Underground Pewster: How did your preacher approach John 14:6?

Today's Gospel reading is one which post-modern false prophets of "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" would just as soon ignore. That was the Underground Pewster's experience in church this morning, and he is interested in how others handled it.

Today's Gospel reading was John 14:1-14. After sitting through today's sermon, I wondered how other preachers tackled verse 6, 

"Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." 

I know how it was handled in our church.

It was ignored.

Sigh...

John 14:6 is felt by many to be a "clobber verse" or a sure-fire conversation killer. Repeating Jesus' exclusive claim is not going to make you many friends if you bring them up during an interfaith dinner party, and writing about it in the public sphere will assure that you are removed from any list of potential commencement speakers.

I remember trying to get a handle on this verse a few years back during an on-line theology group. At that time, I came up with what I called an inclusively exclusive response to the question of whether or not John 14:6 means that someone who has never heard the Gospel, or a good Muslim, or a good Buddhist needed to follow Jesus in order to come to the Father. I reasoned that Jesus could call a non-christian at the time of their death at which time that individual soul could respond positively or negatively. I for one would not want anyone to wait until the last minute like that, and I think we are clearly commanded to go and make disciples in the here and now, so my non-scriptural solution may not be of any merit.

Even if it poses problems for the modern, pluralistic mind, I think the subject is something that should not be ignored when it comes around on Sunday morning.

For what it's worth, here's my sermon on the text from this morning.

Waning evangelical support for Israel tied to rejection of dispensationalism

Dale M. Coulter, writing today for First Things, observes that waning support for the state of Israel among American evangelicals may be indicative of a shift in theological perspective.

While there is no doubt a push for greater recognition of Palestinian Christians among certain evangelical groups, a key issue that has yet to be addressed is the role of dispensationalism and its view of the End. When John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel is a prominent advocate of a rapture theology, one can be sure dispensationalism is in the background. There is a theological issue at stake in this debate that offers a backdrop for the political debate. Evangelicals who want greater support for Israel ignore this issue at their peril.

Placing the theological foundation of any support for Israel within a dispensational framework is problematic because it weds the issue to a highly debated and controversial theological position. In brief, dispensationalism maintains a clear distinction between Israel and the church although Progressive Dispensationalism sees both as part of the one people of God. God has not forsaken his covenant with the natural descendants of Abraham. The consummation of Christian salvation history will begin with a secret rapture of the church, the point of which is for God to fulfill his plan for Israel. Historical events such as the foundation of the modern state of Israel are viewed as prophetic clues to the approaching of the end.

As understood by John Hagee, Christian Zionism is framed in terms of end-time prophecy. In addition, Hagee weds together biblical texts about blessing Israel to a prosperity message, saying that doing the former will bring the latter. He also suggests that any deviation in support for the state of Israel will lead to divine judgment. Again, this is shaky terrain.

No Reformed person worth their salt theologically would go near dispensationalism or prosperity theology although a “Calvinist” occupying the space between theological worlds might. Even within Pentecostal circles rapture theology is not universally embraced. Premillennialism, the belief that at his second coming Jesus will set up an earthly kingdom is fairly standard, but there is room for divergence on a secret rapture of the church.

The point is that the future of evangelical support for Israel cannot rest upon a theological foundation that divides many Evangelicals from one another. It would not surprise me to discover that there is a correlation between waning support for Israel and a rejection of the rapture theology behind dispensationalism.

The remainder of the article wanders into the weeds with some speculation about the development of "an Evangelical theology of Judaism." Catholics, Orthodox, and some mainline Protestant groups have apparently done a better job of engaging practicing Jews at a deeper theological level, to the point, at times, of making evangelicals nervous about their commitment to the centrality of Christ as the only way to salvation.

Pros and cons of supporting Israel aside, however, the growing rejection of dispensationalism is a welcome sign of theological maturation by many evangelicals. John Hagee's history of fomenting "end times" hysteria and his latest fabrication surrounding the "four blood moons" ought to place him outside the pale of orthodoxy even among the most sectarian of evangelical groups. Russell D. Moore has plotted a more sane (although, I would argue, not yet fully satisfactory) course for future evangelical excursions into the study of last things and, as head of the influential Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, he will likely have a lot more say in plotting that course than will the fast fading figure known not so affectionately as "Dr. Armageddon."

Earth creature, stardust, and wisdom teacher: Reimagining C.S. Lewis as disenfranchised crusader for social justice

Brian Miller expresses the sentiment of many who were dumbfounded by the choice of Katharine Jefferts Schori to deliver the  C.S. Lewis Lecture on science and religion at Westminster College.

The topic of the lecture, science and religion, provides a rich and endless list of possible directions to explore Lewis’ thoughts. From the warnings against scientism in The Abolition of Man, to the history of medieval science in The Discarded Image, to the excellent comparison between the thoughts of Lewis and Freud by Armand Niccolai, to the literally dozens of other essays and writings Lewis produced on the subject. But alas, Lewis’s name is only invoked at the beginning and the end of the lecture, as if the speaker did so only out of courtesy.

The majority of the talk is rather unremarkable. Jefferts Schori employs the sort of new age imagery and buzzwords like “earth-creature,” “stardust,” and “wisdom-teacher” that any student of Lewis would be completely unfamiliar with.

It’s unclear what, if any, relation Lewis has to any of this. And judging by the text it seems Jefferts Schori hasn’t got a clue either. She spends most of her time explaining how science and religion both seek to answer the questions we have about our existence. Science does so through empiricism and religion by asking about the meaning of things. She clarifies, of course, that she uses the word religion “in a very broad context, akin to the way ‘spiritual’ is often used in common parlance, rather than its more academic sense as a set of practices and beliefs that bind a community together.”

Okay. You get the picture. You can read the rest at Juicy Ecumenism. For now, let's wax nostalgic for those grand old days when we could imagine ourselves to be "stardust" and "golden" on that desperate journey "to get ourselves back to the garden." No doubt, especially if Madam Oven Mitt is given nine more years at the helm, this classic will be included in the next edition of her organization's hymn book.

C.S. Lewis and the apostate cleric

Bishop Steve Wood posted this piece of timeless wisdom from C.S. Lewis on his blog today.

“It is your duty to to fix the lines (of doctrine) clearly in your minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defense of those opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing in your ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of the other.”

Christian Apologetics, C. S. Lewis, Easter 1945

It reminded me of another venue in which Lewis addressed much the same issue, apostate clerics, in a more imaginative way. This excerpt from The Great Divorce is hilariously funny precisely because it is so deadly serious, and tragic.

An interview with an apostate cleric ...

... but flowed swiftly like a mountain stream: pale green where trees overhung it but so clear that I could count the pebbles at the bottom. Close beside me I saw another of the Bright People in conversation with a ghost. It was that fat ghost with the cultured voice who had addressed me in the bus, and it seemed to be wearing gaiters.

"My dear boy, I'm delighted to see you," it was saying to the Spirit, who was naked and almost blindingly white. "I was talking to your poor father the other day and wondering where you were."

"You didn't bring him?" said the other.

"Well, no. He lives a long way from the bus, and, to be quite frank, he's been getting a little eccentric lately. A little difficult. Losing his grip. He never was prepared to make any great efforts, you know. If you remember, he used to go to sleep when you and I got talking seriously! Ah, Dick, I shall never forget some of our talks. I expect you've changed your views a bit since then. You became rather narrow-minded towards the end of your life: but no doubt you've broadened out again."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, it's obvious by now, isn't it, that you weren't quite right. Why, my dear boy, you were coming to believe in a literal Heaven and Hell!"

