“Endeavoring to Guard the Unity of the Spirit”

13 September 2009

It is a cherished dictum that as Christians, we are a community of faith and therefore our unity is based on doctrine.  In fact, this very thing came up in a recent comment thread on another post here.  I want to make it clear I’m not taking a shot at any of you who’ve discussed that matter here.  I do, however, want to address the way this concept is often applied in the Christian world.

There’s an element of truth in the dictum, of course.  But as generally applied, it is absolute bushwa, and if you can’t smell the reek of brimstone about it, then your spiritual sniffer needs a tune-up.

In Ephesians 4:1-3, Paul writes:

Therefore I, the Lord’s prisoner, beg you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to guard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

We guard the unity, but it is the Spirit who joins us to Christ, who baptizes us into His body, and therefore it is the Spirit who creates the unity we have.  We just guard what the Spirit has already created.

Or rather, we don’t.

We pretend that the basis of our unity is propositions on paper, and then divide endlessly over every jot and tittle in the paperwork.  And not only do we not regret such divisions, we respect them.  We respect them so highly that when people in ministry have a personality conflict, they often find a doctrinal difference, fight about that, and then divide, ostensibly over the doctrine — and this procedure effectively makes the whole sordid affair immune to criticism.

“We had some doctrinal differences,” they say.

We nod sagely.  “Well, the basis for our unity is doctrine.”  We shrug and pat them on the shoulder.  “What else could you do?”

Brimstone.

*****

What we’re missing here, of course, is God.  Specifically, we have a common family as children of the same Father, we share a common redemption through the same High Priest, His Son, and we are baptized into a common body by the same Holy Spirit.

And we somehow think that with a 20-cent Bic pen and a sheet of notebook paper, someone that we know is a brother can scrawl out a bad proposition and sign his name to it, and that will overrule the sovereign grace of the Triune God.

What could we be thinking?  I’ll tell you.  God tells us that He has created unity, but in our heart of hearts, we don’t believe Him.  We believe in the kind of unity we can document in triplicate.

We walk by sight, and not by faith — isn’t that what that verse said?

7 Comments | Meditations, Person/Proposition | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

What is Truth? (The Truth Project, week 1)

10 September 2009

A local church here is taking its people through The Truth Project, a small-group series on Christian worldview by Focus on the Family. It’s hosted/taught by Del Tackett, whose formative influences in this area include the likes of David Noebel (of Summit Ministries fame) and Francis Schaeffer. I and a number of my congregants have been graciously permitted to tag along, and we’re  having a blast.

Since I am also teaching Narrative Foundation with Rocky Mountain this year, it seemed appropriate — and good exercise for me — to offer an NF-style brief treatment of each week’s subject in turn.  I’m in the midst of hunting for work, and can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to see it all the way through.  These things take some time.  But for as long as I can, I’ll be putting one of these up every week through the end of the series.  So without further ado…

What is Truth?

In the beginning, the worlds were framed by the Word of Yahweh, and to this day they are upheld by the Word of His power.  When Yahweh spoke, everything came into being just as He commanded it to be, and Yahweh named it…until the third day, when He continued speaking the creation into existence, but ceased to name the things that He made.  When Yahweh made Man, He set him over the world, to have dominion over it, and gave man the responsibility to name truly, acting as Yahweh’s image in the world.  Initially, man performed this task well.  Yahweh also set a tree in the midst of the garden and told Man the truth about it; but the serpent lied to our parents, and they departed from the truth and believed the lie that they could become as God through disobedience.

Yahweh had told them they would die if they disobeyed, and He did as He said: Man and all his dominion was subjected to death and futility.  But Yahweh also promised that one day a Man, a son of Eve, would crush the Serpent, and they anxiously awaited the birth of Eve’s son.

