“Descriptive, not Prescriptive,” Part 2

17 October 2010

So where does this “descriptive, not prescriptive” thing even come from?

It’s about fear.  It’s about being afraid that someone will take some horrible event in a story and decide that it’s God’s will to act it out.  Next thing you know, somebody’s trying to have multiple wives, and justify it because after all, David and Solomon and Jacob did.  Or speak in tongues, and justify it because it shows up in Acts.  Or dance, because Miriam and David did.  Or drink wine, or…pick your personal horror story.

And let’s face it: “that’s descriptive, not prescriptive” is an undeniably attractive solution.  By denying your opponent in the debate any recourse to the narrative passages of the Bible, you’ve effectively cut his legs out from under him.  It’s all very, very convenient.

It’s also ignorant, foolish, and unbiblical.  The one thing it’s not is childish–as we’ve seen, every child knows that stories teach.

The biblical authors make their points from narrative, and they do it constantly.  Imagine Paul making the argument of Romans 4 in a synagogue — as he must have done many times.  “Abraham was justified by faith, before he was ever circumcised!” he says to the crowd.  “The same thing can happen today.”
Now imagine one of his opponents rising to rebut him: “Our esteemed guest, Rabbi Paul, fails to realize that the Genesis account is descriptive, not prescriptive.”

Or imagine Jesus, teaching on divorce: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but from the beginning, God made them male and female.  For this reason a man will leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
A scribe steps forward in the crowd: “That was true for Adam and Eve, but that’s descriptive, not prescriptive.”

This is just nonsense, and we all ought to know better.  Certainly the biblical authors regularly drew prescriptions from narrative.  If we are not to follow their hermeneutics, then what are we to do?  Just make something up?

That’s pretty much what we’re doing, and the effects are devastating.

The first and most obvious problem is that three quarters of the Bible is story.  God gave us the Bible so we would know how to live, and we’re trying to pretend that a person can’t learn how to live from three quarters of it.  That’s the kind of mistake that tends to issue in long-term disobedience out of sheer, willful ignorance.  Sorry to say, such disobedience is not in short supply.

Second, the most dedicated “description not prescription” guy gets the story about the kid playing in the street.  He will also immediately object, “But biblical stories are not nearly that simple.  They’re far more complicated.”

Of course this is true, but consider the ramifications.   When he pleads “descriptive, not prescriptive,” he is in effect pleading ignorance.  Jesus and Paul set the example, but this guy can’t follow them.  He is admitting that his hermeneutics have broken down, that he’s off the edge of the map.  “Descriptive, not prescriptive” is the hermeneutical equivalent of “Here be dragons.”  But this is just admitting that he doesn’t know how to read the story.

The solution, of course, is to learn.  But instead of learning, he treats his ignorance as an argument for not learning how to read the biblical stories. He wants to deny that it’s possible to learn how to read the biblical stories, and this is just silly.  It’s the equivalent of a frustrated six-year-old who claims that it’s impossible to tie his shoelaces on the grounds that he finds the process confusing.  In Solomonic idiom:  simple ones love simplicity, and fools hate knowledge.  The solution is to listen to Wisdom, turn at her rebuke, and seek for her like hidden treasure.  Blurting out “descriptive, not prescriptive” is a poor substitute.

The fact that conservative evangelicals have pursued ignorance for a few generations compounds the problem.  We have institutionalized the foolishness, and it now afflicts us as a blind spot for our whole community.  Now we have diligent, hardworking servants of God who have been trained to be happy with their ignorance.  Let me say that again: diligent, hardworking pastors are unable to read three quarters of the Bible well, and they’re completely okay with that, because we have taught them to be okay with that.

This is sin, and like all sin, the cure is as simple as it is painful and difficult: repent!

5 Comments | Chicken Bones, Controversies, Doctrinal Inconsistencies, Ecclesiology, Meditations | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

“Descriptive, Not Prescriptive,” Part 1

10 October 2010

So as I’m setting out to prove a point about the biblical pattern of doing things, I flip to the relevant passages in Genesis, or Acts, or 2 Chronicles.  If I’m talking to a conservative evangelical who has had some Bible college or seminary training, I will almost invariably hear the same objection:
“You know, that passage is really descriptive, not prescriptive.”

For those of you who are blessed enough not to know what this means, here’s a quick rundown:
Descriptive: What they did
Prescriptive: What we (or at least the original audience) ought to do

In other words, the narrative portions of the Bible are true in that they accurately report what those people did, but you can’t infer from them that we ought to do the same.  If you try — so goes the reasoning — then we’ll have people chopping up their concubines into little bits, or having multiple wives (you know, like David!), or speaking in tongues, or whatever other horrors we can dig up.  Anything to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt about learning how to live from the stories of the Bible.

Hence “it’s descriptive, not prescriptive” and its cousin “you can’t get doctrine from narrative.”

Now I don’t mean to be overly offensive, but guys: every child in the world knows that this isn’t true.

“Remember Billy and Susy, who lived across the street?  Remember how one day, their mommy told them to stay in the yard, but little Billy went and played in the street and got hit by a car?  Susy played in the yard, and she’s fine, but Billy’s going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

Every child who hears the story, and every parent who tells it, understands perfectly well.  Is there any exegete so obtuse that he can fail to understand that this story has a moral?  Of course not.  And you, dear reader, understood the story as well — even those of you who have had a seminary hermeneutics course at some point.

Furthermore, no parent tells the story and then later begins to think, “Oh my gosh!  What if my kid thinks I’m telling him to act like Billy?”

The question, friends, is not whether we can learn how to live from stories.  The question is whether we ever learn how to live from anything else.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

River Evangediscipleship II: An Example

19 September 2010

Note: this post continues the line of thought from People of the River and River Evangediscipleship

When life is what you’re offering, there’s lots of opportunity to give.  What, specifically, do you offer to Rick, the guy you’re talking with right this minute?  Depends.  What is the opportunity before you?  Is he terrified that he will go to hell?  Offer him assurance of eternal life in Christ, and calm his fears.

But suppose Rick hasn’t said a word about heaven and hell.  He came over to talk with you about his marriage, which is  falling apart right before his eyes.  How do you offer Rick life?  Well, you’ve unfortunately had evangelism training, so you tell him that he needs Jesus, and you set out to share the gospel in the conventional way: heaven, hell, Jesus on the cross, all that.

“Look, man,” Rick says to you, “I’m already in hell.  Heaven will be when Trina and I can spend a whole day together without getting into a screaming fight.”  What do you say to a guy like this?

Isn’t it obvious?  A starving man in agony from a scorpion sting doesn’t really care, right that minute, that the starvation will kill him in a week or so.  In the abstract, food is more important — he might survive the scorpion sting, but lack of food will get him, for sure.  But so what?  If you’re responsible for helping the man, you give him the antivenin now, and then later, the food.

So you ditch your canned-spam evangelism training and just talk to Rick about his marriage.  You ask what the problems are.  He says he walks in the door after work, and five minutes later they’re screaming at each other and he can’t even remember how the fight started.  So you show him Ephesians 5.  You tell him that Jesus is his model, and he should be willing to die for his wife (by inches, if necessary) as Jesus died for us.   You tell him that this means when he goes home today, he must not counterattack, no matter what she says or does.  You warn him that the first thing she’ll do when he doesn’t counterattack is move in for the kill.  “Rick, man, I’m not gonna lie to you,” you say.  “This will probably be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.  But you’ve got to sacrifice yourself for her, and you’ve got to keep sacrificing until she realizes you’re not fighting with her anymore.”

Tell him that if he does not do this, he will kill his marriage.  On the other hand, if he can pull this off, then he will see things happen in his marriage that he’s never dreamed possible.  But there is a catch, you say.  Tell him, with a wink, that God will probably let him have enough success that he can see what a benefit it would be, if only he could really do it — but there’s only one way to really do this, and he can’t do it on his own; he won’t be able to.

“Naw, I get it now.  I see how it’s supposed to work.”  Rick is smiling for the first time in the conversation.  “I can do this.”

