Can we serve God and fear?

The ambiguous title of this post was inspired by a recent article by the self-professed evangelical Brian McLaren (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/15/my-take-its-time-for-islamophobic-evangelicals-to-choose/?hpt=hp_c1). There is much to fault McLaren on here—as elsewhere—and this present criticism of his views follows but one path among many viable critiques. In truth, I find fault with the entire thrust of his article, but the following quotation is a good place to start. He says:

"Islamophobic evangelical Christians—and the neo-conservative Catholics and even some Jewish folks who are their unlikely political bedfellows of late—must choose. Will they press on in their current path, letting Islamophobia spread even further amongst them? Or will they stop, rethink and seek to a more charitable approach to our Muslim neighbors? Will they realize that evangelical religious identity is under assault…by forces within the evangelical community that infect that religious identity with hostility?"

McLaren continues with an important message: “The greatest threat to evangelicalism is evangelicals who tolerate hate and who promote hate camouflaged as piety. No one can serve two masters. You can’t serve God and greed, nor can you serve God and fear, nor God and hate.” This seems like a well-meaning observation, packaged for quick, uncritical acceptance.

Now, it has long seemed disingenuous to me to add “-phobic” to a view one’s opponent disagrees with. It’s popularly done in the homosexual arena, and is done by McLaren here, too. I am opposed to gay “marriage.” I am also opposed to homosexual activity of any sort. This is not out of some hidden fear of homosexuality, but out of the biblical worldview and Christ-loyalty I value unflinchingly. Calling an opponent “homophobic” is a cheap, tasteless trick, although I fear the word has now become common parlance so that it is often used without any special intent. Calling an opponent “Islamophobic” is much the same. Neither term is really, as popularly used, about fear. Rather, they are about ideological disagreement.

Admittedly, there is a slight difference between so-called “homophobia” and “islamophobia”: Islam does give some reasons for fear. McLaren criticizes an evangelical convert from Islam for speaking out against his former religion (this, instead of celebrating the freedom of a person McLaren should call a brother and welcome with open arms). This man may well have cause to fear Islam—a religion whose legal codes, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, “agree on the death penalty (traditionally by the sword) for an adult male in full possession of his faculties who has renounced Islam voluntarily.” On the same note, I think back to a former imam, converted not so long ago, who attended my church at Oxford. He spoke of ordering people stoned—not out of hate but, as he stated, out of a misguided love for God.

Such converts, at the very least, have some grounds for fearing Islam. Yet it is not a phobia; it is no irrational, crippling fear. Is it traffic-phobia to look both ways before crossing the street? Acknowledging causes for fear can be the first step towards courage as readily as it can be a step towards some “phobia.” Converts from Islam fall more accurately in the first category than the second. The grounds they have for fearing Islam are far from paralyzing, however. They have found something greater than fear of persecution or execution. It may be more accurate to say Someone greater has found them. For all that Islam gives some reasons to fear it—if you are a convert, an “infidel,” a woman, one who speaks out against their false prophet, etc.—we evangelicals have no cause for worry. He that is in us is greater than he that is in Islam. And so McLaren is partially right: there should be no evangelical fear of Islam, for its threats cannot challenge our foundation. Nonetheless, I am unpersuaded that there are really that many truly “Islamophobic evangelical Christians” out there. If there are many such—those who fear in spite of Christ, and those who hate the sinner rather than the sin that enslaves the sinner—they ought to remember who Christ tells us are our neighbors (everyone) and how to treat our enemies (with love). It is against powers and principalities, not people, that we wage war.

But disapproval of McLaren’s uncritical use of “islamophobia” is not my main point. I actually agree with him about at least one thing, namely that “evangelical religious identity is under assault…by forces within the evangelical community.” However, it is writers like McLaren who represent this threat. It’s also true, as he points out, that you can’t serve God and something else. You can’t serve God and Mohammed, for example—a statement that would no doubt get one stoned in certain places around the world. Likewise, one cannot (properly) serve God and the sort of relativistic, emasculate, hyper-tolerance that McLaren preaches.

And here is where the title of this response enters. Can we serve God and fear? Perhaps not, if one takes this as McLaren meant it—as two substantive alternatives to choose from. The meaning, as I understand him, is synonymous with “you can’t serve God and serve fear.” However, there’s a way of reading this question that provokes a different response. Can we serve God and fear? Yes, absolutely and necessarily (I know full well that this way of reading is not what McLaren meant; yet because it reveals a serious flaw in his philosophy, I think it worth exploring).
First, I should make clear the ambiguity in the phrase, the fact that it can be taken two ways. I am reminded, somewhat irreverently, of the Lord of the Rings. When Galadriel was tempted by the Ring, she said “All shall love me and despair.” Does she mean that all shall love her and love despair? Or does she mean that all shall love her and, loving her, despair? Clearly the latter. In the same way, I take the phrase in question to mean “Can you serve God and, serving Him, fear?” To this query I would offer my hardy assent. I would even go so far as to say fear is a healthy function of serving (or loving, or knowing) God: this is not an option, but a necessary pairing. If you serve God, you will fear.

This may sound strange to some. What cause could we possibly have for fear if we are in God’s gentle hands? This confusion is the result of an awkward and, I think, downright harmful absence in much of contemporary Christianity. We have forgotten what it means to fear God as we have obscured certain divine attributes. Is He safe? No, but He is good. Fear of God is not an “Old Testament term.” It is a Biblical term. What cause do we have for fear if we are in God’s hands? The author of Hebrews may shed some light: “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). Is it only sinners who should fear falling into the hands of the living God? I suspect not. The verse immediately before the quoted one tells us “The Lord will judge His people.” Not much earlier one finds this: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God” (10:26). Without entering too deeply into doctrines of salvation, I see room for fear in such a picture…at the very least, a vicarious fear for those who remain the enemies of God.

I do not mean to deny that God’s Spirit is comforting. I wish not to even detract from the truth that He is good and loving; that we are fully reconciled to Him through the Blood of His Son; that we have great cause for unbridled joy and security on account of being found in Christ; that we have a sure inheritance beyond mortal ken. The same chapter in Hebrews already mentioned also contains a reminder that “since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the Blood of Jesus…and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” Yet, firstly, we should remember that the work is both accomplished and unfinished: “by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14; pay special attention to the verb tenses here). There is a great mystery here. I will cautiously yet plainly assert that we have far more cause for comfort than fear.

But what cannot be ignored—and this is the central point of my critique of McLaren—is that the fear of God, whatever it weighs on the scales of our disposition towards Him, cannot be faithfully excised from Christian temperament. It must not be entirely obfuscated by revisions to the Biblical faith. It is a theme that must be confronted, even if it cannot be entirely understood, because it is a theme that weaves a common thread through Scripture. The fear of God is indispensible. If we remove it from our Christian vocabulary (or devotional life) we are rejecting His self-revelation. There are no good or safe grounds for doing so.

I am not advocating a form of Deophobia. It is fairly clear that the fear of God is not some irrational phobia, but an awareness of reality. For the wicked, it is fear of punishment and exposure. It is, even for the faithful, fear in the mode of awe and wonder. Yet for all that it is wonder, it is not at all devoid of apprehension. The “fear of God” is not a reality based solely on revelational epistemology; by all rights it should be know even apart from Scripture. For what the first chapter of Romans claims can be known of God through natural theology—His eternal power and divine nature—may create room for a natural (and proper) fear of God. Indeed, the history of world religions, particularly prior to the Enlightenment, attests to the fact that man, when considering God, finds cause for an element of fear. This is in spite of the manifold other details various religions get wrong; this pre-Enlightenment fear of God proved a common theme. No, I’m not advocating Deophobia, but an honest admission of Who God is and our status before Him. This should (must) be viewed through the crucified and risen Christ, the sine qua non of God’s self-revelation. What is revealed of God is true, however, whether found in the Old Testament or the New, and in any event an honest reading of Christ does not erase the fearful aspect of God. Among other things, “The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is His Name” (Ex. 15:3). He is a jealous God who punishes (Ex. 20:5; Num. 14:18; Deut. 5:9). He is a God who brings (Mt. 10:34; Rev. 19:15) and unambiguously even wields a sword Himself (Amos 7:9). By the very fact of His power and holiness, not to mention His mystery and magnitude, a great deal of awe-full fear is requisite when considering God. Even Moses (whom Num. 12:3 says was “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth”), a man with whom God met and talked plainly and intimately, as with a friend—a fact that should impress even those of us washed in the Blood—was not exempt from the truth that “no one may see [God] and live.” This is a truth that the Prophet Isaiah recognized, when he lamented “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). There are verses that add comforting truths to such passages, but they do not remove this dynamic of the Lord’s Nature.

It may have been enough to provide some simple statistics: the phrase “the fear of God” shows up in the ESV 10 times (in both Testaments); “the fear of the LORD,” 27 times. 37 occurrences of just these two phrases, excluding other occurrences of such things as “fear God,” “fears the Lord,” and “fear your God.” It is a substantial weight of evidence that this is an important reality throughout the Bible. In the New Testament, we have verses such as 1 Corinthians 7:1, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God,” 2 Corinthians 5:10-11, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (notice the suggestion of a connection between fearing God and evangelism), and Acts 9:31, “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied." This last one is of special note, for in addition to reasserting the link between the fear of God and evangelical fruit, it reminds us that peace and comfort are not antagonistic to the fear of the Lord. They are instead intertwined with it. We cannot pretend to reject one side of this reality while claiming to properly enjoy the other.

I have spent some, though not considerable, time indicating the sort of fear that the fear of our God entails. To fully treat it might be impossible. It would certainly be beyond the scope of present purposes. For now, let this question of the character of such fear be put aside with a simple reminder: it is not in the character of a phobia.

I said above something along the lines of recognizing the necessity of the Biblical fear of God is a serious flaw to McLaren’s philosophy. I might have said “fatal” instead of “serious,” but for one fact—his philosophy still lives. But this philosophy is neither rightly Biblical nor properly evangelical. He emphasizes that “The greatest threat to evangelicalism is evangelicals who tolerate hate and who promote hate camouflaged as piety.” Here he makes a classical error. He takes the opposite of love as hate. However, it’s also the case that (from a traditional Christian perspective) the opposite of Love can be indifference (it can also be, perhaps, loving the wrong things). Hate and love are not mutually exclusive dispositions. For the God who is Love still hates (this is found in enough verses that I won’t quote any; if a reader doubts it, read the Bible). Moreover, we are—in the appropriate way—supposed to hate the things the Lord hates. “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rom. 12:9); “you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness” (Heb. 1:9).