Eve’s first son was Cain, and rather than clinging to the truth he made war on it, preferring murder to repentance.  Cain was a harbinger of things to come, and the rebellion eventually spread through Eve’s many descendants so that all the vast human family was at war with Yahweh, except for one man, Noah.  Yahweh said that He would not strive with man forever, and in due time He acted, saving Noah and his family and destroying that world with a flood.

In the new world, Yahweh gave Noah and his family the responsibilities Adam had, and further responsibility as well.   But human nature had not changed, and they turned again to the lie, and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, turning away to a variety of idols.  Worship of Yahweh once again became a rarity.

Yahweh reached into that idolatrous world and called out one man, Abram.  Yahweh promised Abram — and confirmed it with an oath — that He would be a blessing to the world, become a great nation, and inherit the land of Canaan from the Nile to the Euphrates.  Abraham lived in that land of idolaters as a wandering nomad, building altars to Yahweh everywhere he went, beacons of truth in a land given over to lies.  Abraham’s son Isaac continued his father’s work, as did his son Jacob in turn.  But Jacob was a mixed blessing to his neighbors, and his idolatrous sons did not stand for truth, but were a curse to those around them.  They even turned on one of their own, their brother Joseph, and sold him into slavery in Egypt.  There Joseph became a blessing to his masters, and Yahweh eventually exalted him to a station second only to Pharoah.  When Yahweh brought famine in Canaan, the family moved to Egypt, where, through Joseph, a place for them was provided.  Upon arrival, Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and his sons took over the care of Pharaoh’s flocks and herds, and once again became a blessing to their neighbors.

Growing in Egypt as in a womb, Jacob’s family became a mighty nation.  For fear of them, a later Pharaoh reduced them to slavery and brought upon Egypt Yahweh’s curse, as He had said to their father Abraham, “I will bless him who blesses you, and him who curses you I will curse.”  Yahweh destroyed Egypt and gave her wealth to Israel, bringing the new nation out of Egypt and into the wilderness with a mighty hand.  Through the scorching desert, Yahweh gave them water and food, and brought them to His holy mountain to worship and enter into covenant with Him.

Even as Moses was on the mountain receiving the covenant, Israel was building an idol for themselves, a golden calf, and began to worship it instead of Yahweh.  So Yahweh sent Moses down to rebuke and punish them, and when they had been chastened, Yahweh entered into covenant with them, and they swore, saying “All Yahweh has said, we will do.”  But they were a hardhearted and faithless people, and when they disobeyed Yahweh slaughtered them by the millions.  Of that perverse generation, only two — Joshua and Caleb – obeyed, and thus survived Yahweh’s judgment.  But the next generation believed Yahweh’s promises, and were a nation of heroes.  Through faith they received the land that was promised them, and Yahweh Himself fought beside them.  After a lengthy campaign, Yahweh gave them rest from all their enemies, as He had promised.

Subsequent generations again and again would fall away from worshipping Yahweh and turn aside to idols.  Each time Yahweh would give them into the hand of an oppressor and they would return to Him in desperation, only to defect again after He rescued them.  Again and again Yahweh’s messengers appealed to them: “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,” but they would not hear.  At length Yahweh spoke by the prophet Jeremiah, promising the harshest lesson yet to befall the nation: they would be carried away into Babylon for seventy years of captivity. After being restored to the promised land, they worshipped no more pagan idols, but Yahweh alone, and devoted themselves to studying the Scriptures He gave them.

The nation grew into a greater maturity than it had ever known before, but their sinful desires found outlet through twisting the truths in the Scriptures to justify and legalize their wickedness.  Thus the nation, outwardly devoted to the worship of Yahweh, became a mixture of good people who loved and worshipped Yahweh, and evil people who offered the right sacrifices, said the right prayers and sang the right songs, but their worship was a lie, because they did not know Him.

