Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Doctrines

  • Christian Carnival CXL

    Christian Carnival CXL has been posted at Lux Venit. There’s a good deal of good stuff to check out.

    Without prejudice to the whole list, I’d like to call special attention to the following:

    • Tight Theological Hatbands
      I’m not reformed in theology, but I have long thought one of the strengths of the reformed camp was in thinking about theology. I love to listen to them, but I often don’t like to dialogue with them, because they’re so sure of themselves. Well, here is a reformed Christian talking about dealing with disagreement, and he makes good points. Some people seem to think dialogue means giving up whatever you believe and assuming that all thoughts are equal, but I disagree. Good dialogue requires you to have a position, but you need the humility and confidence (yes, both together) to test that view in conversation with others. This one is an excellent post.
    • Madonna Commits Blasphemy (Yawn)
      OK, who might have guessed that Laura would have another outstanding entry? 🙂 This one supports what I call “off-switch censorship” aka “channel-changer censorship.” If you don’t like it, don’t watch. There’s some real garbage out there, and it doesn’t need any extra attention.
    • Diversities
      A Penitent Blogger talks about 1 Corinthians 12 and the diversity of gifts in the church. Personally I don’t think I can read 1 Corinthians 12 too often. It reminds us to be humble. It reminds us to celebrate the gifts of others. It reminds us to be under the one Spirit.

    Thanks to Leslie for a nice looking, easy to read carnival post.

  • Revelation Before and After Jesus

    Some time ago (September 5, 2005) Adrian Warnock wrote an excellent entry on the need for a Christian experience in the present (hat tip: Peter Kirk). As usual, whether I agree or disagree, Adrian does a fine job of presenting his position, and in this case, I do agree.

    He continued that entry with another that discussed the nature of revelation both before and after Jesus. To get a clear picture of Adrian’s position you will need to read more than I can quote here, but the following should give the general flavor:

    Such a widespread outpouring of the Spirit cannot ever be purely for Scripture-writing and authenticating. If “all flesh” can prophesy, it is inevitable that they must have something by which to judge those words, for they cannot all be of equal weight or authority. In fact, Jesus was the last true Prophet in the sense of being authoritative and inerrant in everything He said. So where, prior to Jesus, authority rested in a few people who prophesied, but did so inerrantly, in the new era authority rests solely with Jesus and operates through the Scriptures, but the Spirit is poured out so that “all flesh” can prophesy whilst those prophecies are to be judged by the authoritative revelation contained in the Bible.

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  • The Church that is Always Emerging

    God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. 2 Corinthians 5:19

    Do you feel the depth of that statement? Can I recommend that you stop now and read 2 Corinthians 5, or at least verses 11-21 before you continue this?

    I often think that we Christians don’t nearly get the meaning of this passage, which is one of the better scriptural expressions of the meaning of the incarnation that we have in scripture. But then it goes on to bring it home to us, by saying that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

    To parphrase a question I was once asked after a sermon: If this is the message that we were given at the start, whatever happened to Christianity? Why do we have such a terrible time getting along? Why have we had such a long history of persecuting one another? We easily forget that we are a religion that results from the ministry of a man who spent his time breaking up traditional ground, who found extraordinary ways to make God’s message and God’s kingdom have an impact on a world that was not anxious to receive it. More than 2,000 years alter, we act a bit more like warring tribes protecting our precious doctrinal turf from the heretics down the street, often from people whose positions can only be distinguished from our own by theological experts.

    Enter the emerging church. I’ve not really spent much time on the emerging church, though I’ve read a couple of books and have generally liked what I see. I think part of my problem is that I’ve never called myself an evangelical, and so I don’t quite full feel the issues and the call that they do. Nonetheless I have felt that the movement was a good one for Christianity.

    Via MSNBC I found a Washington Post story on Brian McLaren, a leader in this emerging church movement. The article is titled Evangelical pastor challenges tradition. The emerging church movement does indeed challenge tradition. It tries to make the message of Jesus relevant to the modern world. And while I often wonder about some of their doctrinal positions, which sometimes are to my left even though they use the term evagelical and I don’t, they have one thing that is very traditional: Challenging tradition.

