The 10 most pressing issues for evangelical theology today

With a dash of hubris (why not, it's a Monday morning) - here are the issues on which I think evangelicals have some work to do. Not that individual evangelicals don't hold strongly to some of these - it is just that either the 'traditional' view is under challenge, or that there is a lack of consensus among evangelicals. This list is, like all lists, meant to provoke and challenge of course - it is meant (and I hope will be received!) in that spirit.


1 - scripture
How is inerrancy best to be understood and expressed - if indeed it is the most appropriate and useful word to express and uphold the highest possible commitment of the authority of scripture? Can we move beyond the use of the word as line in the sand and actually articulate what we mean by it in the midst of a post-biblical culture? Can evangelicals actually have a mature discussion about this? (I really like what The Gospel Coalition is doing with this, actually)

2 - God
Now that the 'openness of God' distraction has been overcome, there still seems to be a tension between the position known as 'classical theism' and the more 'biblical personalist' position. How are the attributes of God to be addressed, then, by the biblical Christian? Does classical theism help or hinder?

3 - election
Election is always a tough one. Double or single? Have new readings of Paul made a difference to what needs to be said about Israel? What is the purpose of the doctrine of election, dogmatically speaking?

4 - the atonement
Even between those who would agree that penal substitution is an indispensible part of the Bible's teaching on the atonement - what place does it have within the whole scope of the Bible's teaching? How does it relate to other elements?

5 - justification
The debate between Wright and Piper over imputation reveals some faultlines. Imputation seems a necessary corollory of an evangelical testimony to justification by faith. But what are its exegetical foundations? And will 'union with Christ' prove to be a more fruitful model to explain this teaching? (with much good work to come from Moore's own Con Campell)

6 - anthropology

I think theological anthropology is right at the missional cutting edge, and the more thinking evangelicals can do about it the better. That is not to fall prey to the temptation to collapse theology into anthropology, or to get distracted by all kinds of anthropologically interesting byways, but to give a full and rich account of the meaning and purpose of human life lived under the hand of the God who is mindful of man (to steal from Psalm 8).

7 - sin

Sin is a corollory of the doctrine of man... Once again it is a missionally urgent task to give an articulation of sin that is as full-orbed as we can make it. This is one instance where 'biblically faithful' and 'culturally aware' are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The mute incomprehension of our contemporaries as they hear contemporary preachers talk about sin highlights the problem... The answer is not in their hearts of course. The word of God is better than we think it is.

8 - philosophy & theology

Evangelicals seem genuinely undecided about this as a group. Is philosophy good, bad, or indifferent? A friend, or a foe? Is a philosophy-less theology simply naive? or is a philosophy in addition to theology a blasphemy? What have we to say about thinking?

9 - apologetics

A connected issue, then, is that of apologetics. Ought we to do apologetics at all? Many evangelicals have invested very heavily in apologetics. But to what end? Are the models of apologetics - evidentialist, presuppositionalist (does anyone actually understand what the heck presuppositionalist apologists are saying?) - enough for the needs of the day?

10 - church
Evangelicals have always prided themselves on being ecclesiology-lite. They have achieved far more in terms of ecumenical co-operation than other forms of Christianity as a result. Ecclesiology is secondary. However, there are numerous settings where this needs to be revisited, given the rapid realignment of denominations and the retreat of Christendom. So you see some pretty heavy church-speak from evangelicals these days: the Nine Marks ministry says some pretty particular things ecclesiology-wise. The Federal Vision movement is likewise (though very different) heavy on sacraments and covenant/church talk. This is not an isolated trend.

11 - hermeneutics
I don't mean hermeneutics in the sense of perspectival readings etc, but in the sense of asking the question: what makes the bible a unity? In what does a richly theological reading of Scripture consist? There are some very exciting developments on this front, building on the work of a previous generation - biblical scholars now collaborating with theologians on the matter of scriptural interpretation.

Is Jensenism actually Christian?

“NO SUCH THING” - A Response to an article in Quadrant by James Franklin. (Dec 2004)

Jim replied to me here.

A debate ensued on the Sydney Anglican Website

Jim went ahead to publish the article in a book of essays. I should hasten to add that since this correspondence, I have met James Franklin, who is a remarkable fellow and quite a gentleman. I still maintain that his article was misguided.

In December’s Quadrant James Franklin asked “Is Jensenism compatible with Christianity?” and claimed of Sydney Anglicans that they “fear the gospels, for the gospel message is inconvenient”. This brand of “narrow” “Bible-based” Christianity pits Paul against Jesus, he says; engages in selective reading of the Bible; and creates “an inward-looking and recent sect.”
Professor Franklin’s ungentlemanly squib does contain issues of substance, but they are concealed beneath an unfortunate tone and by his caricature of his targets. It is factually inaccurate, theologically mistaken, and biblically simplistic. Many of his objections have been standard responses to Protestantism since the sixteenth century. In this response, I will set aside Franklin’s cheap shots and focus on what I see to be the major points of contention.

There is no such thing as “Jensenism”. What Franklin describes of his opponents is true of the classic Protestant orthodoxy of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer. His quarrel is really with them. These thinkers saw themselves as cleaning the scholastic and Aristotelian dust from the face of the Christian tradition. They returned, like the humanist-trained scholars they were, ad fontes: to the sources of Christianity, to the Scriptures in the Hebrew and the Greek, and to the Church Fathers, though not uncritically. Especially, Luther and Calvin saw themselves as the heirs of the great Augustine of Hippo.

It was Augustine’s reading of God’s grace and human nature that they recaptured, in the face of the sentimentality of much medieval piety. Which takes us to the first issue of substance in Franklin’s piece: the human capacity to please God. The British monk Pelagius, spiritual guru of the Roman elite, claimed that human nature was basically good, if prone to stray. In the Pelagian scheme, Jesus Christ was offered by God as a model to guide human striving in decency.
It was a theologically preposterous and anthropologically naïve teaching; and Augustine proved decisively that true Christianity has a different tale to tell. In his time, Luther won an astonishing intellectual victory over the mighty humanist Erasmus on precisely this issue: the human will is not “free”, but rather bound in a prison of its own construction. And this is not merely a Pauline teaching: it was the teaching of Jesus himself that he had come to “give his life as a ransom for many”, implying that what people need is not moral guidance, but liberation from bondage.

Jesus encountered people who could not present a skerrick of moral decency on their own behalf. They were the corrupt and the immoral; the untrustworthy and the greedy: and they knew it. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, retold by Luke, is a reflection on those encounters. The story provides a typical example of Jesus’ great reversal of human expectations: it is not the upright and superior Pharisee, confident in his tribal religion, who goes to his home at peace with his God - “justified’ - but the shame-faced and desperate Tax Collector.

That human sin is an intractable problem is even the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount (which Franklin cites as an example of Christ’s moralism). When Jesus says “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”, he is echoing the words found in Isaiah 40: “Comfort, comfort my people…”. Why are they to be comforted? Not because they are the bereaved, but because they are the repentant. The punishment of exile has ended, and ancient Israel, in sorrow for their sins, are to be offered divine comfort. When Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers”, he has primarily in view those who seek peace with God – again picking up a theme from the second half of Isaiah’s book. (Franklin seems ignorant of the literary and historical context at this point – and yet he accuses his opponents of this!)

This teaching is no mere abstraction or fine point of doctrine: it powerfully explains the reality of human experience. History tells us that acts of human decency and generosity have been the exception rather than the rule; and that human beings are caught in an inexplicable web of which we are all the victims and the perpetrators. The Holocaust illustrates well the darkness of the human soul. If humane education or religious instruction were enough, surely Nazism would never have flourished among the Germans, of all people. It is dangerous to forget that even the best of us is capable of complicity in a great evil. This is indeed an “inconvenient” message.

Now, it is possible to dispute this reading of human nature, as Franklin does; but orthodox Christianity, following the Hebrew Bible, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the writings of Paul, has rejected Pelagianism and its variants as unorthodox. Franklin can’t have it both ways. He cannot both claim that the Jensens are guilty of diverging from the main stream of Christianity and criticize them for holding to utterly orthodox teaching. Franklin’s Jesus is not the Jesus of the gospels or of orthodox Christianity; he is the rather limp, blond moralist of sentimental portraiture, whose message is not “good news” at all, since we human beings are unable to accomplish what he taught. Franklin’s Jesus is a threat to no-one; he challenges nothing. He affirms the smugness of the Pharisee.

But what we have said so far about humanity is merely the gloom in which the light of the world shines all the more: “the people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Franklin writes: “the most unsavoury aspect of the Jensenites’ distortion of the simple message of Jesus is its concentration on sin and guilt without a compensating sense of human worth.” This is in its turn a gross and unfair distortion not borne out by any fair reading of his opponents. Sin and guilt are but the shadows cast by the cross of Jesus Christ, who died to reconcile God and people. The cross is a sign of how dire our state is; but it is also a sign of the profundity of divine love for us – which is more than a vague “compensating sense of human worth”, whatever that is: it is, in fact, a mighty demonstration of the love of God for women and men. A Christianity without either aspect is no Christianity at all. Franklin’s Christianity appears to be all Christmas and no Easter.

And to respond to this is faith. Franklin offers a lazy caricature of the Protestant understanding of faith: “…what God wants is belief in certain propositions about Jesus and salvation, and without that belief good actions are not pleasing to God.” Faith is not assent to doctrine: faith is trust in the promises of God. It is the response that Jesus himself preached for when he declared “the Kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news.” That human beings are justified by faith alone – a central Reformation teaching rooted in turn in the teachings of Jesus and of Paul – is to remove grounds for any ranking of human beings on the basis of alleged religious, racial or moral superiority.

Franklin contests the Protestant reliance on “Scripture alone”: only, he has no idea what it means, declaring that it means there is no place for the tradition of the Church. This was not and is not what this is taken to mean. “Scripture alone” is a slogan about ultimate authority. The Reformers never excluded Church tradition from consideration, as anyone who has read them knows. But Scripture over-ruled the Church and its traditions: later developments, like compulsory clerical celibacy, could be abandoned as inauthentic. More importantly, the corruptions of the Church could be challenged and reformed from the standpoint of the teachings of Christ and his apostles contained in the Bible. To put the Church over Scripture is to invite ecclesiastical triumphalism.

This was in fact an ancient belief: Jesus’ regard for the authority of the Jewish scriptures was in turn ascribed to his teachings and to the teaching of his apostles. The communities begun by Jesus were formed around his teachings, as Israel had gathered around – and under - the Torah; it is adherence to those teachings that defines them as his communities. A fundamental contradiction in Franklin’s account is that he wants to contest the status of the Bible for Christianity and then argue about its contents. Why should he care?

Franklin’s attempt to belittle orthodox Protestantism ultimately fails, because he has not given it a fair and dispassionate hearing. He fails in his attempt to drive a wedge between “Sydney Anglicans” and the teachings of Jesus. Ultimately, though, whether “Jensenism” is given a fair hearing or not is of small consequence: what matters is whether the true message of Jesus, the crucified and risen Christ, is heard.

James K.A. Smith on evangelicalism

James Smith has an interesting, though I think debateable, post over at the Immanent Frame. He claims to be offering a theological reason why a sociological definition of evangelicalism should be prefered.

The argument amounts to:

1) theological definitions of evangelicalism can be too narrow (so, emphasise the division with Catholics).

2) theological definitions can be too broad (so, include Pentecostals). Smith talks of 'the demographic sleight of hand that enfolds Pentecostals, charismatics, and the explosion of “world Christianity” under the label “evangelical.” '

To which I say, 'well, perhaps, but neither of these constitutes an argument against the use of the term evangelical as a theological definition per se. If some people want to misuse the term then it is certainly worth discussing. But it just doesn't follow at all that the whole business of theological definition should be given up as a bad job. (This, by the way, is what Smith says is a 'theological argument' in favour of a sociological definition...)

Smith's suggestion is that 'evangelical should be seen to represent a tone. So, he says:

'evangelicalism represents a contingent style, a sort of accent within Christendom'. Yet, when he describes this accent or tone, Smith is (it seems to me) full of contempt for it:

It is a distinctly modern, post-Reformation configuration of Christian discipleship that engendered practices and institutions which closely mirrored the development of what Charles Taylor describes as “the modern social imaginary”—a focus on individual salvation, a valorization of the autonomy of the local congregation, an entrepreneurial spirit that fueled ambitious programs of church and parachurch expansion, a kind of Christian materialism that generated its own markets, and other distinctive features.

In effect, Smith denudes evangelicalism of its theology and reduces it to a set of practices... which is the way all sorts of post-liberals are reading doctrine/theology these days...and why so many young American Protestant thinkers have recently become Roman Catholics perhaps.

There's more to say, but enough for now.