Out of that nation John the Baptist called those who loved Yahweh to be baptized and prepare for the Messiah, and into that nation Jesus came: the Word of Yahweh made flesh, the Truth in bodily form, the Son of Eve for which God’s people waited.  All those who learned the truth from the Father recognized Jesus, because He was the Truth sent from the Father, but the nation as a whole did not recognize Him.  Not knowing the Father, they killed His Son with lawless hands, but by allowing them to do this, Jesus purchased the nations with His blood and crushed the Serpent forever.   Yahweh vindicated His Son, raising Him from the dead, and after a season of ministry, brought him to heaven to sit at His right hand, until His enemies are made His footstool, a promise for which we eagerly pray: “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Before He left, he spoke to his disciples, saying “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Therefore go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to do all that I commanded you, and know that I am always with you, even to the end of the world.”

They obeyed, taking the truth to the ends of the earth, and many were killed, as Jesus was, for telling the truth.  Others received the truth with joy, and we are among them.  In our turn we offer our testimony of the truth, knowing that we will be treated as harshly as they were.  We accept this temporary resistance because we know that all authority has been given to the Son.  The time will come when the Father mocks those who rebel against Him and subdues the world to His Son, and every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

Then we will be glad to have stood for the truth, and we will rejoice for those who have received it from us, because the Truth will sit on David’s throne forever; at last, everyone will know that Truth is not a what, but a who, and His name is Jesus.  Then the nations will stream to Zion, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as water covers the seas.

Amen.

7 Comments | Apologetics, Meditations | Tagged: | Permalink
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.

7 Comments | Controversies, Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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

Carbonated Holiness

23 August 2009

I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.  She’s an amazing writer.  We don’t agree on a whole lot, theologically or politically, but the whole book is worth this beautiful sentence:

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Amen.

In just about any subfamily of the church, there are people who practice this, and practicing it, they recognize each other despite denominational and sectarian boundaries.  For these people, “An Episcopalian, a Methodist and a Baptist walked into a pub” is not a joke, it’s fellowship, and it’s a common occurrence.  Their common fellowship with the God who rejoices leads to a laughing life, and they recognize Him in each other.

And in every subfamily of the church, you will also find people who don’t practice this, don’t understand it, and are deeply suspicious of the whole thing.  They gravitate toward positions of influence and authority, because they’re sure that anywhere someone is laughing, there’s danger, and more control is required.  They don’t want the sort of control that comes of inspiring others through the overflow of their own lives and ministries; they want the sort of control that allows them to regulate and contain other people’s lives and ministries.  And because the laughing people are generally not interested in that sort of control, the squinty-eyed folks often succeed in getting their hands on it, more’s the pity.

And anywhere they do, they do their utmost to choke the life out of the church.  The organization thus infected may, and often does, dwindle away to nothing…but not always.  Sometimes a spiritually dead organization grows in numbers.  “Woe to you!” Jesus said to one such group, “for you travel land and sea to make one convert, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”  The test is not numbers, but whether they turn their converts into sons of hell.

4 Comments | Meditations, Reviews | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Retraining the Hair on the Back of the Deacon’s Neck, Part 2

16 August 2009

As I concluded my previous post, I could fairly hear the deacons in the audience shouting, “Just because the hair on the back of your neck stands up, how do you know it’s right?”

That’s a good question.  There has to be some norm, some standard by which to measure.

There is.  It’s called the Bible, and one of the things it teaches us is this: who the hearer is will determine what he hears.  If this sounds subjective to you, that’s because in a sense, it is.  But it’s entirely biblical: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” as Jesus often said.  This saying teaches us that there is such a thing as having ears to hear, and such a thing as not having ears to hear.  The person with ears and the person without ears are both standing in front of Jesus, and both hear the same parable…but only the one with ears to hear really hears it, after all. The same propositional content for both, but one understands and the other does not.

Nor is understanding, or failing to, the full range of outcomes.  The same content can convey two opposite messages to two different people, as Paul tells us:

Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.  For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.  To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?

