Liberalism in Christian preaching often refers to theological and doctrinal shifts that move away from traditional orthodoxy, embracing critical reinterpretations of Scripture and modern cultural values. Illustrations frequently use images of conflict, decline, and compromise within denominations, warning against the erosion of biblical truth (Galatians 1:6-9). They highlight the dangers of excessive openness that leads to doctrinal confusion and spiritual weakness.
Liberal Baptist gives her interpretation of theological conflict being waged in Southern Baptist denomination. Talks about Baptist ideals of soul freedom. Early fundamentalist upbringing and habits contrasted with her current liberal view of Scripture (creation, flood, Babel are myths; Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich are her heroes.) Values-searching is stressed over possessing truth.
Suggestions for reversing membership declines in mainline denominations discussed. Statistics given for decline. Reasons: low white birthrate, older population, no effective urban strategy, shift from lay evangelism to dependence on professional clergy. Solutions: Emphasize hope. Emphasize community. Emphasize ethnics. Emphasize the Holy Spirit.
When ministers pray before a business meeting, it's rare that anyone is asked not to show up. Yet that's exactly what happened recently at a gathering of — of all people — Anglican bishops.
I said “of all people” because the Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church here in the United States, values unity above almost everything else. They express this unity in the celebration of Communion, a rite that sends the message that, no matter how deep the disagreements may be, the participants are still one in Christ.
Imagine, then, the surprise felt by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, when he read a letter from Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola and other conservative bishops. Akinola warned Williams that “Third World archbishops would not celebrate Communion with U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold” at an upcoming meeting in Ireland.
The proximate cause of the crisis was the American church's consecration of an openly gay bishop, Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire. But, for Akinola and the others, this action is but a symptom of a much deeper malady.
As the former bishop of South Carolina, C. Fitzsimmons Allison, told columnist Terry Mattingly: It's difficult to celebrate Communion together when the participants don't share a common understanding of words like salvation, resurrection, marriage, or even God.
He's not exaggerating. He was once told by several American bishops that they “worshipped a god who is 'older and greater' than the God of the Bible.” Allison's word for this is the right one: apostasy.
This departure from the “doctrines that have united Christians through the ages” made Robinson's consecration possible. And it's why the North American churches have been “urgently requested” to “voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council.” To put in it “reality-television” terms: “Just leave quietly. Don't make us vote you off the island.”
While this may sound like Anglican “inside baseball,” there are important lessons here for American evangelicals. The first is Akinola's insistence that “unity of doctrine [precedes] unity of worship.” Or, Allison put it, “stronger stuff” than “appeals to human emotions” are what holds a church together.
If we're honest with ourselves, a lot of evangelical churches also avoid the “stronger stuff.” In this day of seeker-driven churches, what would people answer if you asked them to define resurrection, salvation, marriage, or God? Do we really want to know?
Another important lesson is the growing power of “Third-World” Christians. Akinola and company represent forty to fifty million, mostly active, Anglicans, some of whom risk their lives to practice their faith. Griswold represents two million, mostly nominal, Anglicans, many of whom reject the Bible.
As historian Philip Jenkins has written, the center of “gravity” of the Christian world has already shifted “southward.” These “southern” Christians are much more conservative regarding faith and morals, and their overwhelming numerical superiority makes it impossible to ignore what they are saying.
That's good, because we in the West need to hear what they have to say, starting with a reminder of why it is we pray together in the first place.
FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:
• Terry Mattingly, “Communion in the Anglican Communion?“ On Religion, 9 March 2005.
• Marite N. Sison, “Primates call for breathing space,” Anglican Journal, April 2005.
• “Archbishop Akinola: A Pastoral Letter to the Church,” Anglican Communion News Service, 18 March 2005.
• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040205, “As Long As We All Get Along: Selling Truth for Unity.”
• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030603, “Like It Or Not: Cardinal Arinze at Georgetown.”
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Copyright © 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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The destructive critic in the pulpit is like King Jehoiakim. In one such church, a faithful member, who for two years had taken note of the various passages the pastor had pronounced fictitious or unscientific and cut them from his Bible, was taken seriously sick. The minister called on him. “Shall I read and pray with you?” he asked. The sick man beckoned his wife to bring the Bible. It was in shreds and only fit for the waste basket. “Haven't you a better Bible?” asked the Modernist minister. The dying man replied: “No, this is all I have left after cutting out the parts you said were not inspired. If I should live another year, I'm sure I'd have nothing left but the covers.”
God's Word is imperishable!
Version used July 28, 1991:
Dr. Harry MacArthur shares the following story:
For two years a faithful member of a liberal church had taken note of the various passages the pastor had pronounced fictitious or unscientific. He then cut them from his Bible.
A short time later he became seriously sick. The minister called on him. “Shall I read and pray with you?” he asked. The sick man motioned to his wife to bring his Bible. It was in shreds and only fit for the waste basket. “Don't you have a better Bible?” asked the liberal pastor.
The dying man replied: “No, this is all I have left after cutting out the parts you said were not inspired. If I should live another year, I'm sure I'd have nothing left but the covers.”
Wife of John A.T. Robinson, noted Bible critic, has been touring U.S. Her husband was a great blasphemer, writing "Honest to God." Ruth thinks Cain's wife, Joshua's standing sun, miracles and resurrection are all myths. They were written so that the greatness of Jesus (who made mistakes and was not virgin-born) could be expressed.
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"The Last Temptation of Christ" looks at Jesus as a poached egg, to use C.S. Lewis's expression. In Christology, the liberal temptation is to worship the Jesus of the wax nose. By succumbing to 'relevance,' they trim from the gospel that which offends the spirit of the age and dress what remains in the robes of Christ. Scorsese follows that tradition, surrendering to an age fascinated with violence, sexuality, and the paranormal.
But the evangelical temptation in Christology is the ancient heresy of docetism, the denial in practical piety (if not in theology) that Jesus was fully human, but only appeared to be so.
The issue is not censorship. Blacks would not appreciate a negative film about Martin Luther King, Jr. Protest by Christians is an exercise of free speech.
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Financial hardships hit NCCC. Due to shrinking (and disenchantment) of mainline groups like Presbyterians, Methodists and UCC which support it. There is controversy over increased levies on Church World Service, the council's big relief agency, to support council general services. The council is "shooting itself in the foot," according to Patricia Rumer of the UCC, which has halted routing of relief money through CWS for the time being. Staff has been cut from 187 in 1968 to 61 expected in 1989.
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A group of nationally-known scholars had a "Jesus Seminar" at a major university to analyze the Lord's Prayer. One word in it was considered to be authentic by all - "Father." All the rest of the prayer has some degree of doubt.
Sermon, "Salty Saints in a Sick Society."
1. Leaven of the Pharisees (legalism).
2. Leaven of the Sadducees (liberalism).
3. Leaven of the Herodians (licentiousness).
During battles in Northern Baptist Convention in 1920's, led by W.B. Riley, A.C. Dixon, J.C. Massee, J.R. Straton, Haas wrote about convention battle in Wilwaukee:
"Our brethren will find that cancer, gangrene and leprosy are not easily purged out of a body. Israel and churches were commanded to purge out those unworthy, but no church or group of churches or other organizations has ever been commanded to purge any other church or group of churches or other organization. Some very dear and earnest brethren overlook this fact and are trying to do what is not commanded by seeking to purify the denomination. It is good for those of one spirit to meet together for mutual counsel and cooperation, but when two distinct bodies meet together with two distinct faiths and one tries to cast out the other, the battle is not the Lord's but Satan's, and Satan usually wins at his own game if we try to beat him at it.... Temporary victory ... would have all this load of [liberal] corpses to carry.... This would be a worse defeat than to be outvoted."
”There are new people and new needs. The problem of the church in every generation is to meet those new needs of new people without forfeiting the values in its heritage from the past. To live in the past is to fail the people in the present.” It is the duty of every generation to make the faith relevant to the needs of that generation.
This does not mean playing fast and loose with the essentials. The necessary conservatism comes in here. The essence of the faith is not subject to adaptation; otherwise, what we have is not Christianity but some other religion. But the expression of the faith is another matter. This generation has the responsibility equally with every other generation to tell its contemporaries what Christianity means in terms they can understand.
It is worth reflecting that the word “radical” derives from a Latin term meaning “root.” A radical in the strict sense is one who goes to the root of the matter. In this sense evangelicals must always be radicals. Again and again we must go back to our roots. But plants grow from the roots and what the roots supply. So we apply what we find in our roots to the needs of the day. We do not simply bury our heads in the sand.
We reflect that our Master refused to go along with a hidebound conservatism. There was a conservative party in his day, the Pharisees; but he rarely sided with them. He accepted as fully as any that the ancient Scripture was authoritative. But he saw that the traditional attitude to it had prevented some of his contemporaries from seeing its real meaning. He pointed out that Scripture testified of him (John 5:39). And when he spoke of the man who simply says, “The old is good” (Luke 5:39), he was not commending him: he was castigating him for refusing even to consider the new.
There are always risks in living in a new age. But there is disaster in trying to live in a past age. It is necessary that we conserve the values of the past. But we need the present also. It is always easy to dig in our heels and refuse to be budged from the comfortable past with those values we appreciate so well. It is not particularly difficult to see ourselves as radical, open to the best insights of our day. We are called on to do something much more difficult and important: combine the two.
Liberalism is so open it will accept anything, and therefore stands for nothing.
There is a church in Massachusetts which exemplifies this approach. Although they are Unitarian, they invited a Buddhist priest to conduct a service for them. He was from Harvard, and gave a typical Buddhist ceremony - prayers, chants, bells, etc. Jesus was not mentioned even once.
Afterwards, one man commented that there was a little too much dogma, but otherwise it was O.K. A woman said she'd been a Unitarian all her life, but now she wasn't too sure.
Sermon. Galatians 1:3-10
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A CONSERVATIVE SHIFT
====================
I. Earthquake in political landscape.
II. Torn between two perspectives.
A. There has always been tension within the church.
B. Outline of Liberalism.
C. Outline of Conservatism.
D. The results of the clash.
III. Conservative, but not frozen. Luke 5:39
A. Churches tend to be too conservative.
B. Jesus was a conservative who didn't always trust conservatives.
IV. What never changes and must be conserved.
A. The essential gospel.
B. A commitment to faithfulness. Galatians 1:10
C. Love never changes. 1 John 2:7-8
V. What must change.
A. Negativism.
B. Exclusivism.
C. Determinism.
Theological education has become an exotic and mysterious enterprise, at least to the general public. Most Americans think seldom of theological seminaries, if at all, and most conceive of them as something like graduate schools for religious professionals -- teaching religious people to do whatever it is that religious people do.
Even inside the church, some confusion about theological education clouds the picture. Laypersons often assume that the seminary exists as a factory to turn out preachers -- freshly minted and ready for immediate call -- ready to be wound up and set in motion. The view from the pew is of interest, for it reveals the widespread impression that seminaries can do everything necessary for the preparation of ministers, even if the churches have given little attention to their own responsibility.
The most malignant confusion about theological education exists within the seminaries, and is WRIT LARGE across the accrediting agencies and coalitions of seminaries. This is not a recent development. Writing in 1954, H. Richard Niebuhr found little clarity as he presented a survey of theological education in America: “Great confusion prevails in some quarters about theological education. What, it is asked, is the meaning of this ministry? For what purpose are we educating? The situation in some circles of theological educators seems to be similar to the one found among certain foreign missionaries and sponsors of foreign missions. They know what they are doing is important, but an understanding of the strategy of their work, a relatively precise and definite understanding of its meaning, is lacking.”
Richard Niebuhr, like his brother Reinhold, was one of the paladins of American Protestantism at mid-century. The confusion he found among theological educators was, he noted, the same as that found among missionaries. They were not at all certain of their mission, their task, or their message.
Liberal Protestantism had lost confidence in the Bible, in the Gospel, and in the unique mission of the church. Progressively, its theological schools grew less and less theological; its missionaries grew less and less evangelistic; its bureaucracies grew larger and more powerful, and theological education became the engine for doctrinal dissipation, moral relativism, cultural revolution, and the death of once-great denominations.
Evangelicals had better pay close attention to this pattern. This kind of alarm is often met with bemusement and dismissed as hyperbole, but the nagging reality of what theological seminaries can become and can destroy is affirmed by history and seen in the ruins of churches once faithful, now empty.
In reality, the very pattern so easily traced within liberal Protestantism is increasingly evident among evangelicals as well. The same compromises are demanded; the subtle concessions are rewarded. We dare not deny the obvious. Some evangelicals now present the arguments once made by liberals -- only a half-century delayed.
At the end of his glorious exposition of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in Romans 1-11, the Apostle Paul writes a song of praise to God:
Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments
and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind
of the Lord, or who has become His counselor?
Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to
Him again? For from Him and through Him and
to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
This doxology -- this climactic declaration of praise and wonder and glory -- is precisely directed at God's glory evident in His wisdom and knowledge. These are immeasurably rich, infinite, and inexhaustible. In Him, wisdom and knowledge are combined so that we cannot know the one from the other. We have no right to question God's wisdom, or His economy of salvation. We have no ground from which to launch an investigation into the strategies of the Most High God. His judgments are unsearchable, and His ways are unfathomable.
Modern theology can be seen as one vast exercise in second-guessing the mind of God. The clear declarations of the Bible are seen as hypotheses to be considered, thought experiments to be debated -- anything but eternal truths to be received with gratitude, defended with honor, handled with respect, passed down faithfully from generation to generation, and directed always to God's glory.
Paul did not argue that God's ways are hard to decipher, but that they are impossible to trace. He did not argue that God's wisdom is superior, but that His wisdom is infinitely rich and deep. Modern theology is a massive demonstration of what the Greeks called HUBRIS. It is overreaching of the most egregious sort. As the African American tradition reminds us, our arms are too short to box with God. Look at the current literature in theology. Review the latest so-called biblical scholarship from the academic guilds and societies. Visit the divinity schools and seminaries of liberal Protestantism and confused evangelicalism, and you will find boxing matches aplenty, with cheering in the stands, one-sided energy in the ring, and judgment waiting in the wings. Be not deceived, for God is not mocked.
The contemporary debate over the so-called “openness of God” amounts to nothing more (or less) than such an exercise in second-guessing God, and thereby reducing Him to a more manageable and user-friendly deity. With breathtaking arrogance, these theologians claim that God is so glorious that He does not have to be omniscient, which is akin to arguing that the TITANIC was so glorious that it didn't have to float. The God of the Bible is not standing by ready with “Plan B” when “Plan A” fails. He knows all things, even foreknows all things. Theologians may debate how the divine foreknowledge is linked to the divine will, but never has any orthodox Christian theologian affirmed that God's omniscience is partial, limited, or blind. As Professor Bruce Ware rightly notes, such a theology is an argument for God's LESSER glory.
But the Bible's consistent testimony is to God's greater glory. And believers throughout the ages have testified of God's great glory manifest in His omniscience, His wisdom and knowledge, and the infinity of the divine Mind.
The Apostle Paul then turns to the Old Testament for two important questions. WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO HAS BEEN HIS COUNSELOR? Earthly kings, presidents, and emperors are surrounded by a coterie of aides, advisors, strategists, media experts, pollsters, and the like. The heavenly throne is surrounded by the BENE ELOHIM who continually praise God and testify of His glory. They offer no advice. None is needed.
OR WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM? God is the sovereign Creator of the universe, the source of all that is, and the sustainer of all things. No one can give anything to God in any genuine sense, for all things are His, and come from Him. Most clearly, God is never in debt to His creature for any reason.
Finally, Paul expresses the consummate summary of the divine glory expressed in all creation -- and manifest supremely in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. FOR FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND TO HIM ARE ALL THINGS. TO HIM BE THE GLORY FOREVER. AMEN. This is the great unbroken circle of God's praise and glory. All things were created by Him. All things are sustained even now by Him. All things will find their destiny by His judgment to His greater glory. To Him -- and to Him alone -- be the glory forever. Amen.
This brings us to the starting point, and the ending point, of all true theological reflection. The biblical worldview is framed on all sides by the great reality of God's glory. In this frame we find our identity as sinners seeking to rob God of His glory. In this frame we find salvation through the glorious redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is beheld the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, and in whose cross we glory. In this frame we find our purpose in this life and in the life to come -- to glorify God and praise His name forever.
All of life is to be lived in this frame. All theology is to be defined by this frame. All our teaching and preaching and study and writing and learning and striving and witnessing and living are to be done to the greater glory of God.
This frame defines the Christian worldview and thus the task of theological education. Most problems and controversies in theology could quickly be solved by asking this question: How can we most purely, most truthfully, most biblically, and most eagerly define and describe the glory of God and His ways toward us? Asking that question and answering it truthfully would amount to a revolution in theological education.
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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]
Rev. J. Robert Williams was first openly gay Episcopal priest to be ordained at end of 1989, but angered Bishop Spong by calling monogamy and celibacy an “unnatural” state and a “crazy” ideal. In a talk on same-sex relationships to a group of Detroit Episcopalians earlier this month, Williams also contended that a gay couple can be faithful to each other but still have other relationships as long as they return to their “spouse.” Extensive screening had determined Williams was monogamist. The chairman of the screening committee said inquiries were made into the stability of his relationship. “We require a letter from the mate, significant other, spouse or partner, a detailed letter regarding the prospect of their being part of” a priest’s life.
September 18, 1991. Williams renounces his priesthood and the teachings of the Episcopal Church.
Rev. Robert Williams was ordained as an Episcopal priest though a practicing
homosexual since he claimed to be monogamous. Addressing a symposium on gay
marriage he said, "If people want to try [to be monogamous], OK. But the fact
is, people are not monogamous. It is crazy to hold up this ideal and pretend
it's what we're doing, and we're not." He later replied to a question, "If
you're asking me do I think Mother Teresa ought to get laid, my answer is
'yes'." He declared that celibacy is unnatural and spiritually inhibiting,
and monogamy is just as bad.
The liberal bishop John Spong called on him to resign. Homosexuals are at
every level of the Episcopal church.
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A friend of mine (Glenn Gunderson) attended a Baptist ordination council in New York State where the candidate was asked, "Do you believe in heaven?"
She responded, "No, I don't believe in it right now. But the topic is at the cutting edge of my faith."
(They ordained her anyway.)
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Buchanan shows how the Episcopal church is slipping and attributes it to heretical bishops like Spong of Newark. Spong ordained the first openly homosexual priest (who now admits to having AIDS) and lately has said Paul himself must have been a repressed homosexual. His error makes it even harder for Episcopalians to cooperate with orthodox Catholics.
"Once again, the long pilgrimage of a mainstream Christian cleric, to make his faith 'relevant' to a secular age, has ended in total irrelevance and secular ridicule."
Defense of the Bible against higher liberal criticism.
1. Tactics of liberal scholars.
a. Deny traditional authorship.
b. Fragment material.
c. Deny historical origin.
d. Deny supernatural.
2. Effects of destructive scholarship.
a. Bible becomes human document.
b. Churches, denominations die.
3. Answers of conservative scholarship.
a. Verification from archeology (Jericho).
4. Personal experience with Bible.
a. Many Christians cut and choose, like Jehoiakim.
b. Reading Bible leads to faith.
c. Scripture points to Jesus. [1553]
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Is the Church guilty of beating people with the Bible? As strange as that argument might sound, it is actually a powerful weapon in the hands of those who are determined to normalize homosexuality and same-sex marriage within the Church. Those pushing for the acceptance of homosexuality now argue that Christians opposed to that agenda are “clobbering” sinners with the biblical text.
There seems to be no authoritative original source for this very powerful rhetorical innovation, but it has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it is deployed as a way of subverting the Bible’s condemnation of same-gender sexuality.
In his new book, Fall to Grace, Jay Bakker presents a classic form of this argument. Bakker, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, is now co-pastor of Revolution Church in New York City — a congregation described by New York magazine as “a church that is still figuring out its message.” Well, it may be trying to figure out its message on some issues, but on homosexuality its position is very clear.
Jay Bakker was only a tween when his parents became involved in the massive scandal that led to the collapse of their PTL ministry, complete with its theme park known as “Heritage USA.” As Bakker makes clear, the big lesson he learned from that scandal was that Christians show precious little grace. In Fall to Grace, Bakker sets out his vision of Christianity. He levels some legitimate criticisms at the Church, but what he offers is a revisionist reworking of Christianity and the Gospel that is actually just a rehash of Protestant Liberalism in the early twentieth century.
In a lengthy and insightful profile of Jay Bakker, Alex Morris of New York magazine argues that Bakker has reduced Christianity to a message of forgiveness and little else. “The rest of Protestant Christianity, however, he’s basically prepared to ditch — a stance that pushes him beyond the far liberal wing of the Evangelical Christian community and into what is known as the ‘Emergent’ ministry,” Morris notes. He describes the perplexity of some within Revolution Church who are trying to figure out what the Church actually believes. He asks: “Once you strip so much out of Christianity, what is left?”
Jay Bakker holds to an evolutionary theology. In Fall to Grace, he argues that there is an evolutionary theology within the Bible and that the character of God changes from the Old Testament to the New. Bakker credits author Brian D. McLaren with the argument that the Bible reveals “a trajectory that points inexorably from judgment and punishment in the distant past through time toward forgiveness and all-encompassing love.” Bakker argues against “trying to maintain scriptural consistency” and proclaims that we are “not stuck with the angry God encountered in the Old Testament (and, yes, in some places in the New Testament).”
In the book, Bakker explains how he came to affirm homosexuality and even to perform at least one same-sex marriage. He argues that the Church must evolve in its understanding of the moral teachings in the Bible. He concedes that the Old Testament clearly condemns same-sex sexual behaviors, but he rejects this as irrelevant for the Church: “The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal,” he says.
He rejects the Old Testament as containing laws, including laws concerning human sexuality, that merely “reflect social concerns of another time and place.” Therefore: “Just as our thinking has evolved in these other areas, so it must evolve on the subject of homosexuality.”
When he turns to the New Testament, Bakker identifies three texts he calls “clobber Scriptures.” Why? Because, he explains, “they’re used to beat people over the head.”
These texts include 1 Timothy 1:10, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and Romans 1:25-27. Bakker draws from recent liberal scholarship to argue that these texts actually do not deal with homosexuality at all, but with promiscuity, gang rape, and “immoderate indulgence.”
These arguments have become standard fare among those advocating for the acceptance of homosexuality, and they are trotted out in almost every public debate on the issue. But the arguments fail for two very important reasons. First, the arguments are just not faithful to the texts involved, which clearly condemn same-sex behavior. Second, the arguments are based on the absurd claim that the Church has misunderstood these texts for centuries, only to be “corrected” by revisionist scholars in recent decades.
Nevertheless, the most important aspect of Bakker’s argument is his way of dismissing the texts as “clobber Scriptures” — suggesting that the Church is misusing them by telling homosexuals that same-sex behaviors are sinful.
Interestingly, the word “clobber” took on the idea of physical violence only during World War II, when, according to linguists, “clobber” was used with reference to aerial bombing raids. It is well established in our vocabulary now, which is what makes this rhetorical strategy so effective. It simply isn’t right to clobber people.
But is that what Christians do when we affirm the truthfulness and authority of the Bible? Is it “clobbering” people to point out that Scripture identifies their behavior or attitudes as sinful?
Certainly not — at least not when the biblical truth is asserted honestly. In other words, not when we honestly confess that our sins, too, are condemned within the same Bible.
Without a knowledge of our sinfulness, we do not know of our need for a Savior. In this sense, we all need to be “clobbered” by the Bible so that we will know of our need for Christ.
God loved sinful humanity so much that he gave us the Bible — and the Law — in order that we might know with revealed specificity the truth about our own sinfulness. Then, we truly celebrate what it means that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]
The Bible’s condemnation of same-sex behaviors is comprehensive and clear. It is interwoven with the Bible’s message concerning God’s plan for humanity, marriage, and society — and the Gospel. Human flourishing is found only by living in obedience to God’s revealed plan. Our rebellion against the Creator is never so insidious as when we declare that our own plan is superior to his.
When the Bible, in part or in whole, is dismissed as “clobber Scriptures,” it is not only the Bible that is subverted, but also the Gospel. The Church must recognize that fact clearly — and fast.
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Jay Bakker, Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society (Faith Words, 2011).
Alex Morris, “God Loves Jay Bakker,” New York magazine, November 15, 2010.
On the use of the word “clobber” with reference to the Bible, an interesting example comes from the pen of Professor Walter Brueggemann, who writes of the Ten Commandments: “They are not commonsense rules designed to clobber and scold people. Rather, they are the most elemental statement of how to organize social power and social goods for the common benefit of the community.” Yet, while the Church may often miss some of the social implications of the commandments, it just is not possible to dismiss the personal application of the commandments, as these are affirmed throughout the biblical text. See: Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #13582]
To liberals, Jesus is much different.
They accept his teachings on love and the example he set for us. Jesus becomes the greatest person to ever live, the ultimate nice guy. But genuine liberals reject any supernatural element to his life. One of the most popular books about Jesus followed this liberal view. It was written 100 years ago by a man named Strauss, and he called it the "Life of Christ".
Strauss stripped away the supernatural stuff and focused exclusively on the high ethics of Jesus.
One of those influenced by the book was a young Russian who was studying to be a priest. When he finished reading that book, he felt his eyes had been opened. Jesus had no more power or authority than anyone else. The young Russian dropped out of the church and joined the Communist Party. His ruthlessness became legendary, and he rose to become the leader of the entire Soviet Union.
His name was Joseph Stalin, and historians claim he killed 5 to 10 million people through purges and the infamous concentration camp system called the "Gulag."
Lesslie Newbigin believes the Christian church has largely gone along with the division of facts and values. Threatened by Darwinian biology and the rise of the secular state, it hoped to retain some crucial ground: the individual’s soul. But the arrangement has not worn well. Privatizing faith meant, in reality, trivializing it. No longer did the church forthrightly proclaim Christ as public truth, the most important fact and value of existence. Instead, Christianity was relegated to the same realm as mere opinion or preference.
Right up to the present, many Christians continue to interpret and understand the faith in individualistic and privatistic terms, which is a distortion of the biblical witness. Though not intended to, it undermines the social and indeed cosmic breadth of God’s saving kingdom. By making this concession Christians gain “personal peace and affluence” (Francis Shaeffer). Individualized Christianity offers plenty of comfort and assurance for the believer’s “private” life. Newbigin says the fact-value/public-private split has “seemed to offer the Church the possibility of a peaceful coexistence with false gods, a comfortable concordat between Yahweh and Baalim.”
The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideals of truth were overly narrow. Enlightenment (modern) thinkers pretended to achieve timeless knowledge, secure from all possible doubt. Post-modern thinkers cannot achieve timeless knowledge and doubt everything. Biblical Christianity does not step out of history to find timeless knowledge but finds it within history, in the events of Israel and Jesus’ life.