"But wasn't I right?"

"Oh, in a spiritual sense, to be sure. I still believe in them in that way. I am still, my dear boy, looking for the Kingdom. But nothing superstitious or mythological...."

"Excuse me. Where do you imagine you've been?"

"Ah, I see. You mean that the grey town with its continual hope of morning (we must all live by hope, must we not?), with its field for indefinite progress, is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we have eyes to see it? That is a beautiful idea."

"I didn't mean that at all. Is it possible you don't know where you've been?"

"Now that you mention it, I don't think we ever do give it a name. What do you call it?"

"We call it Hell."

"There is no need to be profane, my dear boy. I may not be very orthodox, in your sense of that word, but I do feel that these matters ought to be discussed simply, and seriously, and reverently."

"Discuss Hell reverently? I meant what I said. You have been in Hell: though if you don't go back you may call it Purgatory."

"Go on, my dear boy, go on. That is so like you. No doubt you'll tell me why, on your view, I was sent there. I'm not angry."

"But don't you know? You went there because you are an apostate."

"Are you serious, Dick?"

"Perfectly."

"This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken."

"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?"

"There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed-they are not sins."

"I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions."

"Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk."

"What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came-popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?"

"Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?"

"Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on
which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?"

"If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology in general, I reply that it is a mere libel. Do you suggest that men like..."

"I have nothing to do with any generality. Nor with any man but you and me. Oh, as you love your own soul, remember. You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice. We didn't want the other to be true. We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes."

"I'm far from denying that young men may make mistakes. They may well be influenced by current fashions of thought. But it's not a question of how the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed."

"Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent."

"You'll be justifying the Inquisition in a moment!"

"Why? Because the Middle Ages erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?"

"Well, this is extremely interesting," said the Episcopal Ghost.

"It's a point of view. Certainly, it's a point of view. In the meantime..."

"There is no meantime," replied the other. "All that is over. We are not playing now. I have been talking of the past (your past and mine) only in order that you may turn from it forever. One wrench and the tooth will be out. You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong. White as snow. It's all true, you know. He is in me, for you, with that power. And-I have come a long journey to meet you. You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?"

"I'm not sure that I've got the exact point you are trying to make," said the Ghost.

"I am not trying to make any point," said the Spirit, "I am telling you to repent and believe."

"But my dear boy, I believe already. We may not be perfectly agreed, but you have completely misjudged me if you do not realise that my religion is a very real and a very precious thing to me."

"Very well," said the other, as if changing his plan. "Will you believe in me?"

"In what sense?"

"Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?"

"Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances... I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness-and scope for the talents that God has given me-and an atmosphere of free inquiry-in short, all that one means by civilisation and-er-the spiritual life."

"No," said the other. "I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God."

"Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind, must it not? 'Prove all things'...to travel hopefully is better than to arrive."

"If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for."

"But you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the idea of finality? Stagnation, my dear boy, what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?"

"You think that, because hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched."

"Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will it leave me the free play of Mind, Dick? I must insist on that, you know."

"Free, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking. He is not free still to be dry." The Ghost seemed to think for a moment. "I can make nothing of that idea," it said.

"Listen!" said the White Spirit. "Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now."

"Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things."

"You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage."

"If we cannot be reverent, there is at least no need to be obscene. The suggestion that I should return at my age to the mere factual inquisitiveness of boyhood strikes me as preposterous, In any case, that question-and-answer conception of thought only applies to matters of fact. Religious and speculative questions are surely on a different level."

"We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ. We know nothing of speculation. Come and see. I will bring you to Eternal Fact, the Father of all other facthood."

"I should object very strongly to describing God as a 'fact.' The Supreme Value would surely be a less inadequate description. It is hardly..."

"Do you not even believe that He exists?"

"Exists? What does Existence mean? You will keep on implying some sort of static, ready-made reality which is, so to speak, 'there,' and to which our minds have simply to conform. These great mysteries cannot be approached in that way. If there were such a thing (there is no need to interrupt, my dear boy) quite frankly, I should not be interested in it. It would be of no religious significance. God, for me, is something purely spiritual. The spirit of sweetness and light and tolerance-and, er, service, Dick, service. We mustn't forget that, you know.

"If the thirst of the Reason is really dead...', said the Spirit, and then stopped as though pondering. Then suddenly he said, "Can you, at least, still desire happiness?"

"Happiness, my dear Dick" said the Ghost placidly, "happiness, as you will come to see when you are older, lies in the path of duty. Which reminds me.... Bless my soul, I'd nearly forgotten Of course I can't come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there. Oh yes! there is plenty of intellectual Life. Not of a very high quality, perhaps. One notices a certain lack of grip-a certain confusion of mind. That is where I can
be of some use to them. There are even regrettable jealousies.... I don't know why, but tempers seem less controlled than they used to be. Still, one mustn't expect too much of human nature. I feel I can do a great work among them. But you've never asked me what my paper is about! I'm taking the text about growing up to the measure of the stature of Christ and working out an idea which I feel sure you'll be interested in. I'm going to point out how people always forget that
Jesus (here the Ghost bowed) was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he'd lived. As he might have done, with a little more tact and patience. I am going to ask my audience to consider what his mature views would have been. A profoundly interesting question. What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature! I shall end up by pointing out how this deepens the significance of the Crucifixion. One feels for the first time what a disaster it was: what a tragic waste... so much promise cut short. Oh, must you be going? Well, so must I. Goodbye, my dear boy. It has been a great pleasure. Most stimulating and provocative. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."

The Ghost nodded its head and beamed on the Spirit with a bright clerical smile-or with the best approach to it which such unsubstantial lips could manage-and then turned away humming softly to itself "City of God, how broad and far."

Bell misses the mark . . . again

Timothy Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary, weighs Rob Bell's new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, on the scales and finds it wanting. In particular, he highlights four shortcomings:

First, Bell fails to clearly embrace the singularity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is, of course, the central proclamation of the Christian faith. Without the Resurrection, St. Paul declares, we are still in our sins, and our faith is useless and futile (I Cor. 15:12-21). As noted earlier, Bell tells the story of his own growing doubts about the credibility of the Resurrection (p. 12), and only brings it up again late in the book when he says, “In Jesus we see the God who bears the full brunt of our freedom, entering into the human story, carrying our pain and sorrow and sin and despair and denials of God and then, as the story goes, being resurrected three days later” (p. 145). Using the phrase, “as the story goes” leaves the reader with the impression that this is what Christians teach, rather than an historical event upon which the whole faith rises or falls. Either Bell no longer affirms the Resurrection or he has failed to understand its true significance. Either way, it is very troubling. Throughout the book, Bell consistently gives us a pre-resurrected Jesus, carefully choosing texts which connect Jesus to the deeper spiritual consciousness which keeps our “reverence humming within” (p. 15), but carefully avoiding the radical exclusivity of Jesus’ teaching as well as the post-resurrection confidence in the cosmic supremacy of Jesus Christ. Bell is surely right when he says that doubt can sometimes be a sign that our faith has a pulse (p. 92), but it is important to remember that faith and doubt really are different – not just two equal “dance partners” (p. 92). Christians can, of course, be plagued with doubts as much as anyone. But, when it comes to the Resurrection, there is a time when we must “stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

Second, Bell has a distorted understanding of “progress.” 