“Okay,” you say.  “Give it a try.  But I’m telling you, man, the day is coming where you can see where it would work if you just did it, but you just can’t bring yourself to sacrifice one more time — and you won’t do it.  When that day comes, don’t you come back and tell me this doesn’t work — I told you, right up front, that you can’t do it alone.”

Rick just grins at you.  “You just watch me.”

When you talk with him next, Rick is dejected.  “I just couldn’t do it, man.  I love Trina, but you can’t believe how she gets.  I couldn’t take it.  I had to tell her to back off, and as soon as I did, we were back into the screaming fight, just like before.”

“Hey, Rick.  Remember how I told you you couldn’t do it alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, here’s the rest of the story.”  You tell him that there’s only one person who ever could live that kind of life — Jesus Himself.  Only Him.  “But Rick, if you let Him, He will give you the ability to do this.  In a way, it won’t be you, it’ll be Him living His life in you.  He wants to give you life — eternal life, in fact.  Rick, man, you’re dying here. If you take what Jesus offers, you don’t die while you’re still alive, and even when you die, you live forever with Him.  All the hell that you’ve been going through, Rick, and all the hell that you’ve got coming to you in the future — Jesus took it all into Himself, died for you, was buried, the whole thing, so you wouldn’t have to go through any of it. And He rose from the dead three days later to show that it’s over — He conquered it all, and He’s alive, and He offers you His life.  He’s been offering you life this whole time, and He’s still offering it now.  When you trust that offer, Rick, it’s yours, and it’s yours forever, absolutely free.  You couldn’t earn something like this, and there’s not enough money in the world to buy it, but it’s yours, just for the asking.”

“Man, I’m desperate here,” Rick says.  “I’ll do anything.  What do I gotta do?”

“Rick, man, haven’t you been listening?” you say.  “It’s a gift.  You trust Him for it, it’s yours.  That’s the beauty of it.”

His brow furrows in confusion.  “Just like that?”

“You got a better idea?”  You punch his shoulder.  “Of course, just like that.”  You pause to let that sink in.  “If it makes you feel better, you can say something to Him out loud, but you don’t have to — He sees your heart.  Does that make sense to you?”

Rick’s brows are still furrowed up.  “Yeah, I guess so…” He looks up at you.  “It’s really free?  Seriously?”

You laugh.  “Of course it is.  You think you could buy it?  What do you have that God could want?”  Your face grows serious.  “Just trust Him, Rick.  He’s got it taken care of.”

“Okay,” he says.  “Okay.”  He nods.  “I think I do want to say something.”

“Go ahead.”

“God, I, uh, I don’t know how to pray, but nothing I do is working out, and everything I touch in my life turns sour.  This thing you give, this life–I want it.  I want all of it.  Please give it to me.”

****

A year later, Rick is a growing young Christian.  Trina has seen changes in Rick that she never thought she’d see.  She’s not convinced Christianity is for her, but she’s certainly interested.  They still fight, and sometimes it’s still pretty bad — but it’s not as frequent as it was, and Rick is quick to forgive, and to confess when he’s been wrong.

Do you know for sure whether Rick was saved that day when he first asked God for help?  Maybe not.  Did he really understand enough about what he was asking for?  There’s no way to know for sure.  But who cares?  We’re making disciples here, and that’s what Jesus said to do.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

GES Conference 2010

25 April 2010

I spent the better part of this past week at the annual GES conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Lord blessed us with a number of good speakers, and the mood of the conference was phenomenal.  I got a strong sense that the majority of the attendees really desire reconciliation within the Free Grace movement.  This is a marked change from when I was last there two years ago.  That, for me, was the highlight of the conference.