    What’s more traditional than doing what Jesus did? Some of the criticisms sound very much like the criticisms of Jesus. Emergent people don’t teach enough doctrine. They’re giving up the basics. They’re question non-negotiable doctrines. But of course we’ve been negotiating these doctrines for centuries, with some of the current basics being quite recent in their current incarnation. At other times we’ve been negotiating such doctrines with the stake and torture implements.

    It’s a conversation. That’s what the emergent church people say. And I agree. The one thing that has to continue is the conversation. It’s a conversation between various Christians, churches, groups, and ministries. It’s also a continuing conversation between each Christian and God. It’s also a conversation between us and the world. I would suggest that the greatest thing we can do as Christians is get other people listening to God–listening to the Spirit of Truth. We think that teaching them a set of doctrines is going to give meaning to their life, but there are thousands, probably millions of people who live in quiet despair with an evangelical theology.

    It’s not the fault of the evangelical theology. There are also many Christians who live fulfilled lives with an evangelical theology. The problem is that any theology that doesn’t get you into the big conversation is still going to leave you dead.

    Thank God for the emergent church. The church ought to always be emerging. It can’t be any harder than Jesus, emerging from heaven, and coming to earth.

  • Nitpicking Translations

    Centuri0n responded, in a way to my post Conscience of a Christian Publisher. I posted a response once, and unfortunately that response was eaten by the server. I was able to restore everything else, but this I have to rewrite. I’m not trying to repeat the other post precisely, so if you read it, don’t look at this as a duplicate, though I am trying to cover the same ground.

    There are a number of things I could respond to, such as his comments on my use of “conscience,” but I think I’ll skip to what I see as the major problem of logic, and it’s one that is not unique to centuri0n. It’s quite prevalent amongst advocates of literal translations. Consider the following quote:

    My complaint about the TNIV, as you can read for yourself, is that it whitewashes the controversial nature of its methodology. Now, if the Bible is just a “signpost”, my complaint is, of course, nit-picking. What the Bible says isn’t actually of first importance but of far secondary importance

  • From Saint to Sinner

    Lingamish comments today on sinners becoming saints and touches on the possibility of saints becoming sinners.

    It’s high drama for a sinner to become a saint (Read St. Augustine’s Confessions) but higher still is the tale of a saint who becomes a sinner. A fictional example from Spanish literature is San Manuel Bueno Martir by Miguel de Unamuno. I read that story in a Spanish Lit class in college and it has haunted me ever since.

    This is a question that haunts many, many people, and my own experience had led me to be very interested in it. I left the church entirely out of seminary, and only returned 12 years after that. I discuss it at some length in my post on the Participatory Bible Study Blog, Hebrews 6:4-6: Can Those who Fall Return?. I link from there to my personal testimony as well. Here, however, I want to discuss point of view in answering this question. See my discussion of Hebrews 6 (linked above) for more scripture on the topic.

    The issue of falling away and returning is a very contentious issue, and I think it is contentious precisely because it cuts very close to the heart. All of us are probably acquainted with people who are terribly fearful that they are not really saved, and that God is going to get them because of some minor failing. Perhaps they will commit the sin of adultery in their heart and then be run over by a bus before having the opportunity to confess it. Living in that type of fear is a terrible thing, and spiritually debilitating. On the other hand we probably also know people who are so sure that they have the inside track to God that they don’t feel any need to seek spiritual or ethical growth. In each case, we may tend to react against unbalanced teaching that led to the problem.