A major portion of the book (pp. 21-73) surveys the breathtaking advances in science, particularly in the area of quantum physics. Bell uses these amazing advances in our understanding of the universe as the backdrop to his real thesis which is that we are all advancing and moving forward and the church is being left behind. Bell explores the idea of progressive revelation and points out how certain texts in the Old Testament reveal that people are at “F and God calls them to G” and now that we are at “L” we look back and God may seem primitive and barbaric. Meanwhile God is calling us to “M” (p. 165). However, it is crucial to Bell’s deeper thesis to make the assumption that just as science is progressing and moving forward in undeniable ways, so culture and family systems and philosophy and every other arena of thought must, likewise, be progressing forward. So, the church with all of its “dead theological systems” must play catch up. One of Bell’s crucial themes is the idea that God is always moving ahead of us and bringing us forward. OK. But Bell never seems to even consider the tension that might be felt in a culture when a step backwards occurs. He never seems to entertain the idea that sometimes societies do not progress, but regress. This inevitably increases the tension between biblical revelation and popular conceptions about God. Where is the prophetic role of the church which resists sinking lower and lower to find a common denominator of spirituality which will be affirmed by most everyone as opposed to calling men and women to the deeper realities of biblical revelation which is never outdated or outmoded, but always fresh with power and relevance? The gospel does not need our help in being made “relevant.” The gospel is always relevant for every time and culture. Bell has given us a reshaped and highly domesticated gospel which tries to make the gospel relevant to contemporary sensibilities.

Third, Bell does not call us to carefully study and submit to God’s revelation in Scripture.

Bell gives many examples of Christians who have only a superficial understanding of the actual teaching of Scripture so they can be caught saying foolish things like “all gay people are going to hell” (p. 6). But these superficial caricatures are not used to call us to a deeper study of God’s Word. Rather, they are used to call us to listen better to ourselves. Bell tells the story of a time when he purchased some snorkeling gear and in his haste to get it out of its packaging a little tube fell out unnoticed. It wasn’t until later that he realized that this tube was essential for keeping your goggles unfogged in the water and, because he had lost the little tube, his underwater vision was blurred and fuzzy. Bell goes on to apply this saying that for twenty years as a pastor he had been trying to get people to see clearly and to help them find that “little tube” (p. 99, 100). But, what, symbolically speaking, is this “little tube”? This was an opportunity for Bell to tell us clearly that the “little tube” (without which all of life is fuzzy and blurred) is the Word of God. Instead, Bells tells us that the “little tube” is to listen within to a “certain stillness” in our hearts (p. 103). He says that it might come to us while we are eating a meal or having a conversation (p. 102, 103). He never suggests that it might come through the Word of God. Bell seems to equate the “ruach (spirit or breath) of God” and “cosmic electricity” (p. 106). But, there is a very important Christian difference between God’s self-disclosure and our self-discovery.

Bell’s book left me with the impression that the musings of an unbelieving man talking about God while he stands in his backyard barbecuing is just as valid as the utterances of the Hebrew prophets or the Apostle Paul. Bell’s ability to listen to the stories of people and discern their spiritual journey is exemplary – and I commend him for it. But, I also long to hear his confidence in the objective revelation of the Bible as God’s Word which just might tell the man barbecuing his chicken that his ideas about God are just plain wrong. For Bell, all such musings must be validated because, in the end, why should we validate a biblical prophet over the man barbecuing? The answer is that, for Bell, theology (our words about God) is a subset of anthropology. This is because, for Bell, any words – even if found in the Bible – cannot ever describe with confidence the ultimate reality that is “fundamentally beyond words and phrases and forms” (p. 87). That is an innocent looking phrase in Bell, but, read in context, it manages to put the Bible, the church and all theological propositions in the tentative and provisional category. Of course, to say that God is beyond words and phrases is an axiomatic truth, but that should not be used as leverage against the proclamation of God’s revelation about himself in words, phrases and forms.

Fourth, Bell offers us a less nuanced, more simplistic, more pluralistic expression of Christianity.

Bell tells the readers he wants to avoid “long and scholarly and technical and complicated words” (p. 15). Instead he wants to use the words “open” “both” “with” “for” and “ahead” (which is used as the structure of the entire book). However, in the end we are left with something short, naiive, populistic and way too simplistic. We are left with a “light weight” tentative world view which makes Christianity just one of many possible ways of “doing” your spirituality. Bell finally answers the question which his book title raises when he says, “so when we talk about God, we’re talking about our brushes with the spirit, our awareness of the reverence humming within us…” (p. 91). This could just as easily be said by a Hindu, a Buddhist or a Sufi Muslim. What makes Bell’s answer a distinctively Christian statement? Is Christianity just one of many options on a global religious smorgasbord, or has something uniquely occurred in Jesus Christ? For the Christian, truth doesn’t just rise up within us, it is revealed to us by God in his Word and, supremely, in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Resurrected One who suffered on the cross for us and is now the living, ascended Lord. Bell seems to be willing to trade the priceless pearl of the gospel for a mess of pluralist porridge. He is clearly uncomfortable with the exclusivity of the Christian claims. Bell has chosen to find his spirituality in a Jesus of his own imagination. Indeed, Bell would not insist on any particular outward forms or divine conceptions as long as one gets in touch with their own “humming spirituality.”

Tennent sums up his thoughts with a conclusion that is charitable, but devastating.

As we face a culture increasingly abandoning the Christian faith we have much to learn from Bell’s missional heart and his willingness to listen deeply to the angst of popular culture. But, the solution is not to further domesticate the gospel. Rather, the church must rediscover a more robust gospel; the good news proclaimed in the New Testament. We must, in fresh and compelling ways, “contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Time magazine has hailed Bell for being “at the forefront of a rethinking of Christianity in America.” But have any of us really been given the authority to “re-think” Christianity? My prayer is that Christians all across the world will realize that the “new and improved” Christianity which Bell offers us is not an improvement of the faith and proclamation of the Apostles who were the eye and ear witnesses of the good news of Jesus Christ. In the end, what Rob Bell seems to be saying is that we don’t really talk about God when we talk about God. Instead, we are talking about ourselves. For Bell, this is a progressive development. For me, it is an irreverent humming of deception. More importantly, for the church throughout the ages, this is just another of a myriad of failed attempts to use Christian language, but deny the power of the gospel.

As with his previous book, Love Wins, Rob Bell has missed the mark, and perhaps even moreso this time around.

Leithart: Schleiermacher still not rebabilitated

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was, for all intents and purposes, the father of liberal Protestantism. His well-meaning but misguided attempts to reconcile the Christian faith with the criticisms raised by its "cultured despisers" of the Enlightenment era opened the door for more radical revisions. Despite the best efforts of Karl Barth, the influence of Schleiermacher is still felt in liberal Protestant circles to this day.

Chief among the weaknesses of Schleiermacher's theology was his muddled Christology, which rejected, or at least strongly criticized, the Chalcedonian Formula, which declared that Jesus Christ was "at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man."

In an article first published a decade ago in the Harvard Theological Review, Lori Pearson attempted to rehabilitate Schleiermacher, claiming that his "Christology continues the ‘Antiochene’ tradition of protecting the absolute integrity of Jesus’ human identity while at the same time maintaining a more ‘Alexandrian’ emphasis on a single (divine) subject that is the source of all Christ’s redemptive activities.”

It is a valiant effort but, as Peter Leithart notes, it is unconvincing for several reasons.

First, Schleiermacher’s characterizations of the problems of classic Christological formulae seem contrived, and arise only because of idiosyncratic and rigid definitions of terms. There cannot be two natures in one person, he argues. That’s because “nature” refers to a conditioned, limited, corporeal existence, moving between activity and passivity; it doesn’t apply to God at all. Besides, he argues, a nature is normally a universal in which individuals participate, and it makes no sense to say that an individual person partakes of two natures at the same time. Person, he says, denotes a unity, but a double-natured being like Christ cannot really ever be unified.

But who says that “nature” has such a restricted meaning? In Christology, it obviously doesn’t. And classical Christology answers the question about unity by insisting that Christ is a single subject, the eternal Logos, who assumed a full human nature. That hardly satisfies our every curiosity, but then one wonders if Schleiermacher’s questions take sufficient account of the fact that in talking about Christ we are talking about an unparalleled mystery.

Pearson points out that for Schleiermacher the main problem with the two-natures doctrine is pastoral and perhaps apologetic: “It cannot give any guidance in the proper preaching of Christ,” Schleiermacher claims. It cannot, perhaps more precisely, make any sense to the cultured despisers to which Schleiermacher wanted to appeal.

The second problem is that even when there are “parallels” with classical Christology, Schleiermacher has put them in a quite different framework. Sein Gottes in ihm, Schleiermacher affirms, but this affirmation comes at the end of a sentence that identifies the Sein Gottes with Jesus’ fully operational God-consciousness: “The Redeemer. . . is like all men in virtue of the identity of his human nature, but is distinguished from them all by the constant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him” (Christian Faith 94). As Pearson explains it, “The Redeemer has what other humans have (a God-consciousness), but in a perfectly ordered and complete way. Since, however, the Redeemer has this perfect God-consciousness, he is a new creation, a ‘new implanting’ . . . of the God-consciousness in human nature.” In this way, Jesus is, Schleiermacher says, the one in whom “there is an existence of God in the proper sense.”

On Pearson’s description, further, Schleiermacher’s position is inconsistent. On the one hand, the God-consciousness is something he shares with other humans; yet she claims that he also “takes great pains to protect the immutability and impassibility of God” by exempting the “inner” divine life principle from the changes of his humanity. It’s not clear how these two statements cohere: Pearson says that Jesus’ “God-consciousness went through a process of development” (p. 357) and, quoting Schleiermacher about Jesus’ determination by His cultural identity, “such determination in no way concerns the real principle of His life but only the organism.” Perhaps the contradiction is Pearson’s and not Schleiermacher’s, but it’s there.

On Pearson’s description too, Schleiermacher combines Alexandrian and Antiochene motifs in a way that results in a (somewhat modified) Apollinarianism. Jesus has a full humanity in Schleiermacher’s scheme, but a “divine principle” of some sort or other plays the active role of shaping all Christ’s actions. Apollinarianism is far more orthodox, because at least it affirms that the Logos occupied the empty soul-space of the humanity of Christ; Schleiermacher insists that the Redeemer is not the second Person, not the Logos: “The Person of Christ began only when He became a man” (Christian Faith, 105). For all his talk of Sein Gottes, there doesn’t seem to be much to distinguish the Redeemer from an inspired man.

Pearson has shown that formal parallels to Chalcedon are evident in Schleiermacher. To my mind, though, she only confirms the common charge that he revised Christology in the direction of psychology and, one cannot avoid the Barthian charge, anthropology.

Wolfhart Pannenberg would still give Shcleiermacher a hearing but, in doing so, he treads on dangerous ground. Leithart notes in a follow-up post:

Pannenberg (Jesus – God and Man (scm classics), 285) offers a more sympathetic summary of Schleiermacher’s Christology than I have done. He agrees that Schleiermacher’s definition of “nature” as “a limited being existing in opposition to others” doesn’t fly: It “does not meet the patristic doctrine, since its concept of nature is interchangeable with the concept of being.” This addresses also to Schleiermacher’s objection that the language of Trinitarian theology and Christology clash.

But Pannenberg thinks that Schleiermacher is on stronger ground in his objection that using nature flattens the Creator-creature distinction: “how can divine and human be so subsumed under any single concept, as if both could be mutually coordinated as more precise specifications of one and the same universal?” asks Schleiermacher.

Pannenberg thinks this question “scores a direct hit” since “one cannot speak of divine being and human being as though they were on the same plane.” While admitting that “this was not the intention of patristic Christologies,” he argues that the “two-natures doctrine is objectionable” for just this reason.

A point taken, but I wonder if any language about God can meet Pannenberg’s strictures, including his own. In formulating his objection he speaks of “divine being and human being.” Has he treated God and creation “as though they were on the same plane”?

Islam: False religion or Christian heresy?

Heresy has often been defined as a truth carried to the extreme. I first heard Islam referred to as "a Christian heresy," as opposed to a mere false religion, while in seminary. This is not a particularly unusual view and, as Peter Leithart points out, it is now getting a fresh hearing from some scholars.

Near the bottom of the pit of hell, Dante encounters a man walking with his torso split from chin to groin, his guts and other organs spilling out. “See how I tear myself!” the man shrieks. “See how Mahomet is deformed and torn!” For us, the scene is not only gruesome but surprising, for Dante is not in a circle of false religion but in a circle reserved for those who tear the body of Christ. Like many medieval Christians, Dante views Islam less as a rival religion than as a schismatic form of Christianity.

A handful of Western scholars now think there is considerable historical truth to Dantes view. According to the standard Muslim account, the Quran contains revelations that Allah delivered to Mohammed through the angel Jibril between 609 and 632. They were fixed in written form under the third Caliph in the mid seventh century. Islamic scholar Christoph Luxenberg doubts most of this. In 2000, he published the German edition of The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran, whose restrained title and dispassionate tone belie its explosive arguments-explosive enough for the author to hide behind a pseudonym. The book has been banned in several Islamic countries.

It is easy to see why the guardians of Islam's reputation would not want such a book to fall into the hands of the ignorant masses. Consider some of its claims:

One of Luxenbergs central arguments is that the Quran is an Arabic translation of an original Syriac/Aramaic text. Luxenberg is able to resolve oddities in the Arabic text by treating them as erroneous Arabic translations of an original Syriac text. Words that have no Arabic source turn out to be garbled versions of common Syriac terms. Luxenberg even finds evidence in the Quran itself for treating it as a translation. By his rendering, Sura 44:58 says “we have translated [the Koran] into your language so that they may allow themselves to be reminded.”

Luxenberg has become notorious for challenging the common translation of huri, usually understood as the hot-bodied virgins with whom faithful Islamic men hope to be rewarded in paradise. According to Luxenberg, they arent wide-eyed virgins, but white grapes, “juicy fruits hanging down,” ready for picking (Sura 38:52). Its a vision of paradise similar to that of the fourth-century Christian poet, Ephrem the Syrian: “He who abstained from the wine here below, for him yearn the grapevines of Paradise. Each of them extends him a drooping cluster.”

That reference to Ephrem is not accidental, for Luxenberg argues that the Quran derives from a Syriac Christian lectionary. Again, the evidence is hiding in plain sight. It has become commonplace among scholars of Islam to recognize that the word Quran means lectionarium, but few draw the controversial conclusion: “If Koran . . . really means lectionary, then one can assume that the Koran intended itself first of all to be understood as nothing more than a liturgical book with selected texts from the Scriptures (the Old and New Testament) and not at all as a substitute for the Scriptures . . . as an independent Scripture.”

Even more astounding is this challenge to historical conventional wisdom which, if true, would be very inconvenient for Muslims.

