Category Archive: Theology
Smith on Waters
Recently Guy Waters published a book, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis. in which he makes some criticisms of things I’ve said in lectures and articles. Bill Smith responds with an extensive review of Waters’s book.
He points out, among other things, that Waters has this remarkable sentence about what he sees as my views:
To understand assurance in a subjective sense, Barach appears to suggest, is to compromise biblical grace, in that we “contribute to God’s election” or election is grounded on human works (p. 136).Â
I don’t recall ever having said any such thing and I certainly don’t believe that “understanding assurance in a subjective sense,” by which I take Waters to be referring to personal assurance of salvation, is compromising grace or contributing to God’s election or grounding election on human works. I have never said anything like that.
As Bill Smith points out in his review, what Waters is picking up on is a comment I made about the exegesis of 2 Peter 1:10 (“Be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure”). What I said was this:
What does he [Peter] mean? The context here is not dealing with personal assurance. He is also not saying that we can somehow contribute to God’s election or that God’s election is based on something in ourselves or something we have done (cited by Waters, p. 136).Â
As you can see, I did say that 2 Peter 1:10 isn’t dealing with personal assurance. Peter doesn’t say, “Make yourselves sure of your calling and election,” though that’s often how people take it. Rather, he’s talking about living in a way that “confirms” or “makes sure” one’s calling and election. In saying this, however, I am not disparaging an interest in personal assurance. I’m merely saying that that isn’t Peter’s focus here.
Nor do I say that an interest in personal assurance is an attempt to contribute to God’s election as if it’s based on something we do. Rather, I say that, in telling us to make our calling and election sure, Peter is not saying that we are to contribute to them or that they are somehow based on us and our works. God’s calling and election are not grounded on anything in ourselves.
But Waters has somehow gotten these two negative statements (“Not X and also not Y”) jumbled in such a way that he thinks I’m saying that X is Y, that an interest in assurance is somehow a quest to contribute to our election. That’s unfortunate.
What is even more unfortunate is that this misunderstanding could easily have been avoided. Several months ago, I e-mailed Waters, and offered to review the sections in which he discussed me so that together we could make sure that the finished work represented my views accurately. He was not willing to let me interact with what he had written, however. Now the work is in print, errors and all, even though those errors could easily have been cleared up beforehand.
Wright on Da Vinci Code
N. T. Wright takes on The Da Vinci Code.
Christianity Today
Christianity Today discovers Rich Lusk.
Good Friday
I didn’t preach this Good Friday or this Resurrection Sunday, for that matter. So, instead of anything by me, here is Peter Leithart’s Good Friday homily, a masterful exploration of the typology of the cross.
A Generous Orthodoxy 2
The first chapter of Brian McLaren‘s A Generous Orthodoxy is entitled “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known.” In it, McLaren traces the developments in his understanding of Jesus from childhood to the present.
McLaren first encountered Jesus in children’s picture Bibles and in Sunday School flannel graph stories. (Come to think of it, I probably did too, which, I suppose, probably dates me: I’m old enough to remember flannel graphs!)
But as he grew older, he encountered what he calls “the conservative Protestant Jesus.” I doubt that’s a completely adequate label, but what McLaren describe is genuine enough. This approach to Jesus focuses almost completely on Jesus’ death for our sins, leaving aside, for the most part, the rest of His life.
McLaren rightly points out that the historic creeds of the Christian church also tend to do this: The Apostles’ Creed jumps from “born of the virgin Mary” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate” without so much as a glance at anything in between, which could easily give people the impression that what happened in between doesn’t matter.
Furthermore, as McLaren notes, this approach, with its focus on our (individual) sins, may tend toward an individualization of the gospel, as if the gospel has to do only or primarily with my own personal forgiveness for my own sins or, worse, as if the gospel is simply concerned with keeping me out of hell.