An Evangelical Manifesto

H/T to Craig for this: a group of prominent Evangelical leaders in the US have released this statement, entitled 'An Evangelical Manifesto'. It is not brief - 7,000+ words - but, by golly, it is fascinating. It is an attempt to grab back Evangelical identity from its political uses in the US, and to distinguish Evangelicalism from fundamentalism. Here's a bit to chew on:

...the Evangelical message, "good news" by definition, is overwhelmingly positive, and always positive before it is negative. There is an enormous theological and cultural importance to the power of No, especially in a day when Everything is permitted and It is forbidden to forbid. Just as Jesus did, Evangelicals sometimes have to make strong judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil. But first and foremost we Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything. The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News of welcome, forgiveness, grace, and liberation from law and legalism. It is a colossal Yes to life and human aspirations, and an emphatic No only to what contradicts our true destiny as human beings made in the image of God.

There's much more, too. It needs thinking about and digesting.
Notable names amongst the signatories include Miroslav Volf, Kevin Vanhoozer, Darrell Bock, Leighton Ford, Walter Kaiser and Alvin Plantinga.

Gender-neutral language

There has been some discussion recently at Sydney Anglicans about gender-neutral or inclusive language and bible translation. Some are holding out, saying that the tide of trendy political correctness is turning, and that we should hold on to the use of 'men' to mean 'humankind'. Certainly, the structure of the English language makes this more convenient.

I remember thinking this through some years ago. What changed it all for me was reading an early 1970s study (so pre-the 'gender neutral language revolution' of the 1980s) that suggested that indeed a majority of women felt excluded when gender-exclusive language was used. Suffice it to say, I haven't been able to track that study down this morning... I read originally in (shock, horror) a book. Remember them?

Since much gender exclusive language is unneccessary to make the meaning absolutely clear, and since I don't wish to give offence except over the gospel (which is offensive enough and does need my offensive behaviour to add to it) I don't think obliging at this point is too much to ask. Indeed, it may even be a good thing: after all, Christians have led the way since the beginning in treating and accepting women as fully human. Shame we have to drag the chain now. And if many, many women report that they feel excluded by such language (and probably the ones NOT in church, so clergymen don't go off and ask your wives!) then it seems important to make a change. True, I went to uni in the late (as opposed to early) 80s and 90s when this was a cause in a way it isn't today, perhaps. But I - even I - find it embarassing and jarring and distracting when I hear an old 1978 NIV passage read out that translates anthropos as 'men' or adds a 'man' when it is unnecessary.

Especially, I feel that this is imperative for those of us who hold more complementarian positions on women's ministry. The accusation is always going to come that this theological position is just a mask for sexism. If it isn't, then wherever genuine sexism is present we need to eradicate it and to show that we are serious about it. This isn't caving in to the culture anymore than having proper procedures for dealing with child abuse is caving in to the culture... don't you think?

[Added later] - It seems to me there are different levels of acceptability for gendered language. You can slip in an occassional 'man' or 'mankind' (meaning 'the human race') and no-one seems to mind too much, especially if you are quoting ('one giant leap for mankind'). But using the male pronoun to represent both is much less acceptable - though a nice alternative to the gendered pronoun in English is harder to find.

The collapse of the evangelical consensus?

One real sign that a movement is in trouble is when it starts to dissolve in self-analysis. Certainly, you would have to say that applies to evangelicalism, a movement which is in danger of disappearing into its own navel at an alarming rate. The sheer volume of books on the subject tells its own story; not to mention the twee 'river, canal, rapids' descriptions (I mean, who wants to be a 'canal' evangelical?) .

So, by way of contributing to the problem perhaps, I penned this thought about contemporary evangelicalism, which seems to me a house divided - at least in the UK.

The common diagnosis of the problem is that, in the 60s, there were three or four leaders of the evangelical movement around whom we all (or our spiritual parents) gathered - Stott, Lloyd-Jones, perhaps Packer. Since then diversity and infighting has been the rule - disputes over charismatic gifts, women in ministry, the new perspective, social action and so on have meant that the movement has no clear common ground anymore. There seems to me to be a significant erosion of what evangelicals used to hold as points of unity: the atonement, the bible, the priority of evangelism/conversion, justification by faith, the work of the Spirit in sanctification of the believer, and so on. Reasserting these, and shouting them more loudly has been the strategy of some, but it isn't working to unify

The various doctrinal bases no longer provide the rallying point that they used to, because it is the question of emphasis and additions to these that is at issue. If evangelicals are going to find a common ground again, it seems to me that they will have to be exclusive as well as inclusive at some point. Which is to say, saying what you are means at some point saying what you are not, too.

Now, I ran this by a UK evangelical leader, and he said I had it completely wrong, and that the movement was in good shape, relatively. Shows what I know...