We are also (this can’t be emphasized enough) called to love our enemies. To pray for them. To not merely tolerate their error but seek gently to correct it. To not affirm their sin as is so common nowadays by self-professed evangelicals, but to display Christ to them. We are called to confront the reality of sin for the sake of the Lost, as our Lord Jesus Christ did. This might mean boldness, or it might mean empathy, or it might mean gentleness, or it might mean firmness. Often, it means all of these. We are not supposed to hate those who disagree with us, or who disagree with the Incarnate Truth of Christ. But we are supposed to hate practices that orbit around the gravity of the fallen, sinful condition, practices we know the dreadful depth of provided we have not abandoned the discipline of self-examination and repentance. Tolerance of things such as homosexuality, false religions, and greed is not demonstrating love, but either chilling indifference or else a love reaching for social cohesion instead of eternal souls. McLaren advocates a position that treads perilously close to the hazard in James 4:4: “don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

Toward the end of the Bible comes the following verse. “But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Rev. 2:6). There’s not much known about the Nicolaitans, but we do know it was a heresy of some sort—as, properly understood, Islam is a heresy. Christians ought to hate heresy; we ought to hate sin; we ought to hate the condition of the lost—hate this last item enough to seek to reconciliation in the true spirit of evangelicalism. We should not blithely congratulate such heresies—if they be “moderate”—as McLaren seems to do here.

He abandons the “us-them thinking” (his phrase) inherent in the Gospel, while maintaining the open invitation aspect of the Gospel. This leads to the sort of cheap grace that Bonheoffer spoke against, for when it’s all “us,” what Good News is the Gospel? The Gospel is impotent when there is no “them”…more, it is burdensome and reviled. Why would one ever accept Christ if He is not needed to reconcile some real divide between two distinct positions? For the Good News of Christ makes demands on us, demands of the highest sort. In the words of that same Bonheoffer, words vivified by his deeds, “when Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

McLaren does not forget Christ. He merely changes Him. McLaren continues: “There is a better way, the way of Christ who, when reviled, did not revile in return, who when insulted, did not insult in return, and who taught his followers to love even those who define themselves as enemies.” This is a partial truth that is used here to lead astray. Insofar as it advocates forgiveness and keeping oneself focused on the central mission of Christ, it serves a good purpose. Yet we cannot properly preach the forgiveness of Christ without acknowledging the sin which leads to death, judgment, and punishment. The verse following the passage McLaren refers to (1 Pet. 2:23) is apt: “He Himself bore our sins in his body on the Tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). We must die to sin before we begin to live to righteousness. Living Christ-like does not mean turning a blind eye to sin.

Broadly speaking, McLaren’s argument tends to make Christ into an absolute advocate of nonviolence—it subtly impugns the idea of redemptive violence, among other things. This introduces a big topic, somewhat outside present concerns, so I won’t spend much time on it. However, I will say that McLaren’s appeal to Christ obscures, in this context, the “either-or” state of following Christ—the fact that there is a vibrant antagonism inextricably woven into the Christian Story. Throughout his article, McLaren appears to identify as much with moderate Muslims as he does with radical Christians (where exactly McLaren gets the virtue of religious moderation from the Bible, I honestly do not know).

Jesus did not and does not have tolerance for other religions; He hates other religions, but nevertheless reaches out to deliver their practitioners at precious cost. He did not have tolerance for sin; He conquered it by His own Sacrifice. The wording McLaren uses—“those who define themselves as enemies”—obscures the fact that (as Jesus said) there are indeed such enemies, real enemies, not confused allies who mistakenly define themselves as enemies. McLaren forgets that a spiritual war is our present reality, that the battle-lines are drawn clearly, and that there are no innocent bystanders. The same Christ Who went meekly to the Cross will return in a somewhat different aspect; at the end, the “wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16) will be known. In the meantime, we ought to strive to divert people from His wrath in the only way that is possible: surrendering to Him while they still live. Christ’s unwillingness to revile, or insult, while on earth is not a rejection of “us-them thinking,” as McLaren has it, but the result of a longsuffering, loving patience that seeks to heal—not ignore!—that Us-Them divide.

What does McLaren’s perspective have to do with the fear of God? For one thing, McLaren’s Christ seems to give little cause for fear; he robs the Lamb of His simultaneous identity as Lion. For another, his wish to include everyone in some hyper-tolerant “us” is the result of blurring lines of practice, belief, and destination that God has drawn. Also, it avoids the cause for fear that the ungodly and idolaters ought to rightly possess—and would possess, if not for their suppression of the Truth. Shame on us for aiding in that suppression. But I do not speak primarily of the fear that the Lost should have for God. To ignore the place that the fear of the Lord should have in our own Christian faith is biblically scandalous. It leads to such things as relativism, universalism, syncretism, and the tolerance of clearly unbiblical practices and positions. More pressingly, it clouds our view of God as graciously revealed in His Word. That’s the critical question: is the sort of God invoked and evoked by the sort of watered-down evangelicalism of McLaren and others similar to him (Rob Bell, for example) the sort of God we can serve and rightly fear? If not, something is dreadfully wrong, and we’d best be afraid.

Contra non-violence

Impelled by recent shooting tragedies, one academic theologian turns to traditional Christian teachings for guidance. And that is the right tendency, no doubt. This particular Christian, however, advocates a wrong response…or rather, he propounds a half-truth, all the more insidious because the man probably has no intent to deceive.
He questions what he (and others before him) call the myth of redemptive violence. According to this professor,

“This myth divides the world into the "good guys" and the "bad guys," and then assumes the legitimacy of employing warring and violence against the "bad guys." Violence is the mechanism by which the good guys believe that they will win. It is a deep faith -- a killing faith -- in the saving efficacy of killing.” See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-c-camp/batman-neo-nazis-and-jesus-good-news_b_1752013.html.

One might offer a slightly less hostile definition, but the broad strokes paint a fairly realistic portrait of the myth of redemptive violence. It is basically the idea that the exercise of violence—or force, or compulsion, or the willingness to contend—can have a redeeming effect on a broken system. In short, that might can and sometimes should accompany right. And, rightly understood, it is integral to the Christian faith.

Yet when posing the question, “What does…traditional Christianity have to do with all this?” the theologian pontificates:

“The non-violent, suffering love of Jesus was a direct challenge to the myth of redemptive violence. One of the dirty secrets of the early church is the fact that for the first three centuries of Christian history, the leaders of the church insisted that Christians do not kill -- including in so-called justifiable war.
This consistent and insistent teaching of the early church is so ignored by so-called conservative Christians as to be laughable, if it were not so tragic.”

Now, it is true that early Christian leaders opposed members of their flocks joining the Roman military. The sound theological grounds for this were two-fold: first, worship of the Roman Emperor went hand in hand (at first “unofficially,” yet forcefully, and then by decree) with service in the legions, and such idolatry jarred unavoidably with the message of the Gospel. Second, the military (or the police power of the State) was all too often the means by which Christians were persecuted. The experiences of believers and their martyrdoms in the Roman Coliseum are too well known to demand recounting here, but there were also such threats as the judgment of Pliny the Younger, governor of a Roman province in Asia. He condemned Christians to death on account of their “guilt, by the name itself.” That is, although he could not point to any laws the Christians in his province had broken (at least none deserving death), their very identity as Christians on its own made them worthy of execution. It is clear in such a hostile situation that Christian legionnaires, who would be forced to arrest or even kill their brethren, would be frowned upon (to put it lightly) by church leaders. It should also be mentioned, briefly, that force employed against the State was also “frowned upon” by Christian thinkers: rebellion and strife were not only ills in their own right, but Christians waging armed conflict against the State would distract and detract from the true message of the Gospel in the early, defining years of its spread.

I think the theologian knows these reasons for the Christian leaders, “for the first three centuries of Christian history,” advocating against joining the army. That timeframe is critical. What happened after those first three centuries? In brief, Constantine. In somewhat fuller description, the rejection of the cult of imperial worship and the cessation of imperial persecution of Christianity as such. The anti-myth of redemptive violence professor, in advocating “traditional” Christianity, is advocating effectively less than 20% of Christian history by focusing only on those first three centuries, before Constantine and Augustine and other seminal Christian figures. Moreover, this fellow is advocating only a biased portion of those three centuries, as is gleaned from looking at the reasons behind early Christianity’s disapproval of military service. More serious still, he’s ignoring the testimony of the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments.

I don’t intend to offer a fully fleshed out critique of this dangerous, invidious, emasculating, corrupting, and naïve antagonism to the myth of redemptive violence, although I’ve written more against it elsewhere. Suffice it for now that I include this brief, survey-like run-through of what this particular Christian thinker has overlooked or obscured.

Apart from one succinct quote, all I cite will be drawn straight from the Bible. This one, perhaps extraneous, quote is offered because what is recounted will be a fugue of sorts, with Burke’s “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” repeating as a theme in the background. In counterpart to Burke’s warning, of course, is the answering motif “But the LORD Victorious reigns.”
That is the first thing to establish, that God Almighty, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is a God of Victory and power. Not for nothing is the phrase “the fear of the LORD” inserted continually throughout the Scriptures. This is a real fear, although a purer one than perhaps we are accustomed to: there is something to fear in God’s Nature—the God Who is a consuming fire, jealous, wrathful, and avenging. He is a God who can and does destroy: Sodom and Gomorrah are testament to this, and the firstborn sons of Egypt, as are much later Ananias and Sapphira. Far from being opposed to violence, “The LORD is a Warrior; the LORD is His Name.” Well, a critic might say, that is all well and good. God might use violence…but He does not approve of men doing so. After all, it was the LORD—not the fleeing Hebrews—who destroyed Pharaoh’s army.

We then turn to David, a man after God’s own heart, who was a passionate warrior and a fervent worshiper. He shows us that there is a time when a violent response is appropriate. One need not read his many psalms to see this—though it is there, as well—one need only turn to that most popular Davidic story. David did not seek to negotiate with Goliath, but responded thusly: “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” He proceeded to slay the enemy of Israel. This, from the man who had recently been chosen by God to lead His people. It is also worth noting that Saul, the previous king, was rejected by God because he did not kill the Israelite king. Yet beyond David and Saul, one need only look elsewhere to see that God does not disapprove of the right use of force: see Moses, and see Joshua; Samson, Gideon, and Phinehas. Such men—and, much more importantly, such a God—gives the lie to the theology professor’s superficial claim, that
“It has become a matter of faith, for left and right, that we can wage war on terror, somehow kill terror, somehow terrify terrorists into turning aside from terror. Terror cannot be defeated by war, for war makes terror. War operates in and out of terror. War destroys, imprisons, humiliates and kills. War delights in terror.”

One cannot utterly reject war while retaining the God of the Bible, for “The LORD is a Warrior; the LORD is His Name.” All of creation is at war; it is groaning with it. It is a war between good and evil, as the myth of redemptive violence teaches, and it is a war that God is involved in. Yet it does not dirty His hands, for violence in itself is not evil. God punishes the evil-doer, and after the royal triumph He casts His enemies into the lake of sulfur; to reject God’s use of violence is to reject His right to punish, and to reject Hell. To reject Hell is to reject God’s holiness, justice and/or sovereignty, in spite of what is cheaply peddled by some as a loving alternative. God’s use of violence began immediately following the Fall: what else is His slaying of an animal in order to provide skins for the First Couple, if not an act of violence? This first example (connected to the proto-evangelion, as some call it, the first subtle hint of the Son of God’s mission) is not chosen only because of its primacy in sequence. It is also illustrative of the fact that the right use of violence redeems, and this is one of the foundational truths of religious thought throughout the Bible.

The spiritual reality between the Old Testament sacrificial system is not exactly simple, and I believe what really occurred on the altars of Tabernacle and Temple is cloaked in mystery. Yet it cannot be denied that in blood offerings, there was violence—a necessary violence that preceded the sprinkling of blood (which is or signifies life, rather than death) which effected a covering of the sin and impurity between God and His people. Likewise, during the First Passover, it cannot be denied that violence played a part in Israel’s deliverance—not only, or even primarily, the death of the firstborn of Egypt, but the death of the sacrificial Lamb and the sprinkling of its blood. Again, there was violence that occurred after the people’s rebellion on the threshold of the Promised Land: first, the immediate wrath of God, and then the long punishment of death to all the unfaithful. This, too, effected redemption, for the passing away of the rebellious generation allowed a new generation to enter into the Land. Then, there was necessary violence in the Promised Land, about which the LORD said, among many other things, this: “I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of the vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plan” (Joshua 24:13). It was theologically significant then that the land was fertile, already producing and settled—and that Israel, under God’s guidance, destroyed those who prepared the land for them. And, lest we miss this, we have this description: “One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the LORD your God who fights for you, just as He promised you” (Joshua 23:10). There we have an accurate picture of how the battle between good and evil should progress: the LORD fighting, yet through, at least in part, His people. Yet this violence does not end with Israel’s settling in the Land. Apart from the already-alluded to judges and later Temple sacrifices, there are the wars with the Philistines; there are other wars and conflicts, and in many of these the implication is that Israelites are faulted for their participation in violence. Yet as the earlier account should demonstrate, sometimes the Israelites are commanded to participate in violence. This is not an inconsistency, but instead the obvious, childishly-simply reality that some people in our contemporary age of accommodating evil have missed. It matters who you fight and what you fight for. It also matters if you fail to fight when you are supposed to, which can be seen as far back as Israel’s spotty record of conquest in the Promised Land, or as recently as the Holocaust of WWII.

There has been a resource notorious, thus far, by its absence. What does the New Testament say about all this? We know that it does not contradict the Old Testament, and so there’s no use airbrushing over the clear picture of a victorious, warlike God. Yet, even in the Old Testament (one thinks of the Book of Hosea, for example), there is also a picture of a loving, gracious, and merciful God. Again, this is not an inconsistency. Is it inconsistent that William Wallace, as portrayed in Braveheart (and as seen in history, for that matter), was a man of deep, passionate love as well as a wild and implacable warrior? Or Hawkeye, in the book or film The Last of the Mohicans? Or Robin Hood, in whichever iteration of the story one chooses? Or, to dip into the children stories in which deep truths are often embedded, Simba of the Lion King? What of that other Lion King, Aslan, who was “not a tame Lion,” but “good”? Was Aslan a loving figure, to the point of sacrificing his life? Yes. Was he a violent figure, to the point of overwhelming his enemies? Yes. In these stories we glimpse the truth that love and war are not mutually exclusive, but rather inter-dependent. And, as both the Bible and our best stories teach us, love often compels one to fight a war, and to refuse such a summons is not only cowardice…it is unloving and hateful. For by the lover’s willingness to contend against evil for his beloved’s sake comes, through victory, redemption.

Now comes the New Testament. There are passages which argue this same myth of redemptive violence. In Matthew 11:12, for example, Jesus says “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” There is—clearer, I think—another statement by Jesus that He came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). There is the casting out of demons, portrayed by Christ as a struggle against a strong man (see, e.g., Matthew 12:29). God wars against evil throughout Creation, and this does not end with Malachi. Also, He brings us into that struggle. There is this poetic and powerful passage in Revelation: “He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost form the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death’” (21:6-8). But stronger than any string of verses is the overall thrust of the Gospel.

In the Gospel of Luke, Christ announces His mission with this Old Testament reference: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” Liberty, deliverance, salvation. Freedom from oppressors. Redemption. These are the things Christ came to bring us, and He did so in power. One might portray His death on the Cross as capitulation to evil…but one would be dreadfully wrong. Throughout His earthly ministry Christ demonstrated His purpose to undo and correct the works of the evil one; His Crucifixion and Resurrection were the culmination, not the reversal, of this mission. He overcame death and sin; He did not surrender to it. He suffered, but like a good soldier, obedient to His Lord and Father. This death was a necessary act of violence which preceded, or rather initiated, Christ “making peace by the Blood of His Cross.” One might argue that it was Satan or mankind who ultimately employed the violence which killed the Son. Not so. Who was it that held Christ there on the Cross, until He breathed in victory, “it is finished”? To answer “Satan” or “the Romans” or “the Jews” is to quietly join the crowd mocking Him at the foot of the Cross, “He saved others; let Him save Himself, if He is the Christ of God, His Chosen One!” For it was Christ’s intent, and the purpose behind God choosing Him, that Christ suffer unto death and rise again. It was God—I suspect it right to say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who held Jesus on the Cross until it was finished. The means of the violence may have been human, but the animus was divine.

But the story is not over at the Cross. Jesus rose again, overcoming evil. This dynamic gave rise to the doctrine of Christian Atonement most popular throughout Christianity’s first millennium, the Christus Victor theory. It is often merged with the Ransom Theory, but not only is it in fact distinct—it is opposed to that latter theory. But the point is not to delve into the rival (or, as I believe, mostly complementary once you exclude Ransom Theory) theories of Atonement. Instead, it is to point out that traditional, “conservative” Christianity—including but expanding beyond those first three centuries to which the professor gives perhaps improper weight—viewed redemption of Man and Creation as the product of a divine struggle of Good versus Evil, in which Good won decisively through both power and stratagem. Christus Victor is a version of the myth of redemptive violence, and it is the right way to view that myth. Redemption does come through violence: the reality of redemption, that it is both corrupting fall and intransigent rebellion, necessitates that violence. This is the violent slaying of a sacrificial animal to cover a people’s sin; the punishing destruction of a depraved people who stand in the way of God’s promise to His nation; the violent wrath of God poured out on a innocent man’s Cross. Evil must be vanquished, evil is vanquished, and evil shall be vanquished, and there is great joy in Heaven afterwards.

More could probably be said, philosophically, practically, historically, about the need for good men to contend against evil, but this is meant as a brief critique. It’s not for nothing that Paul taught us about the armor and sword we bear. It may be the case that Christians are only to wage a spiritual war, though I for one believe the weight of the evidence is against such a view. Yet one cannot escape violence by speaking of spiritual warfare in euphemistic terms. If we are to avoid physical conflict, it is not because it is too dread and grievous and aggressive. Rather, it is because we are called to something more dreadful, more grievous, and demanding more aggression. Spiritual warfare has more gravity and direr consequences than physical conflict, not less. Physical warfare might distract us from what is more serious still. We are, after all, meant not to fear those who can destroy the body (what insignificant threat, that), but rather those who can destroy the soul and send both body and soul to everlasting torment. No, “spiritual warfare” is not a euphemism for some ideological show and tell; if anything, the war we know from worldly testament is the euphemism, for it is child’s play compared to the real thing. To act as though violence is too distasteful for Christians is to rob us of a necessary gumption to bring violence to where it must needs be introduced.

And so I must object to characterizations from this theology professor such as this:

“To embrace a "war on terror" is a rejection of the fundamental Christian conviction that the world has been saved, is being saved, and will be saved not through violence and warring, but through long-suffering, self-emptying love. We claim that the world has been saved not through over-weening militarism, not through more drone assassinations, not through bullets sprayed into a kitchen full of women preparing for an afternoon communal meal.”

This is wrong, and unbiblical, and harmful to the testimony of the Gospel, albeit couched in appealing phrases. For none of us want assassinations and the sort of butchery recent shootings have visited upon us. But the Gospel is about deliverance through an act of violence and about the power which accompanies that testimony. I trust that the man who wrote this is sincere and means well, but he is more influenced by a cultural misappropriation of peace-making than a biblical view. For contemporary culture hears “Prince of Peace” and thinks of a hippy champion; Jesus’ audience, I believe, would have thought more of Caesar Augustus, who ushered in the Pax Romana. Making peace is often to stand firm and boldly, and to even advance against those disrupters of the peace. This rejection of the myth of redemptive violence is unbiblical and philosophically unsound to boot. It is to neuter the Lion of Judah in preference for the Lamb of God…all the while ignoring that even the Lamb testifies to the redemption that comes through violence. The world has not been saved by bullets, true—but by the overpowering majesty of the Warrior God, who is jealous and vengeful on account of His people, Who is Love Incarnate and fights to redeem His Beloved from the grave. That He does this through suffering does not belie the reality of the contest, for suffering is only part of the story. More intrinsic to God’s Nature than suffering is Love and Victory; it is the latter two aspects which give suffering its flesh. As that verse quoted from Revelation says, “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” Conquering is the divine heritage; might is linked to right beyond all eternity. We are made in God’s image, which is His Son, and we are made co-heirs with Him. We need not take up guns and drones if we do not want to, perhaps, but we must take up the Sword of the Spirit and embrace its potency in this present redeeming battle between all that is evil and all that is good.

Filioque and Rob Bell

It seems clear to me there are two poles, or contravening tendencies, of Christian ecclesiology. On the one side are those who exclude others based on apparent trivialities, and on the other side are those who blithely welcome just about any belief. It should be mentioned that sincere believers can be guilty of either extreme—on the one hand, avid sectarianism, and on the other blanket universalism: it is, perhaps, possible even to be guilty of both extremes at the same time (such as when a universalist labels the beliefs of others “toxic”). Yet both sides ignore one of two mandates of the Christian Church: either to have no divisions among us—to be “perfectly united in mind and thought”—and to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.” There are plenty of verses on either side, although on the first side the imperative seems to boil down to “love one another as I have loved you” and “honor one another above yourselves.” But on this prong, too, there are many unambiguous praises of unity (John 17:23, Romans 15:5, Ephesians 4:3, 13). The other prong is equally attested: “stand firm in the faith,” (1 Cor 16:13); “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist…” (Eph 6:14); “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you,” (2 Thess 2:15).

