Category Archive: Theology

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The Story We Find Ourselves In

I mentioned a few entries back that I was reading Brian McLaren‘s A New Kind of Christian. A little over a week ago, I finished the second in that trilogy, The Story We Find Ourselves In. As with the first volume, this one had some good mixed with a fair bit of bad.

In both of these books, but particularly this one, there’s a lot of talk about evolution. At least one of McLaren’s characters, Neo, wholeheartedly embraces evolution. It appears at times as if being a postmodern, emergent Christian is all about being both a Christian and an evolutionist.

I suspect that’s because McLaren (or at least his characters) sees six-day creationism and the approach to Scripture it entails as a barrier which keeps people from the gospel.

Now I grant that McLaren has a point. It’s possible to erect barriers which wrongly keep people away from Christ and His church. For instance, if someone presents all the claims of various “scientific creationists” as if they were Bible truth, their claims may turn people off. Furthermore, it’s a valid question whether someone must first embrace six-day creation before he may become a member of Christ’s church.

But not everything that turns people off is illegitimate. If someone rejects the gospel because he finds God’s commandment to Israel to exterminate the Canaanites repugnant, the church shouldn’t leap to remove that barrier. If someone rejects the gospel because he doesn’t like Paul’s teaching with regard to the roles of men and women, the church may not remove that barrier. And if someone rejects the gospel and won’t join the church because he finds six-day creation ridiculous, the church may not embrace evolution as a way of removing that barrier.

As an aside, I’m honestly not sure what’s so “postmodern” about belief in evolution. Evolution seems to me to be a modernist theory, and I would expect that postmodernists would deconstruct it. And surely, too, breaking away from modernism, while it might also entail a healthy scepticism toward some of the theories of “scientific creationism,” should also entail scepticism toward the allegedly objective findings of science.

Evolution also mars one of the better features of the book. In the course of the first half of the book, Neo tells Kerry “the story we find ourselves in,” which is, in broad lines, the narrative of the Bible. Unfortunately, instead of starting where the Bible does, with the story of creation and the fall, he begins with the big bang and skims over Adam and Eve and the serpent, apparently because he takes the Bible’s story as less than completely historical.

For me, the most significant — and, I suppose, most enjoyable — part of the book was in the middle, where one non-Christian character determines that she wants to be baptized and to be a follower of Jesus. She explains that she doesn’t understand the Trinity yet or how Jesus can be both God and man or how the atonement works, how Jesus’ death can deal with our sins. But she’s also close to death. She doesn’t have much time to learn everything (and how many of us can honestly say that we understand the Trinity?):

How much do you have to believe in Jesus in order to take communion? … Look, if I have to get the whole Trinity thing, and the whole divinity thing, and all those theories … that’s all just beyond me at this point. But I’m starting to believe the story I’ve been hearing from you … and I don’t have that much more time, you know? And I don’t know how long it’ll take to get really sure, or if I ever will, and … and sooner or later, I guess, I’ll just have to … to take a step … that is, if I’m allowed, if it’s permitted (p. 110; only the first and second-to-last ellipses are mine).

A couple paragraphs later:

Look, I have tried to … to understand this from the outside. I’ve tried so hard. In the hospital I would just lay there thinking and praying. But I don’t think it’s going to make sense ? unless I try to understand from the inside. So I … I want to be in (p. 110).

 

And then, a couple pages later:

I don’t know about all the doctrines, or theories or mysteries, as Dan called them. I don’t know all that stuff! That’s the problem. Can I do this … am I crazy to even want to do this … if I don’t have all that understanding? I want to believe. I want to believe all of it. Do I believe enough though? You have to know that, not me. That’s why I asked what I asked before. How much do I have to believe? (p. 112).

Those are important questions, questions that Reformed people ought to be asking, too. In many Reformed churches, heavy emphasis is placed on catechizing new converts, sometimes for a year or more, before they are baptized, admitted to membership, and welcomed to the Table. Would we want to tell this woman: “Well, believe in Jesus. But until you embrace all of these doctrines, we won’t baptize you or bring to into the church or admit you to the Table”?

On our last trip to Moscow, I listened (while Moriah slept) to a lecture Jim Jordan gave in Bend, Oregon, on “Rethinking Evangelism.” In part of that lecture, Jordan addresses the intellectualism that characterizes a lot of Reformed churches, especially in their evangelism, in the light of infant baptism. If we believe that the babies we baptize are full members of the church (and all the more so if, as in some Reformed churches, we admit all baptized members, including the children, to the Table), then what does that say about how much knowledge we need to be baptized, admitted to the church, and so forth?