Other early Islamic texts support the notion that Islam emerged not as a new religion but as a novel development within a Syriac Christian milieu. In his contribution to Hidden Origins, Luxenberg applies his method to the inscription on the Dome of the Rock, which seems to contain a straightforward Islamic confession: “There is no god but God alone . . . Mohammed the servant of God and messenger.” Luxenberg points out that Mohammed, usually understood as a proper name, means “exalted be” or “praised be,” and also notes that Syriac Christians, who were skeptical of the Nicene doctrine of Jesus divine sonship, preferred Isaiah's title “Servant” for Jesus. He contends that the inscription should read: “There is no god but God alone . . . Praised be the servant of God and his messenger.” This makes better sense of the sequel, which explicitly identifies “Messiah Jesus, son of Mary” as “the messenger of God and his Word.” An inscription about Jesus was later reinterpreted as a confession of a different faith entirely.

Syriac Christians were notorious for embracing heretical ideas, most notably Monophysitism and Nestorianism. The influence of the latter on the development of Islam is well documented.

Perhaps the most accurate way to describe Islam, from an orthodox Christian perspective, is that it is a heresy of a heresy--a truth carried to the extreme, with disastrously extreme consequences.

Robertson and Wallis: The two faces of Manichaeism

For the second time in two days, the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) has posted an essay on the perils of marrying religious convictions with political parties. Yesterday's piece by Addie Darling was a critique of the radical individualism which is foundational to both major American political parties but counter to traditional Christian beliefs. Today's offering from Keith Pavlischek is mostly a summary review of David Swarz's book, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism. However, Pavlischek makes a significant, although by no means unique, observation about the two men who have become, respectively, the faces of the "Evangelical Right" and the "Evangelical Left."

Just as no history of the Evangelical Right could be written without telling the story of Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition and the “700 Club,” no history of the Evangelical Left can be written without telling the story of Jim Wallis and his People's Christian Coalition/Post-American/Sojourners Community and Sojourners Magazine. In Moral Majority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism David Swartz takes up Wallis' story in the third chapter titled, "Jim Wallis and Vietnam."

My own long-held view of Robertson and Wallis is that they both are the prime examples from the starboard and port side of the political spectrum respectively of what Mark Noll called the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The political views of both can fairly be described as Manichean and at times downright kooky. Robertson flirted with crackpot conspiracy theories hatched in the fever swamps of the John Bircher right, while Wallis and his comrades embraced conspiracy theories hatched by the New Left. "Drinking deep from the wells of revisionist history and New Left sociology," Swartz reports, "evangelical radicals eyed conspiracy at the highest levels of the United States Government." I would go so far as to suggest that if a young evangelical wants to learn how not to engage in political and public life, they should study the activism of Robertson and Wallis. Swartz, however, seems generally sympathetic to Wallis and Sojourners, but in simply telling his story, Wallis' Manichean view of politics is readily apparent.

Manachaeism, an ancient Gnostic heresy which sprinkled Christianity in with a plethora of ancient pagan religions, is an apt description of the thinking of Robertson and Wallis. American evangelicalism, be it of a "left-wing" or "right-wing" flavor, has always flirted with a Gnostic dualism that keeps it at arm's length from historic Christian orthodoxy. Theologically, this has manifested itself in the novelty of dispensational pre-millennialism and the escapist fantasy of the "pre-tribulation rapture." Politically, it has produced flamboyant and outspoken activists on both sides of the aisle who have proven, in the long run, to be all bark and no bite.

Tuesday afternoon heresy roundup

Around the web today, there are several in-depth articles about some popular heretics and persistent heresies you might want to check out.

Salon has a devastating critique of the narcissistic feel-good "theology" of Joel Osteen.

It’s a curiously childlike vision of faith — a point driven home in a homily offered up by Joel’s wife, Victoria, who serves as a kind of co-pastor of the separate domestic sphere at the couple’s revival meetings. When she finds herself assailed by cares, anxieties and negative thoughts, Victoria reported, “I visualize a bouquet of helium balloons in my hands, and I literally hold those balloons out and release them to the heavens … And as I release those balloons to Him, I say, ‘I may not have the power to change my circumstances, but God has that power to change our circumstances.’” In a later homily on the properties of unconditional love and forgiveness, Victoria delivered an extended gloss on what was apparently one of the few remotely traumatic moments in her suburban Texas upbringing — a time when, as a freshly licensed driver, she had taken out her dad’s car and negligently instructed a friend to roll down a passenger-side window that was malfunctioning, thereby breaking it once and for all. When she finally summoned the nerve to fess up to her dad, she found him to be disappointed but gloriously forgiving; he “didn’t judge my future from that one mistake” — and neither will the indulgent dad of the Osteen heavens. “You may not have been shown unconditional love in your life,” Victoria announced, “but God loves you unconditionally.” The problem, of course, is that even those of us who did survive unhappy childhoods are no longer 16 — and as a result, we need a God who can meet the challenges of the new responsibilities we’ve taken on as we’ve matured, not a figure of undifferentiated sentiment, handing our forgiveness and love like lottery tickets. 

The other childlike quality of the Lakewood account of divine grace has to do with the past — which, together with negative thinking, represents the closest thing to evil in the Osteen’s scheme of salvation. The past is bad because it mires believers in remembered hurts and slights, and thereby obstructs God’s grander design for their lives. “When we hold on to the past, when we don’t go to God, that just puts more baggage in our suitcases,” Victoria exhorted, in a not-altogether-wieldy metaphor.

This spiritual hostility to the past was an all too frequent refrain in the event’s musical selections — a monotonous offering of anthemic, bombastic Christian rock, all composed without the benefit of a single minor chord or any discernible melody. “I’m moving forward,” went the lyrics to one of these intra-sermon studies in Journey-esque hymnody. “I’m not going back / I’m moving ahead / I’m here to declare to you that the past is over.” An American idol contestant named Danny Gokey also offered testimony about how the Osteens had helped him conquer his depression in the wake of the untimely passing of his wife. Gokey then performed a Christian rock number of his own, “My Best Days Are Ahead of Me,” which seemed to make short work of his once-debilitating grief: “I don’t get lost in the past or get stuck in some sad memories,” he sang, rather creepily; the song’s bridge announced that “Age isn’t nothing but a number,” and then resolved on a Successories-style upgrade of a well-known Army recruiting slogan: “If I keep getting better / I can be anything I want to be.”

There’s a term from the psychiatric clinics that neatly captures the outlook of someone possessed of grandiose fantasies about the imperial reach of the self, and a principled refusal to acknowledge anything poised to diminish such fantasies — such as the passage of time. That term is “narcissistic personality disorder,” and it does nothing to detract from the positive features of the Osteen gospel — the injunctions to persevere in the face of adversity, or the appeals for donations to World Vision — to note that this is a system of faith tailor-made to sustain narcissistic delusion. To grasp the overweening self-absorption of the Osteen faith, one need look no further than the frequent recourse Osteen makes to his own success story in sealing the case for God’s providential plan for the believer’s own life. Now, unlike other well-known evangelists, Osteen can’t lay much claim to a hardscrabble Horatio Alger-style life story. His 1920s forebear in Pentecostal media preaching, Aimee Semple McPherson, was a single-mother missionary before coming into fame and fortune as an evangelical celebrity in the Radio Age; Billy Graham was the son of a poor North Carolina dairy farmer. Osteen, by contrast, was a second-generation evangelical leader, who’d been working as a TV producer for his father John Osteen’s growing ministry before he succeeded to the elder Osteen’s pulpit after his father’s death. His personal biography tracks closer to fellow Pentecostal TV preacher Pat Robertson’s background: Robertson was the son of a U.S. senator before finding his own adult spiritual calling.