We carry the gospel on our lips and in our lives, and this bespeaks death to those who are perishing, but life to those who are being saved.  It’s the same content, but different messages are received because the hearers are different.  This is obvious with a little reflection: “Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion” is gospel to God’s people, but chains and a rod of iron to those who will not kiss the Son.

This is to say that there is no substitute for walking with God and being conformed to the image of His Son.  As we do this, we will find that He makes us able to see and hear what would otherwise be invisible and inaudible to us.  All of which returns us to the question: how will we know when this is happening?

Two blind men are standing on a hill, looking out at a sunset.  Suddenly, one of the blind men is healed entirely, and the sunset bursts in on him.  “I can see!  I can see!” he shouts.

“How do you know?” asks his still blind companion.

4 Comments | Meditations, Person/Proposition | Tagged: , , , , , , | 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.

####

*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

You Can’t Leave Out the Dirt

2 August 2009

In the preceding post, I concluded by claiming that an abstract proposition is not the story “boiled down to essentials” because God made the world ex nihilo, entered it Himself in a body, and will resurrect it all one day.

Why would I say that?

God made the world.  Created it all from nothing, spoke it into existence.  In that world, things happen.  God enters into the world He made and acts within it.  God put us in that world — this world — and we act within it.  This is what really happens.  The stories are accounts of what really happened.  The abstractions are short summaries or interpretations of what really happened — but it’s the happening itself that is the reality.

When we say that “by grace you are saved through faith” is the gospel, stripped down to bare essentials with all the extraneous information left out, we are saying that it’s the idea — make that Idea — that matters, and not the incarnational reality.  We are moving, in other words, from Yahweh’s world to Plato’s.

This is a problem, because Plato’s world doesn’t exist.

Yahweh made dirt.  The Word of Yahweh became flesh and dwelt among us, and got dirt under His fingernails.  In the resurrection, redeemed men will get redeemed dirt under their redeemed fingernails, and glory to God for all of it.

Abstractions, important a tool as they are, are not the thing itself.  They always leave out the dirt.

13 Comments | Bare Minimum Gospel Foolishness, Controversies, Meditations, Person/Proposition, The Free Grace Food Fight | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Propositions Matter

26 July 2009

In a previous post, I challenged my readers to try explaining “By grace you are saved through faith” without falling back on telling a story.

It can’t be done.

This simple proposition from Ephesians 2:8 points to a wealth of biblical story.  “Grace” has no meaning apart from reference to the story: in specific ways and at specific times, God acts to our benefit when we don’t deserve it and can’t earn it.  Likewise “saved” refers to the story.  The specific way God acts to our benefit is this: we and our fathers sinned, and we are being delivered, bit by bit, from the corruption and consequences of sin.  One day that deliverance will be complete.  “Faith” speaks of how this salvation, graciously provided by God, comes to a particular person: that person believes God.  As the subsequent context shows, this belief is in contrast to earning salvation through good works.  Finally, let’s not forget the word “you,” by which Paul places his readers within the story that he is telling.  It’s not just a story; it’s their story, which turns out to be a vital point, because Paul wants them to live based on this story (see 4:1-6).

So if it all goes back to the story, why not just tell the story, one concrete detail after the next?  Why bother with the abstract statement at all?

Because the abstractions contain less information, and this is a Good Thing.  They allow us to look at one particular facet of the story, to highlight particular aspects, and therefore to interpret the story.  When God gives abstract propositions, it’s like a math textbook having all the answers in the back of the book.  It provides a way to check your work and see if you understood the problem correctly.

If you read the Abraham stories, you ought to conclude that righteousness before God comes through faith, and not through religious works — especially not through circumcision.  Paul explains this very clearly in Romans 4, and the clear implication of his treatment there is that he’s not saying anything new.  It’s all right there in Genesis.  But Romans 4 allows you to check your reading of Moses against Paul, an interpreter inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself.  If you’re tracking with Paul, then you haven’t gone very far wrong in the way you read Genesis.