Newbigin believes all understanding involves both knowing and believing. One cannot exist without the other. Liberalism accepted the division of them, and tried to meet secular society on its own terms, and failed. Postmodernism gives us the opportunity to see that our competitors speak from narrow bases just as they say we do. The “world” of one or another society or guild does not speak from a stance of special and absolute objectivity. The church does not have to fear being “sectarian” because everyone belongs to sects of one kind or another. There is no such thing as a “non-sectarian” base to stand on, it has only seemed this way because some sects are larger than others. Therefore the church needs to set forth its truth-claims boldly. The Radical Reformation anticipated postmodernism by three centuries.
Charles Colson is one of the foremost Christian thinkers in America today. A while back he visited the United Nations in NYC. The complex is very impressive. After a tour, Colson asked to visit the chapel. Since all nations will bow before God, Colson wanted to see the room where the representatives worshipped.
The person he asked had a puzzled look. “Chapel? We don't have a chapel. Try across the street.” He dodged the infamous New York taxis and crossed the street. The security officer told him there was a chapel, but it had nothing to do with the U.N. He looked through a directory, and told Colson, “Oh, I see. It's back across the street. Tell them you're looking for the meditation room.”
Colson went back, only to be told that the room was not open to the public due to a personnel cutback. But since he was so persistent, a guard would show him the room. The door was unmarked. The room itself was small and had no decoration. There were no windows. The walls were stark white. A large square rock stood in the center of the room, but no other religious symbol. Bright ceiling lights illuminated a piece of modern art on the front wall: steel squares and ovals. The lights were actually focused on a void, which Colson perceives as the soul of the brave new world.
Andrew Carnegie held very decided views about the Old Testament, and once or twice, under provocation, expressed himself very bluntly. In fact, the point of view that Mr. Carnegie took toward the Bible has become very common in our day among the most eminent scholars in the churches. He did feel very strongly on the matter of teaching children certain portions of the Old Testament, which, to his mind, contradicted not only the finest human instincts but the whole spirit of Christ's teaching.
We were once walking together when he suddenly referred to a sensational heading in that day's paper about some preacher's utterances concerning the incident of Jonah: "What in the world has the question as to whether that book is fact or story got to do with the Christian religion?" he exclaimed. "It is this sort of thing that makes sensible people disgusted with the Churches. The first Christians followed Christ and that was all that was ever asked of them. Now we demand that they believe a lot of incidents said to have happened hundreds of years before Christ was born and which have absolutely no relation to him whatever, except that they happened to get bound up in a collection of books with the story of his life. It's just exactly as if I were told that I could not be a believer in Abraham Lincoln unless I believed some miraculous stories about the early settlers of America because the stories happened to be on the same library shelf. The Bible is a wonderful literature of a people who had a genius for religion, but I sometimes think it has been a misfortune that the life of Christ got bound up with the Old Testament. They don't always harmonize."
What disturbed Mr. Carnegie most of all was hinted at in that last sentence. He thought it was a great mistake to teach certain of the narratives of the Old Testament to children for the sake of the ethical lessons. The ethics of parts of the historical books not only did not harmonize with the teachings of the New Testament but they were contrary to them. He used to grow quite indignant on this point and I think the fact that the Sunday Schools were teaching these portions of the Bible somewhat colored his views of the entire Old Testament and perhaps made him unappreciative of its really spiritual revelations. Once he exclaimed to me, as we were discussing this whole question of the worth of the Old Testament (we were walking in Central Park):
"I picked up the Bible just the other day and was reading the
story of the times of Samuel. One king after another comes along
and they are all engaged from year to year in killing -- it is
really slaughter. All sorts of ghastly incidents are related,
and some passages are simply revolting to a mind accustomed to
feel toward humanity as Christ felt, and the thing is that God is
pictured as directing and helping it all. It is God who leads in
the slaughter and He even inspires His children to the most
unmerciful acts. Now, if you want to teach these things to
students in the universities as you familiarize them with the
legends and myths and wars of ancient Rome and Greece, all right,
but do not teach them to boys and girls as heroic deeds, to be
admired and copied, and, for heaven's sake, do not tell them that
the God pictured in some parts of these stories is the God Jesus
Christ shows us in the Sermon on the Mount."
I think I have recorded rather accurately what Mr. Carnegie said, for I was greatly interested in getting his point of view, and he said these things very emphatically. Professor Samuel T. Dutton, who used often to drop into the house at Ninety-first Street Sunday afternoons, for a chat with him, told me that he once said practically these same words to him. When I told Mr. Carnegie that he would find the view which he was expressing even more forcibly put than he was putting it, in the pulpits of many churches, he said:
"I know that; but still they go on teaching it just the same, and
I have heard passages from the Old Testament read in church which
made me blush, so contrary were they to the spirit of
Christianity. I think General Armstrong and David Livingstone
are much better Christians than Joshua or Gideon, and I would
teach their lives in the Sunday Schools. And there ought to be
an edition of the Old Testament prepared for use in church and
home, which would leave out those parts that are not Christian."
As a matter of fact, Mr. Carnegie had a great admiration for those portions of the Bible which deal with pure religion, and was continually quoting it, and had carved upon the walls of his library, over the fireplace, one of its great words: "Let there be light!"
Admission made by liberal professor at Harvard University, Kirsopp Lake:
“It is a mistake often made by educated persons who happen to have but a little knowledge of historical theology, to suppose that fundamentalism is a new and strange form of thought. It is nothing of the kind; it is the partial and uneducated survival of a theology which was once universally held by all Christians. How many were there, for instance, in Christian churches in the 1700’s who doubted the infallible inspiration of all Scripture? A few, perhaps, but very few. No, the fundamentalist may be wrong, I think that he is. But it is we [liberals] who have departed from the tradition, not he; and I am sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a fundamentalist on the basis of authority. The Bible and the “corpus theologicum” of the church are on the fundamentalist side.”
Sermon in Philippians series. Maturity vs. Enemies of Cross. Phil 3:15-21
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MARKS OF MATURITY
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I. Calling perfect people.
II. Live up to what you have.
III. Follow good examples.
A. Dangerous thing to propose.
B. Not his limitations, or even successes, but his grasp on Jesus.
C. Everyone is an example. What kind are you?
IV. Watch out for rotten apples.
V. Application to modern times.
A. Liberals downplay the cross.
B. Appetites - no concern for self-control.
C. Revamping of morality.
D. Focus on here-and-now and politics.
E. Decline and destruction.
VI. Broaden your perspective.
#4359
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A review of Hans Kung's one, true (but less than Christian) religion.
In this work, which the author presents as the culmination of a lifetime of study and reflection, noted Catholic theologian Hans Kung undertakes a comprehensive theological history of Christianity, showing its biblical roots and global implications. Kung differentiates the ceremonial and doctrinal embellishments of the Christian faith from its essence -- the historical person of Jesus Christ. Kung seeks to get beyond a "Eurocentric" understanding of the Christian religion to a "universal historical view" that nevertheless maintains continuity with the original New Testament message. He sees Christianity not as an outmoded traditionalism but as a "radical humanism" -- "being human to the full."
He calls for a Christology from below -- beginning with the historical life and teachings of Jesus rather than the creedal interpretation of the early church, where he discerns a shift from the New Testament paradigm to the Hellenistic paradigm in which the faith was articulated and in some instances drastically altered by Greek ontological categories. He believes that a Christology from below also has ecumenical promise, for it would facilitate dialogue with Judaism and Islam, both of which could never accept Hellenistic Christianity and the Trinity.
According to Kung, the process of Hellenization created a church burdened by hierarchy, ritualism, and creedalism. The call to discipleship, which characterized the ministry of Jesus, was overshadowed in the patristic church by a mounting concern for right doctrine. He expresses unhappiness with the medieval paradigm of the church, which tightened the grip of hierarchy with its emphasis on papal supremacy. He is grateful to the Protestant Reformation for rediscovering the gospel of justification by faith and recovering prophetic spirituality as opposed to mysticism and ritualism. He believes, however, that the present age necessitates a global spirituality and a global ethic that will still focus on Jesus but now in relationship to other world teachers and prophets.
While appreciating the comprehensiveness of Kung's vision and the lucidity of his proposals, I have real difficulties with his analysis and interpretation. First, Kung shows himself at odds with the apostolic church by making the Jesus of history the final criterion for faith. Whereas the apostles and theologians of the early church proclaimed the preexistent Christ incarnate in human flesh, Kung's emphasis is on the life, death, and teachings of Jesus as determined by historical research. He disputes both the preexistence of Jesus Christ and the dogma of the Trinity on the grounds that they represent deformations of New Testament faith. While it is certainly true that the fathers of the church resorted to philosophical terminology in elucidating the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity, a powerful case can be made that both Nicaea and Chalcedon resisted and countered the Hellenization of the faith. Kung sees Jesus as "God's eschatological prophet and emissary" rather than God himself in the garb of humanity.
Kung proposes that we move from the Enlightenment paradigm focused on the historical-critical study of Scripture and the moral teachings of Jesus to a postmodern paradigm focused on universal religious experience and global values. He believes a binding ethical consensus can be reached through interreligious dialogue. While maintaining that Christianity is the "one true religion," he also is ready to acknowledge that there are "many true religions" in the sense that salvific truth can be found in all the world religions, though it is supremely embodied in Jesus Christ -- at least for Christians. Kung calls for a postconfessional, ecumenical paradigm in which Christianity breaks out of its cultural insularity and enters into fruitful conversation with the other great world religions. Our goal should be a "pluralistic holistic synthesis." Kung can be faulted for subverting the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in the interest of cultivating interreligious peace and saving the planet from ecological destruction.
I can appreciate Kung for his appeal to the New Testament over church tradition, his penetrating critique of papalism and Marianism, and his warnings against sacramentalism and ritualism. I must take exception, however, to his reduction of the faith to the original teachings of Jesus and the facts of his life and death (though these certainly belong to the fuller perspective of faith).
The author's Christology from below fails to do justice to the church's teachings of the Incarnation and the Trinity, both of which are solidly anchored, though not precisely elucidated, in the New Testament. Kung urges sensitive Christians to create an ecumenical global paradigm if the church is to maintain its relevance and avoid the risk of becoming insular and sectarian. But is not our task as biblical Christians to develop the ecumenical implications of the Reformation or evangelical paradigm, which Kung acknowledges to be basically faithful to the New Testament? Christians need to enter into dialogue with fellow Christians in order to advance the truth of the gospel and the cause of church unity, and here we would do well to listen to Kung. Yet we must insist that unity will come only when we identify with the apostolic interpretation of the gospel already given in the New Testament and amplified and clarified in the confessions of the early church and the Protestant Reformation.
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"Christianity: Essence, History, and Future," by Hans Kung (Continuum, 936 pp.; $39.50, hardcover). Reviewed by Donald G. Bloesch, emeritus professor of theology, University of Dubuque (Iowa) Theological Seminary.
Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
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The role of divine revealer denied to Jesus at Re-Imagining was filled by Sophia. “Bless Sophia, dream the vision, share the wisdom, dwelling deep within” echoed some two-dozen times through Re-Imagining like the Gloria Patri in a Benedictine monastery. There are, to be sure, passages in the Old Testament that personify sophia (Greek for wisdom), and on occasion speak of her as an attribute of divine activity (see “In the name of Sophia,” p. 43). At Re-Imagining, however, no speaker addressed the role of sophia within the biblical or theological tradition, and particularly the Eastern Orthodox tradition where it has played a significant role. Sophia, rather, was presented in unspecified relationship to the Christian tradition, independent and even alien to it.
Ostensibly, Sophia was intended to represent a feminine expression of the Holy Spirit, but in reality, Sophia was the elevation of an attribute of God (wisdom) to the place of God. The practical result was that Sophia became a subjective metaphor for the political, social, gender, sexual, or ecological preferences of various speakers. We have noted the shift in theological authority at Re-Imagining from transcendence to immanence. That is, theology was severed from its traditional moorings in the transcendence of God, the person and work of Christ, the institution of the church, and the Holy Scriptures, and rooted to human experience alone-a tendency, incidentally, increasingly characteristic of many modern theologies. Any distinction between the “Spirit” and human experience was effectively eliminated, thus positing ultimate authority in human experience, which, at Re-Imagining, meant feminine experience.
The endeavor to shift theology from dogmatic to experiential categories verged on spiritual narcissism. “I reverence the Presence within you,” began an opening liturgy, after which participants were instructed, “Whisper the sacred word that is your name.” Several speakers alluded to the divine within them. Aruna Gnanadason of the Church of South India wore a red dot on her forehead as a symbol of the divine in her. Chung Hyun Kyung of Korea spoke of spirituality as an archaeological excavation of the layers of God within her. Barbara Lundblad took the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 61, which Jesus applied uniquely to himself in Luke 4, and applied it to herself: “The Spirit has anointed me. I need to know that this word is spoken to me in the spirit of Sophia. Trust the stirring in your womb.”
The problem with locating theological authority in human experience is that human experience varies, making an objective standard impossible. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Ku Klux Klan, “German Christians” under Hitler, and the death-to-abortionists faction have advocated things that Christians - including Christians at Re-Imagining - abhor. The authority of human experience leads to the oldest and most violent ethic in the world: might makes right.
The equating of the Spirit with human experience at Re-Imagining resulted in elevating “the evil of patriarchy” to mythic proportions. Never defined, “patriarchy” fulfilled the stereotype of Re-Imagining that “subhuman” fulfills for the Fascist and “capitalism” for the Communist. In a story narrated by Aruna Gnanadason, patriarchy replaced sin as the source of all evil in the world. Man seized the demon of patriarchy to brutalize the creation, including woman, his innocent victim. The church, with its “brain- damaging theology,” sanctions the present state of oppression. There is only one thing patriarchy cannot stamp out, however. That is the feminine spirit, compassionate and regenerating, which will ultimately prevail.
Gnanadason’s mythic archetype might have been dismissed as a theological melodrama were it not echoed in Dirty Harry-epithets from speaker after speaker. One was left blinking in incredulity at such a simplistic-and self- righteous-world-view. But the show went on. Most of the fallout from the blast on patriarchy landed in the lap of the church. A male-dominated clearing house of power over women, the church became the object of all sorts of drive-by shootings from speakers. The upshot was that the institutional church was effectively eliminated as a viable community of faith. Virginia Mollenkott made it explicit when she advised that “it may be necessary for the substantial liberated minority in every denomination to leave the denomination in order to form the holistic church.”
Re-Imagining’s theology of immanence came to most explicit elaboration in sexual imagery. Susan Thistlethwaite declared, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism.” The motif pervaded Re-Imagining at every level. It was most apparent in the default apology for lesbianism, homosexuality, transgenderism, and bisexuality that characterized Re-Imagining. Not a few speakers identified themselves as lesbian. Decrying “the unspeakable treatment of lesbian and bisexual women in mainline churches,” Mary Hunt, Roman Catholic feminist of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (water) in Silver Spring (Md.), stated, “To be an out lesbian in Christian church circles is to live threatened with spiritual if not physical death.” Quoting Mollenkott that “grace is a lesbian,” Hunt urged breaking with “preoccupation with eternal truth ...and the excess baggage of patriarchy.” “People doing justice [for homosexual rights] ...is what it means to me to be religious. Whether it is Christian or not is frankly, darling, something about which I no longer give a pope.”
An appeal for consensual sexual acts followed in consort with the affirmation of lesbianism. “Imagine sex among friends as the norm,” continued Mary Hunt, “young people learning to make friends rather than to date. Imagine valuing genital sexual interaction in terms of whether or how it fosters friendship and pleasure.... Pleasure is our birthright.”
THE JUDGMENT OF HULDAH
Re-Imagining gave voice to the pain and alienation that many women experience in the church. Christians, especially those who affirm Galatians 3:28, for example, should hear such pain with a renewed commitment to the equality of women as coheirs of salvation and as complementary partners in the church. But Re-Imagining was not the way to go about it, as has been recognized from many quarters. Re-Imagining’s radical revisionism with respect to the way theology is done, the nature of God, the significance of the Incarnation, and the person of the Holy Spirit poses a theological danger that the church cannot ignore if it is to remain the church.
The steering committee and various denominational leaders have labeled critics of Re-Imagining as divisive and factious. A post-conference communiqué warned that “Unofficial conservative publications within ...denominations have attacked the conference as heretical and pagan.” The attempt to deflect responsibility with words like unofficial and conservative is a lame ad hominem. That is like accusing doctors of jeopardizing health for attacking illness, or the police of disrupting communities because they prosecute crime. What other word besides heresy is appropriate where the Incarnation and Trinity were dismissed, where orthodoxy was derided, where Scripture was repeatedly contradicted, and where a goddess named Sophia was actively promoted? It is not those who name heresy who divide the church, but those who practice it!
In conclusion, 2 Kings 22 preserves a judgment that is of significance for Re-Imagining. During King Josiah’s reign, repairs were undertaken on the temple. “The book of the Law” (Deuteronomy) was discovered and read before the king, who directed the prophetess Huldah to be consulted, “for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us.” Huldah’s interpretation did nothing to allay the king. “Behold, I will bring evil upon this place and its inhabitants,” said the prophetess. Johanna Bos interpreted Huldah’s prophecy as a condemnation of male domination of the temple, fulminating, “This old house of patriarchy has got to come down.”
That is a decidedly idiosyncratic interpretation. Huldah’s prophecy is not about male domination or patriarchy. It is about apostasy and idolatry, the very things that characterized Re-Imagining. “Because they have forsaken me and have burned incense to other gods, ...therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place” (2 Kings 22:17).
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James R. Edwards is professor of religion at Jamestown College, Jamestown, North Dakota.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
The Jesus Seminar unmasked: Bible scholar Luke Timothy Johnson takes on the radical revisionists.
“Who do scholars say that I am?” asked a recent CT cover story on the flourishing industry of Jesus studies (Mar. 4, 1996). The answer seemed to be almost anything but the risen Christ worshiped by believers around the world. Yet, while the radical revisionists have claimed the lion’s share of media coverage, their conclusions are by no means representative of the whole spectrum of New Testament scholarship. Now, from within the scholarly guild, Luke Timothy Johnson has mounted a frontal assault that demolishes the pretensions of the Jesus Seminar and reaffirms the Christ of faith.
Johnson’s book “The Real Jesus” is one of the most exhilarating religious books published in this decade. His formidable task, which he performs with gusto, is to sort out the claims made by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Funk, Burton Mack, and other much-publicized scholars so that Christians, and other fair-minded people, can take stock of what is actually being asserted.
A former Benedictine priest and currently a professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta (in 1995, Doubleday published his commentary on the Epistle of James in the acclaimed Anchor Bible series), Johnson is a soft-spoken man, at first glance an unlikely candidate for polemics. He was motivated to write his book, he says, out of a genuine sense of outrage over the preposterous claims being made by the Jesus Seminar and its fellow-travelers -- above all, the claim, repeatedly reinforced by the media, that their peculiar form of scholarly reductionism somehow represents the “consensus view” of “most” New Testament scholars.
In fact, says Johnson, the conclusions reached by the Jesus Seminar represent the views of a tiny minority of mostly second-rate scholars working at mostly second-rate schools. None of the current Jesus Seminar scholars teaches at any of the major centers of New Testament scholarship in the United States -- such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Union, Chicago, or Emory. While the Jesus Seminar publicists would often speak of 200 “participants,” Johnson says, in fact only about 40 people attended the meetings and wrote papers.
Of these, only a few, such as founders Crossan and Funk, have any sort of prestigious credentials as scholars. Some, such as Paul Verhoeven (director of the films Basic Instinct and, most recently, the NC-17-rated Showgirls), are not New Testament scholars at all and participated merely as interested observers.
The views of some 40 people cannot reasonably be said to represent the thinking of, say, the more than 6,900 members of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the thousands of others, in and out of graduate school and seminaries, who have had some contact with systematic biblical study.
Johnson does not merely challenge the credentials of Jesus Seminar members; indeed, he is at his best when he “deconstructs” the philosophical assumptions and methodological idiosyncrasies that underlie so much New Testament scholarship. Far from displaying a more scientific, more “critical” view of the New Testament, Johnson says, many of these scholars are touchingly naive in the way they approach historical sources and in their understanding of what history actually is or can achieve. The epistemological gullibility of these exegetes -- especially regarding the nature and limits of historical knowledge -- simply astonishes Johnson.
The problem that underlies much of contemporary New Testament scholarship, Johnson says, is a serious misunderstanding about what constitutes historical knowledge. Indeed, he argues, fundamentalists and skeptical historical- critical scholars share the same error: they believe that history -- understood as what can be known using modern techniques of historical reconstruction -- is the ultimate criterion of truth against which the Gospels must be judged. (It should be noted that Johnson’s use of the term “fundamentalist” is elastic, at some points referring to views that would be held by a majority of evangelicals. The same ambiguity attends his references to “conservative” scholars.)
The more literalistic fundamentalists believe the Gospels can be proven historically true; the modern skeptics believe they can be proven historically false; but both believe that “history” is the ultimate judge of the “truth” of the Gospels. This is a burden that history (as a discipline) simply cannot shoulder.
Johnson observes that this attitude itself displays a remarkably “pre- critical” understanding of history. Far from being a neutral record of “what really happened,” history is a creation of the human intellect, a creation based not merely on highly fragmentary evidence but also on the personal concerns and prejudices of the people writing the history.
Johnson demonstrates that, despite unending claims of “value-neutral,” scientific rigor, the scholarship that undergirds the Jesus Seminar and similar enterprises is based on wild speculation and minuscule evidence. For example, whereas in the past New Testament scholars thought they saw hints of common sources used by the New Testament writers -- most famously, a hypothetical collection of Jesus’ sayings, called Q, used by Mark, Matthew, and Luke -- some of today’s scholars now brazenly assert they can reconstruct, with precise detail, both these sources themselves and their stages of development. They now speak about Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4.
This, Johnson avers, is preposterous, and explains why so much of contemporary New Testament scholarship is viewed with derision by mainstream historians. The entire edifice is “a house of cards,” he says. “Pull out one element and the whole construction crumbles.”
In fact, Johnson argues, authentic Christian faith is not now, nor ever has been, based on historical reconstructions of who Jesus was. He reminds his readers that Christians do not have faith in this or that scholarly account of the historical Jesus, but in the living Christ raised from the dead. “Christian faith is directed to a living person,” he writes. “The ‘real Jesus’ for Christian faith is the resurrected Jesus, him ‘whom God has made both Lord and Christ’ (Acts 2:36).”
According to Johnson, the Resurrection (the heart of the Christian faith) should be understood as a “‘nonhistorical’ event that has historical effects.” Being “nonhistorical” does not mean that the Resurrection did not happen, only that determining whether or not it happened is beyond the scope of the historian. One needs more than the facts of history to do that. History may provide many details consistent with a traditional understanding of Christ’s resurrection (the formation of the church and its early writings), but the discipline has reached its limits when it encounters “the passage of the human Jesus into the power of God.... The problem lies with history’s limited mode of knowing.” According to the church, one needs to meet Christ today to make sense of what happened in the tomb on Easter.
Still, evangelical scholars would want to close the gap Johnson leaves open between the Christ we encounter today and what is said of him in Scripture. While Johnson talks about a “resurrected,” “real,” and “living” Christ, he seems to allow the possibility of some discontinuity between the Bible’s witness and the “real” Jesus. At the same time, he does not rule out the church’s view of Jesus for informing our interpretation of the Gospels -- something the Jesus Seminar’s rules forbid.
Given the explosive nature of Johnson’s book, you would think that he would have been prepared for the media frenzy that followed its publication. But on the day that I catch up with him, he is a bit frazzled. The phone has been ringing nonstop in his suburban Atlanta home, with requests for radio interviews, public appearances, and so on.
“I find it all a bit unsettling,” Johnson says. Although he is the author of a widely respected textbook, “The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation” (Fortress, 1986), and numerous scholarly commentaries, Johnson is not accustomed to the bright glare of publicity.
“This is a book I never thought I would write, for two reasons,” he says, during a lengthy interview. “First of all, I’m not a person who is particularly interested in entering the public fray. And second, I’ve never been particularly interested in the ‘historical’ Jesus. I found it possible to be a Christian my whole life, to be a monk, to be a priest, and to never hear about the [problems surrounding the] historical Jesus.”
Now 52 years old, Johnson is a former Benedictine priest who studied New Testament at Yale University, left the priesthood, got married, and taught for 20 years at Yale Divinity School and Indiana State University.
He was born in Wisconsin, the youngest of six children, but both his parents died when he was very young. At the age of 11, he was shipped off to the Deep South with his oldest brother and ended up at a private Catholic high school, Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Covington, Louisiana, run by Benedictine monks. “They put a little card on you saying, ‘To God from the Church,’” Johnson chuckles.
He gradually fell in love with the Benedictine liturgy and with the life of a monk. When he graduated from Saint Joseph’s, at the age of 19, he became a Benedictine and remained one for nine years, eventually being ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood. He completed his studies in philosophy and theology at Saint Meinrad School of Theology in Indiana and picked up an M.A. in religious studies at nearby Indiana University.
In 1970, Johnson returned to his monastery and taught there for one year. This was at the height of the turmoil in the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council. Johnson wanted to become a Scripture scholar and decided to concentrate on the New Testament because, he says, “there were fewer languages to master.” He applied to, and was accepted by, Yale University, where he studied under such famous scholars as Wayne Meeks.
While at Yale, Johnson decided to leave the priesthood. He met and married a woman ten years his senior, who already had six children (they have subsequently had a seventh together). “I found the transition from being a Benedictine monk to being the father of six children, and then seven, not to be that dramatic,” Johnson claims. “Benedictine life is all about building community or building family, and so I found it excellent training to be a father.”
He finished his Ph.D. at Yale and taught, from 1976 to 1982, at the Yale Divinity School. Although he was part of the “famous Yale revolving door for junior faculty” -- meaning Yale rarely grants tenure -- Johnson enjoyed his time there. And as an ex-priest, he says, he was frozen out of his natural environment, Catholic seminaries. “I was in a situation where ex-priests were not welcome even in Catholic universities, and that continues today,” he says. He was a bit late in the “leaving game,” Johnson adds, and the great heyday of Catholic liberalism had passed. Breaking your vows was not as easily forgiven in the 1980s and ‘90s, under the current pope, as it had been in the freewheeling 1960s. “There was a tremendous conservative reaction, especially in seminaries,” he says.
As a result, when he realized he would not be offered tenure at Yale, Johnson went to Indiana University and taught there for ten years, from 1982 to 1992, in the Department of Religious Studies. He loved the “hard-boiled intellectual life” of a state university, but felt strangely “divided” there. “Being outside the context of the community of faith was not good for me, for my heart,” he says. But in 1992, he was asked to come to Emory University to be the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, a Methodist seminary.
Johnson sees his greatest contribution as a teacher in helping believing Christian students understand that they don’t have to choose between what he sees as the narrow literalism of some brands of fundamentalism and the equally narrow skepticism of historical-critical scholarship. Both of these approaches, Johnson says, miss the point of what the New Testament is trying to accomplish -- which is to proclaim the risen Christ as a powerful reality in the lives of believers here and now.