Meanwhile, in an article that's actually been up for about a year but is making the rounds of the social networks today, Fr. John A. Peck of Preacher's Institute delves into the real origins of "rapture" theology.

The doctrine – called futurism – which would later become ‘the rapture’ originated and was submitted by Francisco Ribera in 1585. His Apocalyptic Commentary was on the grand points of Babylon and the Anti-Christ which are now known as the rapture doctrine. Ribera’s published work was called “In Sacram Beati Ionnis Apostoli & Evangelistate Apocoalypsin Commentari” (Lugduni 1593). You can still find these writings in the Bodleian Library in Oxford England. The work was considered flawed and faulty, and was ordered buried in the Church archives, out of sight, by the pope himself.

Unfortunately, over 200 years later a librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the name of S. R. Maitland (1792-1866) was appointed to be the Keeper of the Manuscripts at Lambeth Palace, in London, England. In his duties, Dr. Maitland came across Francisco Ribera’s rapture theology and he had it republished for the sake of interest in early 1826 with follow ups in 1829 and 1830.

This was spurred along with the Oxford Tracts that were published in 1833 to try and deprotestantize the Church of England. John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) (A Leader of the Plymouth Brethren) became a follower of S.R. Maitland’s prophetic endeavors and was persuaded. Darby’s influence in the seminaries of Europe combined with 7 tours of the United States changed the eschatological view of the ministers which had the trickle down effect into the churches. 

Another contributor to the rapture ideology came through Emmanuel Lacunza (1731-1801), a Jesuit priest from Chile. Lacunza wrote the “Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty” around 1791. It was later published in London in 1827. The book was attributed to a fictitious author name Rabbi Juan Josafat BenEzra. 

Edward Irving (1792-1834) contended that it was the work of a converted Jew and proved that even the Jewish scholars embraced a pre-tribulation rapture line of thought. It wasn’t long until he had persuaded others to follow his line of thought which gave birth to the Irvingites. However, when chaotic disturbances arose in Irving’s services during the manifestations of these “gifts”, the Church of Scotland took action, dismissing Irving from his position as minister in 1832.

In 1830 during one of Irving’s sessions before his dismissal, a young Scottish girl, named Margaret MacDonald, fell into a trance. After several hours of “vision” and “prophesying” she revealed that Christ’s return would occur in two phases, not just one. Christ would first come visibly to only the righteous, then He would come a second time to execute wrath on the unrighteous in the nations. This rapture was promoted by Irving claiming he, too, had heard a voice from heaven commanding him to teach it. In March 1830, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, 15 year old Margaret McDonald made claim of her visions. Robert Norton published Margaret’s visions and prophecies in a book entitled, “The Restoration of Apostles and Prophets in the Catholic Apostolic Church” (London, 1861).

The ultimate result of Irving’s dismissal was the formation of the Catholic Apostolic Church, which still exists until this day. Irving’s movement grew and became the basis of modern day pentecostalism.

There is good evidence that John Nelson Darby, the father of modern dispensationalism, visited Margaret Macdonald in her home during her ecstatic episodes. He began to teach the rapture as a result, provided the idea with theological underpinings necessary for it to be considered legitimate, and his teachings were embraced by the Plymouth Brethren.
Darby’s teachings were embraced radically by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921). Scofield adopted Darby’s (Ribera’s) school of prophetic thought into the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 which was heralded at that time as the “book of books”, and continues to legitimize this false teaching in the eyes of many protestants.

A wrestling church is a living church

Almost from its inception, the church faced the challenge of false teachings and "different" gospels. We see this in Galatia, where Paul chastises the congregation for "so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). There is no other true gospel, as Paul makes clear, but some, perhaps all, of the Galatians, have fallen prey to the nefarious deception of false teachers who have beguiled them into believing something other than the truth. Paul is determined that his beloved fellow believers in Galatia not be led astray so quickly. Hence, the necessity of his letter and his exposition on the truth of the only gospel, that of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

Herman Sasse (1895 - 1976) saw the church wrestling for truth and constantly praying for the Lord's protection against falsehood as a sign, not of a dying, but of a living church. A church not wrestling with questions of truth and falsehood is, in his view, "always in danger of dying."

The Apostle of Love warns Christians: "Believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world." Although John's Gospel and Epistles constantly set forth the love of one's fellow believers as the criterion for true faith and genuine Christianity, his criterion for erroneous faith and heresy is a dogmatic statement: "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus is come in the flesh, is not of God and this is the spirit of the Antichrist." In other words, contrary to all expectation, the correct teaching of the Incarnation appears as the touchstone according to which true doctrine is distinguished from false, the church from heresy. It was so at the beginning of the church's history; it shall continue so until the light of eternal truth shall enlighten us all. Of those times in which the life of the church was not very much disturbed by concern for pure teaching and by alarm concerning false teaching, it may be said that they do not belong to the great ages of the church. On the contrary, the church is always in danger of dying when it ceases to wrestle for truth and to pray that the Lord may guard it against the devil's wiles and false teaching.

A wrestling church, then, is a living church. The enemy is always eager to engage in battle. In guarding the great deposit of faith, the church must be ever vigilant.

From the "They think we still care" file

In one of the more memorable scenes from the movie Major League, aging catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) walks in on a dinner party hosted by his ex-girlfriend and her fiance. Urged to stay despite the awkwardness of the situation, Jake introduces himself and says he is a player for the Indians. "In Cleveland?" asks one of the dinner guests. "I didn't know they still had a team."

I recall that scene every time I come across some stray piece of news about some entity that long ago ceased to have any relevance and was not particularly significant even in its heyday. Such an entity is the Jesus Seminar, a consortium of "biblical scholars" so obscure that those of us who, upon reading this article by Jeff Walton, have been duly notified of its continued existence had, first, to be reminded that it had ever existed at all. 

Yes, I do recall that marvelous little book, The Five Gospels, in which this esteemed collection of biblical brainiacs presented their scholarly "findings" based on the cutting edge research and hermeneutical methodologies of the late nineteenth century. That was two, maybe three, decades ago (the late twentieth century) and it provided ample fodder for late night conversations among insomniac seminary students at the time. Most of us, however, have long since forgotten about these luminaries of the literati. The real world of parish life is a far more edifying pursuit.

Unfortunately, so it seems, the Jesus Seminar is forgotten, but not gone. Their message today is as fresh as yesterday's mildew on the water-stained pages of a first edition printing of Schleiermacher's Reden über die Religion.

Early Christianity was an oral culture launched by an illiterate Jesus Christ, according to two liberal New Testament scholars who spoke recently at a Jesus Seminar event in Washington, D.C.

The claim was one of several bold assertions made during a recent March workshop in which the prevalence of Evangelical Christianity was bemoaned and scripture was “reimagined” from a feminist perspective. The Salem, Oregon-based Jesus Seminar dismisses scripture’s historicity and draws from sources outside of the Biblical canon in order to produce what they claim to be a more authentic view of Jesus than the church teaches.

Bernard Brandon Scott of Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Joanna Dewey, a professor emerita of Biblical Studies at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, argued that a later move into manuscripts minimalized the role of women in the early church.

“Early Christianity was an oral culture based on oral authority,” Dewey claimed, adding that manuscripts were “inherently male” and eliminated women, while oral story kept them in.

Reimagining Mark

During one session of her presentation, Dewey donned a head covering and dramatically sought to “re-imagine” a female-centered telling of Mark’s gospel, performing as an imaginary late first century woman.

“I think something like this could have happened,” Dewey proposed, titling her performance “the Gospel of Ruth.”

The Episcopal seminary professor described such a “reimagining” of Mark’s gospel as an important step in countering alleged sexist distortion of Biblical history. Women, Dewey argued, would be at center, rather than periphery, of any actual gospel events.

Scott agreed, asserting that “These days, unless you are a right-wing conservative, a feminist reading of the Bible is typical.”

An Illiterate Christ

Dewey was firm in her assertion that Jesus was illiterate. Refuting the Luke chapter 4 account of Christ reading in the synagogue as an invention of the gospel writer, Dewey claimed it was “because he couldn’t imagine Jesus as illiterate.”

The seminary professor claimed that a scroll of Isaiah would have been too expensive for the Nazareth synagogue, and the story manufactured. Dewey did not address Jesus writing on the ground in John chapter 8, or other examples of his literacy.

“Jesus did not know how to read and write, there was no reason to,” Dewey flatly declared, adding that while modern people take literacy for granted, “this was not true in antiquity.” Dewey offered that the only group among whom literacy was the norm at the time was the elite, with letters orally dictated and then performed before community.

Scott mostly agreed, stating that no more than 10 percent of the urban population was literate during the time period, and that only 2-3 percent of the rural population was literate. The two speakers differed on whether or not Jesus spoke Greek, with Dewey arguing it was less likely, while Scott countered his observation that lower classes quickly learned the language of dominant culture, and Jesus’ peers would have been no different.

Imperial Images

While Scott and Dewey agreed on Jesus’ alleged illiteracy, Scott argued that widely understood images pervaded early Christian society. Citing early images of Christ portrayed as Roman Centurion, Praetorian Guard and lastly in the clothing of an Emperor, his hand lifted in imperial gesture, Scott stated that early Christianity was juxtaposed with imperial image.

Pointing to a recurring image in some Roman tombs of a woman praying, Scott identified those tombs as Christian, and the woman as a pre-Constantinian Christian image paired with Christ as a shepherd youth. While this female praying form was not mentioned in writing, Scott asserted it was “all over artwork” and the images would later be displaced with Christ portrayed as an emperor.

Sweeping claims by Scott and Dewey, including an assertion that monastics rejected episcopal authority, went mostly unchallenged during the workshop at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Scott at one point suggested to the audience of 40 mostly elderly participants to “make up your own canon” of scripture.

“I would trade the book of Revelation for Hamlet any day,” Scott announced, adding that he would swap the Pastoral Epistles for any two Emily Dickinson poems. “We’d be way better off.”

The United Church of Christ layperson also categorized Revelation as the book of “a left-wing bomb thrower” violently reacting against the violence of Rome.

No Love Lost on Evangelicals

Both Scott and Dewey shared their dismay at the continued worldwide spread of Evangelical Christianity and the failure of liberal religious thought to gain widespread traction. Both of the Jesus Seminar speakers complained that the prevalence of evangelicalism led to assumptions that it is the only viewpoint of Christianity, resulting in either adherence to evangelical belief or a rejection of Christianity altogether.

Mainline Protestants also earned Dewey’s scorn, as the retired Episcopal seminary professor expressed frustration at “pressure still there to preach [Bible] stories as true.”

“We’re not just talking about Evangelicals – but liberal, east coast Episcopalians,” Dewey fumed. Scott agreed, sharing that he no longer revealed to fellow airplane passengers that he was a New Testament scholar out of frustration with preconceived notions he encountered.

“We have lost the public battle for what it [scripture] means, and that’s unfortunate,” appraised Scott, with Dewey adding that the church was going through a “profoundly anti-intellectual” period.

The über stupidity of these "scholars" is eclipsed only by their slavish adherence to a feminized pseudo-hermeneutic which makes the "colored bead" voting system of the Seminar's early years seem almost respectable. David Fischer eviscerates the arguments of Scott and Dewey with a few simple facts of history.

1) Christianity grew directly out of Judaism. Judaism was, indisputably, a “manuscript culture,” one that took great pains to pass down the revelation of God and its rabbinic interpretation in written form. That doesn’t mean there weren’t oral elements, of course (that’s where most if not all of the Talmud comes from), but that by Jesus’s day Judaism was based on the written word. So how could Jesus have been taken seriously as a teacher and preacher if He wasn’t familiar with the written tradition of His faith?

2) Given the extraordinary care that was taken to insure that the written tradition was properly maintained, why should we think that there was some kind of opposition between the two in the early church?

3) Why was writing “inherently male,” other than because it happens to fit the presuppositions and ideology of the academic?

His whole critique is well worth your time.

Phelps Family Chapel targets Paterno funeral

Here they come again. That handful of sons, daughters, nephews, and and long lost cousins that collectively constitute the Fred Phelps Family Chapel, a.k.a. Westboro Baptist Church, is gearing up for another funeral protest. According to the Religion News Blog, the family spokesdaughter has tweeted out the marching orders.

The Westboro Baptist Church — a hate group masquerading as a Christian church — has announced its next publicity seeking opportunity.

The hatemongers, whose despicable teachings and practices make it theologically a cult of Christianity say the group will picket the funeral of Joe Paterno.

The legendary college football coach died from lung cancer last Sunday.

“Joe Paterno is dead. WBC will picket his funeral,” Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro’s leader Pastor Fred Phelps, wrote on Twitter. “He’s in hell. Don’t partake of your neighbor’s sin!”

I noted some time back that this "cult of Christianity" has a rather conspicuous aversion to invoking the name of Jesus. Recently, Greg Griffith noted the same aversion within another "cult of Christianity" which views homosexuality in a decidedly different light. This is neither ironic nor coincidental. One of the most distinguishing characteristics of any cult, regardless of its theological bent, is a denial of the Incarnation. An aberration that relies on a preponderance of words has no use for the Word made flesh.

Timothy Tennent on the Mormon question

Timothy Tennent, president of Asbury Theological Seminary, offers a thoughtful response to the question of Mormonism and Christianity, which has recently taken on presidential proportions.

This past week there was a huge political flap about a Baptist minister named Robert Jeffries over his claim that Mormonism is a cult and that Mitt Romney should not be considered a Christian. The remark set off a firestorm because this was the ground for encouraging people to not vote for Mitt Romney. All of the major GOP rivals for the nomination immediately released statements that they regarded Romney, and fellow Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints members, as Christians and that religion should not be an issue in the GOP nomination.

My own view is that whether a candidate is a Christian or not is only one of a myriad of considerations which one must weigh in an overall decision to vote for or against a candidate. I would never say that someone being a Christian carries no political weight for me at all. However, I would also not say that someone being a Christian or not carries the entire weight in my decision.

The more interesting part of the discussion has to do with whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints should be considered a cult or just another denomination or branch of Christianity such as Methodism, Lutheranism or, for that matter, Eastern Orthodoxy. What makes all the diversity of denominations or branches of global Christianity share a “family resemblance” despite our differences is that we are all built on a common confession rooted in the Council of Nicea and, in particular, the Nicene Creed. The Nicene affirmation is the ground of unity upon which the entire global church is built. This is why it is known as an historic, ecumenical creed. It is, of course, true that there are dozens of churches (especially those who identify with fundamentalism) which boldly proclaim that “we have no creed but the Bible” and would not recite the Nicene creed in their services. However, if you look carefully at their church covenants or statements of faith, they fully resonate with Nicea. Furthermore, as Protestants, they trace their heritage back to movements which fully resonate with Nicea.

