Undeception

I was recently warned about the danger and “arrogance” of judging certain portions of Scripture to be erroneous, particularly in regard to a theological claim made in the Old Testament (the death of Uzzah in 2 Sam 6.7 and 1 Chron 13.10): “In so doing,” said my conversant, “we set ourselves above the Bible and make ourselves the judge.” I agree that we should treat Scripture respectfully. This doesn’t mean that we can’t argue with it, but we should treat it with all due reverence.

The truly frustrating thing that I’ve been trying to point out (for it seems like forever) is that people don’t stop to properly analyze why it deserves this respect.

Those of us who come from Protestant traditions somehow acquire the assumption that we must respect the Bible, and that it is arrogant and dangerous to disagree with it, for the reason that it is perfect, untouchable, the very words of God, etc. But again, why?

I have heard it said, “Christ did not give us a book; he gave us a Church.” That is, the primary reason we give the Bible such high respect is because the Church, the community of believers that composed and compiled the Bible, has passed it down to us as something worthy of respect and honor. Here again, Protestant traditions have undermined that rationale by teaching us to distrust the fallible Church (which Catholics seem to view as more infallible than it actually is) and trust only in the infallible Bible (which most Catholics do not affirm as altogether infallible) — the same Bible that was written and canonized by that fallible Church! Protestants will typically respond that God especially sanctified the efforts of the Church, making sure everything was ship-shape, error-free, and all/only the right books were included because…again, why exactly are they convinced of that?

Is it just because we think the Bible says that we need to uphold it as inerrant? That’s entirely circular. Does something outside the Bible tell us to? That’s self-defeating, because holding that criterion as inviolable is by nature upholding something extra-biblical as your guiding principle. Is it because we find it really, really handy, indispensable even, to have an authoritative constitution to evaluate everything by? As I have quoted Lewis before:

To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, no doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form—something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist’s view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic’s view of the Church. But there is one argument which we should beware of using for either position: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this.

If we non-inerrantists believed that God Himself wrote the Bible, guaranteed its full accuracy, and made it exactly how we wanted Him to make it and for the same reasons, it might indeed be arrogant and dangerous to place ourselves above God by saying “I reject that.” But we don’t believe that: actually, many of us are dismayed by the ill-founded presumption of attributing everything in Scripture (or worse, everything we read into Scripture as interpreters) to God indiscriminately.

I have been accused of trying to dismantle the bedrock of people’s faith and denigrating the Bible just for the thrill of proving that I’m right. If that were the case, I’d spend a lot more time pointing out biblical errors and disproving the attempted reconciliations of apologists. But ferreting out and proclaiming the Bible’s shortcomings is not really how I want to spend my time, mostly because I actually care very much about the faith of others. And I don’t wish to see their house come down on a poor foundation: I know far too many people who have made an inerrant Bible the bedrock of their faith, and when the winds and storms of evidence beat against this assumption they’ve been told is non-negotiable, they lost their faith altogether. Building your faith on a Bible with unimpeachable “authority” is building your faith on the sand. I don’t want to see that happening. Another danger for inerrantists that motivates me to speak out is crazy Francis-Chan-esque affirmations of hollow, unconvincing, or outright loathsome understandings of God’s character and ways.

I certainly am not arguing that there is no warrant for caution in indicting Scripture as containing error. As a rule, we should always give our brothers and sisters in Christ, including the authors of Scripture, the benefit of the doubt and not cast aspersion on their hard-won opinions without fear and trembling. But when we are told that in reckoning some Scripture as erroneous there is the danger that we exalt ourselves as the final authority, I must respond that the danger of refusing to acknowledge that we must judge Scripture is that we will not be able to recognize it when we are doing it. Instead, we exalt our interpretations as the authority and claim that we are just following what God says through the Bible. Because the Bible does not come with a divine commentary,  we all interpret the Bible, and we are all responsible for determining what makes the most sense using whatever means we have at our disposal. We do not have the option of just “going with what Scripture says” — we can only go with what we think Scripture says.

What this means is that if God truly gave us the Bible, in so doing He gave us a medium that requires human judgment, faulty as that usually is. Since He didn’t provide us direct access to the Truth without need for an interface, He could not have expected that we could just trust whatever it is we think we read in the Bible. He had to have known we’d be judging Scripture. Bearing this out, the Gospels show Jesus himself judging Scripture, and occasionally finding it wanting.

My problem is not that people want to give Scripture a unique and extremely important place in our walk with God: my problem is with the accusation that refusing to treat the Bible as an authority of a completely different and superior nature than our other authorities, which include Church tradition and personal conviction, requires a “dangerous” degree of personal judgment from which inerrantists are blissfully exempt.

Please consider how much you might be putting in God’s mouth by maintaining the “authority of Scripture” before accusing people of being arrogant/dangerous for not trusting that this or that biblical author author got it right all the time every time.

It would be indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second best course.

Image via Wikipedia

For that the former was better, God hath made manifest, both by His words and by His doings, since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.

And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the Apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for He, saith our Lord, shall bring all things to your remembrance (John 14:26). And that thou mayest learn that this was far better, hear what He saith by the Prophet: I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them, and, they shall be all taught of God [cf. Jer. 31.33 LXX; John 6.45]. And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said that they had received a law not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart [II Cor. 3:3].

This is certainly in contrast to those who hold the creation of the canon to be the greatest gift God ever gave to the church, second only to Jesus (or so they say).

Chrysostom certainly held Scripture to be divine in origin; in fact the above remarks were brought forth to emphasize that it would only compound our foolishness if, having been so hard-hearted as to require the holy writings as a ”second remedy,” we ignore even those. But notice the logic here: written Scripture is only necessary because we refuse to obey the voice of the Spirit in our hearts.

Because of our incorrigible tendency toward ignoring the law promised to be written on our hearts, it certainly helps to have Scripture and other sacred sources (like our theological traditions) for signposts. But those things, including the Bible, can never take the place of that Word of God that is spoken directly into our hearts — and they certainly can’t trump it. The caution is that if we take those often useful and even necessary crutches as the foundation on which we stand, we’ll find ourselves hugging the floor soon enough.

Polycarp at The Church of Jesus Christ and I seem to be travelling the same paths lately (does this indicate that I’m finally a part of the Church of Jesus Christ? The U.S. branch, anyway?). He recently wrote a series of posts, some in depth and some quite short, regarding hell and universalism in Scripture and in the ECF, appropriately leaving the question open-ended.

Now he’s gone and dredged up another topic left conveniently buried by most modern Protestants who champion orthodoxy and good theology (so long as it comports with their already composed beliefs): baptism.

I was thinking yesterday during Sunday School that I should write a post on “unapproved” answers to Evangelism Explosion question number 2, in which God asks the recently departed who appear on His doorstep, “Why should I let you in to my heaven?”

The correct answer, according to EE and other Protestants everywhere, is something along the lines of, “I stand on Christ’s finished work.” I got to thinking that even saying “I believed the story in the Gospels” would ostensibly not quite cut it, because “even the demons believe, and tremble.” Rather, one must have faith that transforms, a conversion experience. And even that’s not quite enough: it is conceivable that one who believes with all his heart and experiences remorse for his guilt and acknowledges it before God who is nonetheless not one of the Elect would still be sent packing away from the Pearly Gates.

Yet all of the below are scriptural answers, sometimes given to people in the NT without the benefit of any of the above qualifiers (e.g. #2 below). And all of them would be considered somehow deficient by most of those who would endorse the Evangelism Explosion method of proselytization.

1. I repented and was baptized. (Acts 2.38, 3.19) (EE response: “GASP! ‘Baptism’ is a work — do you think you could by human effort contribute to your salvation?”)
2. My father believed and our whole household was baptized. (Acts 16.31) (EE response: “GASP! Doesn’t matter what your father did — did you believe?”)
3. I always thought that Jesus was God somehow, and even said so when asked. I mean, why else would God have raised him from the dead? (Romans 10.1) (EE response: “But did you ever bother to consult God on the matter? Did you even really mean it? Did the Holy Spirit come in and begin to work on you from the inside out?”)
4. Well, You oughta know, Lord – You’re the One who wrote down my name before the world began. (various Calvinist prooftexts) (EE response: “Even the Elect shouldn’t be so impudent!”)

Ok, the last one was somewhat facetious. But do you get my point? Most of the dogmatic “saved by faith alone” persuasion would be horrified with the first two answers at least. The third was an attempt to depict someone in a satured Christian culture (as in my own south-eastern U.S.) who hadn’t really thought about it that much before, but assumed it was true and yet never had a conscious conversion experience.

Now, I don’t want to put words in Multifish’s mouth (Lord knows he has enough in there already), but his posts on baptism certainly suggest (as I have stated before) that in this area, Protestants who look askance at baptismal regeneration are forced both to twist Scripture and ignore early Church tradition in order to do so.

Scripture is anything but perspicuous. And it’s not even particularly coherent: there is no natural way to tie together the answers given in the scriptural references of 1 through 4 above, but all of the answers I gave were in some sense undeniably “scriptural”, nonetheless. This is at the heart of my antipathy toward systematic theologies: they always leave out or skew some data from the historical witness of the early Christians. And as Manyvehiclep pointed out in this well researched post, “Paul was not speaking about written documents when he spoke of Tradition; he was speaking about teachings handed down,” and these teachings kept circulating alongside Paul’s writings and are present in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. Yet they uniformly taught that instead of simply being a symbol of life renewed or a covenant initiation rite, “baptism is dying out to sin,” the outward act necessary to turn to God, just as the confession with the mouth is the act by which Paul says we are saved (Rom 10.10). To these early believers, outward acts aren’t merely signs, but the acts by which things are actually accomplished.

I’m not personally arguing for baptismal regeneration. I’m merely putting on display more of the many necessary assumptions that go into our modern sanitized, preapproved Protestantism. In the end, the majority evangelical view may indeed be correct, but until we receive more, or more authoritative, revelation than what’s contained in Scripture and the ECF, we have no right to be arrogantly dismissive of other Christian traditions that disagree with us, even when it’s in the important area of soteriology. You are free to continue to assume that what you’ve always been taught is correct and that baptismal regeneration is incorrect, but you are constrained by Christian humility to acknowledge that it is an assumption and that other believers who don’t share that assumption can do so in good conscience.

On a cue from Philip Harland, I found this remarkable passage showing an example of the perception that some pagans entertained of mid-second century Christians. It’s not pretty:

[Cynics and Christians] divide and upset the household, and bring into collision those inside with each other, and tell them the worst ways to manage their household. They never say, find, or do anything socially productive. They do not participate in panegyrics (festal assemblies), nor worship the gods, nor help govern the cities, nor comfort the sorrowing, nor make reconciliation with those of opposing persuasions, nor arouse the young – or anyone else for that matter – to the affairs of the world.

–Aelius Aristides in The Defense of the Four, as cited by Frances Margaret Young in The theology of the pastoral letters, p. 17.

This was written by an orator who is associated mostly with Asia Minor but who was certainly well travelled. It’s difficult to say how widely his observations applied to Christian communities throughout the world at the time, or whether he was taking just a few bad apples and making gross overgeneralizations. I point it out because 1) much of what Aristides described then seems to correspond to various visible factions of Christianity today and because 2) to the consternation of a wide range of critics both ancient and modern, those commonalities are probably indicative of what a significant constituency of the early church thought was proper.

First of all, the upending of cultural norms for household management seems to be a part of very early Christian behavior. Galatians, a book whose Pauline authorship is virtually uncontested, famously dismissed fundamental social and cultural distinctions between male/female and slave/free. Granted, he might well have been referring specifically to those classes’ equality in standing before God rather than calling for a social revolution, but the tendency is certainly to extend theological outlooks beyond into broader ramifications, and whether or not Paul intended it it appears that this is exactly what happened. Early secular testimony like that of Celsus (as quoted in Origen) shows that Christians were sometimes characterized as giving undue deference to “stupid women”; Harland notes that there was apparently a tradition of attributing somewhat more egalitarian positions to Paul (e.g. The Acts of Paul and Thecla) than have been associated with him in recent years. It is sometimes argued that the emphasis upon maintaining social norms involving gender that we see in the (probably late, pseudo-)Pauline epistles of Ephesians and the Pastorals look for all the world like they were intended to “stop the bleeding” caused by the inevitable exploitation of Paul’s teachings on Christian liberty that would indeed cause much upheaval if not moderated. Christian feminism has left a very bad taste in my mouth, but the more I learn, the more I begin to realize that there is a very strong, very early tradition challenging the male hierarchical pattern that won out by the time of the ecumenical councils.

It also occurs to me that for the most part, those whom Aristides is criticizing seem to be following the advice of the NT in regard to involvement in society. The ubiquitous NT teaching to abstain from the world to remain pure for the returning Christ would naturally lead them, as it does many in the Left Behind crowd now, to avoid entanglement with “the affairs of the world”. If the end of the world had been around the corner, why should they have bothered “arousing their young” to do anything of lasting significance? It’s interesting to watch these eschatological expectations disappear in the following centuries as Christians came to terms with the fact that the apocalypse was not so imminent and as a resolve to make the best of this world grew until the medieval understanding of Christian mission modeled upon Augustine’s The City of God developed. Yet in the last couple centuries imminent apocalypticism has returned and, not coincidentally, its proponents are reading Scripture at face value like those whom Aristides is criticizing — with the grossly obvious oversight that part and parcel of superficial interpretations of Scripture are the manifold statements of imminency that are impossible to square with a gap of two millennia between the NT and us. This appropriation of first century expectations to our immediate future leads many to retreat from engaging society in a useful way for the reason that it’s pointless to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. Most evangelicals have little patience for subtle, long-term forms of influence, preferring if anything to utilize the strong arm of the state to enforce their ideals and heavy-handed moralism in their forays into the arts, ostensibly in the effort to show the returning Christ that they’ve been busy and have remained out of defiling contact with the world.

To my mind the most damning way in which the modern church resembles the Christians from whom Aristides drew his generalizations is in his pronouncement that they did not “comfort the sorrowing, nor make reconciliation with those of opposing persuasions…” Here again, I suspect that most of this can be laid at the feet of an imminent eschatology. Jesus’ light rebuke, “The poor you will always have with you,” was surely not intended to imply, “You won’t have a chance to remedy poverty before I come back, so don’t bother trying,” but rather “There’ll be plenty of time to fulfill your righteous concern for social justice after I’m gone in a few weeks.” Despite Paul’s many admonishments that believers should strive to live peaceably with all people, there was enough backbiting and indifference toward keeping up good relationships that it apparently struck Aristides as characteristic of Christians in general. I can imagine that if you thought your mission was to hunker down until the bomb exploded and took out all the infidels, you’d expect that exercising the faith was more about maintaining purity of mind, and hence beliefs, than it was about counteracting the defective aspects of society.

Now, my guess is that Aristides’ various indictments listed above were of stereotypes that didn’t apply to any one group of Christians; for instance, I imagine that the more eschatologically minded were not the ones pushing the social structure envelope. But it is nonetheless intriguing to consider  how and why the church then might have looked like the church now.

As I have asked before, so I ask again: how much do evangelicals really want the modern church to look like the early church? Are we aware of how much we already do?

Today Joel Watts posted a quote from one of the Early Church Fathers on the subject of the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord’s Supper or Communion):

For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. [Emphasis all Steve's]

This wasn’t post-Nicea, folks. The doctrine of transubstantiation, or Real Presence, which teaches that the bread and wine literally become Christ’s body and blood upon the blessing from the Church leader, goes way back.  The above quote was from Justin Martyr in his First Apology (ch. 66), written about 155. When looking at the Early Church Fathers, we don’t get a whole lot earlier than Justin Martyr. Interestingly, wider context shows that his main point wasn’t even that the elements became Christ’s body and blood — that was a given — but that the Church leadership was entrusted with the administration of the sacrament. And it’s clear that Justin is under the impression that this teaching was handed down by the Apostles, so at very least it well predates 155.

I’m not taking a position on whether he was right or wrong here, but that this was an exceptionally early witness to a doctrine that many “orthodox” Protestants who highly depend upon “historic, orthodox Christianity” nevertheless reject (this was not true of Martin Luther, who insisted on a literal interpretation of “Hoc est corpus meam,” meaning “This is my body.”). These same orthodoxy-loving Protestants characteristically dismiss out of hand all kinds of perfectly compelling textual, historical, and scientific evidence that contradicts what they regard as the teaching of “historic Christianity”.

From my experience, dissenting from another Christian’s belief on the grounds that it has somehow departed ways with “historic Christianity” is simply the most convenient way of ignoring that belief without having to address it honestly. Granted, not all beliefs warrant the same level of scrutiny before being put on the back shelf or dismissed; I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone to personally debunk every shady conspiracy theory, fantastic claim, or alternative explanation with transparently misguided motivations. But many other beliefs deserve to be examined and not simply ignored, particularly when they’re held by other well-intentioned, critical thinking believers. Letting the question of whether a point of view is right or wrong be answered solely by an appeal to ”orthodoxy” is not critical thinking: it’s blind faith that an intellectually honest lover of truth should not allow to be kept under lock and key to exempt it from analysis and authentication.

Read 1 Cor 5.11-13 (below). The church usually focuses on the words I omitted in the “…” But what about the words I left in? Do we do what Paul instructed? Is our church really very much like the first century church? Do we really want it to be?

“But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is…greedy…or verbally abusive…or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Are you not to judge those inside? But God will judge those outside. Remove the evil person from among you.” (1 Cor 5.11-13)

(Prompted by an insightful comment by RJS at Jesus Creed.)

Last Sunday night, our church hosted a Reformation Party for the kids. It was sort of a Halloweenish deal, with lots of games and candy, and the kids were encouraged to dress up in Reformation-era costumes. My son won the prize for his age group wearing a Martin Luther costume my mother made for him.

The reason the Reformation Party was scheduled for Halloween week is quite natural: October 31st is not only Halloween but also Reformation Day, the day in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Wittenburg church, launching the Reformation. When I found out about the party, I good-naturedly smiled and rolled my eyes that our proudly Protestant church would put this on. I am not near so proud of the Reformation as some, and haven’t held a particularly high regard for Luther since undergraduate school. He was a crass and divisive figure, and as such has set the tone for the fractious nature of Protestantism. Aside from disagreeing with Luther’s critiques of some of the Church’s doctrine and practices, the Church also feared that delivering the Scriptures into the hands of non-clergy would result in a myriad competing theologies based upon a plethora of interpretations of Sacred Scripture. In this, they were absolutely correct.

Indeed, I have said on many occasions that I have more sympathy for the Catholic perspective than a lot of my Protestant brothers and sisters do. But Sunday night as my blindfolded son groped around in an attempt to “pin the Ninety-Five Theses on the Wittenberg door”, I felt more of a kinship with Martin Luther than ever before.

As much as they look up to Martin Luther’s courage in standing against a stalwart establishment intent on preserving what it believed was the very truth of God, the affinity of evangelicals with the Church of Rome is striking. It is true that the list of things they require “good” Christians to be in lockstep about is a different, much smaller list than that of the Church. But Luther’s dissent sprang from his conviction that our theology must be based upon Scripture correctly interpreted, no matter whose interpretation might be ousted as a result.

This last week I have had more conversations than ever with friends concerned about my rejection of inerrancy and the reading of Genesis as literal history. Some of my friends’ comments have had an adversarial bent, and I have actually undergone something reminiscent of excommunication by one of them that I’ve known the longest. No, they don’t want to burn me at the stake, but their indignation at my rejection of their interpretation is not at all dissimilar at its source. When I look at the tight formation of the Reformed system within Calvin’s lifetime and the unwritten list of interpretations thought to be untouchable by the evangelical community now centuries later, it seems that Protestantism never did fully embrace the notion that ecclesiastical authority must be subject to an accurate reading of Scripture. Instead, they simply changed from Rome being the ecclesiastical authority to whatever is popular and commonly accepted by their church leadership and culture. Evangelicalism, not a board of authoritative bishops but an assembly of common assumptions, is no less wont to throw someone like me out for demanding an honest treatment of Scripture on its own terms than was Rome.

A famous slogan associated with the Reformation since before the beginning of the 18th century was Ecclesia reforma semper reformanda: “The Church reformed, always reforming (lit. ‘to be reformed’).” Hilariously, I’ve seen some of the Reformed up at arms against this slogan, to the effect of, “You can’t fix perfection.” But delusions aside, is this not a worthy goal for all of us? We don’t have to reevaluate every single thing we believe on a yearly basis, or even once every few decades. But anyone who claims to love the truth and is intellectually coherent enough to acknowledge that the Church has been wrong once or twice about even major issues should be humble enough to look into divisive issues without assuming those holding views other than his/her own is a compromiser in league with Satan.

I’m certainly not holding myself up as the True Heir of Martin Luther, nor, despite my newly recovered respect for him, am I sure I really want to be; I’m fairly confident he wouldn’t spare the rod on a lot of my own views. But I do think that those who won’t be cowed into submitting to the tyranny of the majority and insist upon carefully and humbly cultivating their theology with the best information available, no matter how it horrifies others in their tradition, are following more closely in Luther’s footsteps than those who obdurately defend their inherited interpretation of Scripture against Scripture itself.

Happy Reformation Day!