In my limited experience, it’s somewhat rare to find a Christian community embracing both prongs. Some do a marvelous job seeking to be One in Christ, and some defend the truth admirably well. Often, though, we do not do both. Often those who strive for the unity of all believers—or all people, “believers” or not—compromise the teachings of Scripture…not necessarily in their own understandings, but in how they present the message of Christ to the world. Not uncommonly, they put on display unity with things not of Christ, or heterodox beliefs, or a preference for tolerance over love. Often those who seek to know intimately well the truth contained in Scripture hold other believers away at arms’ length; often they circumscribe their cause too narrowly, excluding genuine believers who merely represent the diversity of emphases and understandings and aesthetics present within the Church.

For the one side, the message can sometimes be that Christians are intolerant, arrogant, divisive, and hypercritical…far from faithful to the verse “they will know you by how you love one another.” For the other side, the message is often that there’s really nothing absolute or distinctive about Christianity, it is just one interpretation among many and not completely alien to the ways of the world—contradicting the imagery offered by writer of Hebrews as well as Peter that Christians are “aliens and strangers” upon the earth, or James’ warning that “friendship with the world is hatred toward God,” or Jesus’ own observation that the world would hate His followers (John 15:19-20, 17:14). God looks for worshippers in spirit and in truth. It seems to me that the hyper-tolerant Christian communities which do not want to draw hard lines between “us” and “them” undermine the truth that Christ embodies, whereas the hyper-dogmatic congregations who make every doctrine an absolute may err by ignoring the loving spirit of Christ (as well as by often placing too much assurance on their own understanding). In doing so, I suspect each side misses out on the essence of both spirit and truth.

There are plenty of examples of each party, but I’ll just mention one relatively extreme case of each error. One important case of hyper-dogmatic sectarianism comes from the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054. Now, there were a multitude of factors behind this divorce (such as the Bishop of Rome’s assertion of universal jurisdiction), but one which proved more of a deciding issue than it could possibly have merited was the Filioque controversy. The adding of the words “and from the Son” to the Creed split asunder the two great halves of Christendom. No matter that, doctrinally, the West held merely that the Spirit had its actual source only in the Father, and proceeded “from the Son” in the sense of flowing through the Son: they were not ascribing two sources for the emanating of the Spirit, but rather, in a sense, two stages (caveat: I’m no ecclesiastical historian, so I don’t stand by the accuracy of every detail in my account). The actual understanding of East and West did not, in the final measure, seem contradictory. No matter that much of the problem came from the inability to perfectly translate Greek into Latin. What may well have been incorrect in Greek was not necessarily so in the language of the West. This single Latin word led the heads of each church to somewhat bitterly excommunicate each other; I think, even giving allowance for the importance of the Creeds, such an action proved overly divisive.

On the side of universalism stands Rob Bell, who seems to fit in rather nicely with the relativistic culture in which we live in, and much less well with the Christian thinkers who’ve come before. I’m not going to spend time outlining why universalism runs contrary to Christian teaching and Biblical beliefs; others have done better jobs at that than I can, and in any event I take it as an obvious given that Judgment and Hell, Satan and damnation, are supported by the Bible. Only wishful, naïve, obstructive thinking can hold otherwise. No, I see no need to attack the doctrine of universalism: my focus is more on the attitude of universalism. That which, whatever it may profess—even orthodoxy—refuses to draw lines in the sand and say it matters what you believe, that many beliefs are downright wrong and harmful, and that “He, and He alone, is Truth.” I’m not aimed at those who profess truly universalist beliefs: their beliefs stand outside the ambit of the Gospel. I am speaking of those who may assent to the truth, but are unwilling to assert it; who act as though the wrong beliefs held by others do not matter—or are, at least, none of our business. Those who choose superficial unity at the cost of accepting, without comment or complaint, irreconcilable differences into their midst.

Our culture is one that often praises motivation, intention, and a Kumbaya attitude over speaking truth. But in 2 Tim 2, Paul speaks of correctly handling the word of truth, about false teaching that spreads like gangrene, about those who have wandered away from the truth, and false claims that destroys the faith of some. Also, though, he says in the same chapter to avoid “foolish and stupid arguments” that “produce quarrels,” but nevertheless to gently instruct and teach those who oppose the knowledge of the truth. And here lies the crux of the matter, and the origin of a lot of misemphasis. Those who emphasize the value of unity at the cost of defending the truth can look at Paul’s disdain for “quarrels” and “stupid arguments” and conclude that Christians should avoid doctrinal disputes, debating theological matters, and drawing lines around their beliefs. A casual look at the New Testament reveals the flaws of such a interpretation, though, for Paul debated and disputed with Christians who mixed false claims in with the Gospel (see, e.g., Acts 15:1-2). Why else would he instruct believers to put on the belt of truth and to stand firm, if not to actually do so? Why else would he send Timothy to Corinth to remind the Christians there of Paul’s “way of life in Christ Jesus” that agreed with his teachings, if not to bring them into line with his own teaching? And why, significantly, would he call a church to expel an immoral member, to “judge those inside” the church, if he did not wish the community of Christ to draw clear and uncompromising (and ultimately loving) lines around themselves? (1 Cor 5).

When Paul spoke of quarrels, he at least sometimes made clear that he meant the quarrels which cropped out of people following a particular human leader instead of Christ, the jockeying for position among church parties, rather than defending the truth against those undermining it (see 1 Cor 1 and 3). In modern terms he might be saying “don’t fight against one another as disciples of Luther or Calvin or Wesley, but remember you all are disciples of Christ.” He was not instructing the early Church along the lines of “do not insist that we are saved by faith alone” or “don’t argue with those who say Christ is not the only way to the Father.” Indeed, elsewhere he says to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Eph 4:25). While this probably includes the directive simply to not lie to one another, a few verses previously Paul mentions being “taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.” Paul does not condone false teaching; in fact, he seems to prefer preaching the truth out of false motives than preaching falsehood out of true motives (see Phil 1: 15-18).

Throughout Paul’s letters he revealed an earnest desire for both the unity of believers and the defense of the true faith. In reality, these were one and the same thing: this unity resulted from following the same Christ. As for Jesus Himself, He sets up equally clearly the lines of battle: “whoever is not against us is for us” Mark 9:40; “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.” Matt 12: 30. There are only two possible sides to stand on, and people cannot live in unity with both God and the world. One cannot be unified in the one faith in Jesus, and also unite with those who follow the teachings of the world. Jesus cared about truth at least as much as Paul, calling the Devil the father of lies; there was no ambivalence in Jesus, but rather an unflinching speaking of the truth. In fact, He famously asserted “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). Granted, this is Truth of a different order than doctrinal squabbles, but the picture is clear enough: the line between Truth and Falsehood is uncompromising, and tacitly accepting falsehood puts one on the wrong side of the divide.

Unity and defending the truth are, rightly understood, interdependent. Phil 1:27 commands “that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel.” This does not sanction standing in unity with those contending on behalf of other spirits—this verse urges first that we Christians conduct ourselves “in a manner worth of the gospel of Christ,” and that unity of spirit will be the result of that as we contend “as one man for the faith of the gospel.” It is a very specific thing we are supposed to be united on behalf of: to testify to the truth of Christ and the good news of the Gospel. The language of “contending,” actually, asserts a struggle: we should take care lest we join with those who contend against us. And everyone, in the end, IS unavoidably unified, either with Christ or against Him. It doesn’t only matter that you value and work towards unity. It matters what you seek to be unified with. We fight for a cause, and the ideal of unity is to support that cause. It is not meant to supplant the cause. Unity means surrendering your own idiosyncrasies—not for the sake of the majority, or the outspoken minority, or the beliefs of your brother or sister, but for the sake of the Truth revealed in Christ. If we are not unified in Christ, we lack the unity which Paul, John, and Jesus Himself commanded of us. Those who, like Rob Bell seems to do, extol unity and community and blithe acceptance of any and all beliefs (except, interestingly, those which assert absolutes) as the end itself, miss a major point of the Biblical mandate. Unity is not the ideal, but rather unity in Christ: it is no use trying to join Christ with things not of Christ. He will not budge. There will always be things, people, ideas, that refuse unity with Christ, and pity the Christian who seeks to be bound to them.

We love one another because Christ first loved us, bought us and redeemed us, brought into fellowship with Him and each other…and out of that familial relationship springs unity. It was this loving unity that led Paul to direct a man to be excommunicated, for he valued the man’s soul more than congeniality….and he also valued the health of the community that was bound together by their profession of faith in Christ. “What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” The New Testament is not shy in drawing lines; nor should we be shy in acknowledging them—the danger comes when we start to draw lines all our own. But when the Scriptures paint a picture, we are obligated to see it not defaced. This is equally true whether people from within or without the Church try to deface it. We should correct them in love, surely, and we ought to always remember that it is the truths in God’s Word, not the assumptions we’ve built around them, that we should defend. But the attitude of universalism, which refuses to acknowledge that some beliefs (and people) stand on the outside, invites graffiti on Biblical truths.

As mentioned above, there is interrelatedness between “loving one another in unity” and asserting truth confidently, clearly, and faithfully. They do, however, apply pressure in different directions…there are inherent tensions in our obedience to either mandate. I don’t think this is because they work at contrary purposes, but rather complementary purposes. One criticism of Rob Bell’s recent book points out that “the only sins Bell finds distressing are horizontal, as if all that ultimately matters is whether I am greedy, mean, angry, abusive, fearful, or covetous. There is no mention of hating God, of loving ourselves more than Him, of ignoring God and refusing to submit to His commands. That we steal God’s glory for ourselves and want to be praised, honored and worshipped as little gods, does not crack the top 20 of big sins for which I should feel bad, much less repent. That we think about our own reputations but care less about whether Jesus is known, loved and served by those who have never heard of Him never ever comes up in the conversation.” (Tim Stoner, “No Doxology, no (eternal) Hell”). On the other hand, overly dogmatic, divisive, sectarian believers seem to care only about “getting it right,” and assuring themselves that at least they and God are on good terms, no matter about how they treat other people.

