a living thing in our lives so that we cannot imagine being without it. It has implications in our lives (“Christ in you, the hope of glory” – Colossians 1:27), and those implications must be important.

    If we don’t have Christ at the center, then we are simply another social service organization, with a bunch of excess religious baggage to make us less efficient. Why should people get on board?

    The place of Christianity in this kind of social activity is redemptive, empowering, life-giving, and motivating, a body filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit, ready to act. That must be the case for Christianity to have a great impact. Personally I haven’t tried to take a position on global warming as such, because I don’t know the science well enough to defend any position I take. But I do know that there are good things that I can do, things that make sense whether global warming or global cooling is correct.

    In doing those things, “the love of Christ urges me on” because I am called to live a life empowered by the incarnation, guided by the two laws, one of which is love for my neighbor.

  • Exclusion and Inclusion and Vague Boundaries

    A community must have some sort of definition in order to exist. This may seem fairly obvious, but often in discussions of religion we lose sight of that fact in efforts to be inclusive. It’s important to remember that there is a difference between saying somebody is a bad person and saying that they don’t fit into a particular community.

    I could go on and on here, talking about communities within a community, such as congregations and denominations within the broader community of the Christian religion in general. There are different requirements for different communities. That’s not the particular issue I want to write about, however. I simply want to note that I’m aware that boundaries are necessary for there to be communities.

    Having said all that, I’ve observed with interest the advent of exclusion talk in the atonement debates (recent discussion of PSA). While these specifically deal with the evangelical movement in the UK, I think many of the same questions are applicable on this side of the pond.

    What’s interesting to me is that having heard the suggestion over the years (not just in the current debate) that liberals are not really Christians because of their view of the atonement, suddenly it is conservatives, specifically conservative proponents of PSA, who are concerned with exclusion.

    I have noted the same thing in recent discussion with United Methodists. Some evangelical pastors and/or candidates are feeling exclusion from sponsors or from boards of ministry. This is an issue that concerns me a great deal. If the exclusion is real, and is not part of setting the appropriate bounds of the community, then we have folks on the liberal side not living up to their principles.

    There is an alternative. Some people who have had the power to exclude become very irate when that power is taken from them or restricted. I have encountered more than one church in which established membership has become extremely angry and has felt excluded simply because newer members have gotten power and as a result have restricted the power of people who thought of themselves as permanent leaders.

    A very specific case of this is when one restricts someone else from exercising the power of exclusion themselves. Let’s take a couple of hypothetical situations. (Though these two situations may resemble broadly some real situations, I do not intend to duplicate any real-world situations.)

    Situation #1: A candidate for ministry expresses a very conservative view, supporting the United Methodist position (per UM Discipline) that homosexuality is not compatible with Christian practice. The candidate’s liberal mentor makes every effort to block this candidate’s continuation toward ordination.

    Situation #2: A minister is accustomed to reject for church membership anyone he can identify as being homosexual in orientation, irrespective of whether such a person is celibate or not. He is instructed by his DS that such behavior is inappropriate. He claims he is being persecuted for his conservative views.

    These are not well-rounded situations. Fill in the blanks as you wish. Even better, fill in the blanks in different ways, potentially producing different results. A key difference between the two situations, in my view, is that the first candidate believes nothing that is contrary to the accepted beliefs of the community, and has given no indication that he will not carry out his duties appropriately. (You may, of course, fill in the blanks with contrary information.)

    The second candidate is potentially acting contrary to church discipline, yet he feels persecuted, and perhaps excluded by the actions of church authorities. (Note that I’m not a United Methodist pastor, and I don’t have a finely tuned notion of just how important an “admonition” for one’s DS actually is.)

    Is the second person actually persecuted? I would suggest not. He can remain and carry out his duties as instructed.

    Let’s compare these ideas to the PSA issue. Supposing we have a pastor of a church who believes in PSA and has been teaching people that in order to be regarded as Christians, they must understand and accept PSA. When new members transfer from another church, they are immediately indoctrinated into this position and are only made welcome as part of that church community if they accept that position.

    If a superior authority in that denomination admonishes this pastor is he being exclusive? Consider the fact that if this pastor is ordered not to act as he has, he will feel that he is not truly bringing people to a saving faith in Jesus. Is it possible for him to minister honestly under those circumstances?

    The boundary lines become somewhat difficult to draw under these circumstances. I’m simply exploring them. Off hand, I would suggest that the liberal mentor I mentioned is wrong to attempt to exclude the conservative candidate, but that the denominational authorities in my two other examples are acting appropriately. If these two pastors cannot function in a way that they feel is faithful to the gospel, they need to find a different congregation/denomination in which to exercise their gifts.

    Membership in a loosely defined “evangelical movement” is a bit more difficult. Nobody holds the keys there. How much does the word “evangelical” mean? I’m not certain of the answer to that.

    I would like to see moderates and liberals to support the maximum amount of inclusion possible consistent with creating a coherent community.

    Dave Warnock made a couple of very cogent comments in his post :

    I do not believe in a Christianity, or an Evangelical Christianity which does not welcome Adrian and those like him who believe so strongly in PSA. Mind you I also do not believe in a Christianity which demands that all believe in PSA nor an Evangelical Christianity which demands the same understanding and acceptance of PSA that Adrian has.

    . . . and again . . .

    We do need to recognise though that it is always a difficult challenge to include in a community those who continually attempt to exclude others.

    He’s responding to an update by Adrian Warnock to his post Christianity Magazine reviews Pierced For Our Transgressions, in which Adrian says:

    Since writing this article, I came across a piece from Carl Trueman that alleges that some UK ministers feel that they are being leant on quite strongly on the issue of the atonement.

    Now Dave is right when he notes (in the same post) that there are a number of feelings and vague accusations going around (my paraphrase of his words). But those feelings and vague accusations are precisely what most exclusion is made of. It is rarely a matter of direct confrontation. It is a matter of suggestion and pressure, often subtle and not clearly expressed.

    I advocate bringing these suggestions out into the open. We need to examine the boundaries we can accept openly. This is essentially what I was advocating in my post from June 2, 2006 Unity, Diversity, and Confusion. Sometimes we’re so afraid of setting explicit boundaries that we allow vague boundaries to contict our appropriate freedom.

  • Expressing the Multifaceted Nature of the Atonement

    Peter Kirk has a post, The personal relevance of the atonement, that expresses what I have been trying to say about the atonement much more precisely than I have managed to do it. I commend it strongly.

    At the same time, Adrian has posted again regarding a review of Pierced for Our Transgressions. Since I haven’t gotten hold of a copy of the book yet, I’m not going to comment on the review itself, but Adrian said one thing that has left me wondering.

    It is ironic that the more inclusive the evangelical movement in the UK aims to be – by including people who attack or minimize PSA the more they seem to exclude those who hold a more traditional evangelical position.

    I don’t call myself evangelical, but after talking to a few evangelicals from the UK I probably could. (I’m absolutely not going to fight over labels.) I’ve even encountered a few folks on this side of the pond who call themselves evangelical and appear to be even more liberal than I am.

    But even from my more liberal perspective I have no desire to exclude those who hold a “strong view” of PSA from any tent. They believe that God has provided redemption through Jesus Christ. I know of none of them who reject the incarnation. The feel I get from Adrian’s post is that if one doesn’t join in excluding the more liberal elements on this issue one must be excluding the more conservative.

    It would be a total denial of my view of the importance of non-essential doctrines (and I regard the specific metaphor used for atonement as a non-essential) for me to deny someone the one expression of the atonement that best brought the message of God’s reconciling grace home to them.

    I’m wondering if it’s really true that any evangelicals in the UK want to exclude advocates of PSA from their big tent. Could any of my UK readers help me with this?

  • Excessively Large Tent = Crash

    I have written a few times before on the need for a core of essential beliefs that provide a basis for community along with a broader set of non-essentials on which people can agree. Probably my most comprehensive discussion of the issue is in Unity, Diversity, and Confusion.

    Over the last few days I’ve been following the story of Episcopal priest Ann Holmes Redding. I don’t recall where I first saw it, but the story above will do.

    Now I’m a big tent person. I like diversity. But in order to be a community there also has to be commonality. I frequently encounter people who advocate one or another form of interfaith spirituality. Almost all of them will claim that they have discovered the essentials of religion and that on those essentials the various faiths they combine have no conflict. What I have never found, however, is that those claimed essentials agree with what committed adherents of the individual religions would call essential.

    I’m not writing against interfaith spirituality. I’m not even writing to criticized Redding’s own spiritual journey. But I do believe that the Episcopal Church has a serious tent size problem in this case. Many commentators have been upset about such issues as ordination of female priests and bishops and the acceptance of homosexuality in the Episcopal church. But no matter how one stands on those issues, one should recognize that they are less central than the incarnation itself. Between Islam and Christian lies the doctrine of the incarnation as an impassable barrier.

    I think the Episcopal church would share with the United Methodist Church (of which I’m a member) one characteristic: Neither has the central coherence to deal with this level of diversity. I don’t think Christianity can handle it.

    Again, this is not to condemn the individuals who hold such beliefs. As strongly as I believe in the incarnation as the core of Christianity, I also believe that I am not to judge. But I can look at the community and how well it can function, and this goes beyond making a functional community.

    Two other Christian reactions: Pursuing Holiness and NRO (HT: Locusts and Honey).

  • Agreeing with Piper – Twice!

    Laura has a good post with some material from Dr. John Piper. I have previously disagreed with Piper on PSA, whilst joyfully and vigorously agreeing with him on hearing God’s voice.

    In this case, I agree with him on both items, even though my placid nature would probably have resulted in a less vigorous use of vocabulary WRT the prosperity gospel. Nonetheless I agree with what he said about it. In particular I reject the notion that the prosperity gospel is the result of advanced revelation. I believe that there can be modern revelation, but if the prosperity gospel is “advanced revelation,” it’s the advanced revelation of a new and different faith, not the next step for Christianity.

    His article on Ayn Rand is also worth reading. I found much to agree with there as well.

    Thanks to Laura for pointing us to these items.

  • Slippery Language on the Atonement Debate

    Adrian Warnock is again posting on the penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) issue, now about an interview with the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions.

    Now I’m not going to post on PSA today in detail. But Adrian manages to demonstrate some aspects of this discussion from his side of the fence that annoy me-no, that’s not strong enough. I think these statements are just plain wrong.

    At the end of his post Adrian says:

    Where do you stand? Will you join arms with Andrew, Steve, and a whole generation of those of us who feel this issue is quite literally one of life and death?

    Or will you seek to compromise, maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us, and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than “another gospel.”

    The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher.

    I’m willing to allow most of the first paragraph. My answer to that would be a resounding NO!. I do not in any sense stand with them on this issue. But I do think that for some people it may be an issue of life and death. Those who malign the character of God through their doctrine may well have to answer before God for those they have driven away. I don’t want to overplay that point, however, because as imperfect humans I suspect we all have those moments and even years when we do not perfectly represent the gospel of Christ. Nonetheless, grace abounds! Where is there evidence that such grace is comprehended on the PSA side of the debate?

    But my major concern here is with the second paragraph: “Or will you seek to compromise . . .” This is the method of extremist madness. You dismiss the opposite extreme, and divide the rest of the world into people who are right and people who have compromised. The compromise, of course, is with that unmentionable evil that has been cut out of the spectrum. It’s “us good guys” versus the compromisers.

    Adrian continues with “maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us . . .” Downplay? Who’s downplaying? I reject absolutely and utterly the notion that precisely how the atonement is accomplished is a critical piece of knowledge. I call that view “salvation by correct doctrine” and I reject it along with all other human based systems of salvation. However Jesus did it, he did it.

    And again: “and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than ‘another gospel.’” Of course I adopt what Adrian and many others regard as “another gospel.” Why? I regard what they are preaching as dangerously close to “another gospel.” The only reason I don’t call it another gospel outright is that I think many people sincerely grab hold of the message of PSA and are saved, never understanding any other aspects of atonement. The preachers of PSA are grabbing a part and making it the whole, and it gets twisted on the way. But even further, I do not adopt my view because it is “more acceptable to the modern ear.” I adopt my view because I believe it is right. I believe scripture teaches a multifaceted understanding of the atonement and I also believe scripture teaches that we should realize that we don’t fully comprehend any doctrine, but most especially the incarnation and the atonement.