This is why Arianism back in the fourth century was declared a heresy or a “cult” at the Council of Nicea in 325 even though they ardently claimed to be Christians. They, like modern day Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, do not fall within the “family” of Christianity primarily because they rejected orthodox Christology. The Arian claim that “there was a time when he was not” is, of course, the same stumbling block which is fallen over by both Jehovah Witnesses’ and Mormons. The former (JW) is a closer version of Arianism (though JW deny the personality of the Holy Spirit which Arius accepted), whereas the latter (Mormons) is a more complex, nuanced view due to the insertion of the Book of Mormon (rather than merely the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses). Suffice it to say here, Mormons do not believe in the eternal pre-existence of the eternal second person of the Trinity. Mormons believe that He existed eternally only in the way that generic “matter” is viewed as eternal. Any movement that does not affirm the eternal pre-existence of the second person of the Trinity is sub-Christian, regardless how fervently they declare that Jesus is God and that He is the sole savior of the world. At root, Mormonism is about a man becoming God; Christianity is about God becoming a man. Thus, Mormonism has, quite rightly, not been considered a Christian movement.

James K.A. Smith on the new "evangelical" universalism

Old school universalism ("many roads lead to God") has pretty much worn out its welcome among the pantheon of heresies and heterodoxies. But, as James K.A. Smith observes, there is a new form of universalism now emerging (pun intended) and its adherents claim to be of the evangelical persuasion. Unlike their predecessors, these "evangelical universalists" have no objection to the unique claims of Jesus Christ. Their objection is to certain ideas of God which run counter to their "hope" and "imagination."

Let's attend to these two specific sorts of claims. I would note that both of these intuitions are fundamentally anthropocentric strategies--outcomes of what Charles Taylor (in A Secular Age) calls "the anthropocentric turn" in modernity. A couple of thoughts:

1) The "I-can't-imagine" strategy is fundamentally Feuerbachian: it is a hermeneutic of projection which begins from what I can conceive and then projects "upwards," as it were, to a conception of God. While this "imagining" might have absorbed some biblical themes of love and mercy, this absorption seems selective. More importantly, the "I-can't-imagine" argument seems inattentive to how much my imagination is shaped and limited by all kinds of cultural factors and sensibilities--including how I "imagine" the nature of love, etc. The "I-can't-imagine" argument makes man the measure of God, or at least seems to let the limits and constraints of "my" imagination trump the authority of Scripture and interpretation. I take it that discipleship means submitting even my imagination to the discipline of Scripture. (Indeed, could anything be more countercultural right now than Jonathan Edwards' radical theocentrism, with all its attendant scandals for our modern sensibilities?)

2) The "at-least-I-hope" strategy might seem less problematic. Doesn't it just name what all of us secretly desire? Indeed, wouldn't we be quite inhuman if we didn't hope in this way? (Then you get Winner's obnoxious suggestion that any of those who continue to affirm divine judgment are really trying to "guard heaven's gate," taking a certain delight in exclusion, as if they saw heaven as a country club. I won't dignify that with a response.)

But whence this hope? Can our hopes ever be wrong? Let's try an analogous example: I love my wife dearly. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and our marriage has been an incredible means of grace in my life. I can't imagine life without her; indeed, I don't want to imagine life without her. And I want to hope that we will share this intimacy as a husband and wife forever.

But then I run into this claim from Jesus: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven" (Matt. 22:30). Should I nonetheless hope that marriage endures in eternity? Should I profess that I can't know this (since Scripture seems to suggest otherwise), but nonetheless claim that somehow hoping it might be true is still faithful? Or should I submit even my hopes to discipline by the authority of Scripture?

The new universalism is not the old universalism. Fair enough. But those of us who reject even the new universalism aren't gleeful about it. We might even wish it were otherwise. But we also recognize that even our wishes, hopes, and desires need discipline.

Unfortunately, the one thing the "new universalists" have in common with the "old universalists" is an aversion to anything remotely resembling discipline. After all, if we're all going to end up in the same place in the hereafter, what's the point of fine tuning our lives in the here and now?

This will be my last post on Rob Bell

Yes, it was fun while it lasted but the time to move on from obsessive conversation about Rob Bell's pathetically sophomoric tome draws nigh. I have one final observation before getting on with the rest of my life.

As I noted before, Bell's basic argument is a straw man. Only a relative minority of believers (far less than the "staggering number" Bell claims) would frame the issue in terms of "a select few Christians [spending] forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better." But based upon this caricature, Bell proceeds to deconstruct the whole doctrine of hell while cleverly avoiding coming down on one side or the other concerning the question of universal salvation. His methodology of framing propositions in the form of an endless litany of questions may seem harmless and benign, but is, in fact, highly suggestive and ultimately perilous. We would do well to remember the first time such a technique was used.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3.1-3)

This is, literally, the oldest trick in the book. God never told Adam and Eve not to eat of any tree in the garden. Neither did he say anything about not touching the tree in the midst of the garden. But the serpent's intentional caricature ("Did God actually say . . ."), crafted to cast God in a negative light, precipitates Eve's unintentional caricature ("Don't touch the tree"), perverting a covenental relationship into a legalistic ritual. The end result, of course, is the descent of the whole human race into sin, brokenness, and separation from God.

In a similar vein, Bell's questions are often framed in such a way as to cast God in a negative light, presenting him as "cruel," "vindictive," and "a slave driver." Such a "God" exists only in the warped minds of a few backwoods fundamentalists. If that is the kind of "Christianity" Bell experienced in his younger days, it is good that he has been liberated from it. But by caricaturing the whole of Christian tradition based on his own bad experiences with a virulent deviation from it, he is only enslaving himself, and others, in something far worse.

No deference to the Deceiver

Paul asks the believers in Corinth to "bear with [him] in a little foolishness." But what he addresses is no laughing matter. False apostles preaching a false gospel about a false Jesus have infiltrated the ranks and Paul is "afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, [their] thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." He chastises the Corinthians for allowing such charlatans to come in among them and peddle there wares. They speak well. Their message is pleasing to the ears. But like the fruit of the forbidden tree, that message is deadly.

The Corinthians, like so many others down through the ages until the present, are easily deceived by appearances. The pleasantness of the fruit made the serpent's lies to Eve all the more enticing. So, too, the pleasantness of the "super-apostles" makes their false message all the more appealing. They are more skilled in the field of oratory than Paul. But their message lacks the substance of the true Gospel. They rely on the gullibility of the Corinthians to draw them into their deception. They exalt themselves by putting down Paul as an unskilled speaker. They deride him for not making a profit off of his preaching. What preacher worth his salt, after all, would not be entitled to his fair share?

Paul views as foolishness the idea that he needs to defend himself against these sideshow phonies. What, after all, do they have to offer other than self-exaltation and self-adulation? If the truth of their message is supposed to be self-evident, why do they have to be constantly deriding others who lack their speaking skills? Paul wants the Corinthians to see through this facade. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ." To a benighted mind, this is a dangerous thing. Lacking discernment, many can be led astray by Satan, who often "disguises himself as an angel of light," and "his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness."

Paul could see through the disguise. He urged the Corinthians to do the same. He did not mince words, as some are apt to do today. When dealing with Satanic deception, deference to a supposed sincerity is a dangerous mistake. The Deceiver must be confronted and his servants called out for the phonies they are.