This dynamic has been noted before. Tim Stoner wrote of it in the language of “Warriors for Justice and Righteousness.” There is a tendency among Christians to emphasize either Justice—“horizontal” values—or Righteousness—“vertical” relationship—at the functional exclusion of the other. I do not pretend that I have struck the balance between these tendencies. I suspect which side I tend to fall onto, and I no doubt teeter over and fall onto the other side when I try to correct myself, like the proverbial drunkard on his horse. But these two realities, the importance of horizontal relationships as well as the vertical one, are not mutually exclusive, no more than those two beams that form the Cross are mutually exclusive. They possess the same center. The union of these two commands is found in Christ’s answer to the question about the Greatest Commandment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and, in the same breath, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We cannot love our neighbors as ourselves unless we love the Lord with all our hearts. If we do, we will obey His commands: “Love each other as I have loved you.” If we place primacy on the horizontal love, we will never truly display it. If we only care for the vertical love, we will end up deceiving ourselves as to the reality of that selfsame love. We love God, not only with our hearts, but also with our souls and minds, and all our strength. If we truly love Him with every aspect of our being, we will take His words to heart. We will know the importance of the Good News, and the Truth it proclaims: that though the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, and that whosoever believes in Him will not perish; that the mind of sinful man is death and does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so, and is hostile to God, but that the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. Love among mankind and love for God are part of the same love, manifested in God’s love for us. First things come first, though, and the emphasis on our vertical relationship with God takes primacy of place—but, once in place, it branches out among our neighbors and enemies. The urge to exclude and the urge to accept both have their proper place in Christian life, but each are equally dependent on the Cornerstone of our faith, Jesus Christ. In following His guidance and taking on His nature, we learn to keep at arms length what we should have no truck with, and also to extend the grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and sacrificial love that runs at odds with our fallen humanity. Those who refuse to budge on points of orthodoxy may well be lifting up Christ Himself; those who extend welcome to sinners, stumblers, and ragamuffin saints may well be following closely in His footsteps. The guidelines for when and where each tendency is proper is found in the Word alone, not in sappy (and oft-times snarky) sentimentality as is displayed in Rob Bell’s recent book, nor in haughty, self-assured holiness in the tradition of the Filioque Controversy and the Spanish Inquisition. The Word of God is “Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” If anything less be our guide, whether recent cultural fads or ingrained denominational boundaries, woe on us.

Time

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about good memories. Particularly, about how although revisiting them is enjoyable, there is frequently for me a sense of something nostalgic about such recollection. It’s not that “the good ole days” were truly better than these, for often times memory is lovelier than past reality, or at least the appeal of the past moment is highlighted more through remembering. This is not necessarily a consequence of viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses. When recalling the pleasure or poignancy of a past event, conversation, place, or feeling, we can remember the feelings that struck us during such a time and recognize that they are of the same caliber we presently entertain. We can know that today is creating the same such memories for tomorrow, and still there’s something intangible, ineffable, incongruous, about a fond memory. Nostalgia, yearning, longing, bittersweet wistfulness…all these words approach the feeling I’m trying to disentangle from memory, but they don’t quite reach all the way. There’s something strange about remembrance of delightful moments…no matter how great the past has been, it’s hard—if not impossible—to arrive at genuine contentment by dwelling upon the past alone.

The cause of this is, I think, wrapped up in the nature of Time, and how that process carries us (and yes, I think it more useful to think of Time as a process than a stream, or line, or what-have-you). In “A Severe Mercy,” the author reflects on how even satisfying moments carry with them a certain sadness. Even during the most fulfilling, enjoyable times, we know that such a time is passing: fleeting and flying, never to return. This is because, he finally realizes, we are made for eternity. We are not intended to enjoy ‘fleeting’ pleasures, with the looming specter of the ensuing loss—whereupon we may only revisit such joys through the veil of memory. This pleasure tends to be incomplete, whether experienced through transient moment or memory, for that is not where our pleasure should be anchored.

However, stating that good memories offer incomplete contentment may be true, and the fact that we are made for eternity may play a part in the reason, but I think there’s another piece to the puzzle. It is apparent that God does not want us to live stuck in the past (nor dwelling on the future), and perhaps He’s structured our experience of memory in such a way as to keep us from living in our past. Of course, even though it provides an ultimately unsatisfying outlet, many people dwell in the past anyway—people choose all sorts of unsatisfying practices, after all. Still, I think God does want us to enjoy the good things in our past, but they cannot fully satisfy on their own…instead, they are meant to point us forward.

The moments in our past we most wish to remember, as well as those moments in the present which we wish would linger, both point us forward…not merely to our earthly future, but to our eternal home. They are not meant to hook us into a moment of time, but to spur us onward. They are a sort of narrative encouragement, perhaps even a sort of temporal inertia. This squares with the way God works, of course. Not only does He want us to fix our minds on the eternal rather than transient things (2 Cor. 4:17-18), but He’s a God who works within Time to realize His work in us. Sometimes He acts instantly, true, but normally He sanctifies, rather than glorifies instantly; He uses process instead of automatic results; He grows before He harvests.

There’s nothing new in these observations. It’s no secret that God is a God of process. The New and Old Testaments, personal experience, and history itself all tell the story of a God who is powerful enough to effect instant change, but chooses to work through measured development and natural growth. He takes a single man and through steady (albeit incredible) steps, turns him into a nation; He takes a shepherd boy and turns him into a poet-king; He takes a handful of people and turns them into a worldwide church. He takes an infant in a feed trough and grows Him into the Redeemer of the World. Also, he causes a handful of seeds to become a garden, an acorn to become an oak, a light breeze to gather into a storm front. There is, in these latter examples, a cyclical element…but there is also a directional, processional quality to them that cannot be denied. God moves things, people, and causes forward through Time.

That seems a pretty underwhelming statement. Of course things move forward through time, and it’s not difficult to recognize that God’s typical mode of operation is through process and developing stories. History is processional, not cyclic (the recurrence of common themes should be no more taken as evidence of the ‘cyclical’ nature of history than such would be in a novel). Change is something inherent in Time, and is the mechanism by which story, development, process, progress, and growth exist in Time. Again, this seems obvious—to the Western-inculcated mind, of course. Some few cultures held to a cyclical view of time and history. But what I’d like to proffer is the suggestion that at first inquisitive glance, it seems more predictable that God would have chosen a cyclical sort of way to work in history or to structure Time.

Why do I say this? Simply because of God’s immutable nature: He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, unchanging and eternal. Perhaps it could be said that because He’s outside of time, the fact that there is development and process within time is something of a moot point, i.e. because yesterday, today, and tomorrow lie ever in the Present to Him (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about God Incarnate here, but rather God Eternal. The Incarnation does muddy the theoretical waters a bit, as always—far too high an idea to even pretend to wrap one’s mind around), talking about temporal change in relation to an unchanging God should not come as a surprise. Or it could be said that because Creation is something tautologically other than Creator, “change” is merely something “not-God,” among many other such things like weakness, death, darkness, and doubt (again, Incarnation aside…). And I think there is truth waiting somewhere in the wings of that line of thinking. Yet it still strikes me as strange that God, in creating through the overflow of rejoicing in Himself (as Piper paints it), produced something so contrary to His own experience of changeless-ness. After all, the act of creating itself was a drastic change…and yet, because God is eternal and exists outside/beyond/above time, He arguably does not experience it as "change" per se, each moment being always the Present to Him (this poses an interesting seeming-paradox about the relationship between God, Time, and the Present which I won't introduce here). Can He subject Himself to change, as we understand it? Basically, I’m suggesting that the very possibility of change is to me an unexpected oddity when we consider God’s immutable nature. What appeals to an immutable, eternal, and utterly self-sufficient God about creating such an alien thing as change, as time? We think time and change are normal since they are all we ever knew—but how strange indeed for a change-less God to fashion them into His Creation?

Possibly the introduction/existence of change (by which I also mean in rather metonymical fashion process, development, growth, and story) is simply a result of the Fall, the introduction of sin into the system. Possibly, but I doubt it. The way God uses process, growth, and story seem too central to the way He works to be a product of accident. After all, when He chose to enter into the created order, to become a dependent rather than antecedent of Time, He came onto the stage in such a way as to require growth: from infant who “grew in wisdom and stature” to a Man who taught by story rather than tenet and formed His Bride through gradual and guided process. Although Christ’s arrival was unexpected, the way He chose to do so is quite in keeping with what we know of God. Christ’s 33-year story on earth became the focal point of the whole great Story of Creation. And that is why I say that God’s choice to work through means of process, growth, and intentional change is not incidental to His purpose in Creation: His use of story is essential to how He displays Himself and His will. This story, moreover, is what we normally mean by story, not a plot-less ordering of events…it points both forward and upward by means of narrative tension and momentum. Change is a part of His creative purpose.

And so we have an immutable and changeless God who chose to make change and processional Time a fundamental part of His creation. A God who subjected Himself to that change and process through entering personally into it; perhaps, even, this was one of His great purposes, that the Changeless experience Change firsthand. That’s impossible to know, and I don’t claim it so, but it just may be that for all we talk—and rightly—of God’s immutable nature, He wished to extend His already infinite Self by entering His story as a mutable character.

Yet if that is so—and really, regardless of God’s full reasons for entering into Time—there remains the truth that in spite of Christ experiencing and harnessing change, He remained rooted in eternity and perfection. He was complete, and yet He grew; this duality is a common theme for the God-Man, the One who was both sinless and sin. I think that, similarly, the process of sanctification/transformation in the Christian life is rooted in perfection and already-satisfied accomplishment…though we change, there is something of the eternal already at work (indeed, something that has already done its work) in us. 2 Cor 5:21 says “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” That “made” denotes both a finished exchange and an ongoing process: in the words of the author of Hebrews, “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” I may be getting far afield here, but again there seems to be an interesting dynamic between time and timelessness, or change and perfection. Again I find it curious how God chooses to work in this: we are redeemed by the work of the Cross, Christ fulfilled His substitutionary role, and we are reconciled unto God. In Jesus’ own words, It is Finished. That is the Eternal God speaking (or so it seems to me), the One who entered into Creation at that single instant upon which Time hinges…a moment which trumped the constraints of chronology as it forced a bridge from eternity to here. But, although the work is complete on the one hand, on the other it is not. The victory may be won but the process is not complete. God still works within and along time, in such a way that seems so natural and planned. Not only does Creation display the tension between Change and the eternal God; so does human salvation.

Why does process feel so natural in ourselves, and growth appear so proper in and around us, and progress get pointed out even when it remains tacitly indistinct from mere change? Why do we expect story and development through time? Well, obviously there is the fact that we observe such things around us…but to return to my main point, why did God structure things this way? Is there something in God’s nature that is directional and/or processional, or does the manifestation of limited creatures’ experience of relationship with their perfect and limitless Creator necessarily give the impression of direction and procession? This could be the case regardless of sin—were Adam not to fall, we would still need to grow to move towards God; even when He is ultimately intimate (even indwelling, a fathomless thought), He remains in a sense unreachable to non-infinite creatures.