The Ugley Vicar: What’s really wrong with English Conservative Evangelicalism

This is a fascinating insiders critique of uk Conservative evangelicalism

here

Having said that he also has a go at the 'open' evangelicals too,

here

It is time to ask open evangelicals whether blood is thicker than water... if you look at the Fulcrum site (on which there is much GREAT material) you get the impression that the only enemies of the gospel in the C of E are the conservative evangelicals. Really.

Peter Jensen: Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical

A series recently given by the Archbishop of Sydney to a lay audience:



Why_I_am_Protestant

Why_I_am_Reformed

Why_I_am_Evangelical

The scattered gathering

Augustine in The City of God writes:

Scripture tells us that Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, as a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the saints is up above, although it produces citizens here below, and in their persons the City is on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom comes. At the time it will assemble all those citizens as they rise again in their bodies; and they will be given the promised kingdom, where with their Prince, ‘the king of ages’, they will reign, world without end. (XV.1)

The church is an eschatologically gathered polis, in other words. In the book of Acts, the scattering of the disciples - because of persecution - is the impetus for mission. It parallels the scattering of the peoples in the early chapters of Genesis. In this way, the church ought not to exalt in its earthly structures as if these are in some way more than replicas or shadows of the eschatological reality in which it really has its existence. The church ought not to seek to foreshorten the eschatological gap between present experience and the promise that lies ahead. It ought not to proclaim the end of its pilgrimage, or that in coming to one place on the globe it has finally arrived at its destination, its promised land, its Jerusalem. It ought not to imagine that whatever unity it can construct here on earth is the definitive eschatological unity that will one day be realised. In fact, the organisational unity of churches may be a hinderance to the real unity and fellowship of Christians.

Admittedly, Augustine may not have taken this thought in this direction. For him, the impressive historical reality and success of the church was a very strong apologetic for its message...

Moffatt opines

Justin makes a really good point about the value of knowledge and learning in the evangelical community here.

Basically, we is dumbing it down...

One Faith – JI Packer and Thomas C. Oden

Evangelicals seem to be great squabblers. They divide over all sorts of issues: from creationism to the millennium and all the bits in between, it seems. The word “evangelical” itself seems particularly rubbery, implying “fundamentalism” to some, “charismatic” to others, referring to a liturgical style at one point or to a right-wing social programme at another. It can appear that to be an evangelical is to live in a lonely world. What I mean is: there just aren’t that many amillennial paedobaptist four-point Calvinist theistic-evolutionist episcopalian congregationalist non-charismatic complementarians out there...[and if you are out there, could you please give me a call?]

The thesis of One Faith-the Evangelical Consensus by J.I. Packer and Thomas C. Oden is that a comparison of statements of faith from across the evangelical world in fact reveals a remarkable consensus of belief. The evangelical movement, much derided in some quarters as an aberration or a dinosaur, is in fact a growing cohesive global entity. The creeds compared show that this unity is founded on an orthodox doctrine of God in three persons, and on the evangelical distinctives of the authority of scripture, the necessity of the atoning blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, justification by grace through faith alone, the work of the holy spirit in conversion and the hope of Christ’s return.

After an interesting introduction, the bulk of the book is a list of creeds garnered from evangelical organizations world-wide and compared on various topics. It isn’t exactly a scintillating read, I have to say, and never quite rises to the dizzying heights its editors promise. The worth of the book is more as a reference with an essay attached. Disappointingly, while doctrinal statements from Canada, Belgium, Japan and South America are used, not one Australian statement made it into the lists. Left off again!

The listing of the extracts from the statements offers, however, heart-warming evidence that evangelicalism is a vibrant world-wide movement with a remarkable consensus of belief shared by its adherents - despite denominational, national, linguistic and other differences. Our theological views cannot be dismissed as eccentric, novel or aberrant; in fact, they are biblically and historically grounded and intellectually robust.

The section on “the People of God” reveals very little on church order and sacraments – it is characteristic of evangelicalism that matters ecclesiological are held to be second-order. The evidence presented in this book proves that evangelicals have always sought to work across denominational boundaries and are still seeking to do so without waiting for merely bureaucratic solutions. Here is indeed a true ecumenism. I was encouraged to remember that true agreement on the great truths of the faith is widespread.

However, I wonder whether the book concealed some of the deep differences among evangelicals, too. While the section on scripture contained some very strong affirmations of the authority and inerrancy of the Bible it is clear that this is worked out in vastly different ways among people who would own the name “evangelical”. Evangelical scholars need to continue to work hard at clarifying their doctrine of scripture. The section on “the Last Things”, also papered over some very wide cracks...

Rahner on Sola Fide

Rahner makes a virtuoso attempt to outline a Catholic ecclesiology that has a place for the Reformation as a movement within Catholicism. Interestingly, he goes to the Reformation solas and tries to show how, in fact, these were and are true Catholic teachings.

About Sola Fide he says:

'...the act of response to God's grace which alone gives salvation is not a work, but rather, in Pauline terms, it is faith. The Catholic doctrine is that this faith is not merely a dogmatic theory, that this faith must be based interiorly on a hope in the pure grace of God, and that this faith must be interiorly illuminated and fulfilled by what Holy Scripture calls love, calls justifying and sanctifying love. Basically an Evangelical Christian cannot raise any objections against this...' p. 361

Well, wait a minute! Perhaps not an objection, more a quibble: I do think he has clarified helpfully that faith does not equal 'some knowledge believed' (which causes such great confusion). I just don't understand what love is doing there: what can he possibly mean by this love that justifies/sanctifies? What texts is he refering to? Isn't this just a way of sneaking works back in there (in a semi-Pelagian move)?

Of course the Catholic church may decide it agreed with the Reformation all along on this, but unless it becomes the 'article on which the church stands or falls' (Luther), there is still a large difference.

A latent rationalism?

Paul Jewett writes:

Though essential to the Protestant view, the doctirne of the perspicuity of Scripture runs the risk of fostering an exegetical methodology that conceals a latent rationalism. It may be assumed that because of its intrinsic clarity, Scripture can be understood by anyone possessed of native intelligence. At one level, of course, this is true. One can know Scripture, since it is a human book, "from a human point of view", even as one can know Christ "from a human point of view" ... But though it is fully human, Scripture is not merely human. It rather bears witness to the divine majesty of him who addresses us in it, which is to say that its meaning is not simply at the disposal of our native intelligence. God, Creation & Revelation, p. 148

This latent rationalism is not always avoided, alas! But I would like to develop his christological analogy somewhat: Scripture is fully human but not merely human, yes; and this means that the human aspect of it is not somehow short-circuited in the processs of revelation. It is not that our rational processes are somehow denied as we read, or that these rational processes are over-ridden by some other more spiritual method, or insight. It is in, and through, this very human act of reading human words that the process of divine revelation takes place and the Spirit works!

So: it may be even and especially be at the scholar's desk that the Holy Spirit works to reveal Christ!

Some further idle and incomplete thoughts about the clarity of scripture

Thought 1: The clarity of scripture is in fact a far more important doctrine to defend than inerrancy. Inerrancy is a red herring for evangelicals and is divisive. It focuses our attention on the wrong thing entirely, that is, the matter of 'errors' or lack thereof. Whereas, if scripture is not clear, Protestantism is a bad joke and we should become Roman Catholics tomorrow. Scripture itself does not claim its own inerrancy (nor its errancy), whereas a very strong biblical case can be made for clarity.

Thought 2: The clarity of scripture is an evangelical clarity. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that both unites scripture and renders it clear - not that the OT was without clarity. Jesus is the 'Yes' who both explains and fulfils the promises of God. The Ethopian eunuch appeared baffled by his reading of Isaiah until he met Philip who explained it to him. We shouldn't be distracted by the presence of an interpreter here: the point is not: 'you need an authorised interpreter' but rather 'Jesus makes sense of it'.

Thought 3: Of course, the doctrine of the clarity of the scriptures has little to do with how simple or how hard the scriptures are to understand. Indeed, in 2 Peter 3 Peter complains that Paul's letters have things in them that are less than crystal. Having said this though: scripture isn't as tough as is often made out!

Thought 4: The clarity of scripture is primarily a teaching about the effectiveness of scripture to do its job, which is to present us Christ Jesus. It is more about discipleship and holiness than it is about linguistic theory.

Thought 5: But the clarity of scripture DOES have implications for linguistic theory. It certainly did in the Reformation (or at least was in dialogue with 16th century humanism); it does also today...

BB Warfield by Ben Myers

Ben has an intriguing set of propositions to offer about BB Warfield, a much-maligned figure in American evangelical theology.

Standing in the tradition of the Reformation?

I have raised in an earlier post the tension I see and personally experience between on the one hand seeking to give an account of the Scriptural revelation and the adherence as a Protestant and confessional theologian to the doctrines of that period.

In Barth's exposition of the doctrine of election, he has to tangle with the fact that as a Reformed theologian he is going to offer a serious departure from Calvin's teaching, and from the teaching of those that followed him: yet, he wants to stand in the Reformed tradition. He makes as a result several quite salutary points about his theological method.

First, the doctrine is not adequately grounded if it merely traditional to Calvinism:
...we shall be doing Calvin the most fitting honour if we go the way that he went and start where he started. And according to his most earnest protestations, he did not start with himself, nor with his system, but with Holy Scripture as interpreted in his system. (II.ii.36)

Second, it is not the pastoral usefulness of the doctrine that is its foundation or its basis. That predestination is a comfortable doctrine of assurance may be true, but it is not sufficient to assert it.

Third, neither is the datum of experience a worthy candidate. In this Barth is particularly critical of Calvin (fairly?) for introducing his observations of people in his ministry as they accept and reject the gospel in his description of the doctrine.

Fourth, the doctrine of election must not begin with the abstract God of the omnipotent Will, with God as a concept of philosophy, in other words. As he puts it:

If we allow God's self-revelation and the testimony of Scripture to prescribe our concept, then the Subject of election, the electing God, is not at all the absolute World-ruler as such and in general. (II.ii.49)

So: an authentic reception of the Reformation is to listen afresh and anew to the Scriptures, come what may...

O'Donovan on the gay issue: a daring hope?

Oliver O'Donovan has caused some huffiness amongst conservatives because of this paragraph:

The old-style liberalism that used to preside over the church’s dilemmas in a confident spirit of practical compromise began from the assumption that everyone was divided from everyone else by recalcitrant disagreements. The Lord, the liberals prophets announced, had sent a perpetual famine of his word. We should stop asking questions of one another and hoping for answers, and eat the dry bread of commonsense compromises. Those who remember Pentecost may reasonably doubt that this was ever the wisest counsel for the church. But at the very least we cannot know whether and how much of a famine of the word there is in any disagreement until we submit it to the disciplines of patient common enquiry. No disagreement refuses to be analysed, and its constituent elements sorted out according to size and shape. No disagreement does not lure us on with the hope, however distant, of a genuine resolution. Can we promise ourselves, then, that if the churches would only discuss homosexuality long and fully and widely enough, they would end up agreeing? Well, we are not entitled to rule out that possibility. But suppose it were not true; suppose that after careful exploration and a search for common ground, there was an agreement-resistant core at the centre of the issue – a problem about how modernity is viewed, for example, or about the ontological status of self-consciousness - it might still be possible to set the residual disagreement in what the ecumenists like to call “a new context”, and (who knows?) learn how to live with it. We have a parallel in the difference between indissolubilist and non-indissolubilist views of marriage, a traditional point of tension between Catholic and Protestant. That disagreement has not gone away; but if today it bulks less threateningly than it once did, that is because we are so much more clear about the extent of the agreed ground all around it – God’s intentions for marriage, the pastoral desiderata in dealing with broken marriage etc etc. It no longer evokes threatening resonances. It is a problem reduced to its true shape and size.

Is it possible to imagine this? I don't think that O'Donovan is himself making the gay issue a second-order issue as is claimed by the Anglican Mainstream commentator. O'Donovan is rather standing against the liberal belief in the famine of God's word, which means that true reconcilation is impossible...

Key Posts from the Past

Here is I hope a useful selection of past posts. I have chosen according to those that most sparked discussion, rather than those I think that most reflect my interests or emphases in this blog.


imitating christ
sacraments
enhypostasis/anhypostasis
the Bible, and Theology
Stanley Hauerwas
Bernd Wannenwetsch on sex and the trinity
mission and theology
rethinking the term 'propositional'
doctrine - a rationale
the great evangelical bible swindle
kataangelism
if christian schools were really christian...?
von balthasar and impassability
at the crossroads
the famous smacking discussion!
was bonhoeffer a martyr?
gurus and growing up
violence: what is it?
straining at gnats
david hicks: does this bother you?
power of scripture

A tension in evangelicalism...

A moment of clarity for me:

In evangelicalism, is the authority of the Bible absolute? Or is it the authority of the evangelical theological system?

In debates about the New Perspective and other issues, the notion of a 'classic evangelical' position is bandied about as a bit of a trump card: if not the joker in the pack, than certainly an ace up the sleeve. But at the same time, the authority of the Word in operation should theoretically at least mean that (within orthodoxy) for true evangelicals doctrine is revisable... which is to say, the theological system is revisable as the Bible is read more skilfully and more carefully.