While I have serious questions about a lot of what McLaren says in this book, I do appreciate some of the questions he raises and particularly this one. Having grown to know McLaren a little bit through his writing, I suspect that, even if he and I would answer a lot of questions in different ways, he’d be glad that his book helped me to think through some of these issues more.

Andy Crouch & Brian McLaren

The other day, I read a couple of articles by Andy Crouch and I commend them to you, too:

* “Stonewashed Worship,” on the quest for “authenticity” in worship.

* Compliant But Confused,” on why so many teenagers are so inarticulate when it comes to talking about their faith (but not when they talk about other subjects).

As well, there’s a lot of wisdom in Brian McLaren‘s “Open Letter to Worship Songwriters.”

A New Kind of Christian

Before my vacation, I read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian. I had heard about it several times on other peoples’ blogs or in conversations, so I borrowed it from the library. It turned out to be a fairly engaging read, not only because the book is written as a novel and the narrative itself is interesting, but also because I appreciated many of the questions McLaren is wrestling with.

At times, when you study the history of theology, you get the impression that for some theologians theology is a sort of science, working with the data which you mine from Scripture. Charles Hodge, for instance, defines the work of the theologian as taking the facts of Scripture and arranging them in their proper order. I don’t think he meant that the order things are found in Scripture is the improper order. But I do think he viewed theology as mining the Bible for propositions to be arranged in relation to other propositions. Against that, McLaren’s character Neo rightly says:

According to the Bible, humans shall not live by systems and abstractions and principles alone, but also by stories and poetry and proverbs and mystery” (p. 159). 

Or take this, for instance, from McLaren himself:

I preach sermons that earn the approving nods of the lifelong churchgoers, because they repeat the expected vocabulary and formulations, words that generally convey little actual meaning after hearing them fifty-two times a year, year after year, but work like fingers, massaging the weary souls of earnest people. Meanwhile, as the initiated relax under this massage of familiar words, as they emit an almost audible “ahhh” to hear their cherished vocabulary again, these very massaging messages leave the uninitiated furrowing their brows, shaking their heads, and shifting in their seats. They do this sometimes because they don’t understand but even more so when they do understand — because the very formulations that sound so good and familiar to the “saved” sound downright weird or even wicked to the “seekers” and the skeptics. These people come to me and ask questions, and I give my best answers, my best defenses, and by the time they leave my office, I have convinced myself that their questions are better than my answers. [Sorry: I don’t have the page number. It’s in the Introduction somewhere. — JB] 

Now while (unlike McLaren) I don’t believe that preaching in the Lord’s Day covenant renewal service is or should be aimed at “seekers,” let alone skeptics, I do think what he describes is fairly accurate, even if you substitute “new Christians” or “Christians from other traditions” for “seekers” here. In fact, this is a danger that we face in Reformed churches, and all the more so in churches which follow the continental Reformed practice of “catechism preaching,” where the emphasis is placed, not so much on explaining passages of Scripture as on explaining the church’s catechism.

The danger is that we say the familiar words and phrases and much of the congregation leans back and says, “Ah, yes. These are the kinds of things we’ve heard all our lives. This is good Reformed preaching. We have a good Reformed pastor. Our children are probably getting good Reformed catechism instruction. Everything is going well.” That kind of preaching lulls people into complacency.

Now the cure for that danger isn’t so easy to find, and I’m not persuaded that McLaren has found it. In fact, I’m not completely sure what his answer really is, except that he keeps talking about adapting to our postmodern climate (whatever that really means). Why we shouldn’t challenge and confront this climate as much as any other isn’t clear to me.

At times, McLaren (or his character Neo, at least) reminds me of the vicar in Susan Howatch’s Ultimate Prizes who was bored with his sleepy little congregation and so stirred things up by preaching heresy to see if anyone was paying attention. McLaren, too, wants to be provocative and stir things up in the evangelical world by having his characters make provocative statements with which he may or may not agree.

At other times, I can’t tell the difference between his “new kind of Christian” and the same old thing we’ve seen in modern evangelicalism for years. Witness, for instance, the concern that the Sunday service be focused on reaching “seekers.” I can see that his approach would entail some changes for modern evangelical churches, but the changes generally appear to me to be a matter of travelling further down the same road. In other words, I don’t think McLaren is challenging modern evangelicalism enough.

More than that, several things that are presented as if they represent brand new thinking turn out to be pretty standard for anyone who has read much theology (e.g., his discussion of the church and the kingdom). And some of these things, too, including the church and kingdom stuff, could stand more critical examination than McLaren gives them.