Johnson values the contributions that historical-critical scholarship has made to the study of the New Testament, and he is certainly more in that camp, intellectually, than he is in the fundamentalist camp. Johnson says his objection to the members of the Jesus Seminar is not that they use the tools of “critical” scholarship, but only that they use them badly.
“I’m giving a lecture on this stuff at Ministers Week here” at Emory University, he explains. “And I use the analogy of my relationship with my wife. It’s as though I were to spend days and nights closed up in my study, analyzing the historical records of my first date with my wife, trying to figure out if she really was who she said she was. And all the while she’s outside my study crying or calling to me, trying to get my attention. That’s what so much of New Testament scholarship strikes me as being like.”
In the end, though, what really disturbs Johnson about the new “quests for the historical Jesus” is that they all want to focus on a Jesus other than the one portrayed in the Gospels -- a proto-feminist, social revolutionary, Cynic sage, or whatever -- because the Jesus found in the actual Gospels is so disturbing.
“I think what really causes me chagrin is that people parade this kind of piety about how concerned they are about what Jesus really did and how it shakes the foundation of faith,” he says. “No one wants to deal with the image of Jesus in the classical Christian tradition -- the image of Jesus that inspired, for example, Saint Francis of Assisi, the image of giving one’s life in suffering for others. “This is so much more countercultural and provocative and threatening than any image these skeptical New Questers have come up with. And certainly more challenging and threatening than that of normal, comfortable Christian piety. In other words, if we uncover and confront the Jesus in the Gospels, then we really have something kind of scary to deal with -- because that’s the image of Jesus that Christian discipleship is supposed to follow. And that’s frightening to many people.”
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Robert J. Hutchinson is a freelance writer based in Orange County, California.
Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine April 29, 1996, Vol. 40, No. 5, Page 28
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“The Real Jesus: The Mistaken Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels,” by Luke Timothy Johnson (Harper San Francisco, 182 pp.; $22, hardcover).
An anecdote about the intense level of feeling in politics:
Grover Norquist was attending a reunion of his liberal college newspaper in
1991. A now-prominent liberal writer came up to Norquist and said, "Grover,
you conservatives must be so unhappy now that Bush has betrayed you on taxes."
"Nick," Norquist replied, "for 40 years American conservatives had to fight a
two-front war against Soviet imperialism abroad all the while domestic
statists were gnawing at our legs. Today, thanks to the leadership of Ronald
Reagan and the sacrifice of millions of American servicemen from Korea to
Vietnam to Europe, the Soviet Union is broken into 15 pieces. It no longer
exists. So now we can turn all our attention and energy to crushing you."
He was taken aback, but Norquist added two thoughts. "And Nick, the Soviet
Union had nuclear weapons. You don't. And with the Soviets, it was simply
business. With you it's personal."
#4032
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The fall of communism is due to its spiritual failure. It claimed that capitalism was evil and unjust, but Marxism was based on falsehood and did not reflect reality. Capitalism is more spiritual than communism - goods and services are freely exchanged, these goods increase in value, and it rewards the best efforts.
The huge Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Czechoslovakia was set up to study (and attack) capitalism. They secretly became capitalists themselves. An East German made this assessment of the "six miracles of socialism":
1. There is no unemployment, but no one works.
2. No one works, but everyone gets paid.
3. Everyone gets paid, but there is nothing to buy.
4. No one can buy anything, but everyone owns everything.
5. Everyone owns everything, but no one is satisfied.
6. No one is satisfied, but 99 percent of the people voted for the system.
Western liberalism has faults of its own. It constantly says the government is there to do what individuals can't or won't do on their own. However, government can't do anything for us without first taking from us the means to do it. Government's only tool is force, and force is usually the worst possible tool to apply in social matters.
Ideas, not armies, rule the world. False belief, not secret police or barbed wire, enslaves.
The United States of America is "morally bankrupt" because it has followed a "liberal philosophy" that asks "what" instead of "why," Texas pastor O.S. Hawkins said at a national seminar March 4.
"The United States is morally bankrupt in large part because we have been led by a liberal philosophy that has made false assumptions about two particular things: the nature of the universe and the nature of mankind," said Hawkins, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas.
Hawkins spoke at the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission's 29th annual national seminar, titled "Christians in the Public Square: Faith in Practice?" held March 4-6 in Washington.
"Liberal philosophy seldom asks why, it only asks what," Hawkins said.
For that reason, America seeks to clean up problems like drug abuse and AIDS rather than to analyze the root causes of social problems, he said.
"What would happen if the president of the United States would stand up before the American people and stop asking what and begin to ask why?" he said.
Hawkins drew a list of "why" questions from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, where God asks ancient Judah: "Why has this people slidden back? Why do we sit still? Why have they provoked me to anger? Why is there no recovery?"
Hawkins dated America's moral decline to the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling forbidding prayer in public schools, noting that the last 30 years have been marked by trouble for children and schools.
He also complained that religious appeals increasingly are ignored in seats of power.
"Speak of the judgment of God in this city and you'll be scoffed at and laughed out of town," Hawkins said. "We've rejected the word of the Lord for men's liberal agenda and we wonder why people have slidden back."
Hawkins took regular jabs at President Bill Clinton during his address.
He first criticized Clinton for defending last year's United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, as "true blue to families" while the conference discussed lesbianism and featured a prayer to "Mother Earth."
"And the leader of the free world says it was true blue to families," Hawkins said. "Why has this people slidden back?"
Later, he alluded to Clinton again after stating, "America's biggest problem is an apathetic church that has lost its first love and thus its influence."
"When I see political leaders with their liberal agendas contrary to the Word of God coming out of church on Sunday being photographed with Bibles in their hands and waving to the television cameras, the words of Jeremiah 7:9-10 echo in my mind," he said. "Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal and walk after other gods whom you do not know and then come and stand before me in the house that is called by my name and say 'we are delivered to do all these abominations?'"
He targeted Clinton again, making a point that, "It is one thing to be immoral, but another to encourage a moral decline in the land."
"We have had presidents of the United States in the past who have been known for immoral acts. But it is quite another thing to encourage immorality through people and policies," he said.
"A leader encourages moral decline in the land when he takes a pen in hand and signs an executive order permitting the bodies of aborted babies to be used in research. A leader encourages a moral decline in the land when he appoints an AIDS czar who quickly says America is 'a repressed Victorian society' and tells the populace, including teenagers, to seek pleasure in sex."
While criticizing liberals and politicians, Hawkins said the church bears the most blame for increasing secularization in culture.
"Don't blame the politicians for a moral collapse. It belongs at the feet of the church," he said.
"We have a generation in America that does not know Christ primarily because we have not made him known," Hawkins said.
Even Christians have bought into values of the liberal philosophy, Hawkins said.
"Many Americans have bought into the liberal lies, media manipulation and public propaganda, while the church sits by with a false confidence based on lying words," Hawkins said.
"Don't listen to those who say religious principles played little part in the founding of the United States," Hawkins said. "Don't listen to those who say that we basically were not built on a Judeo-Christian philosophy but on more of a pluralistic deistic philosophy.
"Forever etched in the charters of the 13 original colonies is the gospel truth," he said, quoting charters of early states. According to their charters, Maryland was "formed by a pious zeal to extend the Christian gospel," Delaware was "formed for the further propagation of the holy gospel" and Connecticut to "preserve the purity of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ," Hawkins said.
#4135
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[Holwick: AWAB stands for "Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists." W&A stands for "Welcoming and Affirming." They welcome homosexuals into their congregational life and accept them as they are; homosexuality is not considered a sin (unless, perhaps, it involves violence or promiscuity). About 30 American Baptist churches identify with the movement. This is how one of their churches describes itself.]
_______________________________________________________________________
W&A Congregations in Profile: Lake Street Church, Evanston, Illinois
By David Gregg (Minister of Education and Congregational Life)
Lake Street Church is probably well defined by its roots in traditional liberal Christianity and its struggle to transform them. Our desire to reintegrate prophetic witness, spiritual depth, high commitment, and a thriving community is a simple one but has led us on quite a journey.
"First Baptist Church of Evanston," as it was called, spent most of the 70's aging and shrinking. By 1980, this once significant ABC church was nearly decimated, and something needed to change. So the church called Robert V. Thompson, only thirty at the time, to be a "magic bullet" pastor. But there was a difference: unlike many churches looking for institutional salvation, Evanston was willing to change. And it worked: the church began to come back.
The main strategy was a program of liberal activism. Debates on becoming a sanctuary church-voted down-led to a homeless shelter in the church basement. The church expanded its ecumenical work and founded agencies serving people with AIDS, inner-city latch-key kids, and those lacking affordable housing. The church found new life as a place for liberal firebrands. But there was something missing. Like many activist churches, FBC-Evanston discovered their roots to be in shallow soil. Discovering the overly external nature of this latter-day social gospel, the church began asking how progressive, intellectual, post-modern Christians could become spiritual.
The church undertook a wide and serious exploration of some recent spiritual re-discoveries: Goddess spirituality, shamanistic paganism, and Gnosticism. These explorations struck some as profound and others as "New Agey," but they deepened everyone's commitment to spiritual openness in new, even radical ways. These explorations have evolved into committed inter-religious work. For four years, the church has celebrated World Wide Communion Sunday, not as an ecumenical holiday but as an inter-faith one. We invite members of Hindu, Native American, Jewish, Buddhist, Moslem, and Sikh communities to join us at the communion table, because we believe it is what Christ would do in our present Metro-Chicago setting.
As we were expanding the limits of our openness, tensions with our Baptist roots surfaced. We were ambitious about growth; and it became obvious that our name, First Baptist Church, was a major obstacle. The repressive Baptist caricature scared people away before we could say "not that kind of Baptist." So, we changed our name, and everything changed. Finally people would listen to us explain our commitments to openness, spiritual development, and progressive public witness. The congregation grew dramatically as people discovered what we tried to tell them all along: that our combination of a definite, non-dogmatic witness with a commitment to radical openness was just what they were looking for.
Of course, many were worried we would grow away from the Baptist tradition. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. We have spent more time talking "Baptist" since the name change than we ever did before. Then, we had to explain it away. Now, we can simply explain it. Once we do, people become enthusiastic about our allegiance to Baptist principles. There is still too much baggage for many to call themselves Baptist. But all celebrate the Baptist principles by name. It has been a painful irony that, just as we have grown in awareness of our heritage, that heritage itself is under such assault. But our congregation is now more committed, not less, to preserving our traditional values and asserting them anew in our denomination.
Not much of this touches on our W&A stance. It has been an important but ultimately minor emphasis. In large part, this is because, as near as I can tell, the inclusion of sexual minorities is not an issue but a given. When the church voted to join AWAB, the motion passed with no opposing speeches and only one vote against. We offer gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people a church community in which variations in gender and sexual identity are not a big deal. This perhaps makes us a poor choice for people beginning to struggle with integrating religion and sexuality. But it represents our vision of the Kingdom as a place where everyone is included, enfranchised, and "main streamed" - because the main stream is so very wide.
*
Example of doctrinal laxness in American Baptist Churches (ABC-USA):
Dr. Walter Wink to give the speech at National Ministries luncheon during Biennial Convention in 1999.
Some of what he believes:
1. God did not send Jesus to the cross.
2. Jesus did not die a substitutionary sacrificial death for the
forgiveness of our sins.
3. Jesus' death was not unique any more than those of Martin Luther
King Jr. or Gandhi.
9. God is not a being but is the soul or spirit of the creation.
Some text from Wink's book:
"The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer vengeful, but
unconditionally loving, who needed no satisfaction by blood -- this
God of mercy was changed by the church into a wrathful God whose
demand for blood atonement leads to God's requiring his own Son's
death on behalf of us all
...AGAINST SUCH AN IMAGE OF GOD THE REVOLT OF ATHEISM IS AN ACT OF
PURE RELIGION!"
(p. 88, 89)
=============================================================================
The full text of Eby's post to the ABE web discussion:
Subj: 9.05.19b = What's Wrong with Wink (Eby)
Date: 5/18/99 8:39:57 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: ABEConnect
Subj: Walter Wink
From: abevangel@aol.com (John Eby)
I am reading the postings about Walter Wink somewhat incredulously. I
suggest anyone who has read Wink and sees nothing wrong with his theology go
back and read him again. He is not the best writer and the trilogy may bog
you down. If so, I suggest his recent book, THE POWERS THAT BE, that is a
"digest of his third book of the Trilogy with elements from the previous
two." If you do this here are some of the disturbing facts you will
discover.
1. God did not send Jesus to the cross.
2. Jesus did not die a substitutionary sacrificial death for the
forgiveness of our sins.
3. Jesus' death was not unique any more than those of Martin Luther King
Jr. or Gandhi.
4. God is a God of mercy so he just says that our sins are forgiven and
he has done that so a sacrifice of atonement was not needed.
5. The Old Testament image of a violent God was an erroneous projection
by people who were under the influence of the Powers and believed
in Redemptive Violence.
6. Jesus' death served to straighten that error out and in so doing the
Powers and the Domination System were exposed forever placing
them under our power to overcome by non-violent methods.
7. Salvation occurs when individuals accept the reality of the
Domination System and determine to act differently from the
violent way the system wants them to act.
8. The Kingdom of God will arrive when all the powers have returned to
acting the way God intended them to act and the Domination System
will no longer exist. This is evolutionary and progressive and a
work of mankind which will take place in time and history not in
eternity.
9. God is not transcendent but is the soul or spirit of the creation.
He is suffused throughout the universe. Each of us, because we
are also soul or self-centered, when we pray are coextensive with
the universe.
10. Wink describes himself as having a panentheistic [pantheistic?]
worldview which is not a biblical worldview.
11. The meaning of Jesus' resurrection described in the words, "Death
could not hold him," is that the significance of his exposure of
the Domination System still is known.
12. Here is some text from the book: "The God whom Jesus revealed as no
longer vengeful, but unconditionally loving, who needed no
satisfaction by blood -- this God of mercy was changed by the
church into a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads
to God's requiring his own Son's death on behalf of us all....
Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of
pure religion!" (p. 88, 89)
13. Jesus is a savior only as regards his exposure of the Domination
System and its violence. If you believe that message, then you
are saved. The gospel has become our own proclamation of that
message of non-violence and reality of the powers.
14. The "secret hidden since the foundation of the world is the scapegoat
mechanism. The rulers would never have crucified Jesus if they
had realized that doing so would blow their cover." (91)
15. "When the early Christians proclaimed that 'there is salvation in no
one else' (Acts 4:12), this should be taken in the narrow sense:
through Jesus the scapegoat mechanism is exposed and the spiral
of violence is broken." (p. 92)
This is just a part of it all. A more detailed report will be coming in ABC
Connections. You really need to read the book to do justice to Wink's total
disregard for biblical authority, rejection of the true work of Christ and
revised construction of the gospel, which is not a gospel at all.
If the leaders of this denomination, and the pastors in the churches cannot
understand just how heretical Wink's teachings are, then we are in no
position to be doing evangelism and church planting or even calling ourselves
ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
God forgive us, and may the stones cry out.
John C. Eby
A syllabus for a course at the University of Maine contains the following warning: "Any language that may be deemed sexist, racist or homophobic, or may be found offensive by any minority group, is prohibited. Use of such language can result in immediate failure of that paper and possible future action."
It's an example of political correctness, and what makes it especially ironic is that the course in question isn't "Contemporary Feminism" or "Queer Theory 101." Instead, it's a class called "Speech Communication."
Speech codes, it seems, are everywhere. But they don't represent the triumph of liberalism, as you might think. Instead, they represent its surrender.
Harvey Silvergate is the author of the "Shadow University," a book about the restrictions on the liberties of college students. Silvergate says ninety percent of the nation's colleges have adopted speech codes.
The ostensible aim of these codes is to preserve the peace. But, as Silvergate points out, these codes are really little more than attempts at "mind control," designed to preserve a secular orthodoxy on campus.
Silvergate cites the example of a religion professor who quoted biblical passages that describe the role of women and sinfulness of homosexuality. He was brought up on charges of hostility to woman and gays.
Now, the ability to punish politically incorrect speech might seem like a victory for secular liberalism. But, as philosopher Russell Hittinger pointed out at Prison Fellowship's recent Wilberforce Conference on worldview in Colorado Springs, these codes are actually an admission of weakness.
As Hittinger explained, "Once upon a time people really did believe that the modern ["isms"] would provide an order of truth to replace the older worldview of [Christianity.]" It was the belief that "isms" such as Marxism and Darwinism were true that made them so powerful.
But on the eve of the millennium, this faith in secular ideologies is in tatters. It's difficult to find anyone who will argue that any secular ideology describes reality and provides a sure foundation for organizing our lives.
What happened? In a word, postmodernism -- the belief that there are no universal truths or norms. As Hittinger points out, secular liberalism not only doesn't make claims about absolutes, it denies, as an article of faith, that absolutes exist -- including liberal absolutes. In an ironic twist, liberalism, which tried to reduce religion to a private matter, has itself been reduced to a private matter.
This leaves liberals ill-equipped to engage Christians in debates about the fitness of their belief system. Does that mean they're willing to concede the argument to Christians? Not at all. As Hittinger put it, "my fellow faculty is scared down to their socks of Christianity."
This fear produces the speech codes we see on campuses across the country. Knowing that they can't beat the Judeo-Christian tradition in a fair fight, they seek to repress it instead.
Christians are and should be concerned about the imposition of speech codes and other forms of censorship. But that's because we welcome the very debate our opponents fear. We know that it's not our belief system that's been tried and found wanting, but theirs.
And to those who find that assertion offensive, I can only ask, "what are you afraid of?"
___________________________
Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
"People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles... But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not available to them before."
Harold S. Kushner, Cited in The Best of BITS & PIECES
[this passage reflects the liberal idea that prayer is a way of drawing out your own inner resources rather than a plea for supernatural help. -Holwick]
*
Persecution is becoming one of the hot issues of our day, as Christians around the world, thankfully, are rallying around those who are being martyred for their faith. But it's not the only risk we face as believers. More subtle, but just as dangerous, is the threat posed by the ideas and "Isms" that vie for belief, and for authority over our minds.
Christians are not immune to intellectual seduction. If we take our eyes off of Christ and allow the values of modern culture to shape our worldview, we're just as vulnerable as anyone. And, as author and professor Jay Budziszewski points out, ideological seductions tempt Christians on both ends of the political spectrum.
Among those who think of themselves as political liberals, one such idea is perfectionism. This is the view that human effort alone can cure the evils of our time. Some perfectionists put their faith in education, psychotherapy, or political and economic reforms.
But they all share a common failing: the belief that we can have heaven on earth by our own hand. This view may sound attractive, but it ignores the realities of sin and pride.
The message of Christianity, of course, is different. The Bible teaches that sin can only be erased by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The cure for sin will never be complete until we are at peace with God. And we ignore this truth at our peril -- as history teaches.
Dictators and tyrants have haunted human society for centuries, stacking human bodies higher than Nimrod stacked bricks at the Tower of Babel, but they came no closer to heaven on earth than that ancient king.
Christians who think of themselves as conservatives are certainly not immune to seduction either. For them, one of the greatest temptations is "traditionalism" -- the ideas that "whatever is, is right," and that whatever has been done should continue to be done.
Change for the sake of change is foolishness, of course. But the Bible insists that we cannot place our trust in traditions or customs, for what God is doing is beyond imagination. Perhaps the best illustration of the danger of traditionalism in 18th- and 19th-century America was the evil of slavery. Even some Christians defended the practice at one time on the basis of tradition. But every evil eventually calls itself tradition. In our time, some have tried to call tradition to the defense of abortion.
In 1992, when they re-affirmed Roe v. Wade -- the case that legalized abortion -- pro-abortion members of the Supreme Court said that abortion should remain legal because "an entire generation has come of age" depending on it. In other words, never mind that abortion is immoral and wrong; what matters now is that women are used to it.
False worldviews of the day have been a threat to people of faith in every age, which ought to remind us of the need to be alert, and to recognize the risks of intellectual seduction.
To help you steer clear of these temptations, I recommend Jay Budziszewski's penetrating new book, The Revenge of Conscience. It's a valuable resource, reminding Christians of that most important lesson -- that it is loyalty to Christ, and not the Ideas and Isms of our day, that really matters.
___________________
Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
Bill Moyers, at the Inaugural Prayer Meeting, recalled a story by Brooks Hays whose stand against segregation cost him his Arkansas Congressional seat in 1958: Pointing to dog next to him he said: "Old Fergus here, who goes with me every day, is a liberal when he's sniffing through the bushes looking for a rabbit, but a conservative when he buries the bone."
Re-Imagining God: Over the last few decades, mainline denominations have struggled with certain key issues. Can Christians use female pronouns in reference to God? Should men and women occupy the same roles in the church? Does God sanction homosexuality? Feminist and gay ministers and theologians have made their decision on these issues. For a long while, however, the grass roots membership has remained blissfully ignorant of how far their conclusions had gone.
The situation changed dramatically following an ecumenical feminist conference last November in Minneapolis. The four-day gathering, called “Re-Imagining,” was attended by 1,743 women and 83 men from 27 countries in 15 denominations; almost half were Presbyterians and Methodists.
People from all over the country voiced their outrage almost as soon as details of the conference broke in the pages of Presbyterian Layman and the United Methodist Good News. Many local governing bodies promised that they would withhold funds from their central organizations in protest of the financial support and apparent endorsement of “Re-Imagining.”
What caused all the stir? Conference participants used milk and honey for the communion, which were blessed and dedicated to “Sophia.” While supposedly representing nothing more than the feminine personification of wisdom, Sophia attained goddess status at the conference. “We invoke Sophia, Divine Wisdom, who chose to play with all the people of the world. Her voice has been silenced too long. Let her speak and bless us throughout these days.”
Here is a sampling of statements from various speeches:
Mary Hunt -- “Whether [being religious] is Christian or not is frankly, darling, something about which I no longer give a pope.”
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott -- “As an incest survivor, I can no longer worship in a theological context that depicts God as an abusive parent and Jesus as the obedient trusting child.”
Christine Marie Smith -- Regarding the Canaanite woman of Matthew 15:22-28: “It's so much easier to speak about her bold voice than to sense the silent rejection of both Jesus and the disciples ... I've always found this story angering and offensive.”
Elizabeth Bettenhausen -- “Creation out of nothing, is not as women would do it now, a solitary patriarchal creating. How boring. Yahweh all by himself. Although of course he refers to himself in the plural form at one point to remind us, probably inadvertently, of the goddess and the earth from which he came.”
On June 16, a General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) adopted the report of a committee setup to review “Re-Imagining.” The report criticized the administration for losing touch with its membership.
“Theology matters,” it proclaimed, and rejected views that went “beyond the boundaries of Reformed theological tradition but also beyond ... what makes faith Christian.” While it is encouraging to see a large body of people defend basic principles of belief in God, their struggles should serve as fair warning for Christians who believe they will never face similar challenges. -- Reason & Revelation, July 1994 --
*
For the past few decades, a group of scholars known variously as biblical minimalists or deconstructionists have made a big splash in the field of biblical archeology.
Minimalists regard biblical narratives as propaganda, not history. In their view, the Bible was written centuries, even millennia, after the events described and written for the purpose of creating a mythical glorious past.
Most reputable scholars disagree. Even those who don't regard the Bible as inerrant believe that the Bible is a reliable source of information about the history and culture of Israel and of the ancient Near East.
By contrast, minimalists believe that there never was a King David, a King Solomon, or a unified kingdom of Israel. And they insist that Jerusalem was never more than a backwater town on the fringes of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.
But biblical archeologists are proving them wrong. In 1993, a group of archeologists found an Assyrian stone tablet near the city of Dan in northern Israel dating from the ninth century B.C. The inscription lists Assyria's foes. Included on the list are "king of Israel" and "house of David."
Those two inscriptions, dating less than a century after David's reign, are clear proof that the biblical writers didn't invent David.
As for the city of David, archeological digs in and around Jerusalem have uncovered evidence of what one scholar terms a "major city." The walls of the city at the time of the First Temple extend four times further than was previously believed. And the Jerusalem that emerges from this physical evidence has grandeur and scale commensurate with its reported status.
Evidence such as this led Anson Rainey of the Tel Aviv Institute, writing in BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW, to call the minimalist school "a circle of dilettantes." He labeled their ideas a "figment of their vain imaginations" and concluded that findings such as the one at Dan should sound the "death knell to their conceit" about David and other biblical figures.
Deconstructionists replied that the inscriptions in Dan could mean "House of Uncle" or even "House of Kettle." But no reputable scholar agrees with them. It's a case of refusing to look the evidence squarely in its face.
That's because minimalism, like its equivalents in other disciplines, isn't a product of the evidence; it's the product of assumptions about the author's motives. In other words, it's an ideology. Like literary deconstructionists, minimalists look at the text and see a hodgepodge of political motivations and power arrangements.
The problem is that, whereas no amount of digging can ever prove that there was a mayor of Casterbridge, it can prove that there was a king David. And that makes deconstructing the biblical text a completely different thing from deconstructing the work of Thomas Hardy.
Over the next few days, I'll be citing other examples of archeology helping to confirm the words of Scripture. It's a case of the stones crying out, and their message is: Believe what you see and read, and not the vain imaginings of ideologues.
For further reading:
Jeffrey Sheler, IS THE BIBLE TRUE? (HarperCollins, 1999).
Read more about biblical archeology at the BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW website.
Randall Price, THE STONES CRY OUT: HOW ARCHEOLOGY CONFIRMS THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE (Harvest House, 1997).
_________________________
Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
“The liberal soul shall be made fat; and he that watereth shall himself be watered” Proverbs 11:25.
We'll be “fat” when we become liberal. That is, we will be prospered, and we will grow... the one who gives shall also get... “Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, and running over.”
1. WE NEED TO BE LIBERAL IN OUR PRAISE OF GOD. “God inhabits the praises of His people.” “Let all the people praise thee, O Lord.” We ought to be liberal in praise.
We can praise the Lord because He is our Owner. He is the Lord of life. We can say again, “He has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” We can celebrate the truth of God's ownership...
We can praise the Lord for His power. Psalms 62:11 states that “power belongs unto the Lord.” Climb a mountain one day and look at the big, solid boulders or ledges. He placed the mountains in their place and the valleys where they are. God is the omnipotent Lord. He can do all things. We praise Him for His power.
We can praise God for His mercy. Micah 7:18 says the Lord delights in mercy. Wow! He has mercy on us. We remember that a publican, a sinful man, walked into the temple one day and prayed. His prayer was brief: “Lord be merciful to me the sinner.” He returned to his house justified. God shows His mercy to us over and over again. He showed mercy to Jonah. When the run-away prophet called out to God, the Lord answered and delivered him.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 about some of his converts. Some had been drunkards, some homosexuals, some idol worshipers, and the list goes on. But he also wrote, “And such were some of you, but you are washed, , sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God.” God showed mercy upon those people and saved them. The Lord is in the business of saving people today. He makes saints out of sinners. He makes Satan's people change into God's people. God is merciful. We can praise Him for His mercy! Thus, let's be liberal in praise to the Lord.
2. WE NEED TO BE LIBERAL IN OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS. We can learn to tolerate and get along with all kinds of people. We may not agree with some. We may be of different persuasions. But we can be liberal in our dealings with and relations with others...
Someone has written the meaningful lines: “To live with saints in heaven will be bliss and glory; to live with saints on earth, oh my soul, that's another story!” We can have good and meaningful relations with others.
We can encourage others. The world around us needs a word to lift them up, to inspire and help. Solomon wrote in 25:11, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” A framed picture of silver that has golden apples is a beautiful sight. That kind of picture animates and encourages the viewer. So do words that are spoken that warm the heart. They change one's life. All of us speak words. They can be words to uplift, or they can be words to break the spirit. Which will they be?
3. WE CAN BE LIBERAL IN OUR SUPPORT OF GOD'S CAUSE. In the verse before the text in Proverbs 11:24 these words are found, “There is that which scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”
We need to be liberal in giving because this honors God. Proverbs 3:9 states, “Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase.” Then the glowing words follow that God will cause our own barns to overflow we goods. He will bless us as we honor Him with our gifts... We worship God with our gifts. All of us need to see giving as an act of holy worship. We honor the Lord as we give back to Him.
We need to be liberal in giving because this helps meet spiritual and material needs to the ends of the earth. The local Church keeps going and thrives in part by the way we support the work where we live.
We need to be liberal in giving because this helps our eternal well being... The Saviour said for us to lay up treasure in heaven. We do this as we give. We have eternal benefits, not just temporal ones, as we share in giving to God's cause. Let's be liberal in giving.
4. WE CAN BE LIBERAL IN OUR WITNESSING TO OTHERS ABOUT JESUS. In the same chapter as the text in verse 30 of chapter eleven we read, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.” Every Christian can be a witness. We can be God's missionaries where we are. We need to testify to God's love in Jesus Christ.
We ought to witness because we have good news to share. In fact, the greatest news in all world history is the story of Jesus. We tell about Jesus. We tell of His death for us. He gave His life for you and me. He shed His blood for our salvation, our redemption. We turn from our sin, we repent. We trust Jesus. We ask Him to save us, to live in our lives as Savior and friend. Then we tell the good news to others that Jesus changes one's life, that He gives eternal life. This is the only lasting good news story in world history. Life unending through Jesus is great news!
We ought to witness because others wait for “His Story,” the story of Jesus. Many people don't understand that they can be saved, that God loves them, that God changes life, that God gives redemption from sin, that the Lord gives holiness and sanctity and joy and unending bliss. Many wait for us to take the initiative and tell them.
One Indian doctor in a Texas city was invited by a member of the First Baptist Church of that town to visit them. Dr. Varshney asked, “You mean to that beautiful building there on the highway?” He was told yes. Then he said, “Well, I didn't think that anyone like me would be able to attend your Church.” Some people may be afraid to come to visit because they don't know that a welcome sign is out for them. Some may think that the Church is a little club for a few members. We need to share, to witness, so everyone can know that God's House is a house for all people.
We can be liberal in our outreach. Are we doing this, or simply mentioning or glossing over the facts on some occasions as we come to mission days or mission offerings. Let's witness -- really spread the news of Jesus.
Let's learn to be liberal, to be generous in every area of life. God will bless the individual and the Church as we learn to think of others, as we give, and give, and give. What will we do about the challenge of being liberal and generous?
__________
Preston A. Taylor
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #19257]
PREREQUISITES TO BEING A LIBERAL
1) You have to believe the HIV/AIDS virus is spread by a lack of funding.
2) You have to be against capital punishment, but for abortion on demand, in short you support protecting the guilty and killing the innocent.
3) You have to believe that the same public school teacher who can’t teach 4th graders how to read is qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
4) You have to believe that trial lawyers are selfless heroes and doctors are overpaid.
5) You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than nuclear weapons in the hands of the Red Chinese.
6) You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical, documented changes in the Sun, and more affected by SUVs.
7) You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being gay is natural, like.... “being born this way”.
8) You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
9) You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature but animal rights activists who’ve never been outside Seattle do.
10) You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11) You have to believe there was no art before federal funding.
12) You have to believe the military, not corrupt politicians, starts wars.
13) You have to believe the free market that gives us 500+ channels can’t deliver the quality that PBS does.
14) You have to believe the NRA is bad, because it stands up for certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good, because they stand up for certain parts of the Constitution.
15) You have to believe that taxes are too low but ATM fees are too high.
16) You have to believe that Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez & Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, General Robert E. Lee or Thomas Edison.
17) You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides aren’t.
18) You have to believe that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than HIV.
19) You have to believe Hillary Clinton is really a lady and Rosie O’Donnell is not really a man.
20) You have to believe that conservatives are racists, but that black people couldn’t make it without your help.
21) You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn’t worked yet anywhere it’s been tried is because the right people haven’t been in charge of this endeavor.
The Southern Baptist conservative resurgence has been driven foremost by a deep concern for faithfulness to scriptural teaching and is not a reaction to increasingly secularized culture, writers in the spring issue of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology assert.
The issue, a publication of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, focuses on “Theology, Culture, and the SBC,” and interacts with Barry Hankins' recent book, “Uneasy in Babylon.”
Thomas R. Schreiner, professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Seminary, contends that many of the issues addressed by Southern Baptist conservatives have cultural ramifications, but are fundamentally theological.
“[Hankins] rightly points out that many of the theological issues that took center stage also have cultural ramifications,” Schreiner writes. “But this is scarcely surprising. Faithfulness to the teaching of Scripture demands that we declare in public the teaching of Scripture that is contravened in our age and time.”
Schreiner, though, argues that a merely cultural explanation of the conservative resurgence does not fully explain why conservatives have raised certain issues.
“We emphasize inerrancy and the necessity of personal faith in Christ to be saved because many in the theological community deny these truths,” he writes.
Schreiner is one of four Southern Seminary faculty members who interact with “Uneasy in Babylon.” The others are seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr., and professors Gregory A. Wills and Russell D. Moore.
Hankins, associate professor of history and church-state relations at Baylor University, offers a response to the Southern faculty.
The writers contend that the Southern Baptist conflict centered on the issue of biblical authority. Moore, assistant professor of Christian theology, says that Hankins miscalculates the extent to which cultural phenomena drove the conservative resurgence.
“Contrary to Hankins' thesis, conservatives did not rally Southern Baptists around inerrancy in order to fight a battle against abortion, the sexual revolution, feminism or any other cultural phenomenon,” Moore writes.
“Instead these issues crystallized the debate over larger theological and missiological questions of biblical authority, the Great Commission, and the prophetic role of the church in protecting those the culture deems not worthy of life.”
Conservatives are most concerned with the advance of the Word of God, Moore argues.
“Baptist conservatives know they will not find Jerusalem in an idyllic southern culture or in a Republican White House or in a less profane Hollywood,” he writes. “They must seek to hold back the cultural darkness, but they know they will find a New Jerusalem only in the Kingdom of Christ -- a Kingdom that is seen even now in the advance of the Gospel around the world.”
Wills, associate professor of church history, says that theological conviction has driven conservatives to confront liberalism in the seminaries for decades. The resurgence of the 1980s was grounded in conservative activity from decades earlier.
“Conservatives believed that the denomination was drifting from orthodoxy,” Wills writes. “Although they raised some accusations against other denominational agencies, the seminaries were the main targets. Many aspects of the post-1979 campaign to expunge liberalism from the seminaries arose from the denominational experiences in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Echoing Moore in his critique of Hankins, Wills contends that conservatives “were not seeking a platform for countercultural political endeavors but an orthodox foundation for advancing the faithfulness of Southern Baptists in fulfilling the divinely ordained mission of the church.” But Hankins argues that Moore and Wills misunderstand the thesis of “Uneasy in Babylon.”
“Rather than attempting to show that theology is subservient to culture war, I intended to argue that the two are so closely related that a failure to understand one is a failure to understand the other,” Hankins writes. “What Moore and Wills have done is set in opposition the two parts of my interpretation of Southern Baptist conservatives. I do not see these two as oppositional.”
Parties from both sides of the dispute, according to Hankins, tend toward reductionism in labeling the causes of the conservative resurgence. While conservatives often credit the movement wholly to theology, moderates tend to discount theological causes altogether.
“While abortion and the other issues I have covered in 'Uneasy in Babylon' are theological in one sense, the public and cultural impact of these issues heightened the perceived need to shore up the theology of the denomination, and the cultural component also helped convince rank-and-file Southern Baptists that something needed to be done.”
However, Mohler argues that the Southern Baptist controversy has fundamentally theological roots extending back to the fundamentalist- modernist controversy of the 1920s. Over the past 80 years, theological trends have polarized Southern Baptists into two distinct parties, Mohler writes.
The “'Truth Party' insists that Baptist doctrine and polity are inescapably attached to a prior affirmation of biblical truth, to a clear understanding of biblical authority, and an affirmation of revealed truth as demanding our belief in certain doctrinal essentials,” Mohler writes.
The “Liberty Party,” on the other hand, “is established upon an aggressive assertion of individual rights to interpretation, theological formulation, and experience.”
Mohler concludes, “The defining issues are now before us. The Southern Baptist crisis now comes down to the urgent issue of conviction, confession, and cooperation. The question now presented to the Southern Baptist Convention demands an answer: Will we stand upon the absolute truthfulness and full authority of Holy Scripture?”
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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #386]
Richard Niebuhr, a noted neo-conservative theologian of the twentieth century, exposed the core of liberal theology:
"A God without wrath
brought men without sin
into a kingdom without judgment
through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross."
__________________
H. Richard Niebuhr, "The Kingdom of God in America," [New York: Harper & Row, 1959], 193.
PRAYER FOR MORALITY .....
On January 23, 1996, Joe Wright of Wichita, Kansas, was the guest chaplain for the Kansas House of Representatives. He was asked to open their session that day with its customary prayer. However after the prayer, three house members jumped to their feet in a rage and indignantly shouted, “He can't talk like that!” What was it he said that was so terrible? Listen in:
“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know your Word says woe to those who call evil good but that's exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values. We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word in the name of moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it a lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. In the name of choice we have killed our unborn. In the name of right to life we have killed abortionists. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbors' possessions and called it taxes. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today. Try us and show us any wicked way in us. Cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas and who have been ordained by you to govern this great state. Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will. I ask in the name of your Son, the living Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.”
I applaud the courage of this man to pray a prayer that ought to be prayed in every state legislature across this country, as well as our national legislature in Washington, D.C.
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34).
Take a moment to offer a personal prayer for our government officials, that their hearts may be turned to seek and do God's will. “Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.”
Alan Smith Boone church of Christ Boone, North Carolina
========================================================
More info attached to this prayer in another message:
When Pastor Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual politically correct generalities. But on this day what they heard instead was a stirring prayer, passionately calling our country to repentance and righteousness.
The response was immediate - with a number of legislators walking out during the prayer. In six short weeks Central Christian Church logged more than 5,000 phone calls, with only 47 of those calls reponding negatively. Commentator Paul Harvey aired Pastor Joe Wright's prayer on the radio and received a larger response to this program than any other program Paul Harvey has ever aired.
In addition, Central Christian Church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea.
The prayer is reprinted below as an encouragement and challenge for each of us to stand for the truth of the Gospel wherever the Lord gives us opportunity.
If journalist Judith Levine intended to stir up controversy with her new book HARMFUL TO MINORS, she succeeded in spades. As word about the book spread, it was attacked for presenting pedophilia as an "alternative lifestyle." Levine rejects that characterization, calling it an example of the "hysteria" that prompted her to write the book.
While Levine does not condone pedophilia in its technical sense -- that is, sexual relations with pre-pubescent children -- there's little else she rules out of bounds. Levine denies that sex between minors and adults is always wrong. She writes that teens seek out sex with older people for what she considers "understandable reasons."
In an interview with Newhouse Newspapers, Levine demonstrated just how far "understandable" could be stretched. She said, "Yes, absolutely," when asked if a sexual relationship between a priest and a boy could be a positive experience for the boy. She added that "some research" suggests that such "experiences" can be "positive" for "even young children."
In Levine's telling, the real danger in sexual relationships between minors and adults comes not from the relationship but, rather, our reaction to the relationship -- or, as the title of one of the book's sections puts it, "the enemy is us."
To fight this "enemy," Levine suggests revising laws governing sexual consent. She holds up Dutch law, which allows kids as young as twelve to consent to sex, as an example for us to follow. This would only be part of a shift in societal attitudes towards sexual lives of our kids that she recommends.
In many respects, it doesn't matter if Levine's book does or does not endorse pedophilia specifically. Either way, the result is the same: Children will be sexually active and, as a result, exploited and damaged at younger and younger ages.
But is Levine really so radical, or is she just carrying our culture's attitudes about sex to their logical conclusions? She is to sexual liberation, in my opinion, what Peter Singer, the Princeton professor who advocates infanticide, is to the culture of death: She shows us the deadly consequences of the secular worldview.
That worldview denies that sex has anything to do with morality or truth. It considers traditional sexual morality, most notably the biblical morality, as a way of controlling people, especially women. And attempts to curb sexual liberties are repressive and, thus, emotionally harmful.
For Levine and our culture, there are no prohibitions when it comes to sex. What matters is consent and avoiding exploiting or being exploited. Of course, these are thin reeds with which to protect our children -- or even ourselves -- from harm.