In Sydney, Knox and Robinson were great models of the kind of true evangelical priority of the Bible. That is, they produced an ecclesiology which was in many respects a readjustment and reinterpretation of previous ones, because of their commitment to the authority of the Bible above all else. It left them exposed to the charge of an 'un-Anglican' ecclesiology. Today we do this with lay presidency: the argument is, sacerdoctal presidency isn't biblical. We don't care whether it is traditional or not.

Knox was quite an original thinker, and he was free to be, because he didn't hold to a rigid set of handed-down doctrines. That is why Moore sets a little at odds to our fellow evangelicals in other parts of the world: because we don't in general hold to a system of theology (like 5-point Calvinism) just because it might be logical or traditional: limited atonement isn't biblical (and you know, it just isn't!), so we ditch it. Our best current preachers and thinkers do this too: Peter Bolt and John Woodhouse are great examples of guys who have followed in the Knox-Robinson footsteps (if I may take their names in vain).

Noticeably, however, we are happy to play fast and loose with Anglican traditions, but not with evangelical ones. Perhaps this is because the former tend to be liturgical matters as opposed to doctrinal ones...

Liturgy? Who me?

I'd love to begin a discussion of what happens currently in Sydney (and other evangelical Anglican) church services/meetings. At present, the standard format (liturgy?) seems to be: Song X 2
Welcome (often forgetting to pray)
Confession (perhaps)
Song
Break
Notices
Bible reading (on which the sermon is based)
Sermon
Song
Prayers (extempore, usually about local interests)
Song
Close
Coffee

THis pattern is indicative of churches I have had a hand in running, so I am as much to blame as anyone. But it seems to be the general pattern.

BUT: I have seven gripes with this:
1. Bible Readings - there is often no OT lesson, and the readings are entirely dictated by the sermon, which means we limit the way in which scripture may speak to us. We have no scripture unless it is explained - do we think our congregations are idiots?
2. Lord's Supper - if it is done at all, it is done in a kind of embarassed way, as quickly and as roughly as possible, and with as little prayer book as possible.
3. Creeds - what creeds? are we a creedal church or not? What do we believe? How would we know? Do we have any continuity with history at all?
4. Prayers - Confession is often missed out. On the one hand, we have abandoned the rich prayer book prayers, but we haven't got a tradition of magnificent extempore prayer like the baptists and pressies do. And we keep praying prayers that sound like announcements: "we pray for the outreach meeting on Saturday, which costs $10 a head. We pray that you would move those hear to do as I tell them and bring their friends..." Do we pray for our governments?
5. General sloppiness/messiness - church buildings are hugely and chronically untidy places. Would a lick of paint really hurt? Do we have to hand out large amounts of paper all the time? Musos leave sheets of paper everywhere! Service leaders dress badly and are underprepared, don't smile and don't introduce themselves. And they say too much, as if they were cricket commentators: 'now Jo is gonna read the Bible for us.' Power point is mucked up, or in the wrong order, or - well, something always goes wrong with it.
6. Sound systems - I can't believe that churches are so stingy about sound systems, and don't seek help for balancing sound or where the speakers ought to be placed.
7. Lack of creativity - it seems to me 'being creative' means 'having an interview'.

Perhaps I am becoming an old fogey (OK, I am). BUT: it seems to me that these services do not feed the churches well. They tend to the dull, and they are undernourishing. We have jettisoned the old forms and perhaps rightly so: but, we have also I think lost a good deal of the substance of the old Anglican way. I guess for me the shocking realisation was, that when I visited a liberal Anglo-Catholic church, they were getting more scripture than my evangelical church and it was better read. The mistaken assumption it seems to me is that a more free-form service is more 'seeker sensitive': but I would say 1 - no it isn't and 2 who is a church meeting FOR anyway? Seriously - as a pew-sitter, sometimes you do feel treated like a complete twit. Anyone? Could pastors comment as to why they do what they do in their church meetings? Could lay people say whether it is working or not?

[At Moore, we generally have a more prayer-booky service with lots of great bible stuff in it. It works really well, in my opinion: I find that it is a feast of scripture, and works on so many levels - the word of Christ dwelling among us richly indeed. The singing is great, too. And yet, when we turn the services over to the students to organise, we get the boring old sermon sandwich I describe above!]