To return to Ephesians 2:8, Paul addresses the very same truth in much shorter form.  Here, he doesn’t make explicit reference to Genesis at all, but the effect is the same.  If your reading of Torah, of Hebrew Scriptures, led you to the conclusion that salvation comes through currying favor with God through good deeds, Paul says you are very much mistaken.  If you perhaps thought that being born into the right race was all that God required, again, Paul says you are very mistaken.  Salvation is by God’s grace, through faith, and thus both good works and ancestry are excluded.

Could you have gotten that from the stories?  Yes.  In fact, you should have gotten that from the stories.  But we are at times very thick when it comes to interpreting narrative, and the abstract statement gives you a chance to catch up if you’re a little slow.  In it, God interprets the narrative for us.

So if the abstract statement is the interpretation of the narrative, then isn’t it the essential thing?  Isn’t it the distilled essence of the narrative, the sine qua non, scrubbed free of mundane details and tucked into a tidy little box?

Nope.  Two reasons: first, the abstraction only has meaning by reference to the story.  Abstractions are too general to mean anything unless they’re tied down to a particular story, or set of stories (see the treatment of “by grace you are saved through faith” that began this article).  Second, because God made the world ex nihilo, entered it Himself in a body, and will resurrect it all one day.  But that’s a subject for a future post.

15 Comments | Controversies, Meditations, The Free Grace Food Fight | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

True Tales, Told God’s Way

19 July 2009

In the preceding post, I argued (contra Gordon Clark and various others) that the object of saving faith is the Person Jesus Christ, not merely a proposition or set of propositions about Him.  Among my theology-wonk friends — and there are many of them — this point usually provokes a particular response.  “So it doesn’t really matter what propositions I believe as long as I’m looking at Jesus?” they ask incredulously.

Well, of course it matters.  We’re talking about a particular person here, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Adam, Son of Abraham, Son of David, supposed son of Joseph.  As with any particular person, not all things are true about Him.  He had a certain height, and not some other height.  Eyes of a certain color; hair of a certain length; born in Bethlehem and not in Gaza, born to Mary and not to Elizabeth, suffered under Pontius Pilate and not under Nero, and so on.  Certain claims about Him are true, and others false.

We are called to represent Him, and to do so according to His nature.  Because He is the Truth, we represent Him truly.  We must therefore be faithful to what we’re given about Jesus.  We must say of Him the things Scripture gives us to say.  We must tell the stories Scripture gives us to tell.  We must be true to the volume of material Scripture gives us to present.  When we don’t have time to tell the whole story — which, let’s face it, is almost all the time — then we try to summarize or tell a piece of it that’s particularly important for this person at this time.  There’s nothing wrong with that; Jesus Himself does it all the time, as do the apostles, and we have them for a pattern.

But we should not confuse telling a small piece of the story with “boiling it down to essentials,” as though we could do without the rest of it.  If we’re to be faithful to what God actually gave us, then we’re going to overflow with stories, poetry, songs, parables, proverbs, and much more.  We’re introducing people to a Person, and that process proceeds by addition, not by subtraction. You don’t get to know someone by paring away all that is not essential to the person; you get to know someone by adding more and more: different situations, different angles, different facets of the personality.  Trying to do it the other way around is trying to live in a world God just didn’t make.  We can’t view the abstract proposition as “the essence of it all,” because God didn’t give it to us that way, and we must truly represent what God gave us.

Now God did, in some places, give us abstract theological propositions; they are also an essential part of communication — a point I will take up shortly.  But those propositions come in a cocoon of stories.  Apart from the story context that they elucidate and from which they take their meaning, the propositions are not even false so much as utterly useless, completely without referent in the real world.  Just try to explain “By grace you are saved through faith” without telling a story.  I dare you.

19 Comments | Controversies, Doctrinal Inconsistencies, Meditations, Person/Proposition, Speaking as God Speaks, The Free Grace Food Fight | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »