Category Archives: Christian Theology

Theological thoughts written for interested non experts

A Time for Orthodoxy (Part Four)

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Today I will conclude the series urging anti-creedal churches to rethink their opposition to explicit creeds, confessions of faith, and statements of belief.

A Little More History

The Early and Patristic Church

Creeds, confessions of faith and statements of belief served different purposes in different eras of church history. Beginning with the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), early and patristic church leaders met on occasion to deal with controversies. They sometimes issued decrees clarifying controverted issues and condemning erroneous views. For example, the decrees (creeds) from the first two ecumenical Councils, Nicaea and Constantinople (I) built on the list of truths articulated in the early rule of faith. The Councils found it necessary to clarify certain disputed points and condemn certain assertions made by the Arian party, which asserted that the Son of God was not truly God but the first and greatest creature. Wisely, these Councils made no attempt to articulate everything Christians believe and practice. Not only would this have been impossible, it would have engendered fruitless controversies. They left all these things implicit in the tradition of worship and the practical life of the church.

I see much wisdom in the patristic church’s practice. The Christian faith cannot be articulated in all its fulness and richness. As philosopher of science Michael Polanyi observed, “we know more than we can say.” If the church tries to say everything it knows, it will complicate what is simple and oversimplify what is complicated. But there are times when the church must articulate some piece of its tacit knowledge and condemn the worse distortions of its faith.

The Protestant Reformation

When Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and other branches of the Protestant Reformation organized themselves into separate bodies, they promulgated confessions of faith to clarify for the world what they believed and taught and how they differed from the Roman Catholic Church and each other. Among the earliest of these are the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of Faith (1530), the Reformed First (1536) and Second (1566) Helvetic Confessions of Faith, and the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563). These documents were much longer than the Nicene Creed and covered a more extensive catalogue of doctrines. Nevertheless, the Protestant confessions did not attempt to articulate the full depth and riches of the Christian faith. Every later Protestant body explicitly or implicitly followed the same rule.

The proliferation of Protestant confessions of faith was driven by necessity. Given the separation from the Roman Catholic Church and the disputes among themselves Protestants had to make clear how they differed from the RCC and each other. This task remains necessary even for contemporary anti-creedal churches. How else may anti-creedal churches let the world know that they differ from other churches by rejecting creeds?

Contemporary Independent, Community, and Bible Churches

In this list I include every church whose primary leadership and identity rests in the local congregation. Instead of a Protestant confession of faith, they often list their beliefs on their website or in printed material under the rubric “What we Believe.” This list usually includes basic teachings common to all orthodox churches (Trinity, Christ’s Deity, Atonement, Resurrection, etc.), some that are central to Protestantism in general (justification by faith), some that are characteristic of the parent denomination, and some that are important to the identity of that particular congregation. Most of these statements are not too long, at most 20 points. Like the Patristic church and the churches of the Reformation, community and Bible churches do not attempt to put into words everything they teach and practice. You learn these things, if at all, by long years of participation in the life of the church.

The Present Challenge: Progressive “Christianity”

As I explained in the first essay in this series, my faith was nurtured in a conservative wing of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. That is where I serve today and expect to serve for the rest of my life. We like to think we preserve some unique insights within a generally Protestant tradition. To the outside observer, however, we look like most other low church Protestant groups. We cherish the canonical scriptures and adhere (informally) to the orthodox ecumenical faith set out in the ecumenical creeds. But we wished to be guided by Scripture alone apart from detailed Protestant confessions of faith. Our original aim was to protest against the use of minor theological differences to exclude and condemn other believers. We wished to reclaim in practice the biblical doctrine of the unity of the church.

A Different World

Today, however, our anti-creedal stance has made us less able to assert biblical/orthodox teaching even in the most fundamental areas, which in the past we took for granted. Our hesitancy to assert doctrinal truth has opened the door to heresies that never came knocking in the past. We face a decisive moment. Will we assert and enforce the biblical/orthodox faith by making use of the authorities of scripture, tradition, and office or succumb to the spirit of the postmodern age in which everyone is their own judge?

Admittedly, I am speaking here of urban and suburban churches. Rural and small-town churches face other issues. What, then, is the challenge urban and suburban SCM and other independent, community, and Bible churches face? Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I think the greatest challenge to the orthodoxy of those churches is the temptation to assimilate to the progressive sector of modern culture.* That is to say, to adopt an easy-going inclusivism that accepts everyone the way they are. No demand for conversion, repentance, or confession! Sexual promiscuity? No problem! Wish us to affirm your LGBTQ+ way of life? Who are we to judge! Your inner self is the measure of your truth! Want to divorce your spouse because you found someone else? We understand…God wants you to be happy! Abortion…well, at least you struggled with the decision. You think everybody will be saved? Makes sense…God loves everyone! Want a social justice Jesus? So do we!

A Time to Stand

I am speaking to those church leaders and planters who want to preserve the biblical/orthodox faith. I urge you to follow the example of the early and patristic church. State clearly what your church believes and practices. Make it concise, but include the ecumenical faith, other basic teachings, and do not neglect the beliefs challenged by the progressive heresy: affirm the positive teaching of Scripture on these subjects, but also make clear your rejection of the progressive principle of religious and moral relativism and the specific progressive heresies mentioned above.

*Use the search function on my blog to look for essays that deal with “progressive Christianity.”

A Time for Orthodoxy?

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Have you ever heard the following argument:

In a case wherein many thoughtful Christians disagree on an issue, the church ought to tolerate diversity of belief, expression, and practice.

This is an old argument, and it has been applied to many disputes: predestination, the nature of the sacraments, the Trinity, the resurrection of Jesus, divorce, war, and more. I’ve encountered it most recently in discussions of LGBTQ+ affirmation. The church, it is argued, ought to listen to both sides of the issue and make room for a diversity of opinion. And sometimes you hear the additional argument that, because the truth of the matter is uncertain, we ought to risk error on the side that seems most loving, which of course is LGBTQ+ affirming.

Analysis

Let’s think about this argument. First, let us admit that it possesses a certain plausibility both philosophically and theologically. Philosophically, it assumes that disagreement among competent thinkers about a particular truth claim indicates its obscurity of expression or intrinsic unknowability. As an obvious corollary, the argument also assumes that the greater the consensus among competent thinkers the more likely the truth of the conclusion and the greater the division of opinion the less likely its truth. And if human beings were thinking machines, having access to all relevant information and immune to all self-interest and irrational emotions, we might find this argument unobjectionable. But human beings are not thinking machines.

Theologically, too, the argument finds some support in Scripture:

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand (Romans 14:1-4).

Most Christians will agree that there are some obscure and “disputable matters” among issues of theological interest. For there have always been disputed matters, and it would strain credulity to argue that there are no truly disputable (i.e., obscure or intrinsically unknowable) matters among the ones actually disputed. But it would be equally implausible to think that there is a one-to-one correspondence between disputed and disputable matters. That is to say, just because someone somewhere holds a different opinion about an issue does not mean that this view must be tolerated. For there is no Christian doctrine, not even the gospel itself, that someone has not disputed.

The Necessity of Orthodoxy

Clearly, the argument that diversity of opinion demands toleration is too general and can easily be reduced to absurdity. It would lead to theological anarchy, remove the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, destroy the church’s unity, render it unable to confess its faith to the world and teach its young, and discipline its wayward members. Contrary to the diversity-demands-tolerance argument there is no simple rule to distinguish between orthodoxy that must be enforced and disputable matters in which diversity may be tolerated. These distinctions must be hammered out in the heat of controversy. The history of theological development demonstrates the necessity of deciding an issue even in the absence of complete consensus. Some people will be silenced and some who insist on teaching heterodoxy may be excluded as heretics. Even in the absence of absolute certainty, the church must humbly but decisively take this risk. The alternative is gradual or precipitous surrender of its identity and abandonment of its mission.

Young Seminarian Visits With Old Theology Professor (Part Three: The Bible)

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Introduction

The last meeting (posted on December 19, 2023) ended with the professor’s summary of the conversation:

 “To doubt” and “to believe” are acts of situated individual subjects involving judgments, decisions, and moods. Every doubter is also a believer and every believer is also a doubter. The doubter possesses no inherent intellectual or moral superiority to the believer. I think this truth sheds light on your seminary struggles. You may have been beguiled by academia’s spurious claim that doubt is intellectually superior to belief and seduced by the offer of membership in a social class marked by its presumption to higher wisdom.

Setting: The young seminarian drops by the professor’s office without an appointment, hoping that the professor is in and available for a visit.

Seminarian: Hello professor. I remember that you have open office hours at this time on Wednesdays, and I was hoping to visit with you, if you have the time.

Professor: Good timing. A student just cancelled her appointment. Come in. Have a seat.

Seminarian: Thanks. I wanted to continue our conversation. Last time, you mentioned that we’d discuss the Bible next; that is, the contrast between the way the church treats the Bible and the way the modern academy treats it.

Professor: Oh yes, so I did. Since we last talked, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways, overt and covert, modern academia subverts faith. As we saw in our last conversation, modern academia canonizes doubt and criticism as methods of weeding out superstitions and other unscientific beliefs. It rejects tradition, orthodoxy, and commitment as ways of knowing and living. This institutional stance in itself, apart from any particular criticism, places faith under a cloud of suspicion. Of course, we know that modern academia is deceptive and hypocritical. As we learned last time, the doubter is also a believer and critics of one belief must remain uncritical of opposing beliefs. The modern university cherishes its own traditions, orthodoxies, and commitments, but it calls them by other names: professionalism, science, scholarship, equity, diversity, critical thinking, research, inclusion, tenure, academic freedom, free speech, progress, fairness, and academic integrity. So, as we begin our reconstruction of faith, I suggest we refuse to be intimidated by modern academia’s claims to moral and intellectual superiority over faith and tradition.

Seminarian: The Bible?

Professor: Okay. We are nearly ready for the Bible. But I want to know that you see academia for what it truly is. Its two traditional activities are teaching and research. On the one hand, it is tasked with educating the coming generation. It introduces young people to the current state of discussion among scholars of the arts and sciences and it helps them develop the skills they need to become expert practitioners and researchers in their chosen fields of study. On the other hand, academia is a way of generating and testing beliefs, hypotheses, and theories by means of criticism and doubt. It protests that its purpose is not to pass on political, moral, and religious tradition of any kind. But we know that American universities are much quicker to criticize traditional morality, conservative politics, and the Christian religion than they are progressive morality, leftist politics, and exotic religion.

Seminarian: I get it. I should adopt a critical attitude toward the critical attitude practiced in modern academia.

Professor: Yes! As a way into the subject of the Bible, recall as best you can the view of the Bible and the Christian faith you brought with you to seminary.

Seminarian: I don’t recall that I was taught a “doctrine” of Scripture as a child. In my home and in church, the Bible was quoted, preached, and taught as the true moral, religious, and metaphysical worldview. It was our unquestioned framework for meaning, identity, and purpose. In its teachings about creation, fall, atonement and the world’s end, the meaning of history and the destiny of humanity were laid out before our eyes. Our greatest enemies are sin, death, and the devil, and these foes can be dealt with only through the power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit. The Old and New Testaments’ stories and heroic characters provided examples of courage and obedience. The law, the prophets and the Writings provided moral rules and wise principles by which to live. Jesus’s teaching, example, and above all, his sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead were at the center of our worship and moral lives. Religious and moral disputes were settled by determining what the Scriptures teach. Whatever the Bible says is the truth of God.

Professor: At what point in your development were you taught an explicit “doctrine” of Scripture, and what was it?

Seminarian: I can’t remember a particular occasion, but in my teenage years I became aware that there were outsiders who did not believe. This seemed very strange to me. How could anyone not believe? It stands written in the Bible and has been held true for thousands of years. The voice of the prophets, Jesus and Paul ring out as authentic and powerful witnesses to the truth they experienced. Who would have the temerity to label them liars or fools? Around the same time, I began to notice that the church leaders taught a “doctrine” of Scripture, albeit a rudimentary one.

Professor: I am very interested in exactly what you remember about the doctrine of Scripture you learned at this stage in your life. Understanding this process is important because we need to discover what made you vulnerable to the critiques you faced later on. So, try to remember the view of Scripture you internalized in your late teen years.

Seminarian: I will try. But I am not sure I can remember exactly how I understood things at that stage. I may have to use categories I learned later to express what I remember.

Professor: Okay. Do the best you can.

Seminarian: As I said above, as a child I accepted the biblical portrayal as the true world. The voices within the Bible seemed as real to me as those of my parents and the preacher. I believed not because I compared and contrasted it with other ways of understanding but simply because I was taught it. That is to say, I believed the Bible because I trusted my parents and the church. At some point I began to notice church leaders speaking not simply about the contents of the Bible but about the Bible itself. We learned about the distinctions between the Old and New Testaments and the various types of literature within each division. We memorized the names of all 66 books within the Bible. We even sang songs about the B.I.B.L.E. I could not have put it into words at that point in my life, but I could not help but notice that the scriptures were use as the exclusive source and authority for teaching within the church. The Bible was the authority by which theological disputes were settled. Church teachers and preachers often referred to the Bible as “the inspired Word of God.” I took this to mean that the voice of Scripture was the voice of God. I don’t think I heard the word “inerrancy” until I entered college, but even before then I would have rejected instinctively the proposal that the Bible contained mistakes, lies, and myths. Accepting such a proposal would shatter my biblical worldview and thrust me into an uncertain, chaotic world without guidance.

Professor: I presume that in college or seminary you encountered a more sophisticated doctrine of Scripture?

Seminarian: Yes. I learned what many people pejoratively label a “fundamentalist” doctrine of Scripture. That is that the Bible as a whole and in every part, from Genesis to Revelation, down to every word, is “inspired” or “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). I took this to mean that God chose every word the human authors wrote and miraculously protected them from error. The words of Scripture are simultaneously the words of the human author and the Word of God. In terms of its use, this conviction reinforced the authority of the Bible for use in teaching and theological disputation. To quote the Bible was to quote God.

Professor: And you accepted this doctrine of Scripture?

Seminarian: Yes. But what I did not see at the time was that I accepted a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture on the same basis that as a child I had accepted the reliability of the contents of Scripture; that is, that the church whom I trusted believed it and assured me that it is so. I did not ask at the time, “Can the doctrine of the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible be independently verified?” In my childhood, I could not have asked this question, because I accepted the word of those I trusted. To ask for their assurance to be independently verified would be to abandon the very basis on which I trusted Scripture. But by the time I entered seminary, I came to think that the absolute truth of the Bible could be (and needs to be) verified by reason. How this transition occurred I don’t know, but I think it had something to do with my conservative teachers’ efforts to demonstrate by rational arguments the complete truth of the Bible. In other words, my path to doubt was cleared by the friends of faith.

Professor: Humm. This seems like a good place to end for today. Let’s return next time to this ironic turn of events wherein efforts to make faith secure by rational argument ended up making it doubtful.

Seminarian: I look forward to disentangling the matter.

Professor: Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye.

Young Seminarian Visits With His Old Theology Professor (Part Two)

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Introduction

For the full context of this post please read the first conversation posted December 05, 2023. In that meeting, the old professor addressed the question of why seminary training tends to weaken if not destroy the faith and piety that young people bring to the endeavor. In sum, the professor explains, seminaries participate in the ethos of modern academia, which sees as its main task critical examination of all inherited beliefs. Whether intended or not, this relentless questioning replaces the student’s initial certainty of faith with doubt. Many students enter seminary with the naïve belief that the indubitability of the faith is an essential sign of its truth. Hence some students take refutation of the faith’s status as absolute knowledge as disproof of its truth. Or, at least as a reason to refrain from embracing the faith wholeheartedly.

Setting: As our young seminarian approaches the old professor’s office, he notices that his office door is open. Their eyes meet.

Professor: Good to see you again! Come in.

Seminarian: Thank you, professor.

Professor: How have you been? Tell me what you are thinking.

Seminarian: In our last conversation you gave me much to consider. Some of which, I had never before thought about.

Professor: What was that?

Seminarian: That I may have unknowingly identified the believability of a belief with its indubitability; that if I can doubt it, I should not trust it. And in doing so, I may have mistaken the academic method of universal doubt and endless criticism for a livable philosophy. If you don’t mind, I’d like to pursue this issue today.

Professor: I was going to make the same suggestion. Examining this mistaken inference may go a long way to dealing with your concerns about the Bible and the credibility of the orthodox Christian faith.

Seminarian: I look forward to it.

Professor: Let’s begin by thinking about the terms you just used, “believability” and “indubitability.” In my experience, contemporary use of these concepts and their near relatives creates much confusion. I see three areas where we need strive for more clarity. (1) Note first that the words “believability” and “indubitability” diverts our attention away from the person who believes or doubts and focuses on the proposition in question. They speak as if believability and indubitability are properties inherent in the claims being made. I do not accept this attribution. Whereas a proposition’s truth or falsity is not dependent on the person believing or doubting, a proposition’s believability or indubitability is. For a claim may seem believable to one person but doubtful to another. Hence debates about the believability or indubitability of a proposition are a waste of time. It will be helpful here to recall that these terms are derived from the verbs “to believe” and “to doubt.” To believe and to doubt are acts of individual subjects. And one person may believe while another person doubts a claim. A proposition may indeed possess the property of truth or falsehood, but it cannot possess the property of believability or indubitability or doubtfulness, or any other like property. The assertion that a claim is believable means no more than this: “I assent to this claim and can see no reason why others would not do the same.” Likewise, the assertion that a claim is doubtful means no more than this: “I dissent from this claim and can see no reason why others would not do the same.”

Seminarian: This is helpful. It keeps our focus on the place where decisions between belief and disbelief must be made, that is, on the individual’s weighing of the evidence for and against the truth of a claim.

Professor: True. And I will return to examine the acts of belief and doubt in greater detail. But first, there is another area of confusion I want to address. (2) Faith and doubt (the acts of believing and doubting) are often seen as mutually exclusive. More precisely, they are seen as different kinds of actions; that is to say, faith acts and doubt refrains from acting. Faith assents and embraces a claim while doubt refrains from assenting and embracing. Belief moves, but doubt remains steadfast. According to this way of thinking, doubt is conservative and cautious but belief ventures into uncertain waters and risks error. Doubt rests secure until it is moved by evidence it judges compelling. The doubter claims the higher intellectual and moral ground and looks down his nose at the naïve believer.

Seminarian: As I look back on my first year in seminary, I now understand why I was so confused. Up to that point in my life I had thought of the act of faith as responsible and virtuous. Only people lacking true virtue embraced skepticism and doubt. They were clearly looking for a way to escape from the restrictions of morality and religious practice. But when I entered the academic world, these values were reversed. Doubt, skepticism, criticism and avoidance of commitment were viewed as responsible and virtuous. Belief and commitment were signs of fear, gullibility, and carelessness. I suppose I was gradually socialized into academia.

Professor: But it’s all based on a deception. For doubt is not the absence of belief. Doubters can refuse to be moved to belief by arguments for a particular claim only because they hold to other beliefs that exclude that claim. One may justify rejecting Paul’s testimony to the resurrection of Jesus based on their belief that miracles are impossible. A person who rejects the New Testament’s sexual ethics can do so only because they rely on other moral sources they trust more. Doubters can be just as gullible, fearful, and careless as believers! Everyone is simultaneously both a doubter and a believer. Hence debating the relative moral and intellectual superiority of doubt over belief or of belief over doubt is another complete waste of time.

Seminarian: I had never thought of that before! But it’s obviously true. Disbelief in one proposition is possible only because of belief in another opposing proposition. Academia’s critical method won’t work unless the criteria by which beliefs are measured are assumed true, at least provisionally. Criticism without criteria is an absurd idea.

Professor: Well said! Let’s move now to the third clarification. (3) As I said above, “to doubt” and “to believe” are acts of individual subjects situated in a particular time and place. The act of doubting or believing expresses a subjective state, a judgment, a decision, and a mood. (a) To say “I doubt” expresses the present mental state of the speaker. It communicates something like: “I do not find the evidence for your claim compelling.” It says nothing about the properties of the proposition in question or the evidence supporting it. (b) But clearly the subjective state of the doubter results from a judgment, which concludes something like, “The evidence for this claim is not sufficient to justify rational assent.” (c) Because neither expressing doubt nor affirming belief assert infallibility, treating either one as a basis for action involves a decision, a decision to move forward apart from complete clarity and certainty. (d) Many judgments and decisions are accompanied by certain moods: joy, triumph, glee, pride, etc. And these moods often indicate the operations of motives other than desire for truth and commitment to sober rationality.

Seminarian: I did not realize that believing and doubting were so complex. But I should have known this. Human beings are not calculating machines. Their judgments and decisions are conditioned by their multidimensional natures, widely different experiences, and diverse characters.

Professor: Let’s bring this line of reasoning to its point: “To doubt” and “to believe” are acts of situated individual subjects involving judgments, decisions, and moods. Every doubter is also a believer and every believer is also a doubter. The doubter possesses no inherent intellectual or moral superiority to the believer. I think this truth sheds light on your seminary struggles. You may have been beguiled by academia’s spurious claim that doubt is intellectually superior to belief and seduced by the offer of membership in a social class marked by its presumption to higher wisdom.

Seminarian: You may be correct. When I returned home after my first year, I’m ashamed to admit that I felt a bit smug when relating to the “unenlightened masses.”

Professor: I hope I’ve given you something to think about until our next meeting.

Seminarian: You have indeed! But I have many more questions.

Professor: We will take them up one by one. See you soon.

Seminarian: Goodbye.

Young Seminarian Visits Old Theology Professor

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Introduction

Previously, we listened as a confused young seminarian visited with a progressive bishop. Our troubled seminarian explained to the bishop that he had lost faith in the conservative Christianity of his childhood and inquired whether he might have a future in a progressive church. After three sessions, the young seminarian left just as confused as he had been beforehand, if not more. (To pick up on the story, see the posts of October 7 & 17 and November 4.) After his disappointing series of meetings with the progressive bishop, the young seminarian decides to meet with a professor of theology about whom he has heard some intriguing things. This old professor has a reputation for being orthodox in doctrine and morals but not combative or judgmental. Having taught theology for over 40 years and written many books, the old professor is well acquainted with the history of Christian theology from the first to the twenty-first century and with contemporary issues in theology. Above all, he is known for his honesty and moderation.

Setting: After having previously set up an appointment by phone, our confused young seminarian knocks on the old professor’s office door.

Professor: Come in.

Seminarian: Thank you, professor.

(The old professor closes the book he has been reading and moves from behind his desk.)

Professor: Have a seat. Would you like water or perhaps a coffee?

Seminarian: No, thank you.

Professor: What’s on your mind?

Seminarian: Where to start? I hope you will not be offended if I am brutally honest. I’ve lost faith in the conservative Christian faith I was taught in church. Driven by the obligation to be honest with God and myself, I examined doctrine after doctrine of my inherited faith and found them doubtful. I thought I should not continue to hold to a teaching about which I felt uncertain. I visited recently with a progressive bishop in hope that he could help me sort out what I believe and how I could continue in some form of Christianity. You can imagine, then, how shocked I was when I discovered that the progressive bishop admitted that he lies to his church every Sunday. He uses such traditional Christian language as incarnation, miracles, resurrection, salvation, Holy Spirit, atonement, etc., and allows his people to think that he means what the church has always meant by these terms. In fact, however, he believes none of it and justifies his dissimulation by saying he believes these things interpreted metaphorically. I found it all so disheartening. Can you help me?

Professor: I will try. But you need to be patient. To get a handle on the problem we need to move logically from the foundations to the issues with traditional Christianity that most trouble you. Our first goal is to find the most fundamental point at which your thinking departs from the logic of orthodoxy. You need to ask yourself, “Was that departure warranted?”

Seminarian: Okay. I don’t know for sure where that point is, but when I spoke with the progressive bishop, I said something like, “Well, I suppose it all started with the Bible. Before I entered seminary, I believed that everything the Bible says is true because it is the inspired word of God….”

Professor: We will get to the Bible, but first allow me to share some general observations about the transition from childhood faith to mature faith. As children of Christian parents grow up in the home and in the church, they accept what they receive from these sources as unquestionably true. And this is a good thing. Children need simplicity, certainty, and a clear identity; they do not have the maturity to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty. At some point, however, they must learn to deal with challenges to inherited faith and embrace it as their own. Ironically, those children of the church who decide to attend seminary to prepare for ministry face greater challenges to their faith than those who take another path. In seminary they are introduced to the academic study of the Bible and theology. Nothing is taken for granted. Every fact, doctrine, and practice that is taught in church as “what we believe” or “what the scriptures teach” is placed in doubt. In academia, every doctrinal claim must be backed up with persuasive evidence before its validity and truth can be admitted. And even in faith-affirming schools under the guidance of conservative teachers, students must read the works of atheist, deist, liberal, and progressive authors. Many beginning students find this experience shocking, disorienting, and horrifying. What they experienced in their lives up to that point as matters of prayer, reverence, worship and comfort they now hear dissected, debated, and doubted. Even blasphemed! Many students find that seminary study dilutes, cools, and sometimes shatters the faith they received from their parents and churches.

Seminarian: That’s my story exactly! I entered seminary with a sense of God’s presence and confidence in the truth of the Bible. By the time I left, God seemed distant and the Bible no longer seemed sacred. Why does seminary study have this effect on some students?

Professor: I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?

Seminarian: I’d love to hear it! Because it does not seem plausible to think that everything my parents and church taught me was wrong and that I needed to attend a seminary to discover this.

Professor: I do not believe that what your parents and church taught you was wrong. But I think you may have formed the impression that what you learned in church was not only right but self-evident, certain, and so obviously right that no right-thinking, good person could object. Now I am sure that neither your parents nor your church made such a bold claim, but perhaps you took this expectation with you to seminary.

Seminarian: I certainly did not expect to have my faith so thoroughly deconstructed!

Professor: Now for my theory. Academia does not understand the way faith works in real life. Modern academia is a laboratory, designed originally to examine critically every inherited belief and practice, looking for superstitions, fancies, and opinions masquerading as knowledge. It had rather reject a dozen true beliefs than risk being taken in by single false one. It prefers never-ending criticism to the slightest commitment. For above all, it does not wish to be fooled. It would prefer to be teleported naked to a White House gala dinner than to be exposed as naïve and gullible to its peers. The academic study of the Bible and theology follows the same pattern. It feels obligated to challenge traditional Christian beliefs from every angle: historical, logical, and metaphysical. Never has a belief system been so criticized by so many for so long with so little results. Rarely does this history yield a credible claim to have falsified an essential Christian teaching.

Seminarian: Then why do so many seminarians get confused by it?

Professor: Because they enter seminary thinking wrongly that their inherited faith is so obviously true and certain that no serious objections can be made against it! Implicit in this naïve faith is the notion that the unimpeachability and certainty (for me) of the Christian faith is part of the faith itself. That is to say, they accept the absurd idea that the faith can be falsified merely by showing that it could be false. As the student encounters a barrage of historical, logical and metaphysical objections to Christian faith, they lose their naïve confidence in the impregnability of the fortress of faith. Then comes their greatest mistake: they conclude that, because they are fallible and a cherished Christian belief could be false, they ought not remain unreservedly committed to the faith they were handed by the church. They unwittingly accept the enlightenment view that it is better to reject a dozen true beliefs than risk being taken in by single false one. What young seminarians overlook as they enter the world of academia is the nature of faith. The preaching of the gospel of Christ does not call us to gnosis, absolute knowledge and complete certainty, but to faith. If Christian beliefs were as self-evident as 2 + 2 = 4, it would not be called faith. The terms “self-evident faith” or “proven faith” are contradictions.

Seminarian: Wow! I’ve never encountered this perspective before. My head is spinning. I’d like to think about it for a few days before we continue.

Professor: Of course. You think about it and we’ll set a time to meet again.

Seminarian: Thank you. I will check in soon.

Professor: Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye.

Celebrating Ten Years and 385 Essays!

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Today is the tenth anniversary of ifaqtheology.com. On August 08, 2013, I announced the beginning of this blog, promising to address theological questions with

“Clarity in thinking, precision in speaking, honesty, truth, common sense, intellectual humility, thoughtfulness and fairness.”

Why Start Ifaqtheology?

1. I came to realize that I could not write a book or an academic article on every subject I wanted to address. The academic style requires the author to pursue a painstaking process of documentation. It takes huge amounts of time and limits how much you can read and write. Academic writing plays an important role in the life of the church, but I was not satisfied with talking only to fellow professors.

2. I wanted to reach a broader audience. For a long time, I have believed that most churches do a poor job of teaching the full range of the Christian faith to their members. The people’s ignorance of doctrine and church history leaves them vulnerable to the winds of culture. I started this blog to do something about it.

3. I use blogging to clarify my thinking on various topics. It energizes me to think that some people—even if only a few—will read these essays right away.

Accomplishments

I think that my efforts have been worth it. This entry makes 400 posts since 8/8/13. I estimate that 385 of these posts are essays on theological or related topics. The average word count for those essays is about 1,000 words. That makes the total count 385,000 words, which translates to about 1,000 printed book pages. I have published five books that began as essays on this blog:

The Thoughtful Christian Life (2014)

A Course in Christianity (2016)

Christianity—Is it Really True (2015; 2d ed, 2017)

Four Views on Women in Church Leadership (2017)

Rethinking Church (2021)

During the past 10 years the blog has been viewed approximately 91,000 times. I have no way of knowing exactly how many different people have read something from the blog but 5,000 would be a good guess. Readers made 1,400 different comments in reaction to something they read on the blog.

A Resource

All of these 385 essays are still available to readers, and they are easy to access. You can find what you are looking for by using the search box at the top right of this page. Just type in the box a topic that interests you. Also, if you scroll down the page below the month-by-month archive list, you will come to a huge alphabetically ordered list of “Categories.” You might find a topic there that interests you. I view the blog archives as a sort of theological dictionary.

Recommend Ifaqtheology

I started ifaqtheology to help the church as a community and individual Christians to a deeper understanding of their faith and to equip them to live faithfully in a post-Christian culture. I hope you will use it as a resource and recommend it to others.

The Double Meaning of Good Friday

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Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth for blasphemy against Israel’s God and insurrection against the Roman Empire. Only in light of God’s act of raising Jesus back to life again on Easter morning, can Good Friday be called “good.” It is “good” only in view of the part it played in God’s plan to reconcile the world to himself in Christ (2 Cor 5:18-20) and because it demonstrated the depths of divine love (Romans 5:1-11). The cross of Christ is, as Paul never tires of saying, something in which to glory—an irony indeed because crucifixion was designed to shame the victim to the extreme measure. There is much to ponder in this reversal. However, on this Good Friday I found myself thinking of another divine revelation made known in the events of that day.

On the first Good Friday, God displayed his wrath on the world and pronounced his judgment on all flesh. In the persons of Judas the betrayer, Peter the coward, the Jewish religious leaders, and the Roman Empire, all humanity betrayed, rejected, denied, and murdered the Messiah and the Son of God. Whereas the Jewish leaders and the Roman Empire acted to judge and condemn Jesus, in fact they judged and condemned themselves. In their act of judicial murder, God revealed the corruption and futility of all human efforts, religious and political, to bring about salvation. Democratic politics can do this no better than Imperial politics. The Christian religion will fail just as the Jewish religion failed. Coercion will not work. Nor will persuasion.

Every new generation thinks it can do what no other generation has been able to do: If we evangelize the world, the Kingdom of God will be established! If we put all our energies into social causes, we can create a world of justice, love, and peace. Just one more war, one more revolution, one more election, one more treaty, one more freedom achieved, one more scientific advance…. But the glorious future never arrives. It never will.

Good Friday stands as the definitive refutation of optimism in human capacity for goodness. When the very embodiment of justice, love, and peace—indeed the exact image of God—appeared on earth, the “best” of men condemned him to death. They still do.

A New Christianity? (Part 2) A New God, A New Jesus, and A New Church?

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Today I will continue my review of David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. In the previous essay I examined Gushee’s understanding of the sources of authority for Christian faith and morality. We discovered that he has abandoned the idea that Scripture is the sole source and norm for faith and has added reason and experience as sources of continuing revelation. In this essay I will address the second part of the book, “Theology: Believing and Belonging,” which contains chapters on God, Jesus, and the church.

Part Two: Theology: Believing and Belonging

4. God: In Dialogue with the Story of Israel

In the introduction to this chapter Gushee admits that systematic theology is not his strong suit. (His area of specialization is ethics.) He lists six theological “strands” that played a part in forming his theology, which those familiar with modern theology will recognize: Kingdom of God theology, social gospel theology, Holocaust theology, liberation theologies, Catholic social teaching, and progressive evangelical social ethics.

Gushee’s doctrine of God as reflected in this chapter has been decisively influenced by post-Holocaust Jewish thinkers. One such thinker is Irving Greenberg who recounts a story told by a Holocaust survivor who watched NAZI guards throw Jewish children alive into a fire. Greenberg articulated what has come to be called “the burning-children test:” “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children” (p. 70; emphasis original). Gushee accepts Greenberg’s “burning-children test” and allows it to constrain “all claims about God, Jesus, and the church” in his book (p. 70). The “burning-children test” brings to the foreground in a dramatic way the problem of evil. Gushee broadens the principle to include other instances of evil:

It is not a stretch to speak of other tests: murdered and raped women; tortured and murdered indigenous peoples; enslaved, tortured, murdered, and lynched black people; tortured and murdered LGBTQ people.

What kinds of statements about God will pass the “burning-children test” and the other tortured-and murdered-people tests? According to Gushee, in view of the horrendous evils people perpetrate we can no longer believe that God is in control of the world, that God allows evil for good reasons, that all suffering can be redeemed, or that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28). We can no longer ask people to trust God in all things. The only response we can make to the burning of children and other horrible evils is to “cry out against evil…[and] redress as many human evils as possible” (p. 79; emphasis original). Gushee can accept only a suffering God, a God who “weeps at the evil humans do” (p. 80), a “God who risks trusting us with freedom, and suffers from the choices we make” (p. 80).

Is That It?

As I approached the end of this chapter I kept looking for some sign of hope. The only note of hope I heard sounded not from God but from humanity: that some of us might “cry out against evil…redress as many human evils as possible.” The God of Gushee’s new Christianity has given over the fate of the world into the hands of human beings. He can watch, suffer, and weep but cannot deliver and redeem.

5. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet. Lynched God-Man, Risen Lord

In this chapter, Gushee draws on the work of James D. G. Dunn in his book Jesus According to the New Testament. Dunn discerns in the New Testament eight different perspectives on Jesus: the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, John, Paul, Hebrews, and others. But Dunn also attempts to reconstruct from these perspectives a “Jesus-according-to-Jesus” or what is often called the “historical Jesus” (p. 86). According to Dunn (accepted by Gushee), the historical Jesus emphasized the love of neighbor command as the heart of our moral duties, prioritized the poor, demonstrated openness to non-Jews, included women within his inner circle, welcomed children, instituted the Lord’s Supper, and cherished a sense of his divine calling. Using this list as the standard, Gushee contrasts “Jesus-according-to-Jesus” with Jesus according to “American white evangelicalism.” In Gushee’s view, for white evangelicals Jesus is all about the assurance of personal salvation now and after death and success and happiness in this life. That is to say, Jesus supports the interests of white, middle class suburbanites in their comfortable lifestyle.

As an alternative to the white evangelical Jesus, Gushee presents a “Jesus according to Gushee via Matthew.” Jesus came announcing the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God and demanding that the people of God prepare themselves with repentance. Jesus entered Jerusalem and challenged the powers in charge. They responded not with repentance and belief but with murderous violence. Gushee, then, makes this rather anticlimactic statement about the resurrection:

I believe in the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus, although I do not pretend to understand it. I live in hope that if God raised Jesus from the dead, then, in the end, life triumphs over death, not just for me and mine, but for the world. The rest is mystery (p. 97).

What does Jesus have to say to us today? Drawing on Dunn again, Gushee distinguishes between the “religion of Jesus” and the “religion about Jesus.” The “religion of Jesus” is a social justice program centering on the kingdom of God. The “religion about Jesus” dominates the New Testament, John, Paul, Acts, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation. It focuses on the atonement, resurrection, and the Spirit’s transforming power. Gushee prefers the religion of Jesus to the religion about Jesus:

I find the New Testament’s religion about Jesus to be a creative theological adaptation, useful for a time horizon of indefinite duration, deeply meaningful for the individual journey through life and toward death. But it is rather substantially cut adrift from the ministry of the historical Jesus, distanced from both his own Jewishness and the earliest Palestinian Jewish church…It is a beautiful and compelling message…But I cannot accept the common evangelical claim that this message is “the gospel.” It is one version (p. 100).

Where Do I Start? Where Would I End?

It would take more space than I have to reply fully to this chapter. Allow me, then, to let Paul make my reply:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

Gushee demotes what Paul designates as “of first importance” to the status of being “a creative theological adaptation” and places a twenty-first century scholarly reconstruction of the “religion of Jesus” at the center of his “new Christianity.” I suppose it makes sense that a “new Christianity” requires a new Jesus.

6. Church: Finding Christ’s People

This chapter centers on the problem of wounded and disheartened people leaving evangelical churches in droves and culminates in a section advising post-evangelicals about how to find a church. Gushee articulates a biblical theology of the church that sounds rather traditional. He defines the church as “the community of people who stand in covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ and seek to fulfill his kingdom mission” (p. 104). Though incomplete, this definition is not inaccurate in what it asserts. He also speaks of the church in traditional and biblical language: the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, it is the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, a new creation, people devoted to the kingdom of God, and a covenant people.

However, as is characteristic of progressive Christianity in general, Gushee sometimes uses biblical language in unbiblical ways. That the church possesses a “covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ” does not mean that other people (Jews, Muslims, and others) do not possess a covenant with God through other means (p. 105). The church is “apostolic” but as the previous section on Jesus demonstrated, for Gushee this does not mean that the apostles’ teaching possesses as much authority as the teaching of Jesus. That the church is catholic demands that the church reject “racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.”

Gushee proposes a variety of covenant communities as alternatives to white evangelicalism. He recommends that post-evangelicals “give the mainline a look” (p. 114). The Episcopal Church might be an “especially attractive option” (p. 115) for those looking for “high liturgy together with LGBTQ inclusion” (p. 114). Some post-evangelicals may seek out home groups or plant new churches with an evangelical style worship but with post-evangelical theology. As will become even more obvious when we examine chapter 7 (“Sex: From Sexual Purity to Covenant Realism”), Gushee thinks that LGBTQ inclusion is the decisive issue of our time. For Gushee, full and equal LGBTQ inclusion seems to be an essential mark of the post-evangelical church and of his “new Christianity.” A new morality for a new Christianity.

Next Time: Chapter 7, “Sex: From Sexual Purity to Covenant Realism.”

Varieties of Progressive Christianity: Introduction to the Series

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A few months back (July 15 and 19, 2022), I reviewed Roger Olson’s new book Against Liberal Theology: Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity (Zondervan, 2022). In my assessment of the book I complained that Olson focused almost exclusively on liberal theology and left the category of “Progressive Christianity” vague. On August 12, 2022, I posted an essay asking “Are Progressives the New Evangelicals?” in which I attempted to clarify the category of Progressive Christianity. Next I reviewed Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2021). Although as far as I know Du Mez does not designate herself as a progressive, her stinging critique of Evangelicalism seemed designed, as I said in that review, to please “those who already hate Donald Trump, those burned by evangelical churches, those already leaning leftward in their politics, and theological liberals and progressives.”

Many people within my circle of friends, colleagues, and students are reading books by Christian authors from within the progressive camp. Indeed they hardly read any others. These progressive authors specialize in pointing out the faults of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and traditional denominations. They propose a kinder and gentler, less dogmatic and intolerant, more spiritual form of Christianity. They offer a new way of reading the Bible and of doing church. They claim to point the way to authentic and healthy Christianity. But do they really? In this series I plan to assess this claim.

To further this aim, I’ve begun reading books that champion and books critique this this phenomenon. One does not need to read very extensively to discover that “Progressive Christianity” is a very broad category encompassing people on the extreme left, mainline liberals, and disillusioned and wounded evangelicals. In this series I hope to clarify the main commonalities and distinctions grouped under this term. I will begin with some reviews of books I am reading on the subject.

The first book to be examined is David A. Kaden, Christianity in Blue: How the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Theology Shape Progressive Identity (Fortress Press, 2021). This book represents the far-left end of Progressive Christianity. Look for it soon.

Progressive Christians: Beware of Liberal Theology (Part Two)

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Today’s post is part two of my review of Roger Olson’s new book Against Liberal Theology (Zondervan, 2022).

Chapter Six, “Liberal Theology and Salvation”

Liberal theology rejects the traditional doctrine that salvation comes to human beings through the atonement and resurrection accomplished in Jesus Christ. If Jesus’s death plays a part at all in the process of salvation, it is as a noble example of faithfulness to God. Jesus saves only by the continuing influence of his teaching and example. Salvation in Christ does not involve atonement for sin, supernatural transformation, a new heaven and a new earth, or the resurrection of the dead. For liberal Christianity, salvation is about psychological healing, moral improvement, liberation from oppression, and greater social justice in this life. Salvation is “a new principle of life implanted in the heart” (p. 130, quoting Washington Gladden). According to Gary Dorrien, “The liberal gospel is that the victory of spirit over nature may be won if men will appropriate the light and life which are mediated to them through the impact of the historical Jesus” (p. 128).

Chapter Seven, “The Future in Liberal Theology”

It is not an exaggeration to assert that liberal theology possesses no eschatology. Everything in liberal religion focuses on this life. All liberals agree that the resurrection of the dead, the Second Coming of Christ, the transformation of creation, the final judgment, and heaven and hell are at best symbols of an afterlife and at worse left over imagery from Jewish apocalyptic fantasy. If there is an afterlife at all, which many liberals deny, no one will be excluded. All will be saved. Olson quotes John Shelby Spong who entertains the possibility of an afterlife in which there is “some sense of eternity in which my being, differentiated and empowered by the power of love, is joined with the being of others who are at one with the Ground of all Being” (p. 158). As is the case with so many liberal assertions, what they say is not wholly false from a traditional viewpoint. But the claims they make are ungrounded in the historical events of the gospel and what they leave out is essential to the biblical, orthodox faith.

Chapter Eight, “The Crisis in Liberal Theology”

After the American Civil War, liberal Christianity steadily gained influence in mainline Protestant denominations—Disciples of Christ, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran—reaching its high point in the middle of the twentieth century. Since then it has declined precipitously. According to Olson, liberal theology “is frustratingly vague, shallow, limp, unhelpful in answering life’s ultimate questions. It is dying out except in certain mainline Protestant colleges, universities, and seminaries” (p. 174). Liberal theologian Donald Miller may have put his finger on the reason for the decline: “the Christian message [as preached by liberal churches] may become a mirror reflection of the spirit of the age” (quoted on p. 171). Liberal Christianity remains, however, attractive to some people wounded by their narrow, rigid, and dogmatic, fundamentalist upbringing. On their journey toward liberalism (or pure secularity) they move through a progressive stage but do not find it satisfying. Something drives them onward toward liberalism.

What then is “progressive Christianity,” and why does it serve as little more than a rest stop on the way from fundamentalism to liberalism? According to Olson, many on this journey find it [progressive Christianity] “fuzzy, unclear, mediocre, and on a trajectory toward liberal Christianity” (p. 173). Olson observes that,

“Progressive Christianity is not a tradition or a movement or even a real identity. It is simply a label used by many different individuals who do not want to be thought of as conservative and who are attracted to social-justice issues [LGBTQ+, racial justice, etc.], often to the neglect of evangelism, sound doctrine, and traditional Christian norms of belief and life” (p. 173).

In the book’s concluding paragraph, Olson urges progressive Christians to “beware of liberal Christianity, because it is not real Christianity at all. Look for and find a church, a seminary, whatever, that truly takes the Bible and orthodox doctrine seriously but is not cultic in its ethos, like most fundamentalist churches, seminaries, and other ultraconservative Christian organizations” (p. 174).

Observations

In Against Liberal Theology, Roger Olson argues that liberal Christianity is not authentic Christianity but another religion. I believe he develops and sustains this thesis admirably. But Olson also wanted to make a case for “putting the brakes on progressive Christianity.” I think the book is less successful in achieving this second aim, though not by any means a failure.  On the positive side, by reading about liberal theology in such detail and realizing that it is not true Christianity but a heresy, progressive Christians may become more self-aware of their drift and reassess their thinking in the way Olson recommends. However I think Olson’s case is weakened by the book’s lack of a detailed description of what makes a theological position “progressive.” Not every Christian who holds “progressive” views uses that label as a self-description. In the absence of a profile of the progressive stance how will individuals number themselves among the book’s target audience? Olson points to progressive Christianity’s diversity and lack of inner coherence. Perhaps this diversity provides an excuse for not attempting to describe progressive Christianity in greater detail. Nevertheless there must be a family resemblance or an inner principle that unites these diverse positions under the label “progressive.”*

Moreover, while Olson warns progressives against becoming liberal, he does not criticize progressive Christianity as such. At the end of the book I am left with several unanswered questions: Do progressive Christians need to rethink their progressivism? After all, it is in Olson’s words a “halfway house” to liberalism. Has progressive Christianity become “progressive” precisely because it has unknowingly adopted and internalized some of liberal theology’s original critical principles, specifically its view that affirming human freedom and dignity demands liberation from all forms of oppression, with such liberation defined as the right and power of self-creation and self-definition? Is there an internal logic at work driving progressive Christianity inevitably toward liberal theology? If so, wouldn’t “putting the brakes” on progressive Christianity require exposing and rooting out the progressive/liberal principle that drives it forward?

*Do a quick Google search for “progressive Christianity” and I think you will see that for many self-designated “Progressive Christian” groups you could substitute the word “liberal” for the word “progressive” without distortion. For example, see The eight points of Progressive Christianity listed on the progressivechristianity.org website.