    I believe there are at least three perspectives from which one might answer the question:

    1. Biblical
      I think the Bible is a bit equivocal on this issue. There are plenty of scriptures that support our security with God, but also plenty that warn against overconfidence, or more accurately self-confidence.
    2. Theological
      This one is often the hardest. What precisely is true. Can someone lose their salvation? I recall a class with a Calvinist student. In one discussion I told him that I had serious problems with a God who could predestine some people to eternal damnation. He responded that he didn’t particular like it, but that was what he thought was true. I don’t think the Bible makes it quite that clear.
    3. Pastoral
      The answer from a pastoral perspective will often depend on who’s asking the question. Is this a person who is short on security? Are they concerned that God can’t accept them? One might need to emphasize security. Is this a person who is inclined to carelessness? Perhaps the firmer version of Hebrews 6:4-6 would be more applicable. Of course, a pastor needs to work within what he understands to be the truth as well.

    For me, the answer must come largely from the pastoral perspective, because I think that’s the way the Bible tends to answer the question. Looking at the entire book of Jeremiah we can see how an entire nation, and especially the city of Jerusalem, became very confident that because of God’s promises they did not need to fear destruction. The promises were needed because the people needed to comprehend the value of a stable relationship. The judgment was required because people became so complacent in an assured relationship that they let that relationship die.

    I suspect that God looks more at the pastoral perspective on these issues. For myself, I often reduce this to the following: It’s possible for someone to reject salvation after apparently accepting it, but it is never accidental.

  • Squaring the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

    One of the things that originally attracted me to the United Methodist Church was the quadrilateral, in the form in which it is presented in the discipline. Since becoming a member I have found out that most members of United Methodist congregations have no idea what this is, that some members use the quadrilateral to justify just about anything, and that others seem to want to eviscerate it or simply replace it with a more standard “sola scriptura” stance.

    First let me clarify a couple of points. I’m not here trying to figure out what Wesley meant by his comments on the elements of the quadrilateral; I’m simply looking at how I see them functioning today. Second, I’m using “sola scriptura” in the more popular sense that tends to cut the scriptures off from tradition and experience, and to downplay the role of reason in interpretation. I realize that more sophisticated theologians do not make these errors, but in the pews, “Bible alone” tends in this direction. I do believe that both the label and the attached rhetoric have tended toward this imbalance in the pews, so I don’t hold the theological sophisticates guiltless on this point.

    For those who don’t know, the quadrilateral supposes the use of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason in the formation of doctrine. Because many people have driven truckloads of manure through the supposed filter of this method and called it doctrine, others have tried to modify the quadrilateral. One particular explanation is that the quadrilateral is not an equilateral, but that scripture is the longer line. This is a well-intentioned effort to test more United Methodist doctrine by the standards of scripture, but I think it is neither precisely correct, nor is it adequate to the task. In effect, it pushes people toward a “sola scriptura” stance, but doesn’t clarify the position of the other three elements, other than to give them a smaller and subordinate role.

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  • Moderate Thinking

    Since starting the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, I’ve gotten a few comments on what it means to be moderate. One very reasonable question is how I can combine the words “moderate” and “passionate,” as in “passionate moderate.” It seems like a contradiction in terms. And I do do intend the two words to convey a certain amount of tension. Nonetheless I don’t think they’re entirely contradictory.

    “Moderate” isn’t an ideological or party label. It’s a general description that some people are comfortable with. So what I’m about to discuss applies only to me. It may apply to other people. Many people I have run into who self-identify as moderate would be comfortable with most of what I’m saying, at least what I’m saying about the process of thinking, though not necessarily about the specific positions I have come to. I use my own specific conclusions simply as an illustration. It’s quite possible, and indeed likely, for those who identify themselves as moderates to disagree.

    There are people who espouse a form of moderation from apathy. They don’t care to make a decision so they generally find a center point, effectively a point of least conflict among those they have to live with. Another group may well find it difficult to make decisions and end up in the center through lack of concern. I’m not talking about these groups, but rather those who are active and committed and yet take a moderate approach.

    Here are the keys to what I think of as moderate thinking.

    1. Never improperly excluding a middle position

    Improperly excluding middles is a standard practice in both politics and religion. You are either a laissez faire capitalist or you’re a communist. You’re left wing or right wing. You accept Biblical inerrancy, or you don’t believe in the Bible at all. You’re a fundamentalist or an atheist. Each of these pairs ignores many positions between, and some of them ignore additional positions that are more extreme.

    2. Finding the actual extremes

    Very often politicians and theologians want to place their opponents on the extremes. Moderate thinking avoids this by looking for the actual extremes and finding the range of opinions. As an example, Ned Lamont, Democratic senatorial candidate in Connecticut, is called an extremist, and his election is supposed to mean that the Democratic party is turning far to the left. But Lamont, who wants to withdraw troops from Iraq over a period of six months is hardly an extremist. His position is probably held by a majority of the voters of his state, though they may vote for another candidate for other reasons. The extreme position would be a pacifist position that stated that we should not employ force against terrorists, but should turn the other cheek (figuratively) to them.

    On the other hand, Democrats try to paint Bush as an extreme right winger. But a few miles from me we have a Baptist pastor who was a Vice-Presidential candidate for a minor party in the last election and who thinks Bush is a liberal. That doesn’t make Bush right, any more than agreeing with a majority of Connecticut voters makes Lamont right, but it does mean that he’s not the extreme.

    3. Setting relative values on issues and positions

    This third point simply means that in general moderates are not one issue people. Many people have numerous litmus test issues. For example, they will not vote for a candidate who differs with their position on abortion, or on the war in Iraq, or on taxes, or on any of a number of other issues. I don’t do litmus test issues. There are certain positions I find very hard to stomach, but in choosing a candidate to vote for, I have to deal with a range of issues, and generally no issue is absolute.

    Application

    Much of our political and religious discourse is conducted with excluded options. Let me just take a few examples.

    Gun in the House

    I have made a decision not to have a gun in my house. I have had all kinds of reactions to that decision. I have been congratulated on my high moral stance against gun control. I have been condemned for not believing people should be permitted to defend themselves. But gun control advocates should not take comfort from my stance, and homeowners who wish to protect their property with a weapon should not be concerned. I’ll be voting for candidates who will uphold your right to self-defense.

    So then why do I not have a gun? I have simply made a calculation that my own level of alertness, my normal reaction time, and my decisiveness under the appropriate circumstances are not quite good enough to make the gun a good idea for me. I’m not bad with one on the range, or at least I wasn’t a few years ago when I last tried. I have decent aim. But I don’t believe the odds are good that I’m more likely to get the weapon from a safe place, locate a target, and use it effectively, than I am to have it stolen and used to shoot me, for just one example. And to those who have told me I should darn well get that good, I say, “You get that good. I’ll do what I think best.”

    I have no moral qualms about shooting an intruder. If I can get the guy with a baseball bat, I will. But that is where I think that I am safest. The extremes here are a complete refusal to use violence on the one hand, and a “guns blazing” approach on the other. I ask what will make my family safer.

    War in Iraq

    I oppose the war in Iraq. Again, there are those who respond to my high moral stand against war, and there are those who think I’m a wimpy pacifist (no, I’m not calling all pacifists wimps). But neither are dealing with my own reasoning. The question is one of strategy. What is the best way to use force? Here I see the extremes as pacifism, in which we do not respond violently to terrorists, and the parking lot view, which suggests we make countries that support terrorists into parking lots. I look for the action that is going to result in a better state of affairs after it has been accomplished. I cannot see how the Iraq war can end in a better state than things were before the war, and thus I regard it (and did so before it was launched) as a bad strategy.

    Historical Jesus

    This is a topic on which it’s easy to get Christians confused, because most simply don’t know all the various options, and in fact, very few probably need to know all of them. To identify the extremes, however, we have on the one hand a historical Jesus who is precisely as a harmony of the gosples would make him, and on the other hand we have the belief that Jesus was made up, that he is not a historical figure, or even a historical figure around which some myths have grown, but that he never existed at all. There is quite a lot of ground between those two positions.

