Monthly Archives: March 2023

The New Apostles

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The Long, Narrow Way

As a junior in college, I felt an irresistible call to devote my life to teaching and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have given my entire adult life (50 years!) to studying the scriptures, the history of the church, and the greatest minds and truest hearts the church has produced. I’ve not always been certain of my views, likely not always correct, and perhaps sometimes not always pure of heart, but as a whole I believe I have sought God’s will. My assumption in all of this is that I am not a latter-day apostle, that I don’t have a right to craft a Christianity that suits me and keeps me in step with the spirit of the times. Hence, I have tried my best to submit my mind to the words of Jesus, the witness of Paul, Peter, James and the rest of Jesus’s chosen apostles.

Furthermore, I am aware that I am not sufficient of myself—my perspective is too narrow, my knowledge is too limited, and my biases too unconscious—to understand the fulness of the faith. I need help from wise men and women from the church past and present. In my search for reliable partners, I have listened to the teaching of Irenaeus of Lyon, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, John Calvin, and hundreds of others. All of them, too, attempted to submit their minds and hearts to the words of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles. And I have profound respect for the tradition shared by these teachers, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. In fact, I consider myself a biblical, catholic, and orthodox Christian.

I have taught Christian doctrine at the university level for 34 years. Chief among my goals has been to ground the next generation of church leaders in this great tradition. In so doing I hoped to free them from slavery to the winds of change and the spirit of the times. I have tried to teach them to be humble, cautious, systematic, and analytical in their efforts to understand the faith and how it applies to the present age.

Consternation

I say all of this to place in context my profound consternation at how lightly many of my highly educated acquaintances dismiss that apostolic/catholic/orthodox consensus and embrace a “progressive” form of Christianity. They throw over the original apostles and the saints, martyrs, reformers, and doctors of the church to embrace the cultural fads of the last 25 years as a new revelation, a lately-discovered gospel. According to my progressive friends, the man confronted by the risen Jesus on the Damascus Road and chosen by the Lord to be his apostle, the man who personally knew Peter, James, and many other first-generation disciples of Jesus, and author of much of the New Testament, Paul, was wrong about how to live a Christian life, about marriage, family, and sex. He missed the boat on women’s rights and slavery. These modern apostles know more about what Jesus would do than the ones Jesus chose to be his witnesses. All they need to do is keep step with progressive culture as it gradually erases boundary after boundary set by the Creator.

Envy

I’m envious of these new apostles. The knowledge and certainty I’ve sought through cautious, painstaking thought, they attained simply by listening to contemporary culture, which knows nothing of the scriptures and possesses no sympathy for the church. Like the ancient Gnostics, these new apostles attain to gnosis (knowledge) instantaneously without reference to the scriptures or tradition. They know everything they need to know about God and true morality from a source within themselves. Only, the ancient Gnostics at least made a pretense of using reason to deduce their quasi-mythical system. The modern Christian Gnostics don’t need reason, for they know the truth directly from their feelings and desires. Personal experience is their teacher. And if they even bother with scripture and tradition, they use their feeling-derived gnosis to judge and correct them. I am envious indeed! Such knowledge is too wonderful for me! Not being an apostle, I have to rely on the apostolic tradition and the wisdom of the church to learn how to live as a Christian.

Gnostic America

While I am at it, let me recommend a book. Recently I read Peter M. Burfeind, Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion According to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014). Perhaps I will write a full review later, but let me give you a taste of what Burfeind has to offer. Toward the end of the book, in his discussion of the Emerging Church Movement—an early progressive movement within evangelical churches—he charges:

It’s a Christ abstracted from his humanity and his Church once again…a Christ rarefied from his history and ecclesiastical grounding and reunited with the Self. Ultimately it’s a rebellion against created forms, a rejection of them as idolatrous, the very position taken by the Gnostics (Gnostic America, p. 334).

These comments were written nine years ago. They were true then, and nine years later we can see how prophetic they were of developments that followed.

Freedom of Speech for Me but Not for Thee

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There is great ferment in contemporary American society over the idea and practice of freedom of speech. The history of the United States of America from 1788 to today could almost be derived from the history of interpretation and application of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Perhaps reading that history would reveal that from its institution until today, the right to freedom of speech has been prized most by groups with the least political and cultural power. The dominant culture has been less enthusiastic, because freedom of speech grants unearned power to those who do not have it and exposes those with power to criticism and threat of losing power. However, history demonstrates that once the formerly powerless groups gain power and themselves become the dominant political and cultural force, they become critics of freedom of speech. I know it sounds cynical, but I think most appeals to lofty ideals in defense of free speech turn out to be little more than clever rhetorical ploys.

As an example, consider the change that has occurred on American college campuses since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that exploded onto public consciousness in 1964-65. At that time, left-leaning students demanded freedom of political speech on campus. The enemy was the old conservative establishment on campus and in the country as a whole. On college campuses today—and in many other centers of power–the political/cultural left is overwhelmingly dominant. Not surprisingly, the new leftist orthodoxy is as great a suppressor of dissent as the conservative establishment ever was, perhaps even greater. Speech defending conservative morality and politics and even speech advocating free speech is condemned as “hate speech” or “racism” or some other form of despicable speech. The list of ways to misspeak grows longer every day. It seems that hardly anyone really believes in free speech. They pretend to support it only when it is to their advantage.