Was the gospel intended to give hope for human cultures and the created order in history, or was history a lost cause, so that the gospel only could give hope to individual souls beyond death, beyond history — like a small lifeboat in which a few lucky souls escape a huge sinking cruise ship? (p. 48)Â
Later on, though, McLaren encountered what he calls “the Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus,” which is to say that from the charismatics McLaren learned about the importance of the Spirit and of Jesus’ life and power at work in us in the present, though he also points out that the “full gospel” terminology often employed by charismatics can lead to pride, unteachability, and disappointment when miracles don’t happen as one expects.
From Roman Catholics, McLaren learned about the importance of the church and in particular about Jesus’ resurrection:
Through the resurrection, God has defeated death and all that comes with it — fear (when will death come?), hurry (how much time do I have in this short, terminal life?), greed (you only go around once in life, so you have to grab for all the gusto you can get), envy (why does her short life go better than mine?), injustice (the evil often prosper and live long while the good often suffer and die young), materialism (the one who dies with the most toys wins), despair (life is full of pain and then you die), and selfishness (in the end all you have is you) (p. 53).Â
Then, from the Orthodox, McLaren learned that Jesus is the saviour, not only of individuals but of the cosmos. I appreciate McLaren’s delight in what he learned about what theologians call perichoresis:
The Trinity was an eternal dance of Father, Son, and Spirit sharing mutual love, honor, happiness, joy and respect. Against this backdrop, God’s act of creation means that God is inviting more and more beings into the eternal dance of joy. Since means that people are stepping out of the dance, corrupting its beauty and rhythm, crashing and tackling and stomping on feet instead of moving with grace, rhythm, and reverence. Then, in Jesus, God enters creation to restore the rhythm and beauty again (p. 56).Â
On the other hand, I’m not persuaded that it’s correct to say, McLaren does, that “Jesus saves simply by being born, by showing up, by coming among us” (p. 56) or that
God takes the human life of Jesus into God’s own eternal life, and in so doing, Jesus’ people (the Jews), species (the human race), and history (the history of our planet and our whole universe) enter into — are taken up into — God’s own life (p. 56).Â
From liberal Protestants and later from Anabaptists, McLaren says that he learned to follow Jesus’ example and, in particular, that the stories about Jesus’ life in the Bible impact our lives and our societies. And then from liberation theologians, he learned more about following Jesus in terms of social justice.
On the whole, I liked this chaper, in spite of my differences with some of the groups from which McLaren says he learned. At the end of the chapter, when McLaren talks about celebrating all of our different Christian traditions, it could sound as if he’s describing the church (and churches) as a smorgasbord from which you can choose (a Roman Catholic salad, a liberal chicken leg, a scoop of Anabaptist potatoes) or, to use his imagery, as if you can have one type of food one day and another the next. That imagery, I submit, isn’t helpful. But it is helpful to emphasize that various traditions — and, in particular, traditions other than our own — can have something good, something biblical, to teach us.
I think it was probably Jim Jordan from whom I first learned the importance of regarding other traditions as superior to your own. We who are Reformed ought to be able to admit that we aren’t the best at everything, that Mennonites often do community better than we do, that Baptists do evangelism and missions better, that Lutherans and Anglicans do liturgy better, that Roman Catholics are better at good works and compassion for the poor. Here in Grande Prairie, I have to admit that Victory Church does far better than any church I’ve ever served at reaching out to the poor and caring for their needs. (That may raise the question: What do Reformed churches do well? And if we struggle to answer that question — or if we have a hard time pointing to much besides “theology” or “polemics” — all the better.)
Of course, we have to make sure that what we’re learning from other traditions (need I add: from our own traditions, too?) is truly biblical. If we start to think in terms of a smorgasbord, we may be tempted to pick and choose whatever catches our eye or whatever we like instead of what we ought to take. But at the same time, I’m glad that I learned to read widely and, like McLaren, I’m glad for what I’ve learned and what I am still learning from other traditions.
A Generous Orthodoxy
A couple weeks ago, I read Brian McLaren‘s A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-Yet-Hopeful, Emergent Christian. The title is almost a blog entry in itself.
I’m not going to provide anything like a detailed review. Instead, I’m just going to touch on a few things in this book, some of them things I appreciated and some things I had questions about and some thing I disagreed with. (For those who want a review, I’ll refer you to John Frame’s review. I also appreciate a lot of what Doug Wilson says in his series of blog entries dealing with this book.)
So here goes.
At the outset of his book, McLaren describes what he means by “a generous orthodoxy.” Some readers, McLaren says, may be disturbed by the way he tends to identify orthodoxy with “humility that allows us to admit that our past and current formulations may have been limited or distorted,” “charity toward those of other traditions who may understand some things better than our group,” “courage to be faithful to the true path of our faith as we understand it even when it is unpopular, dangerous, and difficult to do so,” and “diligence to seek again and again the true path of our faith whenever we feel we have lost our way” (p. 30).
I heartily applaud this blurring of the boundaries between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I understand that it’s possible to have the right theological views (which is a kind of “orthodoxy”) while failing abysmally in your practice (a failure of “orthodoxy”) and that, to some extent, a distinction between -doxy and -praxy may be valid. But should we really say that someone is orthodox if he doesn’t live in accordance with what he professes to believe? As McLaren says,
The generous orthodoxy explored in the pages ahead assumes, for example, that the value of understanding the Trinity is to love and honor and serve the Trinity, and that allegedly right Trinitarian opinions that do not lead to divine adoration are worth little. More, this view would assert that so-called orthodox understandings of the Trinity that don’t lead so-called orthodox Christians to love their neighbors in the name of the Trinity (including those neighbors who don’t properly understand the Trinity) are more or less worthless, which trivializes their orthodoxy (p. 31).
More later (assuming that I don’t return the book to Duff Crerar, from whom I borrowed it, before I can write more about it).
Retreats
In Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet, the sixth of Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small mysteries, a member of the temple wants to buy a building out in the country to use for religious retreats. Rabbi Small, however, is opposed to the idea. When the man asks why, the rabbi responds:
“Because it smacks of Christianity rather than Judaism,” said the rabbi promptly. “It suggests convents and monasteries, an ivory-tower attitude. Retreat — the word itself suggests retiring from life and the world. That’s not Judaic. We participate” (p. 17).Â
I was surprised to discover that some Jews identify Christianity with retreat. And yet, given the way the church has behaved in much of its history, I suppose I shouldn’t have been.
Frame on McLaren
A few entries ago, I mentioned John Frame‘s review of Brian McLaren‘s A Generous Orthodoxy. That review is now online here. Frame expresses appreciation for many of McLaren’s emphases but also provides some helpful and wise criticism. Very helpful.
Jean Vanier
On Sunday, as I was driving home from our afternoon service, I happened to switch the radio from CKUA, where it is usually set, to CBC, where I caught part of an interview with someone who turned out to be Jean Vanier.
I know little about Vanier other than that he founded L’Arche, a community where mentally handicapped and developmentally disabled people live and are loved and cared for.
In the course of the interview, Vanier made an interesting comment about vocation (though my summary here represents my own reflections on what he said). We often think of a “vocation” as a job, something that requires abilities and skills. At the least, it’s something that requires activity. But if we define “vocation” that way, Vanier said, then we are saying that only certain people have vocations.
But what about people who are severely disabled in some way? Vanier insists that such people have vocations, too. It isn’t always easy to see what their vocations are, but then it isn’t always easy to learn what anyone’s vocation is. People with great abilities may think their vocation is going to use those abilities, only to discover in retrospect that their calling from God turned out to be quite different.
The vocation of someone who is disabled may not be to preach or to run a business or whatever. It may be simply to love and be loved. And that is no insignificant vocation. In fact, it’s a vocation all of us have and one which many of us neglect, perhaps because we’re busy carrying out (what we think are) our other vocations.
Vanier’s comments were a salutary reminder to me as a pastor to be careful in how I speak about vocations and callings.
Later, he spoke about growing older and the challenges, but also the blessings, that it brings. Vanier himself is in his 70s. Recently, he said, he was sitting with a couple in their 80s, and he happened to be holding the wife’s hand as he spoke with them. She commented that she didn’t like growing old, to which Vanier responded by pointing out that if they were in their 30s, he couldn’t sit there in front of her husband, holding her hand. But age, he said, teaches you something about tenderness and fragility.
As we age, he said, our relationships change. Once we mothered; now we are mothered. And it’s okay for us to let go of some of our responsibilities. He related how the members of his community will tell him, “You’re looking tired. You should rest,” and how he’s free now to take a nap in the middle of the day and to allow himself to be “mothered” in that way by the very people he’s been caring for and, in some ways, “mothering” for years.
It was a pleasant surprise to discover this interview. I’m glad I switched stations when I did!
Good Leithart
In “Frame on McLaren,” Peter Leithart presents some of John Frame’s comments on Brian McLaren‘s A Generous Orthodoxy from his review in Reformation and Revival along with some of his own. I hope that the Frame-Poythress site has Frame’s article up soon. It sounds as if it’s very well balanced. Leithart’s own comments are also very helpful.
I also appreciated Leithart’s recent “Baptism and Personhood” and his … but if I get started listing worthwhile Leithart entries I won’t stop.
Do Philosophers Rule?
People who talk a lot about the Christian “worldview” sometimes give the impression that our cultures and the way people behave are shaped by the writings of philosophers, and there’s some truth to that. Ideas do have consequences, and the philosophers have done something to shape the way people think and behave.
But perhaps we attribute too much to philosophers. Why do people fall away from Christ? Sometimes because they’ve read ungodly philosophers, but I suspect more often because they want to sleep with their girlfriends or just aren’t interested in church or have a conflict with someone in the church.
Furthermore, as Mark Driscoll points out in The Radical Reformission, people hold to a number of conflicting philosophies at the same time. Or they believe one thing — or claim to — and then act in a way which directly conflicts with that belief.
Besides,
Most people don’t spend time discussing the differences between early and late Wittgenstein and the effects of his thought on their moral decison-making because they are preoccupied with whether their jeans make their butts look big or if it’s just that their big butts make their butts look big (p. 95).Â
Debating Atheists?
In The Radical Reformission, Mark Driscoll talks about a friend of his who became a pastor at a church whose attendance had dropped from several thousand to about a hundred. One of the things the congregation did to try to draw people, and in particular to attract non-Christians in the neighbourhood, was present a debate between a Christian and an atheist. “They went to great expense only to have no one from the community attend,” Driscoll says.
Why? Because the church did not know that atheism, popular a generation or two ago, is virtually dead today. This church believed that people are either Christians or atheists, and because they didn’t know their neighbors, they wrongly assumed that, since their neighbors were not Christians, they must be atheists. Actually, their neighbors were very spiritual people who spent great amounts of time praying but had no idea to whom (pp. 51-52).
Now Driscoll’s analysis may be a bit superficial and even a bit condescending. I doubt that the whole congregation really believed that if a person isn’t a Christian he must be an atheist. But Driscoll does have a point and it’s a point that Reformed apologists would do well to keep in mind.
I’ve listened to Greg Bahnsen debate Gordon Stein and Doug Wilson debate Dan Barker, and I enjoyed both of those debates. I even learned a lot. I’m sure that some people have been drawn to Jesus Christ through these debates. I am not saying that debates like that are necessarily ill conceived.
But Driscoll’s point needs to be heard. Most North Americans today would not identify themselves as atheists. Sure, there may be many intellectuals who are atheists. You may find atheists on college campuses (and perhaps a debate with an atheist would draw an audience on a college campus). But most of our neighbours, if asked, would say that they believe in God.
The question is which God. They don’t necessarily believe in the God of the Bible. But a debate with an atheist wouldn’t appeal to them. They might be Muslims or Sikhs, for instance. They may just believe there’s a god out there somewhere. They may view themselves as “very spiritual.” They might well say, “You know I don’t agree with that atheist. I think there is a God. But I don’t really agree with that Christian guy either, especially when he was talking about God destroying children in Canaan and stuff like that. That doesn’t sound like the God I believe in. The God I believe in is….”
If we don’t get to know our neighbours, Driscoll is saying, we can’t effectively present the gospel to them. A debate with an atheist won’t necessarily reach them. For that matter, a debate may not reach them. But if we want to reach them, we have to find out what they really believe and who their god is.