    I would like to see us recognize the many possibilities between “every detail of the gospels are historically true without even normal eyewitness variations” and “most of the gospel record is false. For example, one can assume that certain details such as how many times the cock crowed and how many times Peter denied Jesus may have been remembered differently by different people. Even more substantively, one can wonder whether there were, in fact, multiple feedings of 5,000 people and then 4,000 people, and can do so without doubting the entire story of Jesus.

    I recall an online written debate in which I undertood in a series of messages to defend Jesus as a real, historical figure. I came up with six points that I would defend and began the debate. A number of Christians observing these posts told me that I had already given up Christianity because I was not defending the virgin birth or the resurrection. But I had not denied either of those doctrines; I had merely taken on a more limited task–demonstrating that Jesus was, at least, a historical fiction, and not totally a construction of his followers.

    Passionate Moderation

    How can one be a passionate moderate? I see no reason why one cannot be passionate about one’s beliefs just because they are not extreme. In other words, I don’t see the problem here. Let me give a quick example. On the topic of evangelism and missionary effort I get pegged both as evangelical and as liberal. Why?

    First, I believe passionately that Christians are to be witnesses for Jesus. We are not to be ashamed of who we are, and we are to testify of what Jesus has done for and in us.

    Second, I believe passionately that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and converts, and that our witness is never to be forceful, intrusive, emotionally manipulative, or offensive. (Note that I did not say that the gospel itself would not offend; our witness to the gospel should not offend.)

    The first of these points gets me called evangelical; the second gets me called liberal. And if you were to hear and see me carrying out those statements, independently of one another, you might agree. But together, they seem to me to be the “Jesus” way of evangelism. The combination seems moderate to many people, but I simply think it is right, and I’m passionate about it.

    Conclusion

    That, to me, is the essence of being a passionate moderate. Your mileage will probably vary–moderately, I hope!

  • On Being a Love Preacher

    I’ve been talking about the incarnation and the two laws, and placing the concept of love at the center of Christianity. There are those who think that preaching love is somehow a weak form of Christianity, and a soft form of ethics. “All you need is love” is not regarded as a particularly profound message. “There’s lots more to it than just love,” I’ve been told.

    But I don’t think so. I think love requires some definition, because not everything we call love actually is. There are lots of details required to implement love. But love is the key, and love is anything but easy.

    My pastor this morning referred to the “cliche of ‘What Would Jesus Do?’” And indeed WWJD has become a cliche, with just about anything you might want to justify being explained as, of course, precisely what Jesus would do. And in practice WWJD has become something of a cliche, and unfortunately, in general people claim that Jesus would do whatever it was they wanted to do anyhow.

    But what would Jesus actually do? Well, we can get some idea from the gospel of John. (This message is scattered throughout scripture, but I’m using the passage in which it is most clearly stated.) Jesus gave up his life for his friends. And then he gave a command:

    12This is my command, that you love one another just as I loved you. 13Nobody has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do that which I command you. — John 15:12-14 (TFBV, or see the CEV using BibleGateway.com)

    What would Jesus do? Well, he did give his life for his friends. And he did provide that to his disciples as a definition of love, of the love that they were to carry out.

    Now which is easier?

    • Believe a set of doctrines so that despite whatever you may do, you will still be saved and live eternally?
    • Put your trust in God and let him transform your life so that you exemplify this love, that is exemplify what Jesus would do?

    I think the easy road out is option ‘a’. We would really rather not be confronted with what Jesus actually would do in most circumstances.

    But that, I believe, is the challenge of the gospel.

  • The Incarnation and the Two Laws

    34Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they approached him together, 35and one of them tested him by asking him, 36“Teacher, Which commandment is the greatest one in the Torah?” 37Jesus replied, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole being’ {Deuteronomy 6:5} and with your whole mind. 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ {Leviticus 19:18} 40On these two commands all the law and the prophets hang. — Matthew 22:34-40 (TFBV)

    I hope I’m getting across the idea in this series (starting with Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center) that rather than a list of doctrines and of standards I prefer a hierarchy. Both logically and in terms of importance various teachings fall into a hierarchy. At the center of all of this I see the notion of incarnation. I’m going to discuss my understanding of many other doctrines later, including ones I regard as non-essentials, and I believe in each case we’ll find the incarnation shedding light on how that doctrine should be understood.