I do not deny that there have been some true believers in free speech. Sincere free speech advocates past and present appeal to the value of truth. The appeal assumes that everyone can (or should) subordinate their private interests, beliefs, preconceived notions, and desires for wealth, power, and honor to the communal quest for truth and goodness. Allowing everyone to participate in public deliberations, whether we agree or disagree with them, serves the goal of getting a clearer picture of the actual state of affairs and of what is possible. And that makes us all better off in the long run. Or, so the argument goes.

These days, defenses of free speech come only from conservative circles with perhaps a few leftover liberals mixed in. Political leftists and postmodernists do not believe in truth, and they label all appeals to truth and fact as ideological defenses of the racist, sexist, homophobic, white, colonialist establishment. What matters to the political/cultural left is consolidation of its power. Free speech for conservatives would only hinder that consolidation.

Next Time: Consider the essay above an introduction.  In future essays we will examine the idea of free speech in detail. What does it mean? Where does it apply? How do churches, Christian schools, and other religious non-profit institutions deal with demands for more freedom of speech within their spheres or for more restrictions on speech?

Progressive Christian Ethics—An Exercise in Duplicity?

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In my recent studies of progressive Christian thinkers, many of which I have published on this blog, I keep running into a paradox in their ethical reasoning, specifically in their arguments for full acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and lifestyles and their justifications of abortion and sexual activity outside of marriage. On the one hand, they argue like strict legalists, focusing on the precise meanings of words and sentences, and on the other hand they dismiss or reinterpret the Bible’s moral commands by means of general principles.

Progressive Legalism

As examples of the legalist mentality, we saw the Dean of Yale Divinity School argue in effect that because the Bible does not say in many words, “You shall not kill your unborn baby,” we can assume that we are permitted to do so. See my July 7, 2022 essay “A Wizard Ought to Know Better.”

https://ifaqtheology.com/2022/07/07/a-wizard-ought-to-know-better/

 Also, Karen Keen*, Robert K. Gnuse*, David Caden*, and David P. Gushee* argue that the Bible permits loving, non-coercive, same-sex sexual relationships among equals.** A significant component of their argument contends that since the Bible never specifically condemns such relationships, the texts that mention same-sex sexual activity (Romans 1:26-27, 1 Cor. 6:9-11, and others) should not be used in moral arguments to condemn loving gay relationships. Freed from scriptural condemnations, we can look for other ways to justify same-sex sexual relationships as good and right—gathered from science, psychology, sociology, or evolutionary biology.

Progressive theologians fuss over words like clever lawyers looking for loopholes they can exploit. In my reading of their works, I do not get the impression that their fussiness about the letter of the law arises from a desire to obey God’s commands to the letter. Some other desire seems to be at work.

Progressive Liberalism

On the other hand, when explicit biblical instructions and the consensus of the 2000-year Christian tradition stands irrefutably against them, they abandon the “letter” for the “spirit” of the law. They appeal to general principles to overturn the specific moral teaching of the Bible and tradition. We should, they say, always do the loving thing, the just, merciful, compassionate thing. We should not cause harm. And if following the Bible’s and the tradition’s moral teaching does not seem loving and compassionate, we must reinterpret or reject it. In this way, progressive Christians set aside explicit biblical teaching and the consensus of the ecumenical church when it does not seem to them loving, just, merciful, compassionate…or progressive.

General Principles Are Not Enough

But a moment’s thought reveals that general principles alone cannot guide us in specific situations. How do the principles of justice, peace, mercy, and love, apart from specific commands and a tradition of examples, doctrine, and narratives, give us concrete guidance in particular situations? They cannot do so. What is justice? What does it mean to cause harm to someone? Is making them feel uncomfortable causing harm? How do I love my neighbor? What are compassion and mercy?

Every observer of modern culture knows that many of our contemporaries, having cut themselves loose from the biblical and ecclesiastical tradition, use these words as empty vessels into which to pour their own wishes, desires, and preferences. Do you love someone when you validate their desires and feelings, when you care only for their subjective sense of well-being? Or, does loving someone mean to will and seek the best for them? From where, then, do we learn what is good, better, and best for human beings? Progressive Christians clearly look to progressive culture for guidance.

But progressive Christianity is not the real thing. It is a fake. Taking up the real Christian life involves learning the true nature of love, justice, mercy, compassion, and all other virtues from the Bible’s commands, narratives, doctrines, and examples. It involves listening to the wisdom of the tradition and joining with the whole church in seeking to obey God’s will. We cannot do this if we claim the right to sit in judgment over every specific command in view of empty general principles.

*To read these reviews, copy and paste these names into the search box on the top right of this page.

**Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships 

Robert K. Gnuse,“Seven Gay Texts: Biblical Passages Used to Condemn Homosexuality” (Biblical Theology Bulletin 45. 2: 68-87).

 David A. Kaden, Christianity in Blue

David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity