BAD MEN AND OTHER PREDATORS—ABRAHAM’S RATIONALE FOR NEO-PATRIARCHY

10 Replies

 

Speakers:

Gloria (Secular Feminist)

Sarah (Evangelical Egalitarian)

Abraham (Neo-Patriarch)

Moderator (Neutral)

 

Moderator: The last time we gathered, Abraham began explaining his viewpoint, which he calls neo-patriarchy. Through no fault of his own, he was unable to finish his presentation on that occasion. So, I’ve asked him to continue this evening. If you were not present last time, may I suggest that you read his talk (“Abraham Speaks…In Defense of Neo-Patriarchy”), which I have placed on Ron Highfield’s blog, ifaqtheology.

Abraham: Thank you Moderator for allowing me to continue explaining neo-patriarchy to our audience. By way of review, Christian neo-patriarchs believe that each person possesses infinite worth in God’s eyes and that we ought to love each other in a way modeled on God’s love for us. To love others is to seek what is best for them individually, given their natural and historical circumstances. As a matter of natural fact, men are on average much stronger physically and more aggressive in temperament than women. Hence men must make a decision about how to use this advantage. They can protect or exploit women. Christian neo-patriarchs believe they ought to view women as mothers, wives, sisters or daughters and adopt a loving and protective attitude toward all women. Not a condescending attitude, for we know that women are just as intelligent and wise as men and that women possess infinite worth to God.

Moderator: What are your sources of authority that ground and justify your viewpoint?

Abraham: I was just about to turn to that subject. In fact, it’s already been implicit in what I’ve said so far. Like Gloria, I appeal to reason and nature, and like Sarah, I appeal to the Christian Scriptures to support my position. I shall question Gloria’s use of reason and Sarah’s use of Scripture in latter addresses. But I will delay that critique for now and explain my view of these two authorities. When it comes to moral issues, I believe Christian thinkers like Sarah and I should attempt strenuously to harmonize Scripture, reason and experience. Any theory of the ethics of the relationship between men and women in society, church and home, must take into account the natural and historical conditions of men and women. Men and women are not equal in every respect. This is a fact of nature. To deny or ignore it is irresponsible and will harm women in the long run. And, as I argued in my previous presentation, egalitarianism ignores the ethical significance of this fact.

Until the resurrection of the dead, where, as Jesus said, people “will neither marry nor be given in marriage; [but] they will be like the angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25; Matthew 22:30), women will live in a world where there are good, weak and bad men . (There are good, weak and bad women too, but that is another story.) Any ethical theory of male/female relationships that ignores this reality will inevitably be bad for women. There are a few good men. Good men are aware of their greater physical strength, but they refuse to use it to exploit or harm women.

Bad men despise women for being physically weaker and resent them when they excel intellectually. They view women as sex objects to be exploited and weaklings to be bullied. They seduce, intimidate, abuse, rape and murder women. Weak men lack self-control. They cheat on their wives and refuse to take care of their families; they are lazy, whiny and resent successful women. Good men use their strength to protect women from bad and weak men. And because their self-worth is based on God’s judgment, they rejoice in academic and professional and other life successes of their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters.

Christian neo-patriarchs appeal to the Scriptures also. As I argued in the previous session, the Scriptures assert that God created men and women in God’s image and that God loves men and women beyond reckoning. The infinite dignity of women is grounded in God’s love. And the glorious eschatological destiny of men and women transcends mortal bodily life and the conditions necessary to sustain it. Neo-patriarchs believe Galatians 3:26-29 just as strongly as evangelical egalitarians do! Verse 28 asserts, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female.” Being male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile is not what counts toward being acceptable to God. What counts is “faith” (v. 26), being “clothed with Christ” (v. 27) and “belonging to Christ” (v. 29). The one thing all Christians have in common is the one thing that matters in relation to God and it’s the one thing that makes us one! This text grounds neo-patriarchs’ commitment never to treat a sister (or brother) as an inferior.

But Scripture does not draw from this truth the practical conclusion evangelical egalitarians draw, that is, that society, church and home must create one set of rules that applies to men and women equally. Jesus did not appoint six women and six men to be apostles. When the apostles lost Judas, they selected a replacement from a pool of men only (Acts 1:21-26). The seven “deacons” appointed by the apostles to take care of the Jerusalem church were all men (Acts 6:1-6). Paul gave different instructions for how women and men were to behave in public gatherings of the church. In certain settings, women could “pray and prophesy” as long as they wore a head covering as sign of respect for their husbands (1 Corinthians 11:1-16). In other settings, perhaps in view of some abuse of speech, women are told to be completely “silent in the churches” (1 Corinthians 14:34-38).

Paul modifies but still uses the traditional Greco-Roman household code to urge women to submit to the rule of their husbands and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:21-31). Peter also adapts the traditional household code, telling women to remain submissive to their husbands and husbands to respect their wives as “the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life” (1 Peter 3:1-7). In Titus and 1 Timothy, Paul lays down different rules for the behavior of men than those he gives to women. In 1 Timothy 2:11-12, women are forbidden to “teach or assume authority over men.” Finally, the rulers of the church, elders and bishops, must be men (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1).

I am sure Sarah will wish to challenge my use of these texts, and Gloria will view them as manifestations of patriarchal culture to be dismissed summarily. But neo-patriarchs do not believe these texts should be dismissed as benighted or interpreted in a way that makes them irrelevant to our contemporary setting. For sure, allowances must be made for our very different cultures, clothing styles, educational levels, the leveling effect of technology and more, but nature has not changed. The core insight of patriarchal ethics remains true, that is, since women cannot rule men (except by social convention, a subject for a later talk), the guidelines for the behavior of women must differ from those governing men. And in a Christian setting, the motivation for the restrictions on the behavior of women, however imperfectly embodied, is protective love, which seeks the best for each person, given their natural and historical circumstances.

What about the contemporary church? Should the church maintain the New Testament’s restrictions unchanged? Or should the church, as the evangelical egalitarians insist, erase traditional distinctions? Should it open all offices and functions to women? In contrast to all negative stereotypes, neo-patriarchs do not mindlessly wish to preserve specific role differentiations simply because they are traditional and made sense in the past. We believe Scripture’s restrictions were intended for the good of women and men and for welfare of the whole church. They were designed to affirm the goodness of the created differences between male and female, to protect women from bad men, and to keep the ecclesial order aligned with the natural family order. And we believe these truths and goals are just as important and obligatory today as they were in the First Century.

Women are not the natural rulers of men. Men know this, and women know it too. Hence the church must maintain some form of continued role differentiation to make sure that the church’s social order does not contradict the natural, created family order. To be specific, we don’t think women should be appointed to ruling offices, whatever those happen to be in your denomination, for example, preaching minister, priest, executive minister, bishop or elder. The church maintains these distinctions for the sake of true justice and enlightened love, for men and women. For nothing but sorrow and pain can come from fighting against the Creator and the created order. But the exact shape of the ecclesial order must work itself out over time. Some churches will move toward the egalitarian position and others will try to maintain the scriptural restrictions unchanged as if time and circumstances make no difference.

Egalitarians ignore nature and come close to denying the goodness of the Creator for the sake of their abstract principle of equality. Traditionalists mistake faithfulness to the past for faithfulness to God. Secular feminists attempt to replace the Creator with their own will to power. Nature will eventually recoil on those that deny or ignore its laws. And we believe that the church, even if she strays in the short term, will be granted the wisdom to return to a balanced position in the long run. The gentle but constant voices of Scripture, reason and nature will eventually be heard above the den of tortured, whimpering and demanding voices clamoring for  versions of equality, justice and rights uprooted from nature and history, impractical and abstract.

Moderator: Thank you Abraham for this presentation. I am sure our audience found it challenging and a bit surprising. Now that we have all three views before us, we will allow each of our dialogue partners to respond to the others and in turn defend themselves from those critiques. In this way, we hope to clear the ground of all extraneous and superficial differences and get to the most fundamental disagreements, that is, to those places where our most basic values and beliefs tilt us in one direction or another.

Abraham Speaks…In Defense of Neo-Patriarchy

5 Replies

 

Speakers:

Gloria (Secular Feminist)

Sarah (Evangelical Egalitarian)

Abraham (Neo-Patriarch)

Moderator (Neutral)

 

Neo-Patriarchy

Moderator: Gloria and Sarah have stated their positions. Now we will hear from Abraham who will represent neo-patriarchy. Let me remind the audience one more time that we are engaged in a dialogue on the ethics of male/female relationships in society, church and home, focusing on the decisive and most contested issue in the contemporary discussion, that is, male power and privilege. As moderator, I will not take sides but will attempt to enforce civility and encourage clarity. And I will try to keep our speakers from straying from the topic under discussion.

Programing Note: Dr. Ron Highfield, on whose blog we are conducting this dialogue, asked me to warn the audience against taking the views expressed by any of our participants as identical with his own. His interests in sponsoring this debate are clarifying the basic decision points that divide these three perspectives, allowing everyone to hear a coherent and intelligent presentation of a view other than their own, and presenting a model for civil and rational debate on important and emotion-laden issues, such as the one we are discussing.

Abraham, please state your view clearly, explain your grounds for holding it, and detail some of its practical implications for society, church, and home. And may I suggest that you begin by explaining why you call your viewpoint neo-patriarchy. I find it interesting that you would adopt a label that includes the term “patriarchy,” a viewpoint associated in many people’s minds with oppression of women.

Abraham: Thank you Moderator for the opportunity to defend neo-patriarchy, the most enlightened and person-affirming of all views of male/female relationships in society, church, and home. Indeed, I am aware that “patriarchy” is associated in the popular mind with prejudice and oppression of women. Whatever truth there is in this accusation—and its truth is not beyond dispute—I do not subscribe to traditional patriarchal philosophy. I am a neo-patriarch. Neo-patriarchy maintains the core insight of patriarchy but places it within a Christian framework and takes into account the equalizing effects of modern technological advancements.

You asked why I chose the term neo-patriarchy even though it’s sure make a bad first impression and prejudice the audience against my arguments before they hear them. The answer is two-fold. First, I chose it because it accurately describes what I believe. Second, it is a protest against our politically correct, progressive culture in which anyone who dares defend a traditional moral view is met with indignation and outrage. In calling my view neo-patriarchy, I embrace my marginality and refuse to be intimidated by insults and threats. I express my confidence in its truth, certainty of its rationality, and clarity about its moral superiority to the alternatives.

Christian neo-patriarchy asserts that God created every human being in his image. Each and every person is loved by God beyond all measure, which means that each person’s worth to God is incalculable. Men are not loved by God more than women. Nor are they worth more to God than women. But we do not conclude from this truth that men and women should be treated equally in every respect. Feminists and egalitarians sometimes fail to notice that equality is a comparative concept. You can love your neighbors equally even if you do not love them at all! Equality is a morally neutral term. It belongs in mathematics and not in moral philosophy. It provides little comfort to affirm that God loves everyone equally unless you also specify how much! Neo-patriarchs argue instead that God loves each person, male or female, infinitely. Hence we place ourselves under obligation to treat women (and men) according to their infinite dignity. We hold ourselves to higher standards than the ones proposed by secular feminism and egalitarianism.

Moderator: I’m confused. You don’t sound at all like a patriarch. Patriarchs don’t treat women as having infinite dignity, do they? Help us out here.

Abraham: You are confused because, despite my disclaimer, because you still expect me speak like a traditional patriarch. Apparently, you don’t yet understand significance of the “neo” in neo-patriarchy. Perhaps, I can best explain it by examining traditional patriarchy and then differentiating neo-patriarchy from it. Traditional patriarchy is a product of reason, common sense, and accumulated experience…with a big dose of sin thrown in. Let’s consider patriarchy in its most enlightened form rather than looking for its crudest examples.

In his book Politics, Aristotle examines the most basic unit of society, the family. For Aristotle, the family unit includes slaves, wives, husbands, and children. The ruling order of the family is determined by nature. The natural slave has a strong body but lacks the intelligence and wisdom to rule himself or others. Wives possess the wisdom and intelligence required for ruling but do not possess the strength to rule men, who possess both. The husband possesses both natural strength and wisdom and so is the natural ruler of the household, and by extension the city. A wise woman will accept this order and remain soft-spoken in relation to her husband and other men, since it is unwise to rebel against the unchangeable order of nature or provoke fights one cannot win.

Note: In Aristotle’s day, the household was a semi-autonomous sphere headed by the father. The state intruded in its internal affairs only in extreme circumstances. The father could use violence within prescribed limits to enforce obedience on wives, children, and slaves.

In many ways Aristotle simply states the obvious. Because of their vastly superior intelligence, human beings rule the animal world. Ruling requires both superior physical strength and intelligence. Neither alone is sufficient. This is the core truth of patriarchy that neo-patriarchs accept because it is an indisputable fact. But Aristotle draws a conclusion from these differences that Christian neo-patriarchs reject. He attributes more natural dignity to men than to women, and he does so because he measures dignity in terms of fitness to rule. Slaves have less, women have more, but men have the most dignity. We reject this formula. As I argued above, the Christian gospel asserts that women and men possess infinite dignity, and men are obligated to treat women in accord with this dignity. And this rule makes all the difference. Men have no right to pursue their needs, desires or any other private concern at the expense of their wives or other women. Selfishness, male or female, is always wrong. Always!

But how does Christian neo-patriarchy incorporate the differences between men and women into its theory? Neo-patriarchs insist that we are obligated to love each other and treat each other justly.  The concept of justice states that “each receives what he or she is due.” But how do we determine what each is due? Egalitarians appeal to the concept of equality to quantify justice. They insist that a just system treats men and women the same. Neo-patriarchs appeal instead to the concept of love, that is, each seeks what is truly good for others. We argue that seeking “what is truly good for others” is morally superior to seeking equality of goods and privileges among them. Things can be equally bad for everyone!

Moreover, treating men and women equally in every respect would disadvantage women by validating and institutionalizing the natural advantages men have over women in areas of physical strength and aggressiveness. Women would have to win the goods they enjoy in competition with men on an equal playing field. We do not believe this order would be just, because we define justice in terms of love and not equality. Instead of encouraging men or women to seek “what is truly good for others,” such a rule (equal opportunity, same rules), would reward them for pursuing their private interests at the expense of others. Exercising authentic love and justice toward everyone entails uniformly seeking the best for each individual, given their natural and historical circumstances. In so far as women differ from men, what is best for men may not be best for women. So, neo-patriarchs believe in equality after all!

I can see my time is running out. Allow me to speak briefly as a Christian neo-patriarch about how we believe men should treat women. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive than women, and they are keenly aware of it. Women are aware of this too, or they should be. Technological advances have lessened but cannot remove the advantage this difference gives men in the contest for power and privilege. Men must decide what to do with this advantage, and there are only two honest options. (The dishonest option is pretending that it does not exist.) A man can use this power to exploit or protect women. We believe the ideology of egalitarianism facilitates exploitation and harms women in the name of helping them. It forces women to compete with men in areas where nature has placed them at a disadvantage. As Christian neo-patriarchs, we believe that the male form of true love toward women counts every woman as a wife, mother, sister, or daughter. And because we believe our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters are of infinite worth to God, we are determined to use our strength to protect, love, and honor rather than exploit and despise them. We draw our ideals from the original neo-patriarch, the apostle Paul:

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1 Cor 13:4-7).

Moderator: Abraham, I am sorry to interrupt, but we are out of time. I suppose you realize that you have not yet addressed all three areas I asked you to cover. Perhaps it’s my fault for asking you to explain why you chose the term patriarchy and for not interrupting you earlier to keep you on pace. But since our dialogue cannot proceed with responses and rebuttals until we have before us the full picture of all three views, I will give you an opportunity at our next meeting to finish your opening statement. You’ve certainly given our audience something to think about in the meantime!

Abraham: Thank you Moderator. I shall try to be more concise next time.

Programming Note: The second half of Abraham’s presentation of neo-patriarchy is scheduled to be posted on this blog at 6:00 am EST on Monday, November 19.

 

 

 

 

Sarah Speaks

3 Replies

 

Speakers:

Gloria (Secular Feminist)

Sarah (Evangelical Egalitarian)

Abraham (Neo-Patriarch)

Moderator (Neutral)

 

Evangelical Egalitarianism

Moderator: Now that Gloria, our representative of secular feminism, has presented her viewpoint, Sarah will present her understanding of evangelical egalitarianism. Let me remind the audience that we are engaged in a dialogue on the ethics of male/female relationships in society, church, and home, focusing on the decisive and most contested issue in the contemporary discussion, that is, male power and privilege. As moderator, I will not take sides but will attempt to enforce civility and encourage clarity. And I will try to keep our speakers from straying from the topic under discussion. Sarah, please state your view clearly, explain your grounds for holding it, and detail some of its practical implications for society, church, and home.

Sarah: Thank you Moderator for arranging this discussion and thank you Gloria for a clear and robust presentation of secular feminism. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put so well. You lay out the most fundamental decision points where your view and mine diverge and overlap. I am sure Abraham agrees with me on this. As I develop my viewpoint, the audience will see that I share many concerns and principles with Gloria. And in many ways our arguments come to the same practical conclusions. But we diverge in some places, and those differences are anticipated by the differing names of our philosophies.

Moderator: Pardon me for interrupting, but it may help our audience if you explain what you mean by “evangelical egalitarianism.” I notice that you do not call yourself an “evangelical feminist.” Why not?

Sarah: Sure. I’d be happy to do that. Who are evangelical egalitarians and what do they assert? I am a woman and an evangelical egalitarian, but you don’t have to be a woman to be an evangelical egalitarian. The word evangelical derives from the Greek word for good news or gospel. In the English-speaking world, especially in the United States, it has come to mean a transdenominational theological model with its own style, core beliefs, and practical program. We believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, crucified for our sins and raised bodily from the dead. We accept the Old and New Testament Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, the authority for faith and practice for the Christian church. But I am also an egalitarian, which many evangelicals are not. Egalitarianism refers to a set of arguments for the equal status (that is, equal in power and privilege) of men and women in society, church, and family. Evangelical egalitarian arguments differ from those of secular feminism in that they are largely biblical and theological, but they arrive at surprisingly similar conclusions.

As to the question of why I do not call myself an “evangelical feminist,” let me say this. Feminists are a very diverse group. Feminism includes egalitarians but also more radical views, some of which argue that women must minimize their association with men if they wish to realize their full potential as women. Egalitarians affirm the equal dignity of men and women and do not reject marriage and family. So, egalitarians are feminists of a certain type. But using that term in our self-description would lead to confusion. Evangelical egalitarianism focuses on the specific project of equalizing the power and privilege of women with that of men in the church and the family.

Moderator: Thank you for that clarification! You’ve got my attention. Tell us now what evangelical egalitarians assert.

Sarah: I don’t think I could improve on Gloria’s first principle, so, with her permission, I shall quote it as expressing my own thoughts.

Gloria: Of course. I am pleased and a bit surprised that you agree with it. In future discussions I shall want to probe just how far you really agree with it.

Sarah: I look forward to that! Gloria and I agree that: “It is wrong everywhere, always, and for everyone to forbid a woman to do something she wants to do simply because she is a woman.” Evangelical egalitarians don’t believe that being born a woman is a good reason for society or the church to make rules against engaging in any activity, holding any office, or performing any function. There are, of course, many things that ought to be forbidden—immoral things, such as murder, lying, and stealing. And the nature of our mental and physical capacities determines what we are able to do. If you cannot carry a tune, you’ll never be an opera star. If you have no capacity for math or logic or creative writing, Harvard won’t honor you with a professorship in these areas, whether you are male or female.

Evangelical egalitarians—and presumably secular feminists also—do not object to the kind of sorting that works itself out because of the diversity of capacities among human beings. But it is a completely different thing for an authority such as the state or the church to forbid a woman to do something she has the skill to do simply for the crime of being born a woman. Being female is not in itself a disability or capacity.  So, we condemn such discriminatory prohibitions and call for all rules to apply equally to men and women.

Now I will address the second area, the grounds that justify evangelical egalitarianism. We do not limit our sources of authority to reason and women’s experience as secular feminism does, though we do not reject these sources. They have much to teach. However, we gain access to truth from the Scriptures that is not available from reason and experience. The Scriptures tell us that women and men were created by God in God’s image and that God loves each one of us and wants us to live with him forever. And God demonstrated this love and revealed this purpose by sending Jesus Christ to redeem us from sin and death. Evangelical egalitarians ground the dignity of women and men in the eternal being and will of God, a much more objective, universal, and authoritative ground than reason and experience can provide. Jesus affirmed the dignity of women by accepting women as disciples and treating them with a respect scandalous to his patriarchal culture. And Paul’s words in Galatians 3:26-29 provide evangelical egalitarianism its theme text and interpretative principle by which it measures all other biblical statements about men and women:

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Time does not permit me to document every assertion I am making in this brief statement. Nor can I respond here to every objection I anticipate will be leveled at my viewpoint by Gloria or Abraham. But evangelical egalitarians contend that the principle Paul lays down in Galatians 3:28 declares that the social distinctions that determine the way power and privilege are distributed in the world are invalid for the church. And we believe it obligates the church to renounce its traditional practice of withholding certain offices and functions from women simply because they are women.

Moderator: Sarah, our time is almost up. Before you conclude please share with us a brief overview of the practical implications of evangelical egalitarianism.

Sarah: I think I can do that in short order. Though evangelical egalitarians desire equality for women in all areas of life, as a theological program it focuses on reforming the discriminatory practices of evangelical churches. It contends that decisions about who occupies church offices and performs church functions should be made on the basis of “giftedness” instead of the gender of the gifted person. The Spirit endows women as well as men with wisdom, knowledge, faith, speaking ability, and administrative skill. We call on the church to stop resisting the Spirit’s decisions and depriving itself of the gifts God wants to give the body of Christ through its female members. If a woman has the gift of preaching, let her preach. If she can teach, let her teach. If administration is her gift, call her to that work. Let the Spirit decide who should bless the church and how.

Moderator: Thank you Sarah for that concise presentation. I learned much, and I am sure our audience did as well. Next time, we will hear from Abraham, who represents the neo-patriarchal viewpoint. I am looking forward to that.

A Dialogue Between a Secular Feminist, an Evangelical Egalitarian, and a Neo-Patriarch

11 Replies

Speakers:

Gloria (Secular Feminist)

Sarah (Evangelical Egalitarian)

Abraham (Neo-Patriarch)

Moderator (Neutral)

Opening Statements

Moderator: I am very grateful that you three have agreed to engage in a dialogue on a topic of intense interest and immense significance for my audience, that is, the ethics of male/female relationships in society, church, and home. Of course, we will not attempt to address every dimension of that issue but will focus on power and privilege, which are at the center of the contemporary controversy. As moderator, I will not take sides but I will attempt to enforce civility and encourage clarity. And I will try to keep you from straying from the topic under discussion. The dialogue will begin with opening statements from each of you. Please state your view clearly, explain your grounds for holding it, and detail some of its practical implications for society, church, and home. The order will be Gloria, Sarah, and Abraham.

Secular Feminism

Gloria: Thank you, Moderator, for the opportunity to explain and defend secular feminism to this audience. And since you seek clarity in this dialogue, I shall begin with a statement as clear as crystal: It is wrong everywhere, always, and for everyone to forbid a woman to do something she wants to do simply because she is a woman. Some things are logically impossible for everyone. Some things are physically impossible for everyone. And some things are physically possible for some people but for not others. But anything that is possible should be permissible. Secular feminists recognize as legitimate no law of nature, no social custom, no political legislation, and no divine law that forbids a woman to do what is possible for her. And we condemn every political, social, ecclesiastical, and familial institution that keeps a woman from actualizing her potential the way she wishes.

Having stated clearly what secular feminists assert, I shall explain the grounds or justification for our assertions. Those grounds fall into two categories. The first concerns a view of the self that is presupposed by all modern progressive movements, including secular feminism. The second concerns women’s experience of their own selves as women. The modern view of the self began to surface in the Renaissance, continued in the 17th century Enlightenment and in the 19th century Romantic Movement, and came to maturity in the late 20th century. When you disengage the human self from all external frameworks that impose on the self a preexisting, unchosen, and alien identity—state, society, family, church, and nature—you discover the essential self. This self exists apart from these frameworks and possesses power to create its own identity, that is, to become what it wishes to be. Its essence or one essential property is freedom, the creative power of will. The dignity of the self does not derive from any value system outside the self, from nature or God or society. Its dignity is self-grounded. That is to say, I am related to myself and I am worth something to myself. I value myself more than I value the whole world. Given the power of the self to create its own identity and establish its own dignity, it makes sense for the self to assert its right to determine itself and liberate itself from all external frameworks and forces. In fact, this assertion is the self’s essence and its proper act. And it demands that others respect its self-respect. This then is first justification for secular feminists’ assertion of their right to self-determination against all external frameworks and powers.

The second justification is specific to women. Women are self-creating selves like all human beings but in their own particular way. We secular feminists call it “women’s experience.” Women experience their female bodies from within, and they experience the external world of nature, society, church, men, and family as women. And that experience includes misrepresentation, oppression, exclusion, domination, abuse, and rape. Women’s experience includes the feeling of powerlessness, forced silence, and dismissiveness on the part of men. Women experience being valued only for the satisfaction of male lust, as wombs used for reproduction, as housekeepers, cooks, caretakers for children, and babysitters for immature men. We secular feminists consider women’s experience an authority by which to critique the oppressive structures of the patriarchal past and those that still remain.  More accurately, the modern view of the self, which I described above, is the authority by which oppressive structures are judged to be wrong and women’s experience is the way even subtle oppressive structures are revealed as oppressive for women. (In philosophical language, the first is ontological, having to do with the mode of being, and the second is epistemic, having to do with the way of knowing.) Because of their experience of oppression, women can see things that men cannot see.These two sources together provide a foundation and justification for secular feminism.

The third thing the Moderator asked me to do was to detail some practical implications of secular feminism. I will be as clear in this section as I was in the first. Secular feminists demand that every tradition, ideology, theology, or philosophy that justifies male privilege be rejected as false, anti-human, and evil. We also demand that every framework, order, institution, and structure that blocks or inhibits the realization of women’s potential be reformed or abolished. These institutions include all public and so-called private institutions: government, churches, military, clubs, families, societies, and schools. And since these institutions are heirs of a long history of oppression, they cannot be left to reform themselves. There must be an aggressive public policy of affirmative action to move rapidly toward equality. As for churches, they are the worst offenders, not only because of their oppressive practices but, more egregiously, because of their patriarchal ideology dictated by Bible, that ancient patriarchal and misogynous text that ought to have been relegated to the dustbin of failed mythologies long ago but is still revered by uneducated men and the women deceived by them. While I am on that subject…

Moderator: Perhaps this would be a good place to stop, since you seem to have completed your case and are now skating close to the edge of incivility. I think you have given our audience a clear idea of the nature of secular feminism. Your statement was clear, bold, and honest. It will give us something to think about and discuss in the next phase of the dialogue.

Next, we will hear from Sarah our representative of Evangelical Egalitarianism.

Paul—Persecutor, Apostle, Martyr

3 Replies

The following are the words I shared this morning with the University Church of Christ, where I attend. They fit quite well, I think, within this year’s theme of “love not the world.”

Aristotle’s description of the Great-Souled man

In his works on ethics, Aristotle describes various human qualities, virtues, and personality types. The one I find most interesting is what he calls the “Great-Souled” character. In modern translations, the Greek word for “great-soul” (megalopsychos) is often translated “magnanimity,” which derives from a Latin term that also means great-soul. But in modern English the word magnanimity means (excessive and unexpected) generosity.  And that is not what Aristotle means.

Aristotle says the Great-Souled (G-S from now on) man “seems to be the one who thinks himself worthy of great things and really is worthy” (EN 4.3). He is capable of great deeds and knows he is capable. He deserves great honor and knows it. He possesses great energy and ambition. He is willing to suffer greatly for a great cause. In Aristotle’s words, the G-S man “is unsparing of his life, since he does not think that life at all costs is worth living.”

But his great failing is measuring his greatness by what his country or city or community values most. Aristotle says that honor is the greatest of all external goods (EN 4.3). So, above all things, the G-S man seeks the honor and glory he thinks he deserves. And since he knows he is worthy of great honor, he is prone to be intolerant of insult and to explode in great anger when deprived of the honor he knows deserves. (For more on this subject, see Jacob Howland, “Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man,” Review of Politics, 64.1 (Winter 2002): 27-56.)

Paul as the Great-Souled Man

My assignment today is to survey the career, character, and message of Paul the Apostle. By any measure Paul was a great man. But I think we can gain greater insight into Paul by viewing him through the lens of the G-S character type. That’s what we will do this morning.

Upbringing

From Acts, we learn that Paul was a citizen of Tarsus. Tarsus was the capitol city of a region called Cilicia in Asia Minor (Modern Turkey) and a regional center of learning. It was home to several famous Stoic philosophers contemporary with Paul. We are pretty sure that Paul came from a moderately wealthy family, because only people of some wealth could become citizens of Tarsus. In Acts 22, we learn that, though he was born in Tarsus, he was brought up in Jerusalem and studied under Gamaliel, the most famous Rabbi and teacher at that time.

Paul describes himself in Philippians as a “Hebrew of Hebrews” (3:5), that is, ultraorthodox and extreme. And in Galatians, chapter one, he describes himself this way (1:13-14):

13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

Paul was a highly talented man and very ambitious to do great things and receive great honor. But he sought to do great things as measured by what the sect of Pharisees considered great. And his ambition for greatness among the Pharisees led him to become a persecutor of Christians.

The Persecutor

Paul viewed the rise of Christianity as a great threat to Judaism and to his community. For Paul, Jesus was a deceiver and his disciples were heretics! After all, Jesus was tried in the Jewish Court, convicted of blasphemy, and crucified by the Romans as a rebel. He could not be the messiah as the Christians claimed! Paul was outraged at this insult to God, the law, the temple, and Judaism—and to himself!

Paul is first mentioned in Acts as participating in Stephen’s murder and then as the designated inquisitor to arrest disciples in Damascus and bring them to Jerusalem to stand trial. Acts 9 describes him as “breathing out threatenings and slaughter.” He was the Great-Souled man at his worst.

Conversion

But Saul, the Great-Souled man, met Jesus on the road to Damascus. What an unlikely convert! And what a transformation! The chief inquisitor becomes the apostle to the world for all time! What he took as blasphemy, he learned was God’s deep truth. What before looked like weakness now appears as divine power! Human folly has become divine wisdom. Shame becomes glory and insult honor. Everything in Paul’s world has been turned upside down.

His former great cause, his great ambitions, and his great accomplishments, he now considers “as garbage” (Phil 3:8) compared to knowing Christ. His legal scrupulousness, his sincerity, and his zeal for God’s honor, he now calls “the flesh,” mere human pride in oneself (Phil 3:3).

But Paul has not ceased to be the G-S man. All his enormous energy and ambition was brought into the service of Christ. He is still capable of great things and knows it. And he knows how to brag about it, as you can see in 1 Cor. 15:9-10:

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

And in 2 Cor 11-12, he gives two chapters to “bragging” about his work:

Whatever anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying.

As you can see, Paul is still willing to suffer greatly for a great cause! And like Aristotle’s G-S man, “He is unsparing of his life, since he does not think life at all costs is worth living.” But Paul now measures greatness and glory and honor by another standard. It’s not the well-being of the city or the nation or of any other community or interest group or academic guild or profession or business or institution. Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the standard for human greatness, wisdom, and honor. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). He is what God would look like if God became a human being. And the Christian Great-Souled person wants to be as much like God as possible, which means to become as much like Jesus as possible. Listen to Paul’s words from Philippians 3:10-11:

 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Paul’s Gospel, Teaching and Theology

Paul’s message, teaching, and theology are shaped by his character and his experience on the Damascus road. He learned to his total surprise that he did not know himself or God; indeed, he learned that instead of loving God he hated him and that instead of being perfectly righteous he was the worst of sinners! And yet God chose him, called him, forgave him, and bestowed abundant grace and mercy on him. This experience humbled Paul and made him infinitely grateful. Hence…

Paul’s message was cross-centered and Spirit-empowered. It urges us to respond to God by trusting in the unbounded mercy and grace of God shown in Jesus Christ.

The Cross.

It should not be surprising that Paul’s gospel centered on the cross. Listen to 1 Cor 2:1-5:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Before Paul’s conversion, the cross was the thing he hated most about Jesus and his followers. But meeting Jesus in the heavenly vision revolutionized his understanding of the cross. Now he sees it as a window into the heart of God. The law gives some insight into God’s justice, but the cross reveals a deeper justice, the secret of divine love. And it shows the way we must live in order to become like God.

Grace/mercy

Grace is the favor that moves God to extend mercy to us. Paul never ceases to be amazed that God loves him, that God looks on him with favor and extends his mercy to him. Paul knows from experience what happens when you measure yourself by a human standard and think that God also uses that standard! It leads to self-righteousness, blasphemy, and persecution. For all his legal righteousness and zeal for God’s law, Paul discovered he still needed infinite mercy! And Paul’s gospel shouts that we have no claim on God. If God favors us and accepts us, it is because of his sheer grace and mercy! Never ever think there is another reason! Paul makes this clear in Romans 3:21-24:

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in[h] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Speaking of Faith and Trust…

Paul didn’t request a meeting with Jesus on the Damascus Road, and he knows that he didn’t deserve the mercy and forgiveness given him. But he believed the heavenly voice and trusted in God’s mercy. The gospel Paul preached is about the surprising thing God has done for us; it’s about his favor and mercy and forgiveness enacted in Jesus. The gospel urges us to believe and trust in God’s grace.

Faith is our acknowledgment that God’s is way ahead of us and that we want to catch up. It is our confidence in God’s love and mercy. Faith is our first positive response to God’s offer of salvation; it’s not the cause but the effect of God’s grace. Every other response to Jesus flows from faith and trust.

Faith is not some great, noble, and difficult act that sets us above others. No, not at all! Faith is the humblest, poorest, most empty-handed act we can do. It puts no confidence in our power or wisdom or goodness. It renounces all such claims and acknowledges that God alone is holy, that Jesus alone is Savior and Lord. It looks down on no one. It compares itself to no one. For it keeps its eyes fixed on Jesus.

The Unity of Jew and Gentile

Isn’t this amazing: Jesus called Paul the Pharisee, the ultraorthodox enforcer, to be the apostle to the “unclean” gentiles! And Paul took that mission with great seriousness. He resisted every attempt to force gentile Christians to keep the Law of Moses. In Christ, everyone, Jew and gentile alike, relates to God by faith and trust in God’s grace bestowed in Jesus, not by keeping the law. Paul sees the church as the fulfillment of the OT prophecies about the nations of the world coming to faith in Israel’s God and flowing into Jerusalem.

And the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ is one of his major concerns throughout the letters to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. You can see this issue surface especially in Romans, chapters 1-3 and 9-11. No one, gentile or Jew, can make themselves acceptable to God by keeping the law! So, Jews should not look down on gentiles because they don’t keep kosher or observe Sabbaths and other holy days! And gentiles must not look down on Jewish believers because they observe the law or because most Jews did not accept Jesus as the messiah. We are one body in Jesus Christ, as Paul says so eloquently in Galatians 3:26-29:

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

What makes us acceptable to God? What makes us children of God and heirs of the promise given to Abraham? On what basis should we accept each other? Everyone, Paul says, who in faith has been baptized into Christ is our brother or sister. They are God’s children, acceptable to God, heirs of the promise. We are united to each other in Christ, Paul says, so get used to it!

We must accept those whom God accepts, on the same basis God accepts them. It matters not your tribe, your nation, or your social status. It makes no difference whether your skin in pink, white, black, brown, yellow, or purple. It doesn’t matter where your ancestors lived, in the North or South or East or West. Young or old, educated or ignorant, rich or poor, from the city or from the country…It makes no difference. Languages don’t matter! In the church, every day is Pentecost! In the church, only one thing matters: how you stand with Jesus Christ. Do you rely on him completely as Savior? Do you give yourself to him utterly as your Lord?

The Spirit and the Law

To some people Paul’s talk of divine love, grace, and mercy, his insistence of faith as the proper response to grace, and his seeming criticism of the Law of Moses implies that we don’t need to make any effort to be good or to do good in the world. Apparently, Paul heard this kind of objection often. For in Romans, chapters 6-8, he responds to it at length. In 6:1-4, he says:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Where do we get the power for this new life? Paul’s answer is very clear: from God’s Spirit, which lives and works in all who are united to Christ! Listen to Romans 8:1-4:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c]And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

In faith, receive and trust in the power of the divine Spirit to change us, to transform us into new people. Through the Spirit’s power we become people who really do love God and our neighbors, who reject the way of the world, and allow the Spirit to place the life of Jesus into our spirits. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. The Law can’t do it for you. But the Spirit can.

Four Lessons

What can we learn from Paul, the Great-Souled man?

First, we need a Damascus Road experience. We need to encounter Jesus crucified and risen from the dead. We need to learn to see ourselves differently…not as those who “seem to be worthy of great things and really are worthy.” We need to stop measuring greatness by human standards and seeking honor from human beings. Ask yourself how much your search for acceptance, recognition, attention, honor, and glory from other people drives your life? What about us academics? Do we seek honor from our peers or from God? What about students? What about you professionals? What a difference it would make if we sought honor and glory and acceptance from God alone, and in relation to human beings sought only to do them good.

Second, we need to adopt God’s great cause, which is bringing the whole world into conformity with the pattern of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the place to start is with yourself. That is what Paul did.

Third, we need to understand that in union with Christ and through the power of the Spirit we are capable of great things and we will be made worthy of great honor. We do not have to be slaves to anger, greed, lust, pride, and a host of bad habits. You can be transformed into a patient, loving, disciplined, generous, and wise person. We can be a light in the darkness. There is no greater accomplishment than becoming like God as God is seen in Jesus. And there is no greater power for good in this world than living such a life. No one acting as a warrior or persecutor or politician or academic can do such great things or deserved so great an honor.

Fourth, don’t delay. Resolve today to place your biography, character, and experience—no matter what it is!—in God’s hands. Do what Paul did. In faith, accept God’s grace and make that clear to everyone by submitting to baptism into Christ. God used Paul to do great things and he can use you! God alone decides what things are truly great and deserve honor. And you don’t have to be extraordinary in the eyes of others to do them.

I will conclude with the words of Jesus in Matthew 20:25-28:

25 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

SEX, LOVE, AND THE WAY OF THE WORLD

8 Replies

In the post made on October 16, 2016, I defined “the world” as “sin in its organizing mode.” The world is the way our lives individually, socially, and in culture become organized when sin is given space to work out its chaotic logic.  First John 2:15-17 lists “the lust of the flesh” as one of the three organizing principles of “the world.” Today I want to ask how the lust of the flesh orders, that is, disorders, the world. The lust of the flesh refers to any desire to experience pleasure by means of one of the five senses, though usually we narrow it to taste and touch. Specifically, we will deal with the lust for sexual intercourse, which is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term “lust.”

Every human society from the most primitive to the most civilized legislates rules for who may have sex with whom and under what conditions. Such acts as incest, child molestation, adultery, and rape may be defined differently than modern western societies define them, but properly defined they are forbidden in all societies. Warrior societies may permit engaging in forced sex with slaves or conquered enemies. In some tribal societies, giving your wife for sex with a male visitor of the same status is understood not as facilitating adultery but as an act of hospitality. Prostitution is permitted or overlooked in many societies, ancient and modern. And in many cultures the rules for men are much looser that those governing daughters and wives.

As we can see, even “the world” regulates sex. Why? Because sex is a powerful and irrational force! And unregulated by reason it can destroy individuals, families, and societies. It often provokes jealously, inflicts emotional wounds, evokes anger, and sometimes ends in violence. But the world is not stupid and suicidal. It insists on some order. It will not allow individuals to pursue their lusts without restraint.

Why then does John criticize the world for ordering itself according to “the lust of the flesh”? Clearly, John is not implying that “the lust of the flesh” is the only ordering principle the world uses. He lists two others, “the lust of the eye and the pride of life.” And we should not take John’s list of three ordering principles as exclusive of others. Everyone wants to live, be safe, and have friends. Nor is John saying that there is no light and nothing good in the world. The flickering light of reason keeps the world from falling into complete moral chaos. But as John looks at the world from the perspective of the bright light of Jesus Christ, he can see that the world orders itself to accommodate “the lust of the flesh” as much as it can without destroying the social fabric.

In other words, the dominant restraining principle that sets limits on the two lusts and pride is social survival, that is, the traditional and legal order that enables a society to function economically, culturally, and militarily. What makes a social order “the world” in John’s sense is that its principles of order have validity only for this life. Everything is organized to provide maximum pleasure, comfort, and safety in this world. A society can exist and thrive economically, culturally, and militarily, even if it allows individuals to engage in prostitution, promiscuous sex, homosexuality, adultery, pornography or any other avenue of sexual pleasure, as long as these activities do not lead to violence or in other obvious ways threaten the integrity of society. This is the bottom line of the world. And it is this order that John rejects.

But John—and the New Testament as a whole—insists that Christians must order their lives by a higher principle. The Christian rules for who can have sex with whom and under what conditions are not designed simply to enable the social and political order to function culturally, economically, and militarily in ways that provide maximum pleasure, comfort, and safety in this world. That higher principle is love of neighbor enlightened by God’s self-giving love as shown in Jesus Christ. When we see how much God loved our neighbors and us, we will love God in return. And we will love our neighbors in the same way God loved us. Who is our neighbor? Every human being we meet! Love gives only what is good for the beloved, and we learn what is good for our neighbors from God.

Sex is powerful, and, if it is not ordered and disciplined by a higher principle, it is destructive, very destructive. Christianity insists that the drive for sex be subordinated to the principle of love of neighbor, as defined by the quality of God’s love.  In this light, you can see why Christianity limits sexual union to marriage. Marriage in the Christian sense is a life-long bond, made before God and human witnesses. It surrounds sexual union with promises of exclusive love and loyalty. It welcomes children and provides stability for them. Marriage is not merely contract agreeing to keep each other satisfied sexually. It is a multidimensional partnership for all of life. The marriage promises to protect husband and wife from the pains of jealously and insecurity. Sex becomes more than a means of pleasure or pride or power. In marriage, the power of sex is turned to a constructive use. It becomes a means of reinforcing and deepening the bond of love and of giving us the emotional certainty that we are loved and will never willingly be abandoned. It protects each person from superficial physical attractions to other people.

Perhaps a society that allows prostitution, promiscuous sex, adultery, pornography or other avenues of sexual pleasure can continue to perform its basic functions. Perhaps it can function even if it aborts (kills) millions of unborn children every year. Perhaps it can deal with diseases spread by promiscuous sex. I don’t deny it. But such societies and the individuals within them follow the way of “the world.” “The love of the Father is not in them.” No one who has sex with a prostitute seeks her highest good. You don’t have sex with a prostitute because she needs the money or love. You cannot be seeking to love people as God has loved you if you “hook up” with them for mutual exploitation. Nor do you love yourself as God’s has loved you when you do such things. You have to disengage sex from love to engage in promiscuous relationships. Instead of expressing deep and lasting love, sex becomes an occasion for hurt, jealously, cruelty, emptiness, and insecurity. Society may survive, but many individuals will not.

Christianity is much stricter than the world in its rules for sex. And it is often ridiculed as being sexually repressed or obsessed or both at the same time. The next time you hear this tired refrain, you will know how to respond. Christianity has a “stricter” view of sex because has a higher view of sex, and of human beings and their dignity. The world expects less because it thinks less of us. We are valued only as means to the survival of the society. Beyond that, we can live as self-destructively as we please and pursue our irrational lusts as we wish. The world doesn’t care. But Jesus teaches us that we should not use each other as mere occasions for pleasure or pride or power. We are to love others in the way God loved us. You should not toy with the most tender and vulnerable sphere of  another person’s heart with the powerful and dangerous force of sex unless you love them truly and they love you truly and you have made this known in formal, binding promises.

Politics, Sports, Entertainment, and Other False Religions

2 Replies

In this fourth installment of our series on “Love not the World” (1 John 2:15-17), I want to ask what John means by “loving the world” as opposed to loving the Father. In an earlier post, we saw that the “world” is the order of things prioritized to satisfy our self-centered desire for physical pleasure, possessions, and honor. John urges, “Don’t love this order, this kosmos.” “Don’t order your loves in this way.” As we see clearly, the organizing principle of “the world” is unenlightened love of the self, shaped and moved by our immediately felt physical desires and our psychological need for social acceptance—all informed and directed by the dominant culture in which we live.

In worldly society everyone desires, sells, promotes, seeks, and admires, physical pleasure, possessions, and honor above all other things. This way of thinking dominated the society and culture of John’s day. And it dominates ours also. Indeed, the “world,” as an order determined by the three perverted loves, manifests itself in every actual social and political order, in every human institution.

Politics, my friends, concerns the order of this world, and it arranges things to promote the realization of some vision of the good life within this world. And given the values of most people, politics invariably concerns competing visions of how to secure money, safety, possessions, pleasure, and honor. Do not love politics. Don’t become angry, anxious, or obsessed with it. Do not love the world in any of its manifestations. Do not love your sports team or famous people. Love the Father.

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).

John tells us not to “love” the world, either as a way of ordering our lives or as an actual social and political order. He uses the verb form of a Greek word familiar to many church-going people, agape. We should reserve our love for God. God loves us and sent his Son to save us from sin and death. The world does not love us. It cannot save us from sin and death, because the world itself is dominated by sin and death. We love God by returning our praise, thanks, and honor to him for what he has done for us. In loving God, we seek him as our highest good, treating all other goods as means to our ultimate goal of eternal life with God. God is the measure of all things. Nothing else really matters.

We love the world when we treat experiencing physical pleasure as the goal of our lives. Loving the world involves letting our desire for beautiful, convenient, and comfortable things eclipse our desire for God and the things of God. When we seek approval, praise, and honor from other people and do not strive to please God above all others, we have succumbed to the love of the world. Physical pleasure, cars, houses, and lands, and a good reputation are not evil in themselves. They can be means through which we can serve and praise God. The joy we experience in them can turn our hearts to God in thanksgiving. But if we seek them as if they could give us true joy apart from their function of pointing us to God, if we worship them, if we forsake the higher goods for the lower, then these things will turn to dust in our hands. There is only one God. Apart from God, there is only death.

It’s time for some self-examination. Do you love the world? Do I love the world? Let’s ask ourselves some questions:

 

How often do you think of God and pray?

 

When you pray, for what do you ask?

 

How much time do you spend trying to shape other people’s opinion of you? And how much does it bother you when you get less respect or recognition than you think you deserve?

 

How much of your attention is given to planning and experiencing pleasures of all kinds?

 

If you were responding to a survey that asked you rank the top five things you desired most, what would top your list? Second? Third?

 

How much effort do you give to exercising your spirit, in self-examination and confession?

 

What do you think about when you take a walk by yourself?

 

What are the highest priorities of your two best friends?

 

Would you prefer to look good or be good? Does your answer match the effort you put into each?

 

Whom do you most admire?

 

Is the “love of the Father” the organizing and animating force of your life?

In researching for a book I am writing, I’ve come upon some of Plato’s ethical thoughts. In the following quote from his dialogue Theaeteus, Plato sounds a lot like John in 1 John 2:15-17. Considering the high calling we receive from Jesus Christ, we ought at least to aim as high as Plato, who did not know the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, bids us aim:

But it is not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor is it possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure, with understanding. But it is not at all an easy matter, my good friend, to persuade men that it is not for the reasons commonly alleged that one should try to escape from wickedness and pursue virtue. It is not in order to avoid a bad reputation and obtain a good one that virtue should be practiced and not vice; that, it seems to me, is only what men call ‘old wives’ talk’. Let us try to put the truth in this way. In God there is no sort of wrong whatsoever; he is supremely just, and the thing most like him is the man who has become as just as it lies in human nature to be…

My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble (Plato, Theaeteus, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat in The Complete Works of Plato, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1997), p. 195).

The Decisive Issue

3 Replies

Practice has made us perfect at evading the decisive issue in almost every decision we make, in every action we take, and in every word we say. The decisive question we must answer is not “How does this action make me appear to others?” It’s not “Do I feel strongly about what I am saying?” Nor is it “Can I find some justification for this decision?” It’s not even “Will this act accomplish something good or is this word true?”

The most important question for me at every point is this: “How does it stand between me and God?” “What is God’s judgment about me?” It’s not “How does it stand between my brother or sister or my enemy or this or that public figure and God?” It’s not “How does my group or nation or other groups and nations stand in relation to God?” I answer to God for what I am and do. You answer to God for what you are and do. And the moment I begin making judgments about how it stands between you and God, I have already begun evading the decisive issue in my life, which is God’s assessment of me.

Perhaps the most familiar and misused of Jesus’ sayings is found in Matthew 7:1-2:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

This saying is often misinterpreted to mean that since everyone is their own judge and gets to determine what is good and right for them, no one else has the right to make that determination. This interpretation is doubly wrong. First, we are not our own judges. Jesus does not forbid judging others because it violates others’ right judge their own case. God is the judge—everyone’s judge—and that is why Jesus forbids judging each other. To pretend to make a judgment only God’s has the right and knowledge to make and the power to enforce, is to place ourselves in God’s judgment seat. And no one who truly recognizes God as their judge can at the same time substitute their own judgment for God’s judgment.

There is a second problem with the popular misinterpretation of Jesus’ command not to judge. In verse 1, “to judge” means to pronounce a verdict on someone’s person. (This is obvious from what Jesus says in verse 2 about the measure or standard used. His warning assumes that in our judgments we usually hold others to a higher standard than the one to which we wish to be held.) Jesus speaks of a judgment about the ultimate disposition of an individual, a judgment that should take into account every factor that touches the case. That is to say, it is a judgment only God can make. It is not mere recognition that someone broke a law to which they were subject. Jesus does not deny that some actions are wrong for everyone or that we can know what those actions are and recognize when another person does them. You are not “judging” someone when you recognize or even inform them that they are breaking a law. It becomes a forbidden judgment only when you try to speak for God, as if you knew the “sinner” as well as God does or understood completely the extent of God’s mercy or depth of his justice.

How does it stand between me and God? This is the question I should remember when I am tempted to contrast other people’s weaknesses and sins to my strengths and good deeds and excellent motives. When I feel the urge to vent my anger or unleash a sarcastic or insulting word, remembering that God is my judge will give me pause. I don’t get to judge myself. Nor am I allowed to inflict the punishment of anger and insult and violence on others. When someone expresses a “stupid,” “benighted,” or “biased” opinion about religion, politics, or morality, if you must respond at all, respond with the consciousness that God alone knows the human heart, and that God alone determines how others stand before him. Be as merciful to others as you want God to be to you. When I think of Matthew 7:2, my friends, it scares me to death; for I need maximum mercy! Don’t we all?

Book Release: A Course in Christianity

5 Replies

Dear friends, readers, and supporters:

Today, I received my author copy of  A Course in Christianity for an Unchurched Church. This is the third book I have written in installments on this blog. I hope that by collecting, revising, and making these 51 essays available in print form and on Kindle I can provide some small service to the church. I have pasted the link to the book’s Amazon.com page below. Perhaps you know of someone who could benefit from reading these essays. May the book find its way to those few or many whom it can help on their journey toward God. I have reprinted the Preface to the published book below.

coursebookcover2

[You can see the table of contents and the first three chapters by looking at the Kindle version. The Kindle version does not yet show the book cover, but you can still “look inside.”]

Preface

 A Course in Christianity is third in a series of books I’ve written in weekly installments on my blog ifaqtheology (Infrequently Asked Questions in Theology). It contains in revised form 51 essays I wrote between August 2015 and September 2016. My original plan projected writing a “catechism of mere Christianity for a post-denominational church living in a post-Christian culture.”  As the year progressed I realized that the word “catechism” did not accurately describe the product I was producing. A catechism needs to cover all the basics of a church’s teachings in elementary form. I found this task too large to accomplish in one year. The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church contains 800 pages and was written by scores of theologians and bishops. Martin Luther wrote a small and a larger catechism and Zacharius Ursinus, in consultation with the faculty of theology at the University of Heidelberg, wrote the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). But I am no Luther or Ursinus.  I’ve had to content myself with writing on many but not all of the basic teachings of Christianity. Despite its deficiencies as a catechism, I hope that by reading this collection of essays individuals will be motivated to establish a program of self-education in Christianity. I have called it A Course of Christianity For An Unchurched Church because I believe the contemporary church is neglecting its duty of teaching the whole faith to the whole church. And many contemporary Christians are neglecting their education in Christian truth to such an extent that they need to begin at the beginning and traverse the course again. Perhaps the church of today finds itself in a situation similar to the one the author of Hebrews addressed in his day:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! (Hebrews 5:11-12).

I divided the book into five parts. Part One contains four chapters that introduce the problem of the unchurched church and issue an urgent call for renewal of its teaching ministry. I argue that “churching” people involves more than making sure they come to church a few times a month to witness what goes on stage. They need to be formed intellectually, spiritually, and morally to maturity in Christ. Part Two examines such central theological topics as God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Trinity, creation, sin, and salvation. In these chapters I consider what is revealed in the scriptures about God’s nature, identity, character, and activity in the world. Part Three includes studies of the church, worship, faith, baptism, and Christian ethics. These essays explore the appropriate human response to what God has done in creating and taking care of the world and in his saving action for us in Jesus Christ. In Part Four, I examine issues that arise in thinking about the soul, the resurrection of body, heaven, and hell. Part Five contains three chapters of theology in the form of autobiography.

WE HAVE MET THE WORLD, AND IT IS US

2 Replies

As I announced a few days ago, my theme for this year is “love not the world.” The first thing we need to do is get clear on what John, in 1 John 2:15-17, means by the “world.”

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

The first mistake to correct is the notion that “the world” is a sphere outside and in contrast to us. The world is not a group of really bad sinners: murders, swindlers, thieves, and fornicators. Indeed “the world” does not refer to any particular group of people or institutions. The world is a way of thinking, desiring, feeling, and acting that finds its origin in the heart of every man, woman, and child. And in you and me!

The “world” is sin in its organizing mode. Or, to put it another way, it is the way our lives become ordered when we let sin work out its logic. The Greek word translated world is kosmos, which emphasizes the orderliness of the whole universe or any other sphere to which it is applied. John asks us not to love the order (the kosmos) that is organized by the three perverted loves: lust, lust of the eye (or greed) and pride. These loves find their origin in the sinful and self-centered human heart. Everyone desires pleasure, possessions, and honor. And when these desires become the force that organizes our thoughts, desires, feelings, and deeds, we have become guilty of loving the world. Hence “the world” is a way of loving, ordering, and prioritizing our lives that fails to make God the determinative ordering force. It orders the created world as if it were the best and highest of all things possible. It excludes God from its list of priorities. God, who is highest good and should be the ordering principle of our world, is replaced by our own private lusts.

The alternative John envisions is making the Father the ordering principle of our lives. We organize our thoughts, feelings, desires, and deeds so that they serve the highest and best possible thing, which is God. God is to be desired and honored and worshiped above all things. Everything else in creation must serve this end, that is, to know, please, and honor the Father. Our love of the Father orders and unifies and beautifies our lives. The “order” of the world is really disorder and chaos, because lust, greed, and pride pull us in different directions and cause dissension and war among those dominate by them.

The way of the world and its perverted order is ever ready to assert its re-organizing force in our lives. The moment we lose sight of the glory, goodness, and love of the Father, the perverted kosmos again asserts its control over our lives. Hence John urges us not to love the “world” but to keep our highest love for God alone.