    I’m not heading again into writing on PSA in detail right now. I’ve written a few things before. My response here is simply to the dismissive type of language that tries to pretend opponents are not working from conviction, but rather from a desire to be more acceptable to the modern world, and to “compromise,” that compromise being with something that is dismissed without discussion.

    Almost Instant Update: Just after I hit the “Publish” button, my RSS feed showed a new post by Peter Kirk which is well worthwhile reading.

  • Doctrine and Reality – The Need for Balance

    In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following:

    This is how I feel today about teachers of Christ’s people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that God’s ‘punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed’ would be as evil as child abuse, I am angered and grieved. For if God did not punish his Son in my place, I am not saved from my greatest peril, the wrath of God.

    (The whole post by Dave is worthwhile reading, but this post is just a tangent from that.)

    The more I read about this the more I realize that I will be reading this book eventually. But right now I’m not trying to review the book, or even directly to argue with John Piper. He has written and said much that I value, and also much with which I disagree. Often I even value the disagreement more than the agreement.

    But I want to respond to this point of doctrine. It is clear from scripture that good teaching is a good thing. In other words, it does matter what we teach. At the same time it’s very easy to make our doctrine, especially detailed doctrinal issues into something that stands instead of God. If Christ did not die for me, I am still in my sins, but if I fail to understand in a detailed way just why Christ died for me and how the atonement was accomplished, that does not diminish the fact that Christ died for me.

    This is where I am troubled by the teaching about Penal Substituionary Atonement (PSA). It is not that I think the teaching in and of itself is wrong, it is that it seems to be taking the place of the reality in some people’s theology. PSA is a metaphor, a limited human expression of the meaning of the atonement. As with most metaphors, it conveys some of the meaning of the atonement, but it can easily obscure other parts of that meaning.

    But in conversation with many advocates of PSA I can’t simply affirm my acceptance of PSA as a single metaphor among many for the atonement. I am asked to affirm that PSA is the central meaning of the cross, essentially making it the reality, rather than a metaphor. That I will not do, because I believe that is not worthy of the cross. That reduces the cross to a sense of human retribution and punishment, and reduces God to a human judge. It does not adequately express the trinitarian view of God himself becoming one of us and dying for our sins. It does not adequately express the depth and breadth of God’s love and forgiveness. Seeing it in that light, for me–and I reemphasize for me–it would be idolatry to put a lesser thing in place of the reality that is God, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

    There is no language to adequately express the incarnation and atonement. No matter how well we express it, we run up against the difficulty of describing and encompassing infinite God with finite human expressions. Our doctrines on this and every other topic will always contain some taint of the traditions of men.

    For that reason, we need to allow our doctrines and our perceptions to constantly come up against the scriptural presentation and against our experience of God’s presence. This is true whether those doctrines be modern, liberal, post-modern, conservative, or any other label we might put on them. It is true even if we believe our doctrines are scriptural.

    I read a report by a committee in the PCA, examining the New Perspective on Paul and another movement to see if they are in accord with the Westminster Standards. In explaining how they do this, and also elevate scripture above the standards, they wrote the following tortured paragraph:

    In addition, we are a confessional church. The PCA has affirmed that “the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly, together with the formularies of government, discipline, and worship are accepted by the Presbyterian Church in America as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice” (BCO 29-1; cf. 21-5.2; 26-1; 39-3). The church has historically understood that this claim does not elevate the Standards over Scripture itself; and yet, our Constitution does recognize the Standards as our “standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture.” Because this is the case, the main focus of our study will be to determine whether the views of the NPP and AAT/FV are in conformity with our Westminster Standards.

    It’s not my intention here to criticize the PCA any more than specifically John Piper. The question I have is whether you can say that a certain set of standards is not elevated above scripture, and at the same time make the assumption that those standards define what scripture says. The NPP scholars believe they have found good, new interpretations of Paul, and they think their interpretations are closer to Paul’s intention than were earlier studies. Would not the correct question be this: Are these new interpretations more accurate? If you ask instead whether those interpretations are in accordance with the standards, does that not place the standards in the superior position?

    I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and the writings of Ellen G. White were frequently placed in that position. In seminary I began to forcefully reject the claim that Ellen White was not above scripture, and yet when I went to interpret scripture, what Ellen White said was supposed to be definitive. If the Bible was superior, then I could test Ellen White by scripture, not the scripture by her.

    I feel the same way about doctrinal statements and confessions. Confessions are good for denominational unity, but if I am ever studying a proposed new interpretation my question will not be whether it is consistent with a particular confession, but whether it is more accurate. The confession can be adjusted.

    I think that all metaphors and all doctrines (as a subcategory of metaphor) need to be subject to revision at any time. Many have been and will be reaffirmed over and over, but the examination is still good. I think God will be grieved if we don’t allow his presence to shatter our limited understandings.

  • What Embarrasses me About Christianity

    A discussion has been raging over on the Religion Forum, and Tom Sims has taken it up on his blog regarding Bishop Spong and a quote (Rochester, MN Post-Bulletin) in which he says:

    “Religion in America today embarrasses me,” said Spong, 75, who will speak in Rochester next week. “If that’s what Christianity is all about, then I’m not really interested in that.”

    Of course the question is clearly just what Bishop Spong thinks Christianity is actually about. Frankly, while Spong is one of the more popular characters in modern liberal Christianity, he is by no means the most thoughtful, in my view. In fact, when it gets right down to it, I don’t find his historical reconstructions I find him one of the least credible of the writers on the historical Jesus.

    He makes one excellent point, however, in the interview I cited, when he tells us that the problem comes in when someone claims that their way is the only way it can be. I’m one of those “embarrassments” who believes in the resurrection. Once I’ve swallowed a doctrine like the incarnation, it hardly seems a matter of concern. Could I be wrong? Of course I could! I’ve been wrong before, am quite probably wrong about many things right now, and I suspect I will go right on being wrong until I die.

    Especially in matters of theology we do well to walk and talk humbly, simply because when dealing with the infinite we are by definition infinitely ignorant. We have to recognize that very often the more rational option is to simply admit that we don’t really know. But I, and others like me, have a category of experience to describe, and it is religious language and even religious doctrines that describes it.

    For Bishop Spong, however, and for many in the Jesus Seminar, one has to ask just how Christian their Jesus actually is. I do not arrogate to myself the right to judge whether they are Christians or not, or what their relationship to God might be. My question is simply one of picking up their views and making them my own.

    I recall the series of stories by Isaac Asimov which are set at the dinners of the Black Widowers. Each guest was asked one major question: How do you justify your existence? I think the question that needs to be asked of Spong’s Jesus is the same one: How do you justify your existence? When one limits oneself to a purely historical reconstruction, and one done with a seriously skeptical turn of mind, then the resulting “Jesus” is often rather weak, and one has to wonder why anyone should care whether such a person lived.

    In the historical sense, one might make the question instead whether the Jesus one has discovered by historical research would be likely to have had the impact that he had. The one thing I always find when I think about Jesus in purely historical terms is that in the end I’m certain that Jesus must be more than what I can prove him to be historically, otherwise there is an excessive effect for the cause involved. In some ways, however, the Jesus of Spong fits well with American Christianity–tepid and not terribly challenging.

    There are a number of things about American Christianity that do embarrass me, though they don’t primarily have to do with doctrinal beliefs.

    I’m embarrassed

    • that we have so many buildings and so much real estate that tends to be idle during the week. I believe we could improve our use of that property for building up our communities.
    • that we now have almost as many definitions of heresy and orthodoxy as there are denominations. At least the inquisition worked from one script. Now I can be fundamentalist, orthodox, heretical, and an atheist all at the same time. Just ask my critics!
    • that we still permit discrimination and even foster it in our society–any discrimination that considers something other than the ability of the person in question.
    • that we are depending more on political and temporal means than on the transforming power of the gospel.
    • that for so many Christians church is just a social club. We debate the spiritual gospel and the social gospel, but while we do so the “comfy chair” gospel is often winning in churches.
    • that so many of us couldn’t even discuss the issues that Spong is raising, because we have no clue what we believe or what our church claims to believe in the first place.
    • that our faith is so weak and so poorly grounded that we have to get into a real tizzy about every new book that comes out about Christianity.

    I’m embarrassed, but I don’t dwell on it, except for posts like this. Mostly I just try to help alleviate that situation in the little corner where I am.