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  • Incarnation Essentials

    In a previous post I started a discussion of what I think are the essentials of the Christian faith. I think it’s going to be a bit difficult for me to keep clear when I’m talking about essentials, and when I’m talking about how I apply those in broader detail, but since I believe that is precisely what we, as Christians, must do, I will make every effort.

    In simple form, the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation states that Jesus came in the flesh, and that he was wholly human and wholly divine. Many Christians are unsure what this means, as they are about many doctrines. I’d like to restate what I consider the essentials of the doctrine of the incarnation:

    God was present on earth in Jesus of Nazereth. Jesus was human enough so that he is able to understand us completely. Jesus was divine enough so that he is able to redeem us.

    Now I accept the 100% divine/100% human formulation for myself, but this is what I believe it is essential to believe. Stated even more simply: God wants to save you. God can save you. A Biblical statement is: God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). I’m going to expand on that, but my expansion is not part of the essentials.

    Now as I understand it this reconciliation was the ultimate reconciliation; there is no conceivable reconciliation that could cross a greater gap. God is infinite, we are finite. No matter what you subtract from infinity, it remains infinite. God bridged that gap. In bridging that gap he made all other gaps irrelevant. As Paul put it, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). From the incarnational perspective all gaps have become infinitessimal, because they are all to be seen from the perspective of the incarnation, an event that spans infinity.

    This is one reason why I reject the complementarian position. I do not believe it is worthy of the incarnation, and I don’t believe that we can accept any doctrine that is not worthy of the full meaning of the incarnation. Coincidentally, Suzanne McCarthy has again been writing about this on the Better Bibles Blog where she comments on the theology of the incarnation, and specifically about the use of male terminology in translations related to it. Why does the ESV translate terms related to the incarnation with male specific references?

    In a comment on Suzanne’s post, Peter Kirk calls attention to 1 Peter 1:21, in which qelhmati anqrwpou is translated “will of man,” when the contrast should be “human will” as opposed to divine will. This is a clear focus on the minor human differences which should have been overwhelmed by the reality of the incarnation. In a more relevant case, Philippians 2:7-8, the ESV translates en omoiwmati anqrwpwn as “in the likeness of men” rather than the more precise “in human likeness,” though oddly they use “human” for anqrwpo" in the next sentence. This is thinking that is clearly not worthy of the full impact of the incarnation.

    I’m going to reflect more on this later, although I need to move through the essentials in just a few posts, so I’ll leave that further comment for a few days.

    Right now I’d also like to relate this concept of the incarnation to the notion of legalism, total depravity, and our ability to save ourselves. I think the doctrine of total depravity is one that again misses the point. It doesn’t matter if we can be righteous. The Bible calls Job righteous, for example. Modern Christians are uncomfortable with that, but the Bible writers had no such concern. The problem is that no matter how righteous one becomes one is still a finite, limited, human being. It is not merely a matter of being wicked that separates us from God; it is a matter of being not-God. No matter how good we can became, we will still be not-God. Any element of eternity must, by nature, be God’s gift. (Note that I do not refer to us becoming gods; rather I refer to all those elements that fall on God’s side of the line, such as eternal life. There is no possibility that we, who are not eternal, could somehow earn eternity. It doesn’t belong to our reality, but to God’s. It is, by definition and by nature, only attainable as God’s gift.) The gap cannot possibly be crossed from our side. It has to be crossed from God’s.

    In my next entry I’m going to discuss the two laws given by Jesus, love for God and love for neighbor, and tie them to the definition of the incarnation. I think we can hardly find anything more essential than what Jesus said were the first and second laws.