The only way to effectively oppose pernicious nonsense like Levine's book is to attack the worldview that makes this kind of wrong-headedness possible. Ironically, HARMFUL TO MINORS, Levine's book may help Christians by giving us an apologetic argument. After all, if we force people like Levine to take their arguments to their logical conclusion, we expose the fallacy of their belief system. We show that it simply doesn't work. What people must see is not only is a book like this dangerous, but even more dangerous are the presuppositions about life that underlie it.
For further reading:
Frank York and Jan LaRue, PROTECTING YOUR CHILD IN AN X-RATED WORLD (Tyndale, 2002).
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, THE CHRISTIAN IN TODAY'S CULTURE (Tyndale, 1999).
David Crary, "U Press book on kids' sexuality called 'evil,'" Pioneer Press, 3 April 2002.
_________________________
Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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Liberal views on exclusivity of Christianity made by Rev. Rodney Romney, former pastor of Seattle First Baptist Church:
"...The popular image of Jesus was that he was the Holy Son of God (identity) who came to die for the sins of the world (purpose) and to proclaim himself as the Messiah or Savior (mission). But if you take a more historical approach to his life, as have numerous writers today, that image disappears. The new image that emerges is that Jesus' message was not about himself; he did not come to die for our sins, nor did he try to get people to believe in him.
"...I want to call your attention to this statement from Jesus, "I am the Way (Road), the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by me." ... The common assumption by most Christians is that Jesus was here making a defense of his own unique position in the scheme of salvation, and was saying that literally no one can come to God except through him. This may be good news to the Christian, but it is scant comfort for the Jew, the Moslem, the Hindu, or anyone else who does not accept the unique position of Jesus Christ in relation to God. ... Perhaps what Jesus meant was that no one can come to this concept of God within you as your heavenly parent except through the way of consciousness that he had shown. Perhaps what he was really saying was this: 'You are your own way to God.' Only you can open your heart to God. The road to God is found by carefully attending to the way within, by attending to those moments when a new feeling breaks through or a new idea emerges. Each of us is our own way. The Buddhists say to trust the wisdom that rises up within you. It is another way of saying, you are your way. I believe God wants to say to us today, 'Bill, Mary, Jim, Helen, I want you to trust your deepest intuitions. You are not alone and you never will be. You have not lost your way. You are your way.'"
______________________
Rev. Rodney Romney, retired Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church, Seattle, at 1998 National Forum of the Center for Progressive Christianity
Some Old Testament Bible stories, including the account of Jonah, cannot be taken literally, said a Southwest Baptist University Bible professor who led weekend Bible studies for the new Baptist General Convention of Missouri.
Scott Langston, an associate dean and professor of biblical studies at Southwest Baptist University, shared his views following an April 19 meeting of moderate Missouri Baptists who are forming a new convention.
In a letter that appeared on the BGCM's website, Langston noted in a "testimony" that he has reservations about continuing to support the Southern Baptist Convention and the Missouri Baptist Convention.
"Fundamentally, I disagree with the Christianity that is espoused and acted out by those in the leadership of these organizations [SBC and MBC]," Langston wrote, suggesting that the new convention take on the role of a "social agency or a think-tank."
When asked to explain his comments, Langston told Baptist Press that he was referring to what he called slanderous statements labeling some moderates as individuals who don't believe the Bible.
"It makes my blood boil because of how people have been treated," he said.
Langston said he does not use the idea of inerrancy to describe his interpretation of Scripture.
"I don't like to use that term," Langston told Baptist Press. "I prefer to use the term totally trusting."
While Langston said he believes in the virgin birth and the resurrection, there are some accounts in the Bible that he said should not be taken at face value.
"When you say you want to believe everything in the Bible, you have to ask if we are applying a modern standard of literature to an ancient text," Langston said. "To me, part of a literal interpretation is to take seriously the ancient context."
For example, does Langston believe the account of Jonah and the fish really happened? No, he replied.
"I think there is a possibility that it didn't happen," he said.
"If it could be proven that it never happened, my faith is still strong," Langston noted.
Langston, who was only identified as a Bible professor at a Missouri college, noted that he attended the meeting as an individual, not as a representative of Southwest Baptist University.
"The university is neutral in this and I am only here to represent myself," he said.
--30-
For those of us out there who are both ideological conservatives and fans of quality television, NBC's enormously popular political drama "The West Wing" presents something of a quandary. The show is undoubtedly one of the most well-written television programs on the air. At the same time, as numerous people have previously observed, The West Wing often functions as little more than the propagandistic efforts of NBC to parade the leftist political and moral views of the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin.
While a degree of fairness is sometimes attained, more often than not conservatives are represented as mean-spirited and downright irrational, while liberals come out looking like the true champions of American morality. This "liberal as moral champion" mentality is what makes one of this season's episodes, "We Killed Yamamoto," so worthy of note.
President Josiah "Jeb" Bartlett (played by Martin Sheen) is threatened with a very difficult situation. A foreign dignitary will soon be visiting America as a guest of the president.
The problem arises when U.S. intelligence discovers that this very dignitary is also the secret head of a terrorist organization that has recently attempted an attack on a U.S. military base. A debate ensues between President Bartlett and the Joint Chiefs over the best course of action.
The problem is how to effectively take the suspected terrorist into custody without violating international laws governing diplomatic immunity. The president leaves the meeting convinced that the only alternative is not to allow the diplomat to enter America.
Following the official meeting, a clandestine one takes place between the president's chief of staff, Leo McGarry, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Fitzwallace. During this second meeting, Fitzwallace manages to convince Leo, with the assistance of fuzzy legal definitions, that the president has to let the diplomat into the country, presumably so he can be dealt with decisively.
The pivotal scene in the episode occurs at 1 a.m. in the Oval Office. Leo approaches President Bartlett with his suggestion, and the two begin to argue about whether breaking international laws is justifiable. In the middle of this argument, Leo makes the stunning comment, "That's the only problem with your liberalism, Mr. President. You believe in moral absolutes. There are no moral absolutes."
This argument convinces the president to allow the suspect to enter America, though the two do not decide what course should be followed after that. The president concludes the conversation by weakly stating, "There are moral absolutes," to which Leo simply shakes his head. It sounded like President Bartlett was trying to convince himself as much as he was Leo.
The message of The West Wing is clear. Not only are social liberals the safeguards of true American morality, that morality includes no absolutes. This should come as no surprise. Hollywood and the television industry have been trying to convince us of the absence of moral absolutes for years.
The postmodern philosophy that is so prevalent in entertainment is, at its root, a denial of all absolutes. Even if absolutes in truth and morality were to exist, there would be no way for us to determine them. So, in short, morality is subjective, to be determined by the individual circumstance. Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics has become the holy scripture of American morality.
Ironically, the moral vagueness we see articulated so clearly in The West Wing is not simply a postmodern development. Many nations throughout history have attempted to exist and prosper with an absence of any meaningful moral restraints. One noteworthy example is found in the pages of Scripture. We read in the Old Testament that during the time of the Judges, "there was no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his own eyes."
Biblical scholars note that this phrase, which is repeated numerous times, represents the major theological theme of the book. What the verse means is not that Israel needed a human king to control morality, but that Israel had rejected God as their king.
God, who was the author of moral absolutes, was ignored. In short, God's chosen people lived like they did not know who he was. They were functional atheists. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, when men ignored God, anything was permissible.
Unlike Israel, America is not God's chosen land, but many of the same principles are applicable to our own moral climate. Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves Christians. Many of them would even identify themselves with such phrases as "evangelical" or "born again."
Yet, America is a country where, for the most part, every person does what is right in his or her own eyes. Multitudes claim to have a faith in God, but they live as though God (and his moral absolutes) is of no consequence to their daily lives. There are many Americans who are merely "cultural Christians" at best.
While cultural religion is never a substitute for saving faith, the problem is not limited to spiritual imposters. Regrettably, far too many authentic Christians go to church and affirm absolute truth, when in reality they are like Jeb Bartlett, trying to convince themselves that their notions of morality are not antiquated. Like ancient Israel, we are a nation of functional atheists.
Many Christians have a somewhat misinformed view of our founding fathers, believing them to be modern-day evangelicals who just happened to live in the 18th century. While this is a rather simplistic, rosy view of American history, there is no doubt that the founding fathers drafted our historical documents under the Judeo-Christian assumption that there is a God and he created a world of moral absolutes. How else can one explain the language of "inalienable rights." Absolutes were simply taken for granted.
Unfortunately, that is not the case today. In our pluralistic culture, we can no longer assume that all Americans have basically the same worldview in taking absolutes for granted. That is why it is so important for Christians to cling to the notion of moral absolutes. It is our responsibility to speak up for absolute truth and morality.
We must engage our culture in such a way that the biblical worldview is shown to be the only truly viable option. So do not buy into the lie that moral absolutes are a thing of the past. The West Wing may possibly be the best show on television, but its government does not represent the values America needs the most.
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There are places one expects to find feminist theology: the university doctoral seminar or the New Age spirituality section of the neighborhood bookstore. One does not expect to find radical feminist theism at sing-a-long time at Vacation Bible School or church camp. That could be changing.
Feminist theologian Jann Aldredge-Clanton, a Baptist, has teamed up with North Carolina Baptist minister of music Larry E. Schultz to author “Imagine God!” -- a children's musical that proclaims its use of “a variety of feminine, masculine, and non-gender images of God.”
The musical also draws on panentheism, the concept that God is the life presence within all things, an idea popularized within feminist circles by process theology and “creation spirituality.” Thus, according to the musical's lyrics, “God is in us and above, She and He and so much more.”
With this the case, children in this musical sing lyrics such as “Our God is a Mother and a Father too, and God is a Friend who will always see us through / Our God is a Sister who loves you and me, and God is a Brother who sets us free.” The lyrics speak of God as “Mother Eagle,” refer to the Deity with feminine pronouns and appropriate the “Sophia” devotion currently popular among feminist groups in several mainline Protestant denominations.
At first glance, it might seem that this children's musical is just fringe spirituality outside the orbit of the local congregation. But the musical is published by Choristers Guild, a major producer of music for churches. And it comes with the hearty endorsement of Baptist theologian Molly T. Marshall, until 1994 on the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and now perhaps the preeminent theologian of “moderate” Baptists in the South.
Marshall writes that Aldredge-Clanton and Schultz “perceptively understand that transforming the church's language for God can profitably begin with children, whose imaginations are less bound to traditional images.” Marshall notes that this musical “offers a fresh vision of the Triune God who reveals self in all of creation, especially through human creatures who share the divine imagination.”
The feminist theologians are correct indeed that it is easier to transform the imaginations of children in thinking about God. This is precisely what is so dangerous here. Children are indeed “less bound” to “masculine” images of God as Father, Lord and King at an early age than they will be after years of teaching from the church.
But the question is: From where did the church get these images?
The answer, of course, is from the God who has named Himself through His apostles and prophets in Holy Scripture. He is the One who “imagines” Himself as “He” -- and as “Father” and “Son” and “Lord.”
This was not mere cultural accommodation. After all, the Canaanite landscape was filled with “feminine images for the divine” (Judges 6:25-26), and yet the people of God remained with God's self-revelation about Himself. The first- century Roman world was indeed ready for language about “Mother God.” They, after all, adored female deities such as Artemis of the Ephesians (Acts 19:24- 35).
And yet, Jesus and His followers consistently spoke of God as “Father.” The concept of the “Mother God” or “Sister Spirit” was embraced after the ascension of Jesus by the Gnostic heresy movements -- and these theologies were rejected resoundingly by the apostolic and post-apostolic fathers precisely because they violated God's self-revelation in Scripture.
What is at stake here are not whether the church will accommodate more “gender- inclusive” language, but instead the doctrines of God and revelation -- and indeed the Gospel itself.
Aldredge-Clanton argues in the preface of the musical that such language -- indeed all language for God -- is “metaphorical” and thus there are many ways the church can “imagine” the Deity. Marshall's comments, as brief as they are, are tortured in their attempts to avoid using personal pronouns for this genderless Deity: God doesn't reveal Himself or Herself or Itself, but just “Self.” This is precisely the problem. Feminist theology abandons all of God's self-revelation to “metaphor,” at the cost of the personal nature of God. God no longer is Father; He is like a Father -- or a mother or an eagle or a baker- woman.
Thus, it is a sad trajectory to watch as feminist theologians continue in their respective journeys, speaking of God ultimately in impersonal terms such as “the Divine” or the “ground of being” -- anything to avoid speaking of Him as “Him.” Such an impersonal vision of God is closer to the unblinking Allah of Islam than to the “Abba Father” of Jesus and the apostles.
Most evangelical churches would never see such a bizarre musical performed. And yet it is a reminder of how serious the stakes are for the theological grounding of our children. We must remember that the heretic Arius spread his views of Jesus as a created being by teaching children to sing ditties about the time when “He was not.”
Today too many of our churches see music for children not as an opportunity to pass on the faith once for all delivered to the saints, but as an entertainment opportunity for adults to watch their children “perform” for them. Too many of our churches see children's Bible study as babysitting, and so we choose Sunday School teachers more gifted in crowd control than in the teaching of the oracles of God.
There is too much at stake for this. Instead our churches must recapture the priority of grounding our children -- through music as well as through instruction and example -- in the biblical revelation of the God of Jesus Christ. And that means we must embrace the ancient truth of what is increasingly seen as a countercultural and outdated theological claim: “Praise Him, Praise Him, all ye little children / God is love, God is love.”
__________
Russell D. Moore is dean of the school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #13861]
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