Happy Reformation Day!
I like to remember today that the Wesleyan tradition comes from the Church of England rather than the high Reformation path of the Lutherans and the Reformed. The Anglican tradition has often viewed itself as somewhat of a "via media" or middle way.
1. So with regard to sola fide, we are often accused of believing in works because we believe you can fall away. We are both James and Paul. [1]
2. With regard to sola scriptura, we often speak of a quadrilateral, where some would say prima scriptura is a better description of us. [2]
3. With regard to sola gratia, we fit well with recent scholarship suggesting that grace involved a reciprocal, even if disproportionate relationship between giver and receiver. [3]
4. With regard to solus Christus, we are in agreement, but we recognize that the way of Christ is more a confession of the heart than a mere cognitive assent with the head. [4]
5. With regard to soli Dei gloria, it is technically true, but we would emphasize God's response that we mean everything to him.
[1] The Wesleyan tradition fits very well with the new perspective on Paul.
[2] Insights from twentieth century hermeneutics suggest that words alone have no fixed meanings unless they are located in a context. The locations of biblical context are varied and ancient, requiring "translation" to other contexts. In short, it's never the Bible alone.
[3] Once again, recent clarifications of ancient patron-client language support Wesleyan understandings of grace.
[4] Which can survive the postmodern critique much better than hyper-modernist traditions
Showing posts with label Protestant Reformation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protestant Reformation. Show all posts
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
95 Theses for the Church Today
Today is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his famed 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, the spark of the Reformation. He had no thought of splitting the church, only of reforming it. He had no idea of the impact. Small events often have wildly disproportional consequences.Here are 95 theses from me for the church today.
_____________________
1. Rightly did the Old Testament teach Israel that there was only one God.
2. Rightly did the early church come to understand that the one God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
3. Rightly did the early church discern two testaments to go along with two covenants, the old and the new.
4. Rightly did the early church come to affirm the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.
5. Rightly did the early church come to discern the canon of the New Testament, consisting of 27 books.
6. Rightly did the church recognize with certainly the canonicity of 39 books of the Old Testament.
7. Seven more, along with additions to Daniel and Esther, are in a sort of middle status, a "deutero" canon.
8. Luther demoted them entirely out of the canon. In response, the Council of Trent (1545) promoted them to full status. Both moves changed their status.
9. The doctrine of purgatory, while logical, has no clear basis in Scripture, not even in 2 Maccabees.
10. The doctrine of hell is biblical, but Scripture uses figurative language to point to something we probably cannot understand.
11. The Old Testament does not engage the question of the afterlife much, chiefly in Daniel 12:2-3.
12. Paul never engages the question of hell, but clearly indicates a resurrected body on the Day of the Lord for those who are in Christ.
13. Revelation speaks of a lake of fire, originally prepared for the Devil and his angels.
14. Matthew speaks of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
15. Scripture does not teach that ministers must be celibate.
16. Nor does Scripture teach that ministers must be male.
17. In Christ there is not "male and female," therefore, there is no function in life or the church in which a qualified woman or man cannot serve.
18. The laying on of hands is attested in Scripture as a means of grace whereby individuals are sent with ministry purpose.
19. Scripture also attests to the importance of study for the minister.
20. Therefore, it is appropriate for groups of believers to provide means of education and commissioning for the work of the ministry, known as ordination.
21. The doctrine of justification by faith is well attested in Romans and Galatians, and indicates that, when we first enter the people of God, a right status with God is only attained by putting our trust in him and in his king Jesus.
22. We put our "faith" in Jesus by confessing allegiance to him as our Lord.
23. The writings of Paul in Romans 2, 2 Corinthians 5, and James 2 also indicate that our works as a believer will be recognized on the Day of the Lord.
24. Works follow naturally as a result of having the Holy Spirit.
25. The Holy Spirit inside us empowers the image of God within us to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
26. We can be in Christ, have received the Holy Spirit, have left Egypt, and still not make it to the Promised Land. We can be disqualified for the prize despite having once been justified by faith.
27. Depravity in Paul is a thorough depravity rather than an absolute depravity. Every aspect of our selves is marred by the power of Sin over this world.
28. But the image of God is not destroyed. Thus while we do not have the power to be righteous for justification on our own, the goodness of God is present in us because we remain in the image of God.
29. All the world is under the power of Sin. Augustine called this dynamic a "sin nature."
30. For Paul, human flesh is under the power of Sin in this world unless the power of the Spirit takes over. Paul does not speak of this dynamic as a nature.
31. Temptation is not sin. It is when temptation has conceived by intention that it is sin.
32. There is such a thing as unintentional sin. Christ has atoned for all the unintentional sin of the believer.
33. Paul never says that we sinned "in Adam," as Augustine indicated. Rather, because of the power of Sin we sin like Adam.
34. Therefore, no individual is condemned because of the sin of Adam.
35. Original sin only has validity as a reference to Adam's original sin. I have no guilt because of Adam's sin, only its consequences.
36. The power of the Spirit makes it possible to love God and neighbor and thus to fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law.
37. Paul rejects any theology that considers sin the default life of the believer. We are not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies.
38. The basis of justification is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
39. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ is his obedience unto death.
40. Paul likens Christ's death to an atoning sacrifice that God offered or displayed.
41. The doctrine of penal substitution goes beyond the scope of what is claimed in Scripture.
42. We find in Scripture the sense that Jesus satisfied God's justice and that Christ died "for us."
43. But Scripture does not develop a doctrine whereby Christ mathematically satisfied a quantitative justice that was the sum of all sins past, present, and future.
44. "Sola fide," faith alone, thus must take into account the full biblical picture. Our act of faith is the trigger of justification.
45. Our faith is more than an intellectual assent but an act of allegiance that involves a life of faithfulness.
46. If our faith allegiance departs from Christ, then those acts can disqualify our justification. Any version of sola fide that does not take these truths into account is not biblical.
47. Being in Christ is a relationship. Relationships are seldom broken by a single moment or act, but they can be broken.
48. In the working out of Christian theology, both Calvin and Wesley suggested that God's grace empowers us to make the choice of faith. These are logical extensions of broader theology.
49. Wesley believed that this "prevenient grace" was a grace that empowered a free choice. This "theology of the iceberg under the surface" fits best with the appearance of a free choice in Scripture.
50. "Sola gratia," grace alone, needs to recognize that grace in the biblical texts derives from the world of patron-client relationships. In this world, grace could be solicited and could come with informal expectations.
51. Biblical grace thus can be solicited by our prayer of repentance, and our faith in God and his Christ can solicit forgiveness and justification.
52. Grace thus also comes with the expectation of commitment to Jesus as Lord. Such grace can be trampled on and insulted. One should not think such grace would then continue.
53. "Sola Christi," Christ alone is the effective basis for justification. God has chosen of his own free will the offering of Christ as the sole basis of justification.
54. Abraham was justified by faith in God when he was still uncircumcised, that is, a Gentile. He is thus the model of those who are justified by faith in God who are not Jews, as well as the model of faith for those Jews who are justified by faith.
55. He is at least possibly a model of those who have faith in God even though they have not yet heard of Christ. Such individuals would still be justified by faith on the basis of the offering of Christ.
56. When Augustine, Wycliffe, and Calvin read the predestination language of the New Testament in absolute terms, they did injustice to half of the biblical language.
57. Predestination is primarily about the plan of salvation rather than the individuals who are saved, and God's plan involves the participation of human wills.
58. When the Reformers invoked "sola scriptura," they had a pre-modern hermeneutic that was unaware of the extent to which their reading of Scripture was still guided by the rule of faith God developed in the church.
59. The Reformers only eliminated extraneous aspects of catholic tradition that were obvious to them but retained many appropriate core features of tradition, like the Trinity.
60. Because individual interpretation of Scripture uses the individual to provide the "glue" that joins the different teachings of the Bible together and serves as the basis for determining the continuity and discontinuity between that time and our time, the Protestant principle arises. The Protestant principle, set forth by Paul Tillich, is that Protestant churches will continue to split and re-split, to multiply without end, because there is no common basis to join scriptures together or determine the connection between that time and today.
61. Today there are over 30,000 Protestant churches who think they are just following scripture alone. In short, history has shown Luther the loser of his debate with Erasmus.
62. Interpretation and exegesis only tell us what it meant. They do not tell us how God wants us to appropriate it.
63. The Bible should thus be appropriated in communities of faith.
64. The appropriation of Scripture not only requires contextualization by communities of faith.
65. The appropriation of Scripture to individual situations requires improvisation. There is no Pharisaic list of application that can account for every possible situation.
66. Communion was originally a meal that remembered the Last Supper of Christ and looked forward to another meal with him in the eschaton.
67. God has used communion throughout the centuries as a means of grace, whereby the partaker with faith is spiritually empowered to love of God and neighbor.
68. Baptism was a Jewish rite that the early Christians used to signify the washing of sins and incorporation into the people of God.
69. As children were born to these first believers, it is at least possible they were baptized as well. Certainly this became the tradition of the church.
70. Infant baptism indicates that the child is in the people of God, a partaker of its faith, until the child reaches a point when he or she could make that faith his or her own.
71. The child receives a grace mediated through the community in which he or she is baptized. It is a protecting grace.
72. The adult in baptism receives a means of grace as well through the community. It is an including grace. The adult is now reckoned fully in the people of God.
73. The legalization of Christianity was not evil.
74. The organization of Christianity is not intrinsically evil.
75. Nevertheless, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When the church and state coincide, oppression eventually happens.
76. Therefore, the church should be very cautious about its involvement with the state.
77. In keeping with the way God governs the world, the church should not try to force the world to believe as it believes.
78. The church should not try to force the world to pass laws that fit with its particular theological understanding--especially the understanding of one specific Christian group.
79. The church should focus its involvement with the state on supporting laws of general morality--those which prevent harm to others.
80. In keeping with the prophets, its activism should focus on protecting those who cannot protect themselves and empowering all the members of society.
81. The social gospel was not wrong because of its focus on helping the needy and marginalized--this is what Jesus did on earth.
82. The social gospel was wrong because it left out other essential parts of Christian faith--Jesus as Lord, not least.
83. Fundamentalism is a reduction of the Christian faith to a visceral reaction against changes in modern culture.
84. All truth is God's truth, no matter where he reveals it or we discover it by his grace.
85. The New Testament says "Love God and love neighbor" is the fulfillment of the whole law. There is no commandment of God for our lives that is left out (Matt. 22:37-40; Rom. 13:8-10).
86. The love of neighbor includes the love of enemy. God himself loves Satan still and grieves at his perdition.
87. The love of neighbor and enemy never contradicts the love of God, for God never asks us to do or be anything for him that is unloving toward our neighbor.
88. God's justice fits within the context of his love. He is not a slave to justice.
89. God has the authority to forgive without payment. This would be no problem for him but less helpful for us.
90. Our love of God and Christ consists in our submission to his will as our Lord, and his will is that we love one another. God's will is that we love what he loves, and he loves not just the individual but the whole of humanity, groups within humanity, and indeed his creation.
91. There are many points on which Christians disagree. Paul gives guidelines for such situations.
92. On matters of personal conviction, each person should be fully convinced of what God expects of him or her.
93. Despite individual freedom, Christians should behave in a way that is loving toward others. Despite individual freedom, Christians should behave in a way that builds up the faith of others.
94. Paul affirms that no object is intrinsically unclean. It is a matter of personal understanding and conviction. Many actions are not intrinsically unclean. It is a matter of your intention as you act.
95. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Everything else is mostly ice cream on the cake.
Sunday, September 03, 2017
Wesleyans Among the Protestants 1
October 31 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. I'm celebrating it in three ways on this blog:
1. A tradition is like a family. Not everyone in the family looks exactly alike. Over time, with intermarriage with other families, new features emerge that do not look at all like our ancestors. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren have minds of their own. Sometimes things that were very important to us are discarded without a thought by our descendants.
In that sense, the Wesleyan tradition--or any tradition--is not bound by John Wesley. Certainly if some Wesleyan group were to diverge so far from Wesley that it held none of his characteristic beliefs or practices in common with him, we could wonder why they still used the name. Nevertheless, it would still be their right, for what a word means today is a matter of what it means today--not what it meant two hundred and fifty years ago.
The American branch of Wesleyanism has inevitably been affected dramatically by its context. America was Frontier country and Baptist country. Even the United Methodist church, which officially still baptizes infants and holds more closely to John Wesley's theology, has many a Methodist Baptist in its pews. In the democratic spirit of America, many people freely move from church to church, providing a good cross-fertilization of tradition.
2. So what is the Wesleyan tradition? What is distinctive about it over and against other traditions? We should keep in mind the possibility that over time what was once unique has disappeared. We should also keep in mind that, if we are truly Protestants, we are certainly free to reinvent ourselves in accordance to what we believe is truest to Scripture. Some Protestants have taken the protest further, feeling free to reinvent themselves in accordance to what they believe is true.
It may very well be that, for some, what makes them Wesleyan is primarily historical. That is to say, if you trace the story of an organization back in time, it goes back in some way to John Wesley. Others may come from the outside yet discover something about the beliefs and practices of the man that they find attractive. They may feel enough of an affinity for the tradition that they feel that the label fits.
Again, that tradition is living. It is not merely about the man himself. It is about the Methodists and Wesleyans and Nazarenes and Free Methodists and scores of other little groups that have related in some way to the family. My friend Keith Drury likes to say that The Wesleyan Church is something more like the great grandchild of the man than the child or even grandchild.
So one is either Wesleyan historically or ideologically in some way. We will leave it at that for now.
3. Wesley was a Protestant. He was a Protestant in two ways. He was a Protestant historically. He was a Protestant because he was an Anglican of the eighteenth century, and the Anglican Church of the 1700s was Protestant.
We will discuss soon enough the idea that the Anglican Church was a "via media" or "middle way" between Roman Catholicism and what I call the "high" Protestantism of Luther and Calvin. For example, the Wesleyan tradition is not bound to the same understanding of the "solas" that Lutherans and the Reformed have (i.e., grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, glory to God alone). The Anglican Church was born on a different path, one that retained more of catholicism than the Lutherans and Calvinists did.
Wesley was also a Protestant ultimately because he rejected the Catholic church of his day. [1] He called himself a "man of one book," and implicitly took his side with Luther on that issue. [2] Nevertheless, to America's Baptistified version of Wesleyanism today, much of his thinking will seem quite catholic to some.
4. It is often said that Wesley was an eclectic thinker. I personally like to think of this trait as a family characteristic. I believe that Wesleyan thought can be systematized, but its flavor is more focused on practice than theology. Wesley is often considered to be one of the original "evangelicals" in both his focus on evangelism and social justice.
So Wesley's thinking was a mixture. The recipe started with a common catholic foundation as filtered through Anglicanism. Then there was Luther's idea of justification by faith filtered through his Pietist encounters. Then there was Calvin--a lot of Calvin--but with an Arminian twist. Finally, there was England and the rise of the Enlightenment. There was individualism. There was the worth of the everyday individual.
This was the making of Wesleyan theology.
Next Week: The Anglican Via Media
[1] He could be quite vitriolic in relation to the Pope of his day.
[2] In the Preface to Wesley's sermons. However, given that this expression may go back to Aquinas, it counts less for Wesley's Protestantism than one might think at first.
- The IWU Monday reading group will be going through Alister McGrath's Christianity's Dangerous Idea, which gives a sketch of the Protestant Reformation.
- I plan to read through the Book of Concord, which is a comprehensive collection of Lutheran confessions.
- I plan to blog on Sunday's an engagement with the Reformation from my Wesleyan perspective (not the Wesleyan Church's perspective, but a Wesleyan perspective). This post begins this third goal.
1. A tradition is like a family. Not everyone in the family looks exactly alike. Over time, with intermarriage with other families, new features emerge that do not look at all like our ancestors. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren have minds of their own. Sometimes things that were very important to us are discarded without a thought by our descendants.
In that sense, the Wesleyan tradition--or any tradition--is not bound by John Wesley. Certainly if some Wesleyan group were to diverge so far from Wesley that it held none of his characteristic beliefs or practices in common with him, we could wonder why they still used the name. Nevertheless, it would still be their right, for what a word means today is a matter of what it means today--not what it meant two hundred and fifty years ago.
The American branch of Wesleyanism has inevitably been affected dramatically by its context. America was Frontier country and Baptist country. Even the United Methodist church, which officially still baptizes infants and holds more closely to John Wesley's theology, has many a Methodist Baptist in its pews. In the democratic spirit of America, many people freely move from church to church, providing a good cross-fertilization of tradition.
2. So what is the Wesleyan tradition? What is distinctive about it over and against other traditions? We should keep in mind the possibility that over time what was once unique has disappeared. We should also keep in mind that, if we are truly Protestants, we are certainly free to reinvent ourselves in accordance to what we believe is truest to Scripture. Some Protestants have taken the protest further, feeling free to reinvent themselves in accordance to what they believe is true.
It may very well be that, for some, what makes them Wesleyan is primarily historical. That is to say, if you trace the story of an organization back in time, it goes back in some way to John Wesley. Others may come from the outside yet discover something about the beliefs and practices of the man that they find attractive. They may feel enough of an affinity for the tradition that they feel that the label fits.
Again, that tradition is living. It is not merely about the man himself. It is about the Methodists and Wesleyans and Nazarenes and Free Methodists and scores of other little groups that have related in some way to the family. My friend Keith Drury likes to say that The Wesleyan Church is something more like the great grandchild of the man than the child or even grandchild.
So one is either Wesleyan historically or ideologically in some way. We will leave it at that for now.
3. Wesley was a Protestant. He was a Protestant in two ways. He was a Protestant historically. He was a Protestant because he was an Anglican of the eighteenth century, and the Anglican Church of the 1700s was Protestant.
We will discuss soon enough the idea that the Anglican Church was a "via media" or "middle way" between Roman Catholicism and what I call the "high" Protestantism of Luther and Calvin. For example, the Wesleyan tradition is not bound to the same understanding of the "solas" that Lutherans and the Reformed have (i.e., grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, glory to God alone). The Anglican Church was born on a different path, one that retained more of catholicism than the Lutherans and Calvinists did.
Wesley was also a Protestant ultimately because he rejected the Catholic church of his day. [1] He called himself a "man of one book," and implicitly took his side with Luther on that issue. [2] Nevertheless, to America's Baptistified version of Wesleyanism today, much of his thinking will seem quite catholic to some.
4. It is often said that Wesley was an eclectic thinker. I personally like to think of this trait as a family characteristic. I believe that Wesleyan thought can be systematized, but its flavor is more focused on practice than theology. Wesley is often considered to be one of the original "evangelicals" in both his focus on evangelism and social justice.
So Wesley's thinking was a mixture. The recipe started with a common catholic foundation as filtered through Anglicanism. Then there was Luther's idea of justification by faith filtered through his Pietist encounters. Then there was Calvin--a lot of Calvin--but with an Arminian twist. Finally, there was England and the rise of the Enlightenment. There was individualism. There was the worth of the everyday individual.
This was the making of Wesleyan theology.
Next Week: The Anglican Via Media
[1] He could be quite vitriolic in relation to the Pope of his day.
[2] In the Preface to Wesley's sermons. However, given that this expression may go back to Aquinas, it counts less for Wesley's Protestantism than one might think at first.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Happy Reformation Day!
Don't have time to post much today, but I did want to register the 499th anniversary of Martin Luther blogging, ur, posting points for discussion, on the Wittenberg cathedral door. P.S. Tom is now taller than me. Sophie's pretty tall now too.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Quick Thoughts on Reformation
Happy Reformation Day! On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed 95 debate points on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, and the rest is history.
However, it would not befit the spirit of the Reformation if we took the developments of Luther and Calvin as some new kind of magisterium. As I am a Protestant, I believe that God used Luther and the Reformation to redirect Christian history in a more healthy direction.
But one of the reasons I value coming from the Wesleyan tradition is because I believe we are more of a "via media" between the Roman Catholic tradition and these "high reformers."
Sola fide, sola gratia
"By faith alone," "by grace alone." The Roman Catholic Church has now more or less conceded that Luther was more correct on these issues than they were.
At the same time, I would argue that the Wesleyan tradition is more biblical than the Lutheran or Calvinist traditions in the way they take these slogans. For example, a Calvinist might criticize the Arminian tradition as teaching that works are a part of justification. The reason is that Wesleyan-Arminians rightly interpret the New Testament to teach that a justified person can end up not being saved because of faithlessness.
But I am not a Lutheran or a Calvinist and, in the spirit of the Reformation, I am free to point out that Paul really doesn't care what Luther or Calvin thought on this one. "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10).
In its Greco-Roman context of patronage, grace usually came with certain informal expectations. A person couldn't spit in the patron's face and expect to continue to receive grace.
Solus Christus
"By Christ alone." No criticism here of the Reformation. We come to God only by means of Christ. There are of course debates and nuances. I would argue that this is a matter of God's free choice rather than him being forced in some way to reconcile the world through Christ, even if it makes sense. Similarly, we can debate how much we need to know about Christ in order to be justified through him.
Soli Deo Gloria
This was a later add on. I agree that all glory ultimately goes to God for everything, and the glory of everything else is in some way derivative. However, if this slogan is used to say that God has not given glory to his creation as well, I turn to Psalm 8. In the end, I am a Wesleyan, I am not bound by the slogans of Calvinists.
Sola scriptura
This was a premodern slogan, meaning that it comes from a time when the meaning the Bible was thought to have was in large part a projection of the person reading it. So this slogan, functionally, meant that we will only rely on the Bible for what we believe and do, with the understanding that I am smuggling in a boat load of what I think the Bible means from my own Christian tradition.
Those who were more consistent became heretics. So the Socinians of the 1500s, recognizing that the Trinity was not explicitly spelled out, did away with it in the name of the Reformation getting back to the Bible alone. Protestant Liberals followed this principle until the distinctness of each biblical text caused the Bible to fall apart as dozens of unrelated books.
Rather, because the books of the Bible were not originally one text, we must have (as we see in math with Godel's incompleteness theorem) an outside scaffolding or metanarrative to come alongside the books of the Bible so that we can have a coherent "biblical worldview." Our theology provides this scaffolding, whether we realize it or not.
In short, history has proved Erasmus to be the winner on this one. "Prima scriptura," "Scripture first," is not only a more Wesleyan perspective, but an actually coherent one.
So there you have it, some Wesleyan push-back on Luther for Reformation Day.
 |
| Wittenberg Door, October 2011 |
But one of the reasons I value coming from the Wesleyan tradition is because I believe we are more of a "via media" between the Roman Catholic tradition and these "high reformers."
Sola fide, sola gratia
"By faith alone," "by grace alone." The Roman Catholic Church has now more or less conceded that Luther was more correct on these issues than they were.
At the same time, I would argue that the Wesleyan tradition is more biblical than the Lutheran or Calvinist traditions in the way they take these slogans. For example, a Calvinist might criticize the Arminian tradition as teaching that works are a part of justification. The reason is that Wesleyan-Arminians rightly interpret the New Testament to teach that a justified person can end up not being saved because of faithlessness.
But I am not a Lutheran or a Calvinist and, in the spirit of the Reformation, I am free to point out that Paul really doesn't care what Luther or Calvin thought on this one. "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10).
In its Greco-Roman context of patronage, grace usually came with certain informal expectations. A person couldn't spit in the patron's face and expect to continue to receive grace.
Solus Christus
"By Christ alone." No criticism here of the Reformation. We come to God only by means of Christ. There are of course debates and nuances. I would argue that this is a matter of God's free choice rather than him being forced in some way to reconcile the world through Christ, even if it makes sense. Similarly, we can debate how much we need to know about Christ in order to be justified through him.
Soli Deo Gloria
This was a later add on. I agree that all glory ultimately goes to God for everything, and the glory of everything else is in some way derivative. However, if this slogan is used to say that God has not given glory to his creation as well, I turn to Psalm 8. In the end, I am a Wesleyan, I am not bound by the slogans of Calvinists.
Sola scriptura
This was a premodern slogan, meaning that it comes from a time when the meaning the Bible was thought to have was in large part a projection of the person reading it. So this slogan, functionally, meant that we will only rely on the Bible for what we believe and do, with the understanding that I am smuggling in a boat load of what I think the Bible means from my own Christian tradition.
Those who were more consistent became heretics. So the Socinians of the 1500s, recognizing that the Trinity was not explicitly spelled out, did away with it in the name of the Reformation getting back to the Bible alone. Protestant Liberals followed this principle until the distinctness of each biblical text caused the Bible to fall apart as dozens of unrelated books.
Rather, because the books of the Bible were not originally one text, we must have (as we see in math with Godel's incompleteness theorem) an outside scaffolding or metanarrative to come alongside the books of the Bible so that we can have a coherent "biblical worldview." Our theology provides this scaffolding, whether we realize it or not.
In short, history has proved Erasmus to be the winner on this one. "Prima scriptura," "Scripture first," is not only a more Wesleyan perspective, but an actually coherent one.
So there you have it, some Wesleyan push-back on Luther for Reformation Day.
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Leadership Lessons from Wycliffe to Zwingli
I personally love the Wesley Seminary foundations side of the leadership course (the students may not be as excited). Here's a snapshot of today's discussions of leadership lessons from some of the key figures in the lead up to the Reformation:
Wycliffe
Wycliffe
- Ideas rarely appear out of the blue but are usually a function of concrete contexts with concrete issues.
- It sure helps to have friends in positions of power. Be careful about biting the hand that feeds you. "Prophets" who just shoot their mouths off aren't as effective as those who are aware of their surroundings.
- It's best to be burned at the stake posthumously.
- Don't tell your enemies what you're going to do before you do it. Don't shoot yourself in the foot.
- You can be right and completely fail because you're stupid.
- Small changes can have big consequences. (Butterfly Effect)
- You don't have to say everything you know.
John Huss
- There is a kairos moment for reform and for a movement--and there's a time and place where you get burned at the stake.
- Trust but verify.
- What you can get away with today, you might not get away with tomorrow, when the situation has changed.
- The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- Accessibility, affordability, early to the game tends to win over quality, complexity and bureaucracy (within certain limits).
- Sometimes if you try to stay in the middle, you tick everyone off.
Luther
- You can never completely tell what the consequences of events will be.
- Don't confuse tradition with the truth.
- Those who seem important now may not be those remembered by history.
- Fighting against a movement can empower it.
- Sometimes you win in the long term by losing in the short term.
- Leaders often give their opponents the long term victory by refusing to admit faults and make adjustments in the short term. Leaders tend to get stubborn when confronted and become self-defeating.
- Practice what you preach.
- My way or the highway is usually a losing strategy.
- Demonstrated that sola scriptura doesn't work practically
Friday, November 22, 2013
A History of Inerrancy
A few quick thoughts on how I think the Bible's truthfulness has been conceived over time and has changed throughout church history.
Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.
Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.
Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.
The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.
It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.
Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.
We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.
In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now). Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.
My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.
Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries. If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.
Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.
Some thoughts after walking through the book...
Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.
Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.
Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.
The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.
It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.
Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.
We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.
In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now). Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.
My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.
Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries. If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.
Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.
Some thoughts after walking through the book...
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wesleyan Version of the Reformation
Happy Reformation Day! 496 years ago today, Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Today I'd like to give a Wesleyan version of the Reformation.
1. When Martin Luther was over there in Germany, stirring up trouble, we were just a twinkle in Henry VIII's eye. The notorious loser king himself wrote a treatise against Luther called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments (no doubt with some help from someone he later beheaded). Henry opposed the Reformation, was made "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope, and was quite Roman Catholic...
... until the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527. Over the course of the next 10 years Henry VIII in stages would extract England from the authority of Rome and take over the new Church of England. Religious anarchy began to knock at the door. By 1539 Henry had reaffirmed transubstantiation, celibacy of priests, confession, etc and was trying to get control of English translations of the Bible.
2. The English Reformation didn't really begin taking on a more positive direction, in my opinion, until Thomas Cranmer put together the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. As this book of Anglican faith and practice developed, it would come to include the Thirty-Nine Articles, the grandpappy of Methodist and Wesleyan statements (although not without alteration). These articles were not a complete statement of faith, but located the Anglican church in relation to the rest of Christendom at the time.
a. For example, they placed the locus of authority for the church in Scripture. You can't require believers to believe or do anything that can't be demonstrated through Scripture. The locus here has to do with salvation, however, not belief about any topic whatsoever. The Apocrypha were included for instruction, but not for doctrine (deuterocanonical, as for Jerome).
b. In general, the Thirty-Nine Articles bear the strong influence of the High Reformation. There is justification by faith here. There is Calvin's predestination and the continuance of a sin nature after faith. There is the rejection of transubstantiation but continuation of infant baptism. Priests can marry. Only two sacraments. It opposes those Anabaptists who shared their possessions in common, as well as speaking in other tongues. It was possible to commit the unpardonable sin.
3. Much of Anglicanism would follow a Calvinist route, and Wesley himself said he was a "hair's breadth" from Calvin. However, England in the 1700s was impacted fairly strongly by the thinking of another individual who came out of Calvinism, Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609).
Some of the most important distinctions included that God's election was conditional on our choice, that God desired everyone to be saved, and that the atonement was thus in theory for everyone. Wesley would follow this line of thought rather than that of Calvinist Anglicanism.
4. Wesley represents a true amalgam of influences. At Oxford he drank deeply from Roman Catholic writers on the goal of holiness. He took justification by faith from Luther and extended Calvin's more pessimistic version of sanctification to stretch toward Catholic holiness. He took prevenient grace from Arminius.
But the real missing piece of the equation was the Pietism of the Moravians. Very unusual for the day, they believed they knew they were saved. Wesley's thinking took on an experiential dimension. In 1738 he felt his heart strangely warmed. He would understand holiness as another experience to be pursued in the life of a believer, "Christian perfection."
5. The Wesleyan tradition is not part of the high Reformation. Justification by faith, yes. But not Luther's "at the same time sinner and saint." Depraved and elected, yes, but not determined and requiring faithfulness to be maintained. The Bible sufficient for salvation, yes? But much to learn from tradition as well.
Happy Reformation Day!
1. When Martin Luther was over there in Germany, stirring up trouble, we were just a twinkle in Henry VIII's eye. The notorious loser king himself wrote a treatise against Luther called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments (no doubt with some help from someone he later beheaded). Henry opposed the Reformation, was made "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope, and was quite Roman Catholic...
... until the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527. Over the course of the next 10 years Henry VIII in stages would extract England from the authority of Rome and take over the new Church of England. Religious anarchy began to knock at the door. By 1539 Henry had reaffirmed transubstantiation, celibacy of priests, confession, etc and was trying to get control of English translations of the Bible.
2. The English Reformation didn't really begin taking on a more positive direction, in my opinion, until Thomas Cranmer put together the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. As this book of Anglican faith and practice developed, it would come to include the Thirty-Nine Articles, the grandpappy of Methodist and Wesleyan statements (although not without alteration). These articles were not a complete statement of faith, but located the Anglican church in relation to the rest of Christendom at the time.
a. For example, they placed the locus of authority for the church in Scripture. You can't require believers to believe or do anything that can't be demonstrated through Scripture. The locus here has to do with salvation, however, not belief about any topic whatsoever. The Apocrypha were included for instruction, but not for doctrine (deuterocanonical, as for Jerome).
b. In general, the Thirty-Nine Articles bear the strong influence of the High Reformation. There is justification by faith here. There is Calvin's predestination and the continuance of a sin nature after faith. There is the rejection of transubstantiation but continuation of infant baptism. Priests can marry. Only two sacraments. It opposes those Anabaptists who shared their possessions in common, as well as speaking in other tongues. It was possible to commit the unpardonable sin.
3. Much of Anglicanism would follow a Calvinist route, and Wesley himself said he was a "hair's breadth" from Calvin. However, England in the 1700s was impacted fairly strongly by the thinking of another individual who came out of Calvinism, Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609).
Some of the most important distinctions included that God's election was conditional on our choice, that God desired everyone to be saved, and that the atonement was thus in theory for everyone. Wesley would follow this line of thought rather than that of Calvinist Anglicanism.
4. Wesley represents a true amalgam of influences. At Oxford he drank deeply from Roman Catholic writers on the goal of holiness. He took justification by faith from Luther and extended Calvin's more pessimistic version of sanctification to stretch toward Catholic holiness. He took prevenient grace from Arminius.
But the real missing piece of the equation was the Pietism of the Moravians. Very unusual for the day, they believed they knew they were saved. Wesley's thinking took on an experiential dimension. In 1738 he felt his heart strangely warmed. He would understand holiness as another experience to be pursued in the life of a believer, "Christian perfection."
5. The Wesleyan tradition is not part of the high Reformation. Justification by faith, yes. But not Luther's "at the same time sinner and saint." Depraved and elected, yes, but not determined and requiring faithfulness to be maintained. The Bible sufficient for salvation, yes? But much to learn from tradition as well.
Happy Reformation Day!
Monday, March 18, 2013
Book Review 3: Protestantism is the root of all evil...
OK, OK, Brad Gregory doesn't say that in The Unintended Reformation, chapter 2: "Relativizing Doctrines." That sure is how this chapter feels. This post is the second half of my review of this chapter.
My second review begins at about p. 96. In keeping with the Parable of the Talents, I'll try to obey the Lord's command and not bury my gift of sarcasm too much in the ground. But in keeping with the love command, I'll at least try to maintain a modicum of civility. :-)
1. Up to this point in the chapter, I agree with Gregory that sola scriptura has failed to provide anything like a common Christian understanding of faith. However, this does not validate Gregory's apparent agenda, only thinly veiled, which seems to be to say it was a mistake to leave the pre-nominalist views of the Roman Catholic Church, with a frequent hint that he thinks Vatican 2 was a big mistake.
In fact, let me stop right here and trash his whole line of thinking up front. Transpose his arguments back a couple thousand years and we're trying to justify how the new fangled religion of Christianity didn't settle the "hyperpluralism" of the ancient religious world. Oops--his entire underlying argument disintegrates into a pool of drool. This book is a Charles Taylor want-to-be. It tries to use the big words and complex sentences, but is completely devoid of the profundity. His rhetoric is stale, contributes no new ideas, and does so in a tiring, preachy style.
2. The only coherent option is thus the next variety of Protestant Christianity he trashes. He calls it "spiritualism." Let's call it by the name those of us to are more sympathetic to it use: pietism. He is quite right that those who looked to the inner light of the Spirit to settled disagreements over ideas did not arrive at common ideological ground...
And here let me stop and tell him the best hope for orthodoxy. The best for orthodoxy is not for Protestants to admit we were wrong to leave the Roman Catholic Church. What were we thinking? He doesn't say this but, come on, what else could we conclude from a chapter like this one? He trashes every other option but clearly believes in orthodoxy. So the answer is that Luther should never have disagreed? In other words, the theological bickering that you say led truth to shift to science could have all been solved if the Protestants would have just shut up? That's helpful.
No, the only real hope for Christian orthodoxy is some sort of faith in common Christianity. It is not "Scripture only." It is something like "5 centuries, 4 councils, 3 persons, 2 natures, 1 God." Even that requires an act of faith, but it represents what the vast majority of Christians believe and have believed throughout the centuries. This faith in common Christianity acknowledges what Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the Orthodox hold in common in terms of creed.
... but pietism takes the only really coherent position on what is important to God. If God is not ultimately more interested in our hearts than our heads, there's no hope for Christianity. So eat Vatican 2, Gregory, and accept that I am your "separated brother." Otherwise it all falls apart. The alternative is not pre-nominalist Roman Catholicism any more than it's pre-Great Schism. It's non-Christianity.
So perhaps neither Zwingli nor the most zealous catholics of the Inquisition will be in the kingdom of God, while Luther and Erasmus may fare better. Gregory criticizes pietism because it did not result in orthodoxy... which is ultimately a circular argument. A heart-oriented religion cannot be judged a failure by the criteria of a head-oriented religion!
3. The bulk of the rest of the chapter is devoted to trashing reason as a reliable path to truth. He runs through a host of modern philosophers--Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Husserl--with the goal of showing that they didn't agree with each other while being quite certain they, at last, were the individuals that had reasoned it all out. And of course there can be no doubt that philosophers say the darnedest things.
Are there commonly accepted relationships between these philosophers? Gregory seems to ignore the fact that Kant is more or less the funnel of the rationalists and empiricists before him like Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. There are accepted connections, accepted improvements between these thinkers. They are not disconnected atoms that all disagree with each other. He also seems to ignore empiricism and seems to want to bracket science from it, as if the success of science is not in some way a vindication of empiricism on some level.
And stuck in his cognitive priorities, he cannot see that modern philosophy has inevitably led to the same basic point of view as pietism: it is not so much our ideas as our living in the world. Nietzsche and Foucault do not ultimately present us with another alternative. That is to misunderstand them. They argue for the dead end of the cognitive priority. This is what postmodernism variously boils down to. Each in their own way, these faithless philosophers are saying the same thing--if there is common ground, it is not in ideas.
Philosophy does have three rock solid rules of truth. All reasoning, including religious thinking, is susceptible to the weight of these rules. How well does a hypothesis correspond to the data? Does a hypothesis appear to be logically coherent internally? Does a hypothesis seem to help us function in the real world? Against such there is no law.
I believe there is room for Christian faith in all these developments. What we can't do what Gregory seems to want to do, to somehow become pre-moderns again. I guarantee you that his understanding of the otherness of God is not the understanding he seems to think Anselm and the medieval church had. Even Hegel knew that.
My second review begins at about p. 96. In keeping with the Parable of the Talents, I'll try to obey the Lord's command and not bury my gift of sarcasm too much in the ground. But in keeping with the love command, I'll at least try to maintain a modicum of civility. :-)
1. Up to this point in the chapter, I agree with Gregory that sola scriptura has failed to provide anything like a common Christian understanding of faith. However, this does not validate Gregory's apparent agenda, only thinly veiled, which seems to be to say it was a mistake to leave the pre-nominalist views of the Roman Catholic Church, with a frequent hint that he thinks Vatican 2 was a big mistake.
In fact, let me stop right here and trash his whole line of thinking up front. Transpose his arguments back a couple thousand years and we're trying to justify how the new fangled religion of Christianity didn't settle the "hyperpluralism" of the ancient religious world. Oops--his entire underlying argument disintegrates into a pool of drool. This book is a Charles Taylor want-to-be. It tries to use the big words and complex sentences, but is completely devoid of the profundity. His rhetoric is stale, contributes no new ideas, and does so in a tiring, preachy style.
2. The only coherent option is thus the next variety of Protestant Christianity he trashes. He calls it "spiritualism." Let's call it by the name those of us to are more sympathetic to it use: pietism. He is quite right that those who looked to the inner light of the Spirit to settled disagreements over ideas did not arrive at common ideological ground...
And here let me stop and tell him the best hope for orthodoxy. The best for orthodoxy is not for Protestants to admit we were wrong to leave the Roman Catholic Church. What were we thinking? He doesn't say this but, come on, what else could we conclude from a chapter like this one? He trashes every other option but clearly believes in orthodoxy. So the answer is that Luther should never have disagreed? In other words, the theological bickering that you say led truth to shift to science could have all been solved if the Protestants would have just shut up? That's helpful.
No, the only real hope for Christian orthodoxy is some sort of faith in common Christianity. It is not "Scripture only." It is something like "5 centuries, 4 councils, 3 persons, 2 natures, 1 God." Even that requires an act of faith, but it represents what the vast majority of Christians believe and have believed throughout the centuries. This faith in common Christianity acknowledges what Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the Orthodox hold in common in terms of creed.
... but pietism takes the only really coherent position on what is important to God. If God is not ultimately more interested in our hearts than our heads, there's no hope for Christianity. So eat Vatican 2, Gregory, and accept that I am your "separated brother." Otherwise it all falls apart. The alternative is not pre-nominalist Roman Catholicism any more than it's pre-Great Schism. It's non-Christianity.
So perhaps neither Zwingli nor the most zealous catholics of the Inquisition will be in the kingdom of God, while Luther and Erasmus may fare better. Gregory criticizes pietism because it did not result in orthodoxy... which is ultimately a circular argument. A heart-oriented religion cannot be judged a failure by the criteria of a head-oriented religion!
3. The bulk of the rest of the chapter is devoted to trashing reason as a reliable path to truth. He runs through a host of modern philosophers--Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Husserl--with the goal of showing that they didn't agree with each other while being quite certain they, at last, were the individuals that had reasoned it all out. And of course there can be no doubt that philosophers say the darnedest things.
Are there commonly accepted relationships between these philosophers? Gregory seems to ignore the fact that Kant is more or less the funnel of the rationalists and empiricists before him like Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. There are accepted connections, accepted improvements between these thinkers. They are not disconnected atoms that all disagree with each other. He also seems to ignore empiricism and seems to want to bracket science from it, as if the success of science is not in some way a vindication of empiricism on some level.
And stuck in his cognitive priorities, he cannot see that modern philosophy has inevitably led to the same basic point of view as pietism: it is not so much our ideas as our living in the world. Nietzsche and Foucault do not ultimately present us with another alternative. That is to misunderstand them. They argue for the dead end of the cognitive priority. This is what postmodernism variously boils down to. Each in their own way, these faithless philosophers are saying the same thing--if there is common ground, it is not in ideas.
Philosophy does have three rock solid rules of truth. All reasoning, including religious thinking, is susceptible to the weight of these rules. How well does a hypothesis correspond to the data? Does a hypothesis appear to be logically coherent internally? Does a hypothesis seem to help us function in the real world? Against such there is no law.
I believe there is room for Christian faith in all these developments. What we can't do what Gregory seems to want to do, to somehow become pre-moderns again. I guarantee you that his understanding of the otherness of God is not the understanding he seems to think Anselm and the medieval church had. Even Hegel knew that.
Book Review 2: "Relativizing Doctrines" 1
Last week I posted on the introduction and chapter 1 of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation, which the Monday reading group is working through. His basic thrust, as I see it, is that one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation was the secularization of society.
Today I'm posting on the first half of his second chapter, "Relativizing Doctrines." His underlying thesis in this chapter, as I see it at this point, is that the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) is directly responsible for an unintended pluralism of answers to Life Questions in contemporary times.
First, there is some of what I consider recycled stale stuff in here:
Today I'm posting on the first half of his second chapter, "Relativizing Doctrines." His underlying thesis in this chapter, as I see it at this point, is that the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) is directly responsible for an unintended pluralism of answers to Life Questions in contemporary times.
First, there is some of what I consider recycled stale stuff in here:
- Back in his introduction (19), he tried to recycle the old, "the denial of all truths is to make at least one truth claim." I think he messes it up (common) because he's talking about a denial of all norms and values (ethics) not a denial of all truth claims (epistemology). Denying all norms and values is not the same as denying all truth claims. Similarly, you can deny universal norms without considering such a denial a value.
- On the other hand, he probably is making a fair observation that most scientific types are not particularly good philosophers of science. To describe the big bang, at least at this point, does not seem to answer questions about what is behind the big bang. He is probably right that Occam's Razor can be used to exclude a spiritual dimension to things that might very well be present--secular approaches tend to seek minimalist explanations.
- I couldn't help but think he was a hypocrite when he criticized social scientists for using metaphorical language of humans being "constructions." This line especially stood out to me: "they should adopt a clearer idiom to make their unobjectionable points" (79). I wrote in the margin, "verbose physician, heal thyself." Communication does beg for simplified language. But, really, if you can't understand the profundities of someone else's discipline, then butt out of it!
- Before the Reformation, there was an institutionalized worldview, a combination of sharp limits to orthodoxy combined with a wide diversity of local traditions and practices. Gregory believes that, on a lay level, the 1400s were more devout than any preceding century in Christianity (84-85).
- He argues that the Protestant Reformation was not about reforming the church but a rejection of Roman Catholicism period, even at its best (86). I personally don't think this is true of Luther. I do not feel ready to argue back, but I believe Gregory is drawing too stark a line, one that evolved and was far more concrete than ideological.
- Nevertheless, he does demonstrate by a pastiche of quotes from Reformers like Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli that the Reformers did use the rhetoric of sola scriptura as a weapon to try to undo the parts of the Roman Catholic church to which they protested. And once an idea gets in a certain type of person's head, s/he will follow the idea through.
- I suspect he is right, however, when he says that there was never a point in the Reformation when anti-Roman Christians agreed among themselves about what scripture said and God taught (91). Whether we like it or not, any objective observer can see that the idea of sola scriptura has never worked, not even from day 1 of the Reformation.
- The closest "sola scriptura" came to reality was the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, when Luther and Zwingli agreed on 14 out of 15 points. The scoundrel Zwingli, whom I don't expect to be in heaven, couldn't live with that much disagreement.
- Zwingli is an excellent case in point. He was happy to split vehemently with the RCC--and to die going to war against them. And he was happy to drown Anabaptists in the river, who thought they were following the Bible alone in teaching believer's baptism.
- He is right in zinging the high Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists in their attempts to make out Anabaptists and pietists as departures from their "true" idea. No, he rightly strikes. The Anabaptists were following the same non-functional principle of sola scripture that they were. It never worked, the Protestant principle is simply that group after group, thinking they are simply following the Bible alone, will endlessly multiply as they follow the whims of their own interpretations. The pluralism of Protestant belief is a natural by-product of sola scriptura.
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