We are created in God’s own image. Although it may be worth noting that in Genesis when God created man and woman in His own image He created (apparently) an adult man and woman. Maybe He created them infants (although in Eve’s case at least that seems quite unlikely), and I find it suggestive that when God created beings in His own image He created them mature—at least physically, and one can assume emotionally and mentally as well, with only spiritual maturity on hold for ensuing reasons. However, I’m not quite sure what that suggests…perhaps that something truly made in God’s image doesn’t need growth? If so, it’s a suggestion that lacks substantial persuasive weight. In any case, we can infer from the Genesis account and elsewhere that mankind is an image of God, however sullied. After all, the man Christ is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” and “the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being.” We are created in God’s image, yet we expect and experience change, growth, process. Is that a part of our nature that is in God’s own image, or a result of the Fall, or otherwise a part of the Story God is telling? I really don’t know…I hesitate for obvious reasons to consider that there is something inherent in God’s nature that is analogous to human growth or directional change. Nevertheless, there is a piece I’m missing here, one which I don’t think I’ve quite articulated in this whole writing.

There’s one more thing I’d like to bring into the mix before I wrap it all up. These next thoughts are largely sparked by re-listening to a sermon from my old campus minister, Matt Dean, although the ideas come from a couple other sources too. The Greeks had two words for time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos was often personified as “Cronus,” known to the Greeks as the consuming god of time and father of the Olympians. He was, in Greek mythology, a usurper of the sky god Uranus. Both he and his Roman counterpart, Saturn, wielded a sickle, for he was the harvester. In the Middle Ages, Saturn/Cronus was associated with melancholy, and in astrology he represents coldness, separation, skepticism, and misfortune. The sort of time he represented was the devouring, destructive, dreadful sort of time…the type that wastes away, that rots, that lies like an inevitable burden on the shoulders of mortality. In a less harsh light, it was the timeline sort of time, calendar time: it was our normal conception of time as an ever-marching procession of instants. Alternatively, kairos refers to “an appointed time, season.” This is not the sort of time that can be measured by seconds or days or years, but only by significance. In a way, chronos is the sort of time which flows unceasingly onward, and kairos is the sort which freezes chronos so that a moment of import can make its appearance.

I’m no Greek scholar, so I will not try to differentiate between the two concepts any further. Nor will I really draw any specific conclusions from the philological distinction between the two times. But perhaps “chronological” time really is a kind of usurper, introduced (or more likely, corrupted) by the Fall, and the “appointed” sense of time, the “right-place-at-the-right-time” sort of thing, is truer to the way the spiritual/celestial realm works. Perhaps one thing the Fall did was divorce these two manifestations of time. Of course, this is very speculative. Still, something tells me that a proper understanding of kairos might go a long way towards illuminating why an immutable, eternally-perfect God formed Time, why He uses it like He does, the necessity of the temporal element of process, transformation, and growth…and maybe even why there seems to be a tension between salvation being already accomplished and something we need to work out—in other words, the relationship between justification and sanctification. In the meantime, I will continue to suspect there’s a mystery to Time that I can’t unravel.

The Hiddenness vs the Apparentness of God

Sometimes it seems I either strongly like a talk here at Oxford or strongly dislike it—there seems to be no middle ground in which to relax, but rather two extremes that either rouse my polemical passion or, on the other hand, draw me along in apologetic agreement. The last talk at GCU qualifies as the former for, although the speaker seemed like a genuine enough sort of fellow, precious little he said struck me as either sound or harmless.

The title of the talk was “Science and the Hiddenness of God.” Pretty attractive topic, in my opinion, and I anticipated the sort of message that showed how science, properly understood and used, directs one to God. Or something along those lines; really, I just thought it would be interesting to hear from a scientist who was interested in theology. Almost right off the bat, I realized my expectations would prove misleading.

I’ll try to give a fair account of what the speaker’s message was, but I think of it more in terms of the ideas he was attacking and expressing more than as an outlined argument, so his points may well come across as more beggarly than they in fact were. He started by giving a bit of personal background: he was raised in Hong Kong, went to an Anglican school—where Christianity, he said with apparent disapproval, was the wrapper around all they learned—then went to Cambridge (the “Other Place” as it’s called here) to study chemistry. At this point he belonged to the creationist camp of Christian scientists. The worldview of such Christian scientists he described by mentioning their unofficial motto: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His Hands.” (He actually may have used Psalm 111:2 to highlight this idea: “Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them.” However, I can’t remember exactly which verse he used, and the former is the more familiar and direct for this line of reasoning so I’ve stuck with it.)

Here he began the argumentative phase of his talk, starting with his break from the creationist ranks. He realized that he did not think about Creationism the same way he “did science;” also, he mentioned that all these creationist scientists were, in fact, scientists—the whole problem, in his mind, came about by them not understanding that different literary genres exist. Reading Genesis 1 as strict historical fact misled his compatriots into an overly simplistic understanding. He realized that separate genres existed in the Bible, and he could mould his understanding of various passages based on the independent understanding he brought to the reading of the Bible. Creationist complaints against secular science, he began to believe, were not actually scientific. Around about here he made here his strongest point. He argued that when creationist scientists bring a complaint against, for example, the secular evolutionary account, saying that “Current theory does not explain this particular point,” and then use that to dismiss current theory, they are making an elementary blunder against the very thing that drives science. If he went to his supervisor and said “Current theory does not explain this, therefore we must dismiss current theory,” his supervisor would have been appalled. For science progresses when it is realized something doesn’t fit within current theory...when something doesn’t “fit,” you experiment until you add to current theory, you don’t dismiss it. Science is current theory moving, millimetre by millimetre, across the face of knowledge, propelled by realized gaps in present understanding. Before I continue, I will note—even though I’m trying to hold my counterargument until later—that I think he portrays creationist scientists unfairly. They are not acting contrary to science, and are not guilty (as a whole group) of what he claims: instead, sometimes science encounters or needs paradigm shifts, and creationists merely seek to address a previous shift perceived as erroneous. Science does not progress smoothly and evenly, for the course of scientific understanding has often been bumpy—or nearly stagnant—in the past. And “progress” does not continually go on when a previous error is perceived—no one does a mathematical proof or a laboratory experiment like that.

Anyway, he also made the point that science was like a great and elaborate edifice—one cannot remove a single column from a cathedral and expect it to tumble. Science is more resilient than that. Creationists picking at particular points cannot alter the building. Of course, if the analogy is used, one must accept that different cathedrals can be built if different materials and plans are made; even using the same foundation, vastly different structures can arise. The Gothic cathedral of Saint Denis was constructed on the same foundations as the earlier, much simpler, church upon which it was built. If creationists imagine a light, airy, and inspiring Gothic cathedral where the bulky basilica of secular science now stands, can they be blamed for trying to knock down a few walls to bring in illuminating sunlight?

While I’m showing my colours, a point about different “genres” in the Bible before I continue. The “genre approach” is often overemphasized. Though different sections of the Bible tend towards a method of expression that we can ascribe to one particular modern genre over the other, we should beware projecting our narrow cultural view backwards into a timeless Book. The whole Bible belongs, first and most importantly, to the genre it alone occupies: inspired Scripture. It is one cohesive Book much more than it is 66 independent accounts. Though different sections contain different styles, breaking a particular passage out of its place in the unified whole and approaching it simply as an independent piece belonging to a modern genre can become dangerously imbalanced. This is NOT to say that viewing the Bible through genre-inspired lenses cannot be useful—sometimes, it may be necessary—but we should keep foremost in our minds when doing so that these “different sections” of the Bible were not WRITTEN as distinct genres. Assigning them post facto to segregated genres each with distinct “rules” for understanding them can be to miss the underlying message. We don’t need to be modern literary critics to understand that different verses should be taken differently; do we take Pharaoh’s words the same way we take Moses’? But we are ill-served by those who put everything they dislike or don’t understand into the genres of “allegory” and “myth.”

Back to his argument. He made much of what is called the God Hypothesis, seeking to discount it entirely. This hypothesis, in short, is the belief that you need God in order to properly explain things. It has been used and misused much over the millennia: before “modern science,” curiosity was assuaged by appealing to the supernatural to explain natural phenomena; in the Christian tradition, God has often been at the beginning and the end of logical-philosophical reasoning and even ponderings on the mechanical arts; scientific debate has often included an appeal to God or Biblical authority—sometimes misunderstood by proponents on either side—such as the famous geocentric/heliocentric debate. The example the speaker used was Newton, who used the God Hypothesis to explain the orbits of the planets for, according to his calculations, the orbits should not be stable, eventually spinning off out of control. God was needed, Newton wrote, to nudge the planets back into their orbits every once in a while.

The speaker then came to Laplace. This fellow, a bit later than Newton, did Newton’s own calculations and showed that the planets did not need God to nudge them into place. The anecdotal-yet-plausible story is that, when Laplace showed his calculations to Napoleon, the little emperor asked him where God was in all his calculation. Laplace’s answer was “I have no need for that hypothesis.” This becomes the Laplace Principle, the point that we can understand science perfectly without God; that we can “do science” without appeal to God or the supernatural. In fact, the speaker said that if he could pass on just one sentence to future generations, who would lose all other scientific knowledge, he would choose to pass on the Laplace Principle.

The real point of the talk, true to his title, was the Hiddenness of God. This was really a polemic against Psalm 19:1 (which I already noted), and Romans 1:19-20 “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Against, as well, other verses and the great weight of historical and modern Christian experience. His standard response to those who say that the heavens declare the glory of God, or that God can be glimpsed through the study of Nature, is “Where? Show Him to me...I can’t see any sign of Him in the stars.” He also maintained that if you started with the Cross and studied Creation, you’d find the God in Creation (hidden, significantly), that you’d expect; if you started with Creation and tried to glimpse God, you wouldn’t find Him because He was, in fact, hidden. His understanding of the Cross led him to deny the points about the Heavens declaring God’s glory and about God being made known through His works.

He then attempted some Biblical exegesis, going through the Bible chronologically to show that one of its key messages was the increasing hiddenness of God. He started with the Garden—God walked with Adam; then went to Abram, when God appeared to Him—rightly stressing the implication that “to appear” means “to have been hidden”—then to Exodus, when the people of Israel asked God to not appear to them again...and He never again appeared to the whole people of Israel. With Elijah, we have the last appearance of God to nonbelievers, immediately after which we have God appearing to Elijah not in the flame or earthquake or wind, but in a still small voice. In the last historical book of the Old Testament, Esther, God doesn’t even make an appearance.

Then, of course, we have the New Testament, where God appears—but only in the unexpected setting of a manger. Then, the crux of the matter: on the Cross, when Christ was mocked and told to demonstrate that He was in fact God’s Son, His response was Psalm 22. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The focal point of the entire Bible contains a cry to the God Who has forsaken, not only unbelievers, not only the faithful, but His very Son.

A compelling argument, and perhaps he presented it better than I have. Yet it has, in my opinion, glaring errors and painful falsehoods. My least favourite thing was his treatment of the Cross, and the argument of God withdrawing into hiddenness throughout the Bible that his treatment required. Of course, his iconoclastic approach to Christian tradition bothered me as well. Also, though, is his fierce allegiance to a secular scientific tradition that, in my opinion, is a cultural affectation injurious to deep knowledge. Since this post is getting long, I’m going to explain my problems with his Biblical and Christological interpretation here, and then (hopefully) post later about my problems with his particular scientific philosophy.

The basic premise of the Bible outlining God’s general and progressive withdrawal from man is slightly troubling to me. If anything, I think the Bible shows the opposite of that—God reaching out to a resistant, reclusive man in ever more dramatic ways, culminating in the Incarnation. That is sort of what Grace is, God extending His hand to unwilling man; God is not always OBVIOUS, true (and I imagine this point will come up again), but nor does He seek to hide Himself—He would be perfectly obvious if only we knew where to look. Sin, of course, disrupts our ability to look in the obvious places. We do not, to use Biblical language, “lift up our eyes and look to the heavens” and remember the One who knows each star by name. Sin is the missing piece of the puzzle in the speaker’s explanation. Why was God not walking in the cool of the evening with Abram as he had with Adam? Because Sin had disrupted Paradise. Why did God no longer appear to the collective people of Israel after Exodus? Because, due to Sin, they asked Him not to—it wasn’t Him trying to hide, it was Israel turning away from Him. Yet He refused to remain hidden, and found new and creative ways to become apparent.

In highlighting passages that showed God growing more hidden as the Bible goes on, the speaker skipped over some important counter-examples. God appeared to Moses in a more intimate way than Abraham, talking with him face to face, even though Moses came after Abraham; God’s Presence rested continuously within the Temple, long after Moses. Though one could argue God was “hidden” inside the Temple, the fact that the people always knew where to find Him (though they could not approach, due to their own failings) reveals the fundamental error of such language. The cry of God throughout the Old Testament seems to be “and they will be My people and I will be their God.” This does not suggest hiddenness to me.

More significant than whether or not there is a trend of God’s hiddenness in the Old Testament (and I think there’s not, but rather an interplay of God’s holiness, His justice, restraint, patience, and most of all, His love) is what the New Testament tells us about all this. Fitting Christ into an argument for the hiddenness of God gets one nowhere, I strongly believe. After all, His Name is Jesus—the LORD Saves—and He is called Immanuel—God with us. Using His cry of Psalm 22 upon the Cross does not show God’s hiddenness...although it does reinforce the idea that sinful men do not see Him where He is. For He was on the Cross in front of them, Son calling to Father, and though the Roman centurion recognized Him as the Son of God, most did not. Then again, most people missed the fact that something significant happened even after an eclipse, earthquake, the veil of the Temple being torn, and dead people walking through the streets of Jerusalem! How is God hidden through all that—or through His very ministry and its denouement on earth?

Jesus’ cry of “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” should be appreciated more fully. Now, I hesitate to write about this because of the weightiness of it, and though I’ll choose my words with care I’m sure I’ll place a misemphasis on something. I don’t want to diminish the anguish of Christ on the Cross at all—it was for this moment that He sweated blood the night before. This moment, when the Father (in some way, somehow, that I do not understand) turned away from the Son was I think the most anguished moment in humanity. Yet Jesus was not simply—it seems to me—expressing doubt or despair about the Father...He knew the Scriptures intimately well, and knew what psalm He was referring to. It is a psalm of painful lament, but one of trust and certainty too. Being the Rabbi that He was, I am convinced Jesus had the whole psalm in mind when He spoke. After all, these words are also contained in Psalm 22:
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”
We know such words speak directly to Jesus’ experience on the Cross...but they are not the theme of Psalm 22. The theme is, I think, found in such verses as this: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel” and “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.’ Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God.” The significant thing about this latter passage is that in both Matthew and Mark’s accounts of this, Jesus’ cry is recorded right after the crowd mock and insult Him, telling Him to come down if He really is the Son of God. Jesus’ response to that? Psalm 22, which includes vivid trust in being in God’s hands since birth as a response to just such a challenge.

This psalm also contains such displays of trust and purpose as this: “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you...For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden His face from Him but has listened to His cry for help.” And later, “The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him—may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him.” The psalm ends with these words: “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn—for He has done it.” Mark and Matthew both, then, tell us that soon after Jesus cried out the beginning of Psalm 22, He gave up His Spirit. His mission was done—from “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” to “For He has done it!”...the bookends of the Psalm frame Jesus’ Crucifixion.

I’ll wrap up with this observation—using Jesus’ cry to highlight God’s hiddenness seems, to me, to ignore the deeper reality going on here. Immanuel completing His rescue of us—the wilful sinners who turned away from God, Who has pursued us ever since—that is the theme of the Cross. That is the theme of the Bible; if God is hidden from time to time, it is because of man’s choice, not His, either directly because man turns his gaze away from God, or indirectly because sinful man cannot bear God’s holy Presence. Laced throughout the Bible are claims that God can be known nonetheless: that was why He called Abram, after all. Instead of tracking God’s “hiddenness” through the Bible, a better theme would be God seeking to make His home with us in ever more intimate ways: with Abraham He occasionally met but was not pressingly close; with the Tabernacle, He made His home among the people, but it was a temporary dwelling; with the Temple, He made His dwelling among the people a permanent thing; with Jesus, He came down to live amongst us; with Jesus’ resurrection, He sent His Spirit to live WITHIN us.

All in all, I found the speaker’s Biblical interpretation not at all compelling. It was done with an agenda and according to a trendy worldview, one that wants to segregate Nature from the supernatural—one that elevates what can be quantified over what can be known of quality. Hopefully I’ll get to a discussion of his allegiance to his particular scientific philosophy in another post. However, I think his Biblical treatment called for answer more strongly: it seemed to ignore the problem of Sin, that God’s apparentness is hidden only by man’s sinfulness. It’s hard to justify his claims that the heavens do NOT declare the glory of God in any verifiable way, and that God’s invisible qualities have not been made known throughout Creation (suggesting, by extension of Paul’s passage, that man has an excuse for not knowing God?), without a casual handling of the Scriptures as pertains to sin.

The Word and the Spirit

A while ago I visited a church that has since become my home church here in Oxford. I had almost settled into another church, having gone several times and liking it quite well—it was a friendly, Bible-teaching church. But this new one went beyond being “good” and meeting certain checklist-type qualifications. The difference, I think, was a vibrancy of worship, spontaneity of expression, and an openness to the Holy Spirit. These church members were clearly excited to be in the presence of God.

I’ve been thinking for a while about the role of the Spirit in the Church, in Christian community, and in individual Christian growth. This is rather natural for someone who belongs to a very charismatic church back home, and yet by natural disposition is not particularly charismatic, but more of a staid, intellectual, Reformed-theology sort of believer. By natural disposition, I said: by faith and experience I tend to favor more responsive forms of Christian expression. But anyway, for someone who is interested in theology and Biblical exegesis, Church of the Highlands is a mildly unexpected church to gravitate towards. There is teaching, of course, sound and Biblical, but more in the form of anecdote and application; the sermons are very seeker-friendly.

I’ve wondered if it is the right church for me many times (knowing, all along, that finding a church to fit my predispositions is much less important than growing to into a good fit for the Christian community in which I find myself). I self-identify as a (non-Roman) Catholic, (non-Eastern) Orthodox, Reformed Charismatic…so finding a church to “suit” me is a bit beside the point. There are three main reasons I remain with Church of the Highlands. The first and simplest is that it was God Who brought me there, and He has yet to say leave. The second is that I believe in the vision of this church: its seeker-friendly atmosphere is not a weakness of critically examining the Word, but rather an intentional strength enabling it to live the Great Commission better, in my opinion, than any other church I’ve encountered. The third reason is that I do not go to church for a Bible lesson; I go to church for the expression of the community that is the Body. And, I think, the purest expression of that community is worship…Scripture reading can and should be done as part of a personal lifestyle. Truly, the same can be said of worship (and by worship here I specifically mean worship by praising) but the Body worshipping together is a big part of what it’s all about; teaching and study are more a means to an end, the end being worship in all its multihued shapes. I can learn Biblical truth from the Bible itself, or Christian authors, or Christian friends…sometimes even a non-Christian source will hammer home a transcendent truth. Worshipping together, however, is harder to manage alone.

But this post is not about why I stay with Highlands. It’s more about what I’ve learned here, or what I’m in the process of learning. I went to a church I liked, but not in an impassioned way, for several weeks. And let me say here I don’t mean to belittle this church, or imply it’s not as good as any other specific church; the fact that it didn’t provoke a certain sort of response in me says much more about me than it does about the church. But, even before I arrived in Oxford I wondered what short of church I should go to, having been told several time there was no shortage of good churches here.

Part of me wanted to attend a high-church Anglican service regularly. But this was for purely aesthetic reasons, those of a nostalgic medieval English history student. For while I theoretically value liturgy-heavy styles, and even enjoy them…for me it’s the enjoyment of an opera or museum, not of a worship service.
However, I ended up getting several recommendations for good churches and liked the one I visited first. Its focus, I was told by more than one person, was on “teaching the Word.” The other church I was most interested in (having not gone yet) was a vibrant community, but not as interested in Bible teaching. Now, before I even checked out this other church I had preconceived notions about it. “Not as into teaching the Word” translated, to me, as indicating one of the liberal, ungrounded, wishy-washy churches that were more about emotion and friendliness than the Truth. I was, it turned out, wrong.

A dichotomy between passionate worship and a firm stance on the Bible, on Truth, does seem to often exist. That common divide between “worshippers in Spirit” and “worshippers in Truth” which should be no divide at all. Church of the Highlands bridges this perceived gap quite well, particularly in the pastor’s own vision and teaching (though as a congregation, my amateur opinion is that it inclines more towards the “worshippers in Spirit” side). Sure, the teaching may not be as “rigorous” as elsewhere, but teaching the essentials and “mere Christianity” should never be undervalued, especially in a culture that either knows them so poorly or ignores them for the sake of fierce debate about non-essentials. The practicality of truth to relevant circumstances is also of great benefit, a benefit that is sometimes absent in the more “rigorous” teaching circles. Still, my college ministry bridged this gap so well that it was not visible, at least to me. In my opinion—having not given it all that much analysis—this was due to Grace Campus Ministries’ focus on Grace and Community.

Still, even though I’ve experienced communities where the dichotomy between Spirit and Truth was not painfully visible, I’ve realized that I nevertheless expect it. And so, having not visited St. Aldate’s, I assigned it to the “Spirit” side, and felt St Ebbe’s fit comfortably on the “truth” side of things. But I visited St Aldate’s, recognizing a desire for community-worship that I cannot manufacture alone. Even before I stepped in, I had half decided to go to Aldate’s regularly, even if the teaching wasn’t great.

For, as I said above, I look for worship more than teaching in a church. Maybe this is because I’m a better student than I am a worshipper, and I need more guidance in the latter. But beyond that, I honestly think that the sermon part of a service is of secondary importance to the worship, and not just for me. This is not because I undervalue teaching—but, as I mentioned before, a lot of teaching should go on throughout daily life. We all have the Bible, and if we fail to read it on our own, fail to discuss it with our friends, fail to seek out an explanation from those wiser than us, then surely we need a preacher to do our work for us. But a preacher is not a necessary role in a church—a pastor, on the other hand, is. We have blurred those roles into a semblance of a single role, but they of course have quite difference job descriptions and callings.

I think describing Ebbe’s as focused on “teaching the Word” is a confusing label. Sure, each sermon I’ve heard there was based on a Bible passage—but so was the message at Aldate’s. And the messages at Ebbe’s were more historical and cultural studies than a deep exegesis of the passages…good and true and useful points, but nothing I couldn’t get reading the passage alone; less, I think, than I would get from discussing the passage with friends. That’s not to say they were at all bad sermons; it’s just that reading a passage and giving an introductory explanation of it is not the only way to “teach the Word” (a tangential note: our evangelical terminology seems to confuse the Bible with the Word, Who is Christ—the Bible being God’s Holy Scriptures, but not a fourth person of the Quadrinity, as a friend expressed to me a little while ago. This distinction will be fleshed out a bit more below). It is good for young Christians, perhaps (but then again so is application), but it’s doing the believers’ work for them. Better, I think, to meditate on a passage, study it, pray over it, consult concordances or supplemental material if need be, and let the Spirit illuminate it for you; other believers can check or correct your understanding later.

This does imply the danger of an individual’s false interpretation of Scripture. We can’t have every trying to find out for themselves what the Bible “means,” can we? Of course we can, if we trust the Spirit, the role of Christ’s Body, and the life of Christ within each believer. Of course, mistakes will be made—but with preachers “teaching the Word,” mistakes and false interpretations also occur. If Christians are taught to diligently and critically read the Bible, rather than merely passively receive a sermon, they will be less likely to make serious errors.

It seems that in some churches that focus on “teaching the Word rigorously,” the Bible at times becomes less than living and active, less of a companion to a Christian’s daily walk. You get some nice, occasionally insightful, oft-times quaint “lessons,” and perhaps some doctrine, but little application or relevance or introduction to the role of the Spirit. I think this derives from mildly contrasting views of Scripture itself. Both sides would agree that “all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness,” but one would equate the Word of God exclusively with the Bible; the other would see the Bible as one of the key ways God reveals His Word (His expressed and knowable will) to His people.

One of the friends who seemed to favor Ebbe’s helped provoke these thoughts a couple weeks before I visited Aldate’s. We agree about many theological particulars, but it became clear we have slightly different views of the Bible and how it relates to the Church, among other distinctions. Both of us agree that every word, in the original manuscripts, is fully inspired of God and its meanings are absolutely true. Where differ seems to be about how the Spirit of God relates to or uses the Scriptures.

I won’t attempt to provide an exhaustive argument on either side, but basically he thinks that the Spirit confirms and elucidates only what is in the Bible; I tend to favor the view that God is not limited by the Bible, and although God never contradicts His Own words, He is free to tell us things outside of the 66 Books we have—for example, God could tell me to go get in my car and go for a long drive, though the concept is found nowhere from Genesis to Revelation. That’s an over-simplistic example, but basically I think we have a genuine relationship with God of a sort (potentially) deeper and fuller than we have with people, and that this would be impossible if God were limited by a book the size of the Bible—or even one the size of Gibbons “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” A book all about a finite mortal—or the intimate relationship between two finite mortals—would be longer than the Bible; a book, no matter how long, would never fully express an infinite God. John says as much at the end of his Gospel account: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” Were the things He did that were not recorded less true than those recorded? Of course not. God does not, I firmly believe, cripple His ability to relate to His children by restricting expression of His will to a few hundred chapters of script. Many of which, incidentally (one thinks of long portions of Levitical Law and already-fulfilled prophecy) are not immediately applicable to us, unless we wrench them out of context. Again (to belabor the point), the intended meaning of much of Scripture should not be completely divorced from its context—we cannot claim for ourselves everything God said to Abraham, Moses, and Elijah…He shows us something of Himself through these stories which are not of us, but it is Himself, rather than the events recounted, that is the unchanging timeless point. Elevating the Bible to be the source of all spiritual truth we can know leads, almost invariably, to taking such passages out of context to fit them to a current situation…for if we believe God only speaks to us through the Bible, we must frantically search for something in the Bible vaguely reminiscent of what God is saying now, or else disregard altogether the Voice we hear as something sent to deceive us.

My friend would say, however, that all we NEED to know is found within the Bible; I would respond yes, but all we NEED to know can be found in perhaps a dozen verses, and possibly less. My friend would say that we cannot be sure about the truth of any claim apart from the Bible; I would say we only know that Bible itself is true because of the Spirit and the Body which the Spirit used both to compile the Bible we have and to confirm its continual relevance. I believe the Bible because I know God; I don’t believe in God because I know the Bible. My friend would equate “God’s Word” precisely with the Old and New Testaments. I would describe the Testaments as definitely a true expression of God’s will, but I would equate God’s Word with His Son, the Logos, “the image of the invisible God,” and the “radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being.” I would also leave room for any revelation—natural, supernatural, common, specific—to be a portion of the Truth God is speaking constantly over Creation. Yes, such general revelations as the existence of fatherly love, or such specific revelations as Christ appearing in an unbeliever’s dream (such as has happened many, many times in modern Turkey, bringing in many new converts) are open to misinterpretations…but so is Romans 9, or Revelation pick-your-chapter, for that matter. I would say that a new convert in a jungle in the Amazon can grow, even lacking a Bible, through the ministrations of the indwelling Holy Spirit. My friend would say no, for healthy growth the new convert absolutely needs a copy of the Bible. We would agree that, if the Bible is available, failing to study it is a recipe for disaster—but I would point to my Amazonian or African tribesman, or the believers during the first couple hundred years of the Church who lacked an “official” canonical Word of God because it hadn’t been agreed upon, and say “don’t sell the Holy Spirit short, don’t overlook the relationship with a living and sovereign, intimate and personal God, don’t limit the work of Christ in any way.”

For the Gospel is not a collection of four books of the Bible. Christ is the Gospel, the Good News of God, as He is the Word and revealed Reason of God. It is a sad mis-emphasis to focus so much on the Bible that we downplay the very Gospel of Christ—it is the Gospel that saves, not the Bible. One of the great things about the Bible, though, is that it contains the Gospel account—it is perhaps the best tool for introducing the Gospel.

Enough of that. Let it suffice to sum up: I believe the Bible is the best single object for enabling Christian growth…but I would not call God or the Body of Christ “objects,” and would, in every circumstance I realize, seek to place no limitations on God’s relationship with His beloved. I realize I coming up against the Reformation cry of Sola Scriptura (in another post, I encountered the cry of Sola Fide, but I’ll ignore that one for now). I won’t try right now to place that mantra in context, and will offer no explicit opinions concerning its viability. But I do NOT think the Bible is exhaustively the Word of God; having only tasted the tip of the iceberg that is the weight of truth in the Bible, I still maintain that God is more talkative, more demonstrative, more involved than limiting Himself to the Bible. After all, the Bible itself speaks of Jesus Christ as the Word of God, which has more or less been the way I’ve tried to mean “the Word of God” throughout. What are we to make of that, really? Christ is the radiance of the invisible God; He fully encompasses what God is saying to His sons and daughters, in all the ways we can possibly understand it. The Bible, whether Greek or Vulgate, Hebrew or NIV, does NOT fully encompass God’s Word.

I hesitate to say this, but I actually think my view of the Bible places it in a more distinguished light than some Bible readers do (though not those who wrongly place it on near-equal footing with the members of the Trinity). I don’t look at the Bible as the culmination of what we are to know of God in this world (which is, I suppose, the understanding I am arguing against)…I see it as something MORE. For all the wisdom it contains, its purpose as I understand it is to point unfalteringly beyond itself—were the Bible to be given a voice, I think it would lament people coming to it to and settling down contentedly to fully understand it. We should come to the Bible to pass through it, into understanding of God, Who we can know much more about than the limited words found in the pages of the Bible. That’s what makes the Bible so great: it is an introduction to Someone much more expansive and limitless than itself.

It is like a key that unlocks a door into an ever-branching hallway: limiting our study to the key itself can make us ignore the Voice telling us where, when, and how to use it. It’s also like a prism that splits our one light of perception into a rainbow of knowing; it’s the tip of an iceberg that hints at unseen depths, the keyboard that plays a whole range of pieces all written by the same composer, it’s the 26 letters of an alphabet that enable an epic of expression, a code that makes a hitherto-unknown language fathomable. But more than these mysterious avenues of complexity that this one book can introduce, it is most like the letter of a Father to an estranged (and simple-minded) child, written in plain language but nevertheless hinting of the Father’s poetic mastery. And that is the true value and purpose of the Bible, introducing a Father to His children. The letter of introduction will never be forgotten, never be tossed aside, but it is only a starting point for the relationship, which will be filled with countless more words of love and wisdom from the Father to the child. It is a shame if the child never takes his eyes off that first letter—prized though it should be—and actually genuinely, intimately, interacts with his or her Father.

That was more of a tangent than I intended. But it applies to my original trajectory in this way: there are two sorts of teaching that are grounded in the Scriptures. One comes from my friend’s understanding of the Word, and is found at many good churches. When the Bible is the entirety of what we can know about God, though, a basic survey of a passage suffices; when it is a manual, a rule book, an exhaustive concordance, one needs to take no truly rigorous steps towards understanding relevance or application: the Bible, in brief, points mainly to itself.
The other sort of teaching, firmly grounded in the Bible and with a slightly modified understanding of “the Word of God, “can be found at Church of the Highlands, at Grace Campus Ministries, various other churches, the writings of Lewis and Chesterton. In its beginning steps it can merely be called “application,” but really I think it is about understanding the meaning and message contained in the Bible, and the interactive relationship it points to. This second sort of teaching, I firmly believe, has a bigger view of the Holy Bible.