Some other personal highlights:

  • Bob Swift’s session on the Johannine prologue was both simple and very, very deep.  It goes well with Jim Reitman’s “Gospel in 3-D” series, which presents some additional refinements.
  • Dan Hauge’s workshop on 1 Samuel.  He aimed to equip us to teach 1 Samuel and convince us of the value of doing so.  It worked.
  • John Niemela’s presentation on Hebrews 12:14 was very good.  His thesis: “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (in you).”
  • I had the privilege of presenting a plenary session on Hebrews, and a workshop on worship.  You can find them both here.
  • My good friend and future co-worker Joe Anderson came to the conference, and we partnered up for some serious psalm-singing (more info here).  Monday night we spent working on matching lyrics and tunes, Tuesday night we spent a few hours in a corner of the Riley Center with a few friends, singing, sharing, and praying until midnight or so.  Wednesday night the same, but with a very good conversation about worship dance…and a little actual dancing, even.
  • We also got the chance to introduce psalm-singing to the whole conference in the main session after lunch on Wednesday, and in the prayer time.  That was a lot of fun, and very well received.
  • The fellowship was outstanding, as always.  Made new friends, reacquainted with old ones, and got to meet an online friend and fellow worker in person for the first time, which was a real pleasure.
  • Jim Reitman (knowing that my presentation would be discussing unity in the body of Christ) brought me a t-shirt that said “Ask me about my dysfunctional family.”  Priceless.

A good time was had by all — as far as I know — and I’m looking forward to next year.

1 Comment | The Free Grace Food Fight, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

The High Personal Cost of Maintaining Unity

18 April 2010

There is such a thing as a false gospel, a cancer which must be cut out of Christ’s body. But there is also such a thing as having a sense of proportion, and if we expect anyone to believe us when we need to sound the alarm about genuine heresy, then we need to stop crying wolf all the time.

Christ only has one body, and the gospel of grace tells us that all our brothers are a part of it. Even when the argument is about the gospel, if we respond to every piddling difference by carving off major parts of the Body, how are we defending the gospel that brings us together? If you get a carving knife and flay off every freckle and skin blemish because it might be cancer, are you helping your body, or hurting it?

So the charge is to do what Paul did. Tell the truth, and tell it as starkly as it needs to be told. Then go to meet your erring brothers and have it out. This will cost you—money, time, energy, pain, everything. Keep at it until you all come to one mind. If they throw you out, that just puts the process on hold for a while. Maybe a week, maybe a decade or a century or even longer. Keep working anyway, however God gives opportunity. The prize is worth it.

Christ will build His church, and the whole body will come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. On that day, we will no longer be children, and the whole body will have grown up in all things into Christ our Head.

This is the prize. Christ purchased it; He calls us to live worthy of it. It is worth what it will cost us to serve Christ in this. So look to your own connections with this in mind, and pray for me as I attend to mine this coming week.

11 Comments | Controversies, Preaching, The Free Grace Food Fight | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Truth is a Person

4 October 2009

A further thought to add to the earlier reflection on universals and particulars:

Ultimate reality — truth — is a Person: “I am the Truth,” Jesus says. Because the Truth is also the divine Word, one expects propositions, and there are propositions. But because the Truth is a Person, one expects more than propositions: one expects acts in history, questions, commands, stories, emotions, all the true things of which a person is capable. And there they are. These lay claim to truth in the same way that propositions do: they are the derivative truth that comes from being a reflection of Truth, the Person.A life that honors God — “walking in the truth,” the apostle John calls it — derives its truth in the same way: by reflecting Christ.

This is another reason why universals and particulars are equally ultimate. When the divine Word is made flesh, when Truth is a person with hair of a certain length and eyes of a certain color, particulars and universals have met and kissed, and can never be separated.

Which leaves us with a burning question: how are universals and particulars related?  It’s a question that has plagued philosophers for centuries (again, see Rushdoony’s The One and the Many for details on the history).  Christians have an answer to this question: “The same way unity and diversity are related in the Trinity.”  We have a word for it: perichoresis, the mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity in one another.  So we might say that in the world, universals and particulars are perichoretically related — each indwells the other, as in the Trinity.  Which is to say, we don’t understand the phenomenon in the world any better than we understand the Trinitarian phenomenon of which it is a reflection.  But since the world is created by the Trinity and reflects the Trinity, we expect to encounter a mystery on this point, and it should not surprise us that the answer is beyond our ken.

Discovering that the thing is, finally and forever, beyond our reach forces us to realize that we are not God, and never will be.  There are two possible responses to this: glorify Yahweh in gratitude, or be offended and ungrateful.  One of them is life, health and peace, and the other is struggle, sickness and death — the same two choices humanity has always faced, from the Garden right down to today.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Update

1 October 2009

I have updated the Gospel Discussion page, for those of you who follow such things. Not much new info, if you’ve been reading here regularly, but maybe organized a bit better.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

We Are of Christ…Or Are We?

6 September 2009

I grew up in — and still happily attend — independent Bible churches, which for those of you who don’t know, is a bit like independent Baptist churches, with a small variation in spelling.  To be fair, the Bible churches have sometimes also left behind a certain amount of legalistic drivel that the independent Baptists have, in my experience, largely kept.  These things aside, they’re about the same.

Except for one thing.  We claimed no larger family affiliation.  People would ask, “What denomination are you with?”  We would say — rather proudly, to be honest — “None.  We just study the Bible and believe what it teaches.”  This was, presumably, different from those denominational folks, who believed in the Bible and their denominational distinctives (and, we thought, tended toward the latter in the event of a conflict).

Which is to say, we just followed Christ, and never mind Martin Luther, or John Wesley, or Menno Simons.

Paul once wrote to people who thought very similarly.  He castigated those who followed one human teacher to the exclusion of others — they would say ” I am of Paul” or “I am of Apollos” or “I am of Cephas,” and Paul shot back, “Was Paul crucified for you?  Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”  A little later he says,

For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal?

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one?  I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.  So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.  Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.  For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.

“Exactly,” we would say.  It wasn’t about the human teacher at all; it was about following Christ.  And that’s just a lot holier, isn’t it?

Not so fast.  While there were those in Corinth who would say “I am of Paul” or “I am of Apollos,” there were also those who would say “I am of Christ.”  And Paul had a rebuke for them, too: “Is Christ divided?”

When we claim to follow Christ, but we find ourselves constantly divided from our brothers, something is wrong.  If it is our very devotion to Christ that seems to be dividing us from the rest of His Church, then we need to consider whether we are in fact worshiping Christ, or ourselves.

“But the Church is filled with apostasy today,” we say.  “Of course we have to separate ourselves from that.”

As if the Corinthian church were some sort of paragon!  Paul wrote this rebuke to a church that was corrupt to the core.  Their services were a mess, their men consorted with prostitutes, they didn’t practice church discipline, they sued each other in secular court, they got drunk at the Lord’s Table, they tolerated heresy and every sort of license…let’s face it, what the Lutherans down the street are up to is apt to be pretty mild by comparison.  Yet even with all that going on, Paul doesn’t treat sectarian divisions as a solution, but as yet another problem — and the first one he tackles, at that.

It’s pretty simple, really: if we are following Christ, we’ll find ourselves drawn toward His people.  If His people have gone astray, we will find ourselves seeking to return them to the Shepherd, not just avoiding them…again, if we are really following Christ.  When we find ourselves dividing from His people then we are not really following Christ, no matter what it says on the church sign or the doctrinal statement.

Denominations exist because believers wanted to band together, and as long as the denomination is a force for unity, glory to God for all of it.  There’s nothing wrong with being nondenominational, either, if in your particular circumstance that doesn’t hinder unity.  Conversely, if your affiliation, or proud non-affiliation, becomes a point of division from your brothers instead of an occasion for unity with them, then you’re warped and sinning, no matter what the affiliation or lack thereof.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Whom to Ban from Theological Debate

30 August 2009

We’ve been talking theology here of late, and people being what they are, talk about important things like theology often leads to controversy.  I’ve been involved, willingly or not, in several such controversies, and there are definite patterns, one of the more important ones being this: very often, the fight is more about the people fighting than it is about the theology they’re supposedly fighting over.  This makes it very hard to find a solution, because the real problem is not even being discussed.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the theological issue on the table will be trivial — although that often happens.  In fact, this dodge works best if the issue is quite important.  A weighty theological disagreement conceals unaddressed relational sins so much better than a trivial one.  If the disagreement can somehow be tied to the gospel, for example, then both sides can invoke Galatians 1: 8-9 (while ignoring what Paul actually did in that instance, but that’s another post).

Now as Americans, we have the notion that everyone has a right to a voice in the discussion.  Everyone should be heard; freedom of speech and the press and all that.  But this is not universally true in such theological arguments, precisely because warped and sinning Christians, especially in positions of leadership, often cause division and then cover their tracks with a doctrinal difference.  As much as it galls our democratic ideals, some people need to be silenced (Titus 1:10-11).  They simply shouldn’t be allowed to participate in discussions of controversial issues.

People who cause division, for instance.  Jesus said,

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;  that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.

And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

Our unity, Jesus says, is a necessary part of our gospel witness.  Some people refuse to be unified, and persist in dividing the body for their own selfish ends.  They will say that they’re trying to protect the gospel, but in fact their deeds are lying about Jesus and what He came to do.  So if a man’s deeds lie about the gospel of grace, why in the world ought anyone to listen to what he says about the gospel?

And so the divisive, those who exhibit hatred of their brothers, and other such people simply shouldn’t be heard.  A man whose life does not tell the truth about Jesus simply should not be listened to — even if he’s a pastor or a Ph.D., even if he’s a towering theologian or a great exegete, even if he’s right.

Why even if he’s right?  Because “he who walks with the wise will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.”  The man may be right on paper — i.e., the propositions he would affirm are technically correct — but in a way, that only makes it worse.  He is privy to the wisdom of the Word, and yet it is not profiting him, and that’s a comment on his character: “Like the legs of the lame that hang limp, so is a proverb in the mouth of fools.”  You do not want bad counsel, and — trust Solomon on this — the counsel from this guy is going to have a flaw in it somewhere.

Picture yourself at the Bema Seat, answering for acting in accord with this guy’s counsel.

“But Lord, his doctrine was correct.”

“I told you not to associate with people like him.”  Jesus says.

“But he was so well educated.  He was right about the doctrine!”

Jesus shakes His head.  “I didn’t say, ‘the companion of fools will be destroyed, unless the fools are really well educated, and right about some stuff,’ did I?”

Better just to steer clear.  The ones who lack Christian character are going to be evil company no matter what their doctrinal statement says.  You can’t walk in the light and walk with fools and liars at the same time.

9 Comments | Controversies, Doctrinal Inconsistencies, Meditations, The Free Grace Food Fight | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Retraining the Hair on the Back of the Deacon’s Neck

9 August 2009

In 1999 Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho chose the theme “Poetic Ministry” for its annual minister’s conference.  The following is from the close of a talk entitled “Fruitful Labor,” delivered by Douglas Wilson at that conference (emphasis mine).*

…You will probably be accused at some point of advocating or compromising with postmodernism….You must guard yourself against any genuine relativism or postmodernism, but people will just oppose you and this is going to be a handy stick to beat you with….

And the reason for this – and this is why Christians get into legalisms, often times:  there’s the gnostic impulse in legalism, but there’s also the laziness impulse in legalism.  I cannot tell, by looking at a man, if he’s truly temperate.  I can look at him and say “is he temperate; is he balanced?”…I can’t tell by looking at him.  But I can tell if he’s got a can of Coors in his hand.  That’s easy.  So if I make a rule against drinking beer, then I can tell if he’s violating it, and I can tell if he’s violating it at a glance.  This is the lazy man’s way of identifying sin, of identifying a problem.   So if you’re looking for intemperance, you can’t tell that at a glance, so you make up an arbitrary and capricious rule.

Related to poetic ministry, there are many people—we might call them conservative, pro-Enlightenment Christians—who believe that the way to fight the left wing enlightenment — postmodernism — is by embracing the right wing enlightenment — various forms of conservatism, and so forth.  But we’re Christians; we should be operating in another category entirely.  Many people get sucked into the analytic tradition because it’s far easier to catch a bad logician than it is to catch a bad poet….  If you’re appealing to poetry, the biblical patterns and the biblical cadences of poetry, that is pretty slippery for a lot of people, and it would involve a lot of work distinguishing the right and the wrong and the wholesome and the unwholesome, and so forth and they just don’t want to do it, so they’ll just accuse you of postmodernism.

Third, if they finally see you, if they wake up in time, you will be understood by your enemies outside the church….and they will understand far more clearly than many of your friends—but your prayer should be that they will not understand, that they will not see you, until it’s far too late.

This is the dangerous territory we are going to have to enter, and there is no way to enter it by just learning a few propositions.  We are going to have to become different people, better people: people who can catch a bad poet.

this is another aspect of the personalism with which we are re-infusing our theology, and a very necessary one.  Not only is belief in the “saving message” belief in a Person, but it is also belief by a person, and this extends beyond the “saving message” to every act of interpretation.  Every interpretation is by a person, and it matters who that person is. If a reader is at all serious about allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, he quickly discovers that there are some aspects that don’t lend themselves well to propositional analysis: symbols, types, and other such resonances.  When these resonances occur in a passage, a reader with literary skill catches them, and realizes that their presence in the passage is not an accident.

If that reader is also a skilled communicator — say, a good pastor — he can retell the passage in such a way as to highlight the resonances, and a lot of people who wouldn’t have caught the connections on their own will be able to see them with his help.  So he gets up and tells the story to his flock, and all across the auditorium, people get chills and the hair on the back of their neck stands up as they see the connection for the first time.

But what is that pastor to do when someone just doesn’t see it?  Suppose one of his deacons comes up to him after the sermon and says, “Pastor, I don’t think I understand what you were talking about today.  Could you explain it again?”  He does, and the man still just doesn’t see it: “Pastor, I hear what you’re saying, but it just sounds pretty thin to me.  How could you prove that the author really meant for us to see those connections, and interpret them as tying back to that earlier story?”

The answer is, he can’t, because what the deacon means by “prove” is approximately what Euclid meant by it, and stories don’t work like that.  There’s a subtle alignment, a sympathy with the author, that is called for here, and if you don’t have it, they you can’t see the thing well enough to see what the author wants you to see.  N. T. Wright** describes the problem like this:

One of the first insights I came to in the early stages of my doctoral work…was that when you hear yourself saying, ‘What Paul was really trying to say was…’ and then coming up with a sentence which only tangentially corresponds to what Paul actually wrote, it is time to think again.  When, however, you work to and fro, this way and that, probing a key technical term here, exploring a larger controlling narrative there, enquiring why Paul used this particular connecting word  between these two sentences, or that particular scriptural quotation at this point in the argument, and eventually you arrive at the position of saying, ‘Stand here; look at things in this light; keep in mind this great biblical theme, and then you will see that Paul has said exactly what he meant, neither more nor less’ — then you know that you are in business.

I’m not always a fan of Wright’s answers, but he’s describing the process very well indeed.  To bring it back to our struggling deacon, the problem isn’t that the deacon fails to understand the propositions of the argument; it’s that the hair on the back of his neck didn’t stand up when he heard the story told that way.  There’s no easy answer here; restating the argument isn’t going to help at all.

He’s already a good logician, but he needs to become a good poet.  This is less about training his mind than it is about training the hair on the back of his neck to stand up when it should — and that is going to take a lot of time, and a lot of work.

See Part 2 of this post.

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*For those of you who are aware of the Federal Vision controversy, a few words: Wilson gave this address anticipating significant resistance within his circles to the shift toward “poetic” ministry.  Undoubtedly there was some resistance, but it does not seem to have been a huge thing.  However, it seems to me that the Federal Vision battle that erupted just three years later is the anticipated controversy.

To my eye, what’s happened is this: the shift toward a poetic mode of operating is the root, and within a Reformed milieu, the Federal Vision is the predictable fruit.  Most of the FV opponents don’t understand the root and never did — hence all the accusations of lack of clarity — but they can see fruit that doesn’t mesh with their ideas of what good fruit should look like.  So they object to the fruit, and they still don’t really understand where it’s coming from.

**Wright, N. T., Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) 51.

2 Comments | Meditations, Person/Proposition, The Free Grace Food Fight | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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