But I do agree with him that what is absolutely crucial is for preachers to be able to speak the language of Scripture, to say what the Bible says, even if it doesn’t sound like the familiar words we’re used to hearing, even if it challenges our thinking, even if it doesn’t appear to fit into our theological boxes — and indeed, to say what the Bible says even if it does sound familiar and even if it is what the church’s confessional documents say.

In a couple of places in the book, McLaren hints at that approach, but I don’t think he follows through. Even the one sermon he presents (in chapter 10) has little to do with Scripture. In the end McLaren leaves us with little more than an engaging and provocative encouragement to think about how to adapt to a somewhat fuzzy “postmodernism.”

Leithart and Water

What do Peter Leithart and water have in common? Find out here.

New Biblical Horizons

The latest issue of the Biblical Horizons newsletter is out, and it’s already online. Jim Jordan has two essays in it: “The Closing of the Calvinistic Mind,” in particular, is well worth reading, especially to remind people of how things used to be in the Reformed camp.

Here, to whet your appetite, is the opening line:

Once upon a time there was such a thing as Calvinistic thought. It existed when I was younger, but seems to have largely disappeared in recent years.

MVP Report and Reputations of Brothers

Recently, an ad hoc study committee of the Mississippi Valley Presbytery of the PCA produced a report on a number of concerns the committee has with regard to the teaching of some in Reformed circles. That report has been sent to the PCA’s General Assembly as a “communication” from the presbytery.

Unfortunately, the report includes some misrepresentation of the teachings of a number of men, including ministers in good standing in the PCA, and could well do serious damage to their reputations.

Those who are interested in studying these matters (and I do not believe that every Christian ought to be troubling himself about these debates!), would do well to look over the responses that have been written by Mark Horne, Joel Garver, and Peter Leithart.

In general, the “communication” has been ably critiqued by Joel Garver and Paul Owen.

I trust that these documents will help to sharpen and improve the discussion surrounding this report and will help to protect, uphold, and vindicate the reputation of men who have been attacked and condemned unjustly.

Starting Milbank

I’m starting to read John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory. I know that Milbank was Peter Leithart‘s doctoral advisor and was one of the major influences behind Leithart’s brilliant Against Christianity, and so I decided that one of my major projects this year would be to tackle his magnum opus.

Remembering Joel Garver‘s advice on reading Milbank, I purchased some Glenfiddich in the hopes that it would help. I’m not sure it does. It just makes me sleepy.

Milbank is a profound writer, but I can’t say that he’s a good writer. Every page is a struggle. Milbank often seems to assume that his readers are fluent in Latin and well versed in the history of philosophy, theology, political science, and sociology. Alas, I’m not. To top it off, Milbank’s writing style is exceptionally dense, worse even than that of Cornelius Van Til.

Still, I do believe it will be worthwhile for me to work my way (however painfully) through this volume, not only because difficult volumes stretch you as a reader and thinker, but also because I think Milbank has much to offer. I was delighted to discover that I understood his first page. Here’s a quotation from it for you:

The pathos of modern theology is its false humility. For theology, this must be a fatal disease, because once theology surrenders its claim to be a metadiscourse, it cannot any longer articulate the word of the creator God, but is bound to turn into the oracular voice of some finite idol, such as historical scholarship, humanist psychology, or transcendental philosophy. If theology no longer seeks to position, qualify or criticize other discourses, then it is inevitable that these discourses will position theology: for the necessity of an ultimate organizing logic … cannot be wished away. A theology “positioned” by secular reason suffers two characteristic forms of confinement. Either it idolatrously connects knowledge of God with some particular immanent field of knowledge — “ultimate” cosmological causes, or “ultimate” psychological and subjective needs. Or else it is confined to intimations of a sublimity beyond representation, so functioning to confirm negatively the questionable idea of an autonomous secular realm, completely transparent to rational understanding. — Theology and Social Theory 1.

Return of Jeff Meyers

It’s good to see Jeff Meyers blogging again. His new blog is entitled Cacoethes Scribendi”. Already, he has posted a number of very good items, among them

* “Ordination for Life?” examines the popular idea that a man may continue to be ordained and should continue to be regarded as a pastor even when he has been deposed or has left the ministry.

* “Abba in Gal. 4:6” rejects the idea that “Abba” means “Daddy,” and asks why Gal. 4:6 would include two words for “father” back to back.

* “Pure Unadulterated Theological Speculation” provides some interesting thoughts on the doctrine of the Trinity drawn from Hans Urs von Balthasar.

* “Subscription and Freedom” looks at confessional subscription and the freedom of exegesis and includes some very helpful stuff from John Calvin’s life.

* “My Testimony,” in particular, is must reading, especially for people who were baptized as infants, grew up in the church, and have been told that their early experience was probably not genuine.

Good stuff! Welcome back, Jeff.

Blood

Very interesting: Peter Leithart on blood.

Necessary Laws?

I recently read a quotation from Plato somewhere in which he said that for a righteous man laws are unnecessary. If, then, we had a society in which everyone was good, we wouldn’t need any legislation. Each would simply do the right and good thing naturally.

I’ve heard Christians express the same view. In heaven, they would say, we won’t need laws. No commandments will be necessary. We will all be good and just naturally do what is good. We won’t need rules. Rules, in their view, become necessary because of sin.

I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been reading Charles Williams recently (see my old entry from last October), but as I was driving around Grande Prairie I started thinking about what Plato said.

Consider traffic laws. Williams would see them as instruction in charity: I extend charity to you when I stop at this corner and wait for you to go first.

But would I know what to do at a four-way stop if it were not for rules? It seems to me that no amount of natural goodness would instruct you as to what you ought to do, even if you were approaching a corner on the new earth and there were no sin.

When you come to a corner, who should stop? You or the guy on the cross street? How do you know? Should you simply let him go, putting him ahead of yourself? Or should he let you, putting you ahead of himself? But if you both want to put each other first, and if you both took that to mean stopping to let the other go, you’d both end up stopped. And that, of course, would slow down all the traffic around you.

So what do we do? We put up a stop sign and we make rules. I stop because I have the sign, and no matter how much you want to put me ahead of yourself, you keep going because I have the stop sign and you don’t. And when we all come to a four-way stop, we follow the rules. If it’s your turn, you don’t defer to someone else and motion for him to go; you go. And when you do that, you enable everyone else to make it through that intersection smoothly and that is charity.

But in order for good people to show that kind of charity, we need rules. Rules aren’t necessary only because of sin. They won’t disappear in the new heavens and new earth. And therefore we shouldn’t view the existence of rules as a burden (though many rules are burdensome); they’re necessary aids to help us express love. Plato didn’t see that, but I suspect Charles Williams would have.

Stay, and Believe in Jesus

Doug Wilson‘s recent blog entry on the Lord’s Supper is well worth reading. For that matter, so is his recent parable, “The Golden Stumbling Block.”

God’s Grace

Barb discusses this stuff on her blog, but I thought I’d mention it here as well, because some of the readers of this blog don’t read Barb’s but they do listen to The White Horse Inn. Furthermore, many of my readers are in churches that subscribe to the Belgic Confession, as do some of the guys on The White Horse Inn.

In the discussion entitled “One Covenant or Two,” the speakers maintained that grace is always God’s favour in the face of demerit. Therefore, they would say, there was no grace before the Fall since there was no sin before the Fall. One might speak of God’s goodness, kindness, and so forth before the Fall, but not of grace. Likewise, Jesus never received grace because He knew no sin.

It is interesting to note, however, that the Belgic Confession teaches that grace does not require the presence of sin. In Article 12, the Belgic Confession says about the angels,

Some of them have fallen from the excellence in which God created them into eternal perdition; and the others have persisted and remained in their original state, by the grace of God.

I wonder if one couldn’t find similar statements in other Reformed confessions, let alone in the writings of the Reformers.

Furthermore, lest someone claim that, even if the Reformers didn’t use “grace” to refer strictly to God’s favour in the presence of sin, the Bible does, I would point to Philippians 2:9, where Paul says about Jesus that “God .. has given him the name which is above every name.” The word translated “has given” here is not the word for a wage paid to a worker; it’s the word normally used for a gracious gift. It is, in fact, the verbal form of the noun charis, usually translated “grace.”

Moreover, in Luke 2:52, we read that Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature, and grace with God and men.” The word is often translated “favour” (NKJV) or something like that, but again it’s the word charis which is the normal Greek word for what we call “grace.”

It appears, then, that this new definition of the word “grace,” which sees grace strictly as God’s favour in the presence of sin, isn’t the way the Bible uses the term nor is it the way the Reformed confessions (at least, the Belgic Confession) use the term. That’s fine. Theologians today aren’t required to use words only in the sense that they’re used in Scripture or the Reformed confessions. But it isn’t fine for theologians today to claim that people who do use the terms as Scripture and the Reformed confessions do are misusing them!

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