Tag Archives: Christianity

Can Christian Scholars (And Colleges) be Academic?

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For the past year I’ve been reading about higher education in America, about 10 books in all. I wrote blog reviews of 5 of them. Most of these books focus on secular private and state-controlled colleges and universities. Whenever they mention “denominational,” or “sectarian” schools, the clear implication—if not the explicit declaration—is that these colleges are not truly academic. Indeed, they cannot be academic, because they exempt certain religious dogmas from critical scrutiny and prohibit professors from teaching or writing anything that contradicts them. To be a real college or university, that is, to live up to the ideal of academia, the institution must not presuppose the truth of any belief. No theory, hypothesis, belief, description, method, etc., can be given privileged status. Professors must be left completely free to follow where their minds and hearts take them and share these thoughts with students and the public…and be given career-long security and a salary to do so.

Academic Hypocrisy

I think you can see already that this ideal of academia is unworkable. It is skepticism of the most cynical kind that envisions academia as a game to be played for its own sake. If students, parents, and the government came to believe this, would they pay professors and administrators to play this game? In fact, however, the secular description of academia is a cynical ploy designed for one purpose: to make it seem irrational for a college to presuppose Christian faith, traditional morals and common sense as guiding principles. Secular colleges and universities have no intention of living up to this ideal.

The whole point of anything we might call an academy is to rise above the undisciplined and emotion-driven conversations of the street. The academy claims to be a social good because it uses time-tested and critically proven methods of assessing facts, perceiving logical coherence and causal connections, and weighing probabilities to approximate truth. And in order to carry out this process, scholars work within traditions, schools of thought and communities to work out the implications of the dominant theories. Apart from accepting well-supported theories at least provisionally, scientific progress is impossible.* The same holds true in all areas of academic research—from fine arts to history to economics. It is precisely the methodical, rational exploration of (provisionally) accepted theories that makes academia academic!

Christian Academia

Christian scholars, colleges and universities conform to this model of academia as well as secular colleges and universities do. If you think of basic Christian doctrine in analogy to a well-supported theory, Christian scholars seek to work out the full implications of this theory in religion, theology, ethics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. Christian colleges and universities gather Christian scholars from all disciplines to work together on this grand project and to share the results of their study with students and the public.

Objections and Replies

1. But you may object that Christian colleges presuppose only one grand theory, whereas secular colleges gather scholars that presuppose many theories, which are allowed to clash. In response we might point out that secular colleges exclude many theories from consideration. Just try exploring the implications of belief in divinely revealed moral law or the resurrection of Christ at a secular university. Or try teaching a class arguing for rejection of the theory of human-caused climate change or that there are only two genders. Larry Summers was forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard just for suggesting that the disparity between the numbers of men and women in the STEM subject areas should be researched to see if it might be biologically based. Secular colleges’ and universities’ claims of neutrality and all-inclusivity are clearly disingenuous.

2. Some would object that Christian faith is not a “well-supported” theory but a set of beliefs based on faith. But this objection misses an important truth about Christianity. Christianity claims to be true. Belief in God can be supported by many lines of argument that many people find compelling. The distinctive beliefs of Christianity are based on events that it claims really happened. Christian scholars assert that Jesus Christ really lived, taught, died on a Roman cross, and three days later rose from the dead. The tomb was empty and Jesus was seen alive by many people, including Saul of Tarsus. One may argue that these beliefs are false, but note well, you have to argue that they are false! And if something is worthy of arguing about, that makes it worthy of academic study! If Christians believe that basic Christian doctrine is true, that of itself makes engaging in scholarship to explore the implications of this truth and creating an institution to facilitate that exploration an immanently reasonable (academic!) thing to do.

*This is a major conclusion of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Revolutions come along generations apart. In between, scholars work within traditions or paradigms. Kuhn calls the activity within these interim periods “normal science.”

Is Liberation Theology Christian?

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I am taking a break from my essays on higher education to ask, “Is Liberation Theology Christian?” A few years ago, I would have answered this question, “It depends.” Perhaps that was because I knew it only from books. But now my first impulse is to say “No!” because I find myself surrounded by “liberation” theologians, and I know firsthand where they are coming from. It does not matter what they focused on in graduate school—biblical studies, church history, systematic theology or practical theology—everything is about liberating the oppressed. They’ve multiplied like rabbits. It seems that within the past 10 years, every theology graduate program in America decided that the only subject worth studying is oppression and liberation. Everybody is a social ethicist and a political activist. And you advance your academic career by discovering new classes of oppressed people and ever more subtle ways oppressors oppress their victims.

Before I go further into my complaint, I should probably define liberation theology. Liberation theology is a general term for any system of theological thought that privileges “liberation” as the lens through which it views all the topics usually studied in Christian theology. It evaluates every theological utterance by its tendency to oppress or liberate some group of people. There are no neutral theological statements! Everything is political, and everyone has an agenda. The purpose of liberation theology is to critique theologies that justify oppression and construct theologies that justify the efforts of designated oppressed groups to liberate themselves. It is not to listen to the word of God, repeat it to the church, and obey it.

What kind of oppression does liberation theology have in mind? Not sin, death, and the Devil! These three are the classic oppressors of humankind from which traditional Christianity sought liberation through the gracious saving action of the Father, Son, and Spirit. In liberation theology, the oppressors are human beings and the social structures they create. Liberation theologians work to expose and critique the capitalism, patriarchy, white racism, homophobia, colonialism, transphobia, etc., that they see permeating American society. Liberation theology focuses on political liberation. And it draws on the socio-political analysis of Karl Marx and his contemporary followers often called neo-Marxists. They divide the world into the oppressor classes and the oppressed classes. It’s a very simple analysis of a very complicated world. And from this simple analysis liberation theologians derive a simple theology that divides people into good and bad, guilty and innocent based on group identity. The oppressors can make no defense and the oppressed can give no offense.

What gives these liberation theologies the appearance of being Christian? The simple answer to this question is that they argue that the God of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ always took the side of the oppressed. Liberation theologians select such prooftexts as the Exodus story, some of Jesus’s statements, some of his interactions with the poor and rich, and a few other isolated statements in the Old and New Testaments. They sprinkle these quotes within an already complete system of social and political thought derived from Karl Marx and lead the reader to leap to the conclusion that the whole system springs from the essence of Christianity. But Christianity is completely superfluous to the doctrine. It is added to tickle Christian ears and, frankly, to deceive them.

Why do I say that liberation theology is not Christian? (1) Read any liberation theology you please—feminist, Black, womanist, gay, queer, and Latin American—and you will always find that the subjective experience of these groups is considered a divine revelation as authoritative, if not more so, than Scripture. No reading of Scripture, no matter how obvious to the ordinary reader, will be allow to subvert the “truth” of the subjective experience of oppression. But in any theology worthy of the designation “Christian,” Scripture must be acknowledged as the norm of all theological doctrine and ethics, and to reject this norm is to cease to be Christian. To continue posing as Christian is to lie and deceive. (2) Liberation theology selects one theme within Scripture—liberation—and subordinates everything else to it. Liberation theology does not therefore present the fulness of the gospel or the apostolic teaching; and this distortion through omission is a textbook definition of heresy.

How to Use Jordan Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine

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In my previous essay I made some suggestions about how to read Jordan Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God. In that essay I asserted that we should not read the book as if it were Christian theology, philosophy, psychology, or sociology. It is rather a “phenomenology of homo religiosus” or religious man; that is to say, it is a study of the ways in which human beings perceive and respond to the divine. In this essay I will suggest a few ways in which the book can be useful to Christians.

Why Read Peterson?

First, it is important not to be afraid to incorporate the wisdom of non-Christian thinkers into our thinking. Of course, we must do this with care. But faithful church leaders and even apostles have done this from the beginning. In Acts 17, Paul quoted two Greek poets, Epimenides (6th century B.C.) and Aratus (4th and 3rd centuries B.C.), approvingly: “In him we live and move and have our being” and “We are his offspring.” Paul taps into the near universal belief and experience that the divine is near, around, within, and active everywhere. The pressing question within the religious horizon of the Old and New Testaments was not “Is there a god?” but “What is the true nature of the divine?” and “Who is God?” And that is what Paul proclaimed to the Athenians that day.

We, however, cannot presume that our contemporaries experience the overwhelming, self-evident presence of the divine. They do not. It is doubtful that even we who believe in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit experience it as well as the pagans in Athens did. We wrestle with the question of the existence and presence of God in a way no ancient person did. For many people, belief requires heroic effort. This modern feeling of divine absence is why we need to listen to Jordan Peterson and other thinkers who can awaken us to the universal divine presence felt so vividly by the Athenians and all premodern people.

The Question of God is Inescapable

As I argued in the first essay, Peterson reads biblical texts for their witness to the universal experience of the divine. Human beings are by nature religious, that is, human consciousness is so constructed that we cannot help but raise religious questions, questions of meaning, of life and death, being, eternity, and divinity.  Unless we are taught otherwise, we experience the power and beauty of nature, the inner call of conscience, the threat of death, and the lure of love as intimations of the divine. We feel the tension between the upward call toward the good, true, and the beautiful and the downward pull into sensuality and chaos. Peterson criticizes such modern errors as scientism, race and gender ideology, and utopian revolutionary theories (“idiocy” he would say) that blind us to what lies open before us: We live in Someone else’s world and we can never become what we could be unless we respond sacrificially to the divine call.

From a Christian point of view, Peterson does not provide satisfactory answers to the two questions Paul posed and answered in Acts 17: (1) “What is God?” Paul’s answer: “God is the Creator of heaven and earth!” And (2) “Who is God?” Paul’s answer: “God is the One who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.” But Peterson sets the conditions wherein these questions make sense. If we come to perceive the divine all around and within us, and if we feel compelled to choose between seeking the divine and falling into chaos, the next step naturally appears before us. It is to ask: “What and Who are you, Lord? How may I seek you and find you? What would you have me do?”

Peterson and the Bible

Peterson does not read the Bible as the canonical text for the Christian church. Nor does he read it according to the modern historical critical method, which seeks, not to hear the religious/moral message of the text with a view to obeying it, but to uncover the history of the composition of the present texts and to reconstruct the “true” historical events behind the text, neither of which we can know for sure. Peterson takes the biblical texts seriously as speaking universal truth learned in genuine encounters with the divine. Unlike modern historical interpretation, Peterson finds an existentially relevant and religiously compelling message in the Bible. It articulates a command built into human nature that we must obey or disobey. Once we have heard it, we can never return to our naive secular existence.

The church, like Peterson, reads the Bible for its religious/moral message. Unlike Peterson, however, the church reads the Bible as its authoritative scripture, as the normative story by which it measures all its teaching, theological and moral. But it does not contradict the ecclesial reading of the Bible to read it also as a witness to the universal human “perceptions of the divine” as does Peterson. Believers read the Bible as more but not less than Peterson. And this is why a person who is not a Christian can recognize their experience in many biblical texts and a Christian can recognize their experience in some pagan and secular texts. God has not left himself without witness in nature and in human consciousness! Peterson is on the side of the angels here. In my view, then, Christian preachers, teachers, apologists, and theologians could make good use of his work and the work of others like him.

Next Time: Perhaps I will follow up these essays with some reflections on Peterson’s moral and social ideas.

How to Read Jordan Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine

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A Reading Guide

I just finished reading Jordan Peterson’s most recent book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. In this 505-page, quirky, provocative book Peterson wrestles with certain biblical characters and stories, among which are the creation story, the fall, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Moses, and Jonah. As my essay title indicates, I will not be doing a full review. My aim, rather, is to give you my perspective on what the book is and is not, what it does and does not do; that is to say, I want to help you get the most out of reading it.

What the Book is Not

Not Christian Theology

Don’t read this book as if it were an exercise in Christian theology. Peterson is not a theologian. You will completely miss its important message if you measure his interpretations by the standards of Christian theology, orthodox, progressive, or liberal. Mistakenly reading it in this way will lead you to think at one moment that he is orthodox, the next heretical, and the next completely off the wall. Peterson does not read the Bible as the canonical scripture of the Christian church and does not adopt the methods and language of Christian theology. Don’t critique the book for not doing well what it makes no pretense of doing at all.

Not philosophy

We Who Wrestle is not a book of philosophy. Peterson is not a philosopher and does not attempt to deduce a system of metaphysics from self-evident axioms. Nor does he use logical analysis to clarify traditional philosophical problems and arguments. It’s not philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, or philosophical anthropology. The book is much too mystical, hermeneutical, eclectic, and as I said above, quirky for that. Indeed, at points it reads like a stream of consciousness riff on a theme. So, don’t look for an internally consistent philosophy. You will be disappointed.

Not Christian Apologetics

Peterson is not a Christian apologist, though he could be mistaken for one. Peterson often asserts the “truth” of the religious and moral message of the Bible. He speaks of “inspired” prophets who open themselves to “revelations” of the “divine” and “reality.” And he consistently uses the words “God” “spirit” and “Logos” to refer to the highest Reality toward which we should aim. We should not, however, assume that he uses these words in exactly the same sense as they are used in the worship and theology of the Christian church. He does not. And he always qualifies assertions of “truth” and “reality” with question marks or other markers of tentativeness. In the end, Peterson poses the question of the “reality” of the divine as a decision between directing one’s aspirations toward the good, true, and beautiful or surrendering to the downward pull of evil, falsehood and the ugly. God is defined as the adequate ground of all we hold to be worthy of highest human aspiration. Listen to these words from his conclusion:

All these great, profound and unalterably memorable stories are characterizations of God…God is presented as the unity that exists at the foundation or stands at the pinnacle. In the absence of that unity, there is either nothing that brings together and harmonizes, in which case there is a deterioration into anarchy and chaos, or there are the various replacements that immediately swoop in, in their foul way, to usurp and dominate: the spirit of power that characterizes the Luciferian realm and produces the scarlet beast of the degenerate state. Does that make the divine real? This is a matter of definition, in the final analysis—and therefore of faith. It is real insofar as its pursuit makes pain bearable, keeps anxiety at bay, and inspires the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. It is real insofar as it establishes the benevolent and intelligible cosmic order…It is real as the force that opposes pride and calls those who sacrifice improperly to their knees. It is real as the further reaches of the human imagination, striving fully upward (pp. 502-504).

Not Historical and Literary Study

Peterson does not interpret the Bible in the traditional ecclesiastical or the modern historical and literary way. Don’t expect to learn much about the historical context of the events recounted in the texts or the setting and process of their literary composition. He does not concern himself with whether or not the events recounted in Genesis, the rest of the Pentateuch or Jonah really happened. Interestingly, Peterson’s method of interpretation has more in common with patristic and medieval than modern interpretation. The church fathers and medieval interpreters read the scriptures on four levels: literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical or spiritual. The word “anagogical” means “leading upward.” In other words, to interpret biblical texts in an anagogical way means to seek in the text a mystical or spiritual truth about God and the soul. Peterson does something similar. He seeks evidence in biblical texts of human “perceptions of the divine.” The medieval interpreters were guided by their conviction that God spoke in the texts and if we purify ourselves and listen carefully, we can hear his voice speaking deep truths and mysteries. Similarly, Peterson assumes that these texts, as evidenced by their power to shape definitively and inescapably the culture we live in—that is, what we consider to be good, true, and beautiful—have proved themselves reservoirs of deep truth about the divine and the human. This truth, these perceptions, is what Peterson seeks to articulate.

Not Psychology, Sociology, or Politics

Peterson is a psychologist and draws on his knowledge and experience as a therapist. But this book is not a book of psychology. Despite his many studied observations, opinions and off-handed comments about society and the political order, do not read the book as primarily about society or the state.

What the Book is

A Study of “Perceptions of the Divine”

As the subtitle indicates, Peterson listens to the biblical stories for “perceptions of the Divine.” Think about each word in this expression. First, these “perceptions” are human perceptions. The place where the divine is perceived is in the human psyche; hence the book is a study of the human soul as the locus of divine revelation, not a theology that attempts to speak about God in himself. Second, to perceive is not the same as to think or to theorize. Perception is, if not precognitive, at least preconceptual. In perception, we meet a reality that causes changes in us that we feel but cannot yet name. Peterson is careful to warn us that our “perceptions” of the divine can never be exhaustively translated into clear thought. God is always beyond our comprehension. Third, Peterson speaks in his subtitle of the “divine.” The “divine” is a general term that covers many different “characterizations” of the divine. Whereas “perceptions of the divine” are universal in human experience, the divine is named and characterized only in specific religious traditions. This book is about the universal human openness to and experience of the infinite, the upward call toward perfect unity and perfection, which as Peterson reminds us many times, is “by definition” the divine (e.g., p. 234).

A Phenomenology of “Homo Religiosus”

Peterson does not preface his book with a discussion of his methodology. He talks a bit about meaning and paradigmatic and archetypical stories. And when I hear such discussions I think of the psychology of C.G. Jung, the scholar of archaic religion Mircea Eliade, and phenomenologist of religious experience Rudolph Otto. Having read the book, I would characterize Peterson’s method as a phenomenology of “homo religiosus” (Eliade) or the religious human being. Phenomenology is the study of how things come to appear in human consciousness. Peterson listens to biblical texts, which were produced by prophets and deeply religious individuals, for their perceptions of the divine. That is to say, how and in what ways did the divine—the highest and the best—come to appear in their consciousness? And what kind of transformations happen to people who perceive the divine and made the sacrifices required to respond appropriately?

According to Peterson, these biblical texts voice something universally human. The book’s title is We Who Wrestle With God; not “They” or ‘Those” but “We.” Peterson challenges his readers to understand themselves as part of the “We.” Human beings by virtue of their humanity have no choice but to wrestle with God. The divine is always near, pressing in on us, calling us upward. Our destiny as individuals and as a society will be determined by whether we obey the upward call or in sloth or malice sink downward into chaos and destruction.

Next Time: In Part Two I will propose some ways the book can be useful to the individual Christian, the church, and society.

Was Jesus Really “Invisible” in Your Grandmother’s Church?

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I just read Scot McKnight and Tommy Phillips, Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Jesus (Zondervan, 2024). I will not do a chapter-by-chapter review, but I want to share my thoughts.

The Argument

I decided to read this book for two reasons. First, one of the authors Scot McKnight wrote a very kind endorsement for my book, God, Freedom & Human Dignity (2013), and he is an insightful author. Second, I am also interested in the subject it addresses. A student in my current (Fall 2024) theology class brought to my attention his own process of “deconstruction” and return to faith. At first, I was confused because to me “deconstruction” refers to the French theory of literary interpretation, which assumes that works of literature never merely tell the truth or a good story but always construct a fictional world designed to preserve the power structures that advantage the author. The job of the interpreter is to sniff out (deconstruct) the ways the text seeks to deceive and dominate the reader. But I learned from the Invisible Jesus that the term “deconstruction” is now being used of people rethinking their Christian faith in critical ways. I suppose the term “deconstruction” fits what this group is doing because much of their critique focuses on exposing narratives that preserve abusive power structures within (mostly) evangelical and fundamentalist churches.

McKnight and Phillips paint a sympathetic picture of the “deconstructors.” They do not portray them as rebels, heretics, and anarchists. Deconstructors ask legitimate questions of their evangelical and fundamentalist churches. They challenge the hypocrisy of church leaders and question legalistic morality. They object to the church’s lack of concern for the poor and silence on racism and sexism. To them, the church seems too focused on money and right-wing politics. It’s too hierarchical, patriarchal, middle-class, and White. The deconstructors question the truth or importance of such doctrines as six-day creationism, male headship, ever-lasting punishment in hell, and the rapture.

McKnight and Phillips see deconstruction as a prophetic movement impelled by the Holy Spirit and in search of a Jesus-centered faith. Deconstruction is the negative side of many believers’ longing for a Jesus-shaped community of intimacy, generosity, equality, and inclusion. Deconstructors cannot see Jesus amid the institutional structures and activities of typical churches; hence the title of the book Invisible Jesus.

Analysis

Agreements

There is much to applaud in Invisible Jesus. Indeed, I made some of the same observations and critiques in my book Rethinking Church. Many churches are too clergy-dominated, stage-centered, and money-driven. We need to focus more on the Table of the Lord and small groups. Let every voice be heard. And let the way of Jesus, not corporate America, set the agenda. Amen! McKnight and Phillips are right to say that we ought to listen carefully and patiently to the deconstructors and learn from them.

Critical Observations

However I do have some concerns. (1) Over the last 5 to 10 years, exposing the evils of evangelicalism has become a cottage industry and a good strategy to get a book published by a major publisher.* I detect in McKnight and Phillips a mood that troubles me. Is it Uncharitableness? I don’t know how to characterize it. But there are many gratuitous barbs directed toward evangelicals. Perhaps this sharpness is related to the negative church experiences of the authors. Readers of the book will discover in the first chapter that both McKnight and Phillips think of themselves as deconstructors. They tell their own stories of deconstruction (pp. 5-10), which strikingly resemble the stories of many other deconstructors told in the book.

(2) In the opposite direction, McKnight and Phillips construct an almost wholly uncritical, even heroic, picture of the deconstructors. I don’t share their view. Do the deconstructors measure the faith of the churches they are leaving by the teachings of Jesus? Did they learn these lessons from Jesus alone? To the contrary, many of the deconstructors I know absorbed the values of progressive secular culture before or simultaneously with their departure from the evangelical church. And the Jesus they admire seems to champion secularized versions of toleration, peace, love, inclusion, equity, and diversity.

(3) It strikes me that the picture of a Jesus-centered church painted by Invisible Jesus is utopian or at least unhelpfully abstract. The real living church has always been imperfect and impure. The weeds always mix with the wheat. There will be disagreements even within a “Jesus-centered” church about what it means to be Jesus-centered! The authors leave the nature of this ideal church underdeveloped. Yes…we must love God and our neighbors, be kind, tolerant, take care of the needs of the hungry, naked, and homeless. But does doctrine, that is, the full range of biblical teaching, matter at all? Are there any rules for making sure that the powerful force of sexual attraction is used for good and not evil? What about marriage and divorce and abortion and LGBTQ+ ways of living? Is there any type of authority in the church?

(4) Perhaps I find myself somewhat critical of Invisible Jesus because McKnight and Phillips are writing to a different audience and dealing with a different problem than that with which I am most concerned. I do not deny that the evangelical movement is in trouble, and for many of the reasons treated in Invisible Jesus and other recent books. It’s just that I don’t live there. The people I am pastoring (especially my students) are being crushed not by evangelicals but by progressives. Where I live (the West Coast) the dominant culture is secular and hostile to any form of Christianity that takes the Bible seriously. For me, to write a book critiquing evangelicals would be smashing through an open door, jumping on the band wagon, beating a dead horse. I have no desire to take the devil’s side when the devil is already winning!

(5) Invisible Jesus implies but does not construct an alternative vision of faith and life of the people of God. I suppose we will have to wait for the authors’ next book. But if history is a good teacher, when you reject a Bible-based evangelical theology, an almost irresistible logic carries you all the way to Liberalism.

*See my review of Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2021) from August 2022.

“The Workers are Few”

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It seems that we have heeded only too well James’s admonition that not many of us should become teachers (James 3:1). But not for the same reason! James finishes his warning with these words: “because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” I doubt that the prevailing ignorance and lack of good teaching in the church today can be attributed to the fear of the Lord.

The Need

Many of you know what it is like to feel called to preach the gospel and teach the faith and to feel overwhelmed with the task. We feel something like what Jesus may have felt as he looked at the people:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matthew 9:36-38).

It takes so long to bring a believer to maturity! Paul felt it:

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you (Galatians 4:19-20).

We want to train others so that our work can be multiplied, but sometimes our teaching does not seem to bear fruit. The writer of Hebrews expressed this frustration in these words:

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! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:11-14).

There is so much work that needs doing and there are so few who can do it. I am not speaking here about a shortage of seminary-trained, professional clergy. Indeed, we need more of those too! But I am thinking about a shortage of individuals willing to prepare themselves to be volunteer or part-time teachers, spiritual mentors, and leaders of God’s people.

The Call

If you are open to preparing yourself to teach, mentor, and lead others or you know of someone (man or woman) who is open to this, this essay is for you. Perhaps you cannot devote several years of your life to studying theology in a college, graduate school, or seminary. But that does not mean that you cannot embark on a course of self-education in theology. Today I want briefly to set forth the basic principles of theological education.

The Preparation

In Part Three of my recent four-part series “A Time for Orthodoxy” (September 15, 2024), I highlighted the three basic factors that must be brought to bear on any debate about what the church should believe and teach: scripture, tradition, and office. In one of the concluding paragraphs, I said this:

Scripture, tradition and office provide mutual support and together are often called “the three-legged stool.” All three of these authorities are necessary for preserving the identity and unity of the Church, the Christian college and other parachurch institutions. Church leaders would be completely powerless to make and enforce decisions if they could not appeal to Scripture as the prime authority to give divine sanction to their decisions. And if tradition has no recognized authority for the community, leaders cannot convincingly assert their interpretation of Scripture as the true one!

Because Scripture and tradition play such indispensable roles in the teaching function of the church, anyone who would teach, lead, and guide the church must know them well enough to apply them to whatever problems arise. Hence the study of Scripture and tradition are essential to the preparation of church teachers at whatever level.

Study Scripture

Above all, a teacher of God’s people must know the scriptures. You need to become familiar with the entire Old and New Testaments: narratives, law, history, poetry, prophecy, and gospel. This step though elementary is fundamental, for you cannot understand that with which you are not familiar. One can read the Bible on many levels and for many legitimate reasons. Most often people read it looking for encouraging examples of faith, morality tales or rules, or devotional thoughts. And these are legitimate reasons, but apart from the next step they do not produce understanding. To understand, we must also read the Bible for its cumulative image of the nature, character, and purposes of God and for its picture of the nature, condition, and duties of human beings to God.

Study Tradition

The Bible is the norm for all Christian doctrine. Sadly, however, some people misunderstand or twist the scriptures to fit their own private preferences. As I argued in the four-part series I mentioned above, the church’s widespread and long-term understanding of Scripture, which we call “tradition,” should carry more weight than the private musings of one individual. Hence your self-education in theology must include the study of church history. From the first to the twenty-first century, the church has faced many crises and challenges. It has produced many brilliant and spiritual individuals. It has filled whole libraries with profound studies of the faith. And anyone who would be a teacher of God’s people today must have some familiarity with the church of the past.

Two Proverbs

In carrying out the project I am envisioning we need to keep in mind the wisdom voiced in two contrary proverbs:

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

If you don’t keep in mind the limits of what you know you will become arrogant and reckless. Most heresy is created by mistaking a partial truth for the whole truth.

“Something is infinitely better than nothing.”

Because, having read the Bible and a few good books on the history of the church you are much less susceptible to being deceived by ignorant or unscrupulous teachers. And you can warn others away from false and unhealthy teaching.

Next Time: I hope to return to this theme for more detailed advice about the best way to educate yourself in theology.

What Keeps You Up at Night?

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Interviewers often ask FBI directors, generals and diplomats the question, “What keeps you up at night?” It’s a simple way of asking about the most pressing dangers facing the nation or the world. Today I want to answer this question in my own case.

Interviewer: Professor Highfield, as a student of church history, Christian theology, and contemporary culture, what keeps you up at night? What dangers currently threatening the church do you see that less observant people may not see?

Highfield: Indeed, I have given much of my life to study and observation of all things Christian. Also, I have given much attention to the cultures with which Christianity has interacted for 2,000 years. However, despite all that study I still feel like I am groping in the dark. The world is far too complicated for one person to grasp. Nevertheless, I will give you my take on your question.

Interviewer: That is all my audience can ask.

Highfield: One more thing before I answer your question. I want to make it clear that I believe firmly in the comprehensive providential care of the infinitely wise and good God. Nothing can separate us from “the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Interviewer: Understood.

Highfield: What keeps me up at night? I am most alarmed by the rapidity with which the younger generations in the church are assimilating to the mind and behavior patterns of the surrounding culture and abandoning traditional Christianity. In the history of Christianity there have been many crises, defections, and heretical movements. From Judas who betrayed the Lord onward there has been a steady stream of traitors and deserters. I am aware of this. So, I am not claiming that this latest crisis is unprecedented. Only that it is different from anything I’ve seen during my life.

Interviewer: Could you unpack your thoughts for us. What exactly are these young generations finding in the surrounding culture that they are not finding in traditional Christianity? Why? And why now?

Highfield: I will state this as concisely as I can. The secular culture appeals primarily to our lower natures, as John says, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). It offers an easy way to pleasure, excitement, freedom, and happiness. Just follow the inclinations of your desires. In an unflattering contrast, popular culture pictures traditional Christianity as unnatural, backward, and unhappy. Christianity’s ethic of obedience, humility, self-discipline, and prudence, contemporary culture sneers, is as boring as it is antiquated.

Interviewer: Is that all there is to it? Young people have always been tempted to “sow their wild oats” before they come to their senses later in life.

Highfield: I was just about to address that issue. The secular culture wraps its sensuality in appeals to youthful idealism. Secular culture was not created exclusively by its rebellion against Christianity’s strictures on sexual excess, drunkenness, and other modes of self-indulgence. It also inherited certain ideals that it combined with its pleasure-seeking core. Among these are freedom, tolerance, respect, and dignity. In Christianity, these ideals fit perfectly with faith, obedience, and self-discipline. Popular culture, however, uses the rhetoric of these ideals to construct a view of the self whose inherent freedom and dignity give it a kind of moral independence that supposedly deserves respect from others. We are told that each individual is unique and must be left free to seek happiness in their own way.

Interviewer: So, secular culture uses Christian ideals to lure young Christians away from their Christianity?

Highfield: Precisely! Well…almost. In Christianity, “freedom” is the God-empowered state of exemption from the destructive powers of sin and death. In popular culture, freedom is the ability to indulge your desires as you please. In Christianity, we are sometimes allowed to tolerate behaviors we condemn. In secular culture, to tolerate means to approve. In Christianity, dignity is rooted in our God-imaging nature. In secular culture, a sense of our dignity comes out in asserting our rights to self-determination.

Interviewer: And young people are fooled by this rhetoric?

Highfield: Sort of. When young people hear these ideals used to justify a life of self-indulgence and criticize traditional Christianity, I am not sure they are completely fooled. The human tendency toward self-deception is very strong. But invocation of these twisted virtues gives the impression of moral superiority. And that moral fig leaf combined with the pull of the flesh and desire for acceptance by the majority culture explains why so many are taken in.

Interviewer: But why are so many so vulnerable to such deception? And what can be done to make them less vulnerable?

Highfield: I wish I knew the definitive answers to your questions. However, I do have some thoughts. First, I think most of us are unaware of how deeply embedded in the Western psyche the ideal of the independent, self-creating individual is, and how anti-Christian it is. Our political rhetoric and all our institutions—even many of our churches—idealize the individual’s freedom to choose their own path to happiness free from subservience to any lord. This pattern of thought is woven into every level of society and every social activity. So, when the time is ripe for secular society to use the rhetoric of freedom and individualized happiness to subvert traditional Christianity, young Christians fall by the millions.

Interviewer: Why now? Why was the time ripe?

Highfield: Again, you are asking a question to which only God knows the answer. I am sure it is much more complicated than this. But I believe this precipitous fall results from generations of ever more thorough assimilation to an ever more secular culture. It was not as precipitous as it seemed. The churches, the grandparents and parents of the current generation failed. They failed to understand and teach the true nature of the inner rot and godlessness of modern culture. They failed to understand and teach the true inner nature of the Christian faith and way of life. They failed to understand and teach the true nature of Christian freedom, dignity, and joy and how these ideals fit perfectly with faith, obedience, and self-discipline. They failed to understand and teach how to love God truly and keep ourselves from idols.

Interviewer: What can be done to slow or reverse this crisis?

Highfield: I dearly wish I knew. Until God visits us with revival on a large scale, all I know to do is repent and urge others to repent of our negligence. Church leaders need to repent of their superficiality, get educated, and grow a backbone. Parents need to repent of worldly ambition and childish self-centeredness, teach their children, and get their families involved in a like-minded group of believers.

Interviewer: So, that is what keeps you up at night?

Highfield: Yes. I pray I am wrong, but I don’t see it changing on a large scale until it gets much worse. But it can change for your church and your family. It starts with you and me. Who knows, God may yet surprise us with a great outpouring of his Spirit. Come Holy Spirit!

Without God, Without Soul, Without Heart

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The Postmodern University

In the previous essay we examined Julia Schleck’s defense* of the postmodern university. Though she admits that the postmodern university no longer believes in knowledge, truth, and virtue in the traditional senses of these terms, she nevertheless argues that society ought to grant professors academic freedom and tenure and generous financial support even though they engage in activities that seem destructive, useless or perverse to most people. My somewhat tongue in cheek paraphrase of her argument goes like this:

Trust us with your children and your money. Give us unfettered freedom, good pay, and lifetime employment. But don’t expect us to answer to you or explain why your investments are sound.

With Scheck’s argument in mind, I want to contrast the idea of a Christian college with her description of the postmodern university. As I observed in my former essay,

A university that no longer believes in knowledge, truth, or virtue no longer believes in itself. As far as I can tell, its driving purpose is maintenance of a system that provides faculty unfettered freedom, good pay, and lifetime employment in exchange for expressing their private opinions in esoteric vocabularies.

By rejecting all presupposed knowledge, truth, and virtue, the postmodern university loses its purpose, forfeits its prospects for progress, and gives up any measure by which we could judge its outcomes. To the casual observer, the postmodern university’s rejection of all “dogmas,” presuppositions, and time-honored truths, and its openness to strange and unpopular ideas may seem the epitome of enlightenment and a fine formula for uncovering new truth. But in this “the casual observer” is completely mistaken. For as described by Schleck, the postmodern university is not about discovering true and useful ideas. It’s about winning a struggle for power and money. The postmodern university replaces knowledge, truth, and virtue with ideology, power, and pretense.

The Christian College

A Christian college worthy of its name believes in knowledge, truth, and virtue; therefore, it believes in itself. Hence it can devote itself energetically to achieving its purpose. Its knowledge is faith, its truth is God and God’s creation, and its virtue is the way of Jesus Christ.

Faith Knowledge

The founding principle of the Christian college is faith, the apostolic faith preached and preserved for us in the New Testament. Far from viciously restricting our search for understanding and truth, faith points us toward truth and away from idols and ideologies. It protects us from evil, immoral, and superstitious paths. The knowledge of faith serves as a foundation on which to build our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. Faith provides a language within which every discipline and every professor in the college can communicate with every other. Faith, sincerely held by every member of the college community, unifies the Christian college in a way the postmodern university can never achieve.

Transcendent Truth

Because it believes in God the Creator of heaven and earth, the Christian college believes in an objective reality. For God is unchanging and eternal and is the Creator of all else. Truth is the conceptual form of reality and knowledge is the form of a mind in which dwells truth. In faith, the Christian college believes it possesses knowledge of God centrally and principally in Jesus Christ who is the living truth of God manifest in the world. And with respect to this knowledge, its purpose is twofold: (1) to pass this knowledge to the next generation unchanged and (2) to seek deeper understanding of the truth in all its dimensions. Every discipline and every professor is united in this purpose. All seek to know God and God’s works in truth.

True Virtue

A Christian college worthy of its name looks to Jesus Christ as the model for its conduct. There are not two systems of virtue, one for the church and one for the Christian college. Jesus Christ is the Lord of both. The way of Jesus is obedience to the Father; his is the way of humility, faith, love, hope, peace, and patience. The Christian college affirms the teaching of Jesus and his chosen apostles as the normative guide for our relationships to others and the use of our bodies. We are not allowed to do as we please with regard to money, power, sex, and honor. We must bring our words and deeds under the sanctifying and strengthening power of the Spirit. For the postmodern university “virtue” is a mere strategy for attaining power, a Darwinian struggle for money, control, and honor. It should not be so in a Christian college.

Freedom Versus Freedom

At first glance, the postmodern university seems to offer more freedom than does the Christian college. Professors have the freedom to reject Christian faith and traditional morality and to affirm atheism, immoralism, and perversity. They can blaspheme the holy, praise the profane, and parade the ugly without sanction. And they can teach their students to do the same. Christian colleges do not allow professors these freedoms, and true Christians do not want them. On the other hand, postmodern universities do not allow believing faculty to affirm Christian faith and interpret the world under the guidance of the Christian faith. And postmodern universities have their own dogmas, sacred cows, and lists of virtues and vices. They will not tolerate the blasphemies of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia; you may not speak against their sacraments: fornication, adultery, and abortion.

The Christian college holds a different view of freedom. There is no freedom in the power to do evil, only blindness and slavery to lust and pride. True freedom is God-given power to know the truth and do the good. Since Christian colleges believe in knowledge, truth, and virtue, they encourage believing faculty to teach and research under the guidance of their Christian faith. Students can learn from faculty who are so guided. Instructed by faith, Christian faculty can pursue the truth of God and creation with confidence, energy, and hope. And this is the freedom I cherish!

*Dirty Knowledge: Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism, University of Nebraska Press, 2022).

A Time for Orthodoxy (Part Three)

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In the previous two essays I argued that anti-creedal traditions such as the Stone-Campbell Movement (S-CM) need to rethink their opposition to creeds. We no longer live in a culture that reveres the Bible and believes in objective facts and clear truths. In today’s context, the anti-creed stance will inevitably be assimilated to postmodern relativism wherein each individual has the right to construct their own creed. The unity of the church dissolves into anarchy and its identity is obscured to the point of vacuity. I recommended that churches and Christian colleges and other parachurch institutions state clearly the beliefs and practices for which they stand and prepare to enforce them. Call them what you will, creeds, statements of faith or confessions of faith.

A Little History

Despite the rhetoric of the anti-creedal traditions, there has never been a church without a creed, written or merely understood. From the New Testament era forward, every church has had three elements of authority that worked together to preserve its unity and identity: scripture, tradition, and office.

Scripture

The New Testament scriptures embody the apostolic witness to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, the earliest explanation of the meaning of what happened in Jesus Christ, and the apostolic instructions about how to live in response to it. The NT possesses prime authority for identifying true Christian faith and practice. No other document or person or tradition should be allowed to define Christian faith and practice in contradiction to the scriptures. Because Scripture possesses such unique authority it is tempting to conclude that no other authorities are needed. But historical experience demonstrates that this is not true. We find many instances wherein the scriptures have been distorted, twisted, and interpreted contrary to their original meaning.

Tradition

The NT scriptures record events and teaching set in first-century Judea, Galilee, and the Mediterranean world. By the late first- and early second-centuries the church had become largely composed of gentiles many of whom were steeped in pagan religion and philosophy. They brought many of their pagan views of divinity, humanity, and salvation with them and they read some of these ideas into the scriptures. In this way they constructed such hybrid forms of Christianity as Gnosticism in which Christian words were ripped from their historical context and filled with mythological and mystical meanings drawn from pagan speculations. Thus arose the question of the “true” interpretation of the scriptures. The gnostic churches taught one thing and the orthodox churches taught another. Which is correct?

Irenaeus of Lyon (b. 130) argued against Gnostic Christianity that the true meaning of the scriptures is preserved in the “rule of faith,” which has been taught, believed, and preserved from apostolic times in the oldest churches, especially Rome. The rule of faith is a short summary of the heart of the Christian faith often memorized by new converts and incorporated into worship.*

Irenaeus argued that gnostic Christianity was a recent invention that contradicted the earliest traditions embodied in the rule of faith. In this way the continuity of belief represented in the rule of faith preserved the true interpretation of the scriptures and disproved the gnostic interpretation. Throughout the history of the church, tradition has functioned as a check on interpretations that read alien ideas into the scriptures contrary to their original meaning.

Office

But how is the rule of faith enforced? Who says, “This is what we believe. No gnostic, no progressive, no liberal teaching will be allowed. And you (supply name here) are guilty of error. false teaching or heresy.” Apart from a living voice the “rule of faith” itself is subject to distortion and reinterpretation! For Scripture and tradition are written texts, and written texts can be manipulated by unscrupulous or ignorant interpreters.

In practice, every church has always recognized the necessity of leaders—apostles, bishops, elders, shepherds—to make decisions for the community to preserve its identity and unity. This is true in all Christian traditions from Roman Catholic and Orthodox to the most extreme Protestant and from the first- to the twenty-first century. When the identity of the community is threatened, an authoritative voice must be ready to assert “This is who we are, this is what we believe and teach.”

Different churches seek leaders with different qualities, but all of them recognize that their leaders should be very well versed in the scriptures and the traditions. They must be mature and known by the community to live exemplary lives.

The Three-Legged Stool

Scripture, tradition and office provide mutual support and together are often called “the three-legged stool.” All three of these authorities are necessary for preserving the identity and unity of the Church, the Christian college and other parachurch institutions. Church leaders would be completely powerless to make and enforce decisions if they could not appeal to Scripture as the prime authority to give divine sanction to their decisions. And if tradition has no recognized authority for the community, leaders cannot convincingly assert their interpretation of Scripture as the true one!

Three is the minimum number of legs for a stable stool. Indeed, a three-legged stool is more stable on uneven ground than one with four legs! Balancing scripture, tradition, and office is the best way to insure the identity and unity of the church. Of course, even conscientious leaders who listen carefully to Scripture and tradition can make mistakes. But like all decision makers, church leaders must take that risk. The alternatives are far worse: an ecclesiastical wild west where everyone claims to be their own Pope, a democracy in which the illiterate and unwashed vote their whimsical opinions, or an aristocracy who think they can edit Scripture and reject tradition because they can feel the Spirit’s new wind.

*See Everett Ferguson, The Rule of Faith: A Guide (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015). Ferguson is an internationally recognized church historian from the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Next Time: How creeds, confessions, and statements of belief work.

Identity Politics and the People of God (Part Two)

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In part one of this two-part series (June 13, 2024), I described the essential features of identity politics. Identity politics divides people into oppressors and the oppressed and further subdivides the oppressed into a hierarchy of oppression. One’s place in this hierarchy determines all personal relationships, communal bonds, and social policies. This vision of society is characterized by division, hostility, and shame. Communal bonds among the oppressed are forged by a sense of victimhood and hostility toward the oppressor classes. The oppressors are allowed into the community only if they confess their privilege and guilt, engage in rituals of shame, and pay reparations in some form. In this way, the oppressed become everything they hated in their oppressors. Just like their oppressors, they seek power, wealth, privilege, and honor but use a different set of virtues to rationalize their quest: justice, diversity, respect, inclusion, truth, and equity. And like their oppressors, they display the vices of greed, envy, resentment, pride, and jealousy.

The People of God

The New Testament frankly acknowledges the existence of social divisions and hierarchies, of class and ethnic consciousness. It understands the human tendency to seek power, wealth and honor, and it is well aware of the rationalizations used to justify it. It sees the widespread injustice, violence, and oppression that plagues the world. It knows of the prevalence of greed, envy, resentment, pride, and jealousy. But the New Testament neither excuses these evils as do defenders of the status quo nor attempts to reverse the order of oppression and privilege as do theorists of identity politics. The Christian vision of community is dramatically different from either order, as we can see from 1 Peter 2:9-10:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter declares that those who believe in Jesus Christ have been given a new identity superseding all others. God has united people from every tribe, tongue, and class into a people, a nation. The divine power that unites them is much greater than the worldly forces that had divided them, for their unity is grounded in God’s eternal nature, will, and power. The “identities” that identity politics makes primary—race, class, sex, gender, and all others—God subordinates to the greater harmonizing force of the Holy Spirit. God orders natural and cultural diversity into a rich harmony of love, beauty, and fellowship.

Consider the identity markers these people share. They are each and all chosen by God, each and all are ordained priests, each and all are holy to God, each and all are called by God, each and all have the task of praising God, each and all have been saved from darkness and blessed with light, and each and all have been given mercy. Notice especially the words bolded in the quote from 1 Peter. Peter uses three Greek words that may sound familiar because they have been incorporated into the English language: genos, ethnos, laos. They are often translated race (or generation), nation, people. It would be foolish to attempt to distinguish them. That is not Peter’s point. He uses three different words to emphasize one point: just like the ancient people of God, he says to his readers, you have a bond of kinship, calling, and purpose that takes priority over all other bonds. You are not a people because of your similar economic interests, not a nation because of your common ethnic origins, or your language, native customs, etc., but because of your divine calling and your common faith.

The Line of Division

In an essay posted May 03, 2024, I wrote about the origins of such training programs as Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED), which is used in hundreds of American colleges and universities to inculcate identity politics. In the 1980s, Erica Sherover-Marcuse developed workshops designed to promote a new intersectional consciousness among educators and other shapers of culture. The most well-known exercise in these workshops is the “privilege walk.” Participants divide into groups based on where they stand in the hierarchy of privilege and oppression. The privileged, then, must acknowledge and apologize for their racism, sexism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression. Imagine a room filled with students, school teachers, or college professors. The facilitator asks the white males to move to one side of the room. White females stand next to them. The process continues in order of least to most oppressed. Those considered oppressed are invited to share stories of abuse, shame, and marginalization. Tears abound. The privileged, however, are not allowed to defend themselves from accusation or relate their stories of oppression; instead, they must confess their undeserved privilege and engage in penitential rituals. No reconciliation here. No love. No forgiveness. No foundational unity. Only resentment, envy, shame, and hypocrisy.

The Circle of Unity

Imagine a different room. Men and women and children from different ethnic groups, languages, cultures, economic classes and educational levels gather to worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They surround the Eucharistic Table to participate in the body of Christ in grateful memory of their costly redemption. United in the one baptism and full of the one Spirit, they sing praises to their Creator and Savior. They form a circle of love by joining hands. They look across, to the right, and to the left and see only dear brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. Each has a claim on all and all have a claim on each. The love of God compels them to love each other, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. There are no oppressors and no oppressed…no shame, no envy, and no contempt.

Lines have beginnings and ends, tops and bottoms. Circles do not. The most prominent feature of a circle is the center, the principle of its unity. A line has a middle but no center, therefore no unity. As we can see from 1 Peter 2:9-10, God is the center that makes a circle of a line and a people of a crowd.