A Practical Theology of Baptism

Today my Romans class reached Romans 6:4 and we ended up spending most of the class discussing the practical theology of baptism. I consider myself very wesleyan when it comes to the topic (in contrast to Wesley-an). Of course I don't expect anyone to agree with me but here were my positions:

• Baptism is normative (although not essential for salvation... Salvationists and Friends can still go to heaven). Baptism does not "save" you, nor does it cleanse "original sin."
• Baptism is a means of grace, but the specifics of the grace dispensed varies somewhat depending on the point when a person is being baptized (e.g., infant versus child versus adult, etc).
• The earliest church probably baptized primarily by immersion, but the word baptizo does not necessarily mean "to immerse." It's not a point to fight over, although immersion probably has the strongest symbolism of death to our former self.
• There are advantages both to infant and believer's baptism. The advantage for infant baptism is the strong claim on the child for Christ by the community from the very beginning. It does not "save" the child, who will need to confess faith subsequently and receive the Holy Spirit. But it strongly affirms inclusion in the community of faith and makes faith the assumption of the future.
• The advantage of believer's baptism is the power of conscious, individual choice. It strongly affirms the individual faith decision for Christ, although it suggests the person is in a kind of limbo up to that point (the child is a stranger in the church's midst).
• Rebaptism is not ideal or necessary, but is a pastoral call--would rebaptism significantly invigorate the person spiritually.

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Sacraments

Earlier today I finished a series of posts on sacraments in my  "theology in bullet points" series. This coming Sunday I hope to start the final section of the whole enterprise, on Christian ethics.

So here are all the links in the series thus far:
_________________________
Part 1: God and Creation
God and Creation (online)
God and Creation (book form)
God and Creation (Kindle book)

Part 2: Christ and Salvation
Christ and Salvation (online)

Part 3: The Holy Spirit and the Church
The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology)
1. The Holy Spirit is a distinct person, but one in substance with the Father and Son.
2. The Holy Spirit enacts the will of the Father and Son in the world.
3. The Spirit sanctifies the Church.
4. The Spirit sanctifies the believer.

The Doctrine of the Church (ecclesiology)
1. In Christ, the Spirit creates the Church.
2. The true Church is an "invisible" church.
3. The invisible Church meets in visible churches.
4. The Church is one body, although it has many members.
5. There is no one, correct form of church governance.
6. There are likely elements to church governance.
7. The Church is in the world, but not of the world.
8. The Church has worship as its central and most important task.
9. The Church participates in God's mission to the world.
10. The Church disciples and nurtures God's people.

Christian Sacraments
1. A sacrament is a divinely appointed means of grace.
2. Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the people of God.
3. Christians have varying perspectives on baptism.
4. Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
5. Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
6. The Scriptures are a sacrament of God's transformation.
7. Christians vary somewhat in their conceptions of Scripture.
8. The Bible is inspired, infallible, and inerrant.
9. God uses all sorts of instruments of grace to transform his people.

SA9: God uses all sorts of instruments of grace to transform his people.

This is the ninth and final post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
God uses all sorts of instruments of grace to transform his people.

1. In our first article on sacraments, we mentioned that there were both "ordinary" sacraments and what we called "momentary" sacraments. Protestants generally recognize baptism and communion as ordinary catalysts of God's grace to us. Roman Catholics would add marriage, confirmation, ordination, penance, and "last rites" before death. God can use any of these to dispense his grace at a moment of his choosing, usually on the condition of our faith.

Cannot marriage be a moment when God dispenses his grace? In a day when tensions exist among Christians over those whom the State might marry, would not this be an opportune time to distinguish between civil unions, as it were, by the State and marriage as a means of God's grace as administered through his Church?

For those baptized as a child, confirmation is an important moment of personal commitment that surely can be a means of grace. In "low churches" (churches that do not emphasize sacramental moments or longstanding Christian traditions) where baptism does not coincide with the moment of church membership, cannot the moment of confession in church membership be a sacramental moment?

The early church often laid hands on those it was commissioning for special service. The church at Antioch laid hands on Saul and Barnabas (Acts 13:3). Timothy was commissioned by the laying on of hands (1 Tim. 4:14). Is not the ordination of ministers today a moment when God's grace is given in a special way at a special moment.

The process of dying is a central time in a person's life. Perhaps surprisingly, it is a time when some saints have moments of doubt. It is thus a time when God uses many ministers, family, and friends to serve as a means of grace. I have heard of the words, "Let me be faith for you," uttered over the dying, and of God giving the dying peace through the body of Christ as a means of grace.

Protestant churches have had means of grace in relation to penance in the past, recognizing that some physical action, some outward and visible sign, is helpful as a catalyst of the inward grace of forgiveness. In the Wesleyan holiness tradition, going to the altar was such a means of grace. It was a means of outwardly signifying repentance. Today, churches sometimes have people stand. These outward signs are versions of the Roman Catholic sense of penance.

2. John Wesley divided up God's means of grace into two types: works of piety and works of mercy. The first (acts of vital piety) had to with God meeting us as we did acts of individual and corporate devotion like prayer, searching the Scriptures, and fasting as individual acts. Corporately there was communion, baptism, and fellowship (which he called "Christian conference"). [1] He considered these means of grace that were "instituted" means of grace.

The second type, works of mercy, had to do with God meeting us as we did outward acts of service toward others. [2] So Jesus assumed that we would give to the poor ("almsgiving") as in Matthew 6. Almsgiving is "everything that we give, or speak, or do, whereby our neighbor may be profited." [3] Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, assisting the stranger, visiting the sick or those in prison, comforting the troubled, teaching those without knowledge, redirecting the wicked, praising the person who does good, these are all ways in which God not only dispenses his grace to others, but to us as well.

3. It is understandable that God would use different means of grace in different times and places to meet and transform his people. Cultures differ in the means they have available and in their understandings of the world. God does not expect all people to come up the mountain to his timeless temple in his timeless way. He is an incarnating God who became flesh in Christ Jesus. God meets his people in various times and places in the ways that best change them.

So it is no surprise that God began to use the Scriptures as one of the primary means of his grace once the printing press came into common use in the West. Not only did a culture develop where most people could read but by the 1900s most people in the West had easy access to a Bible. Prior to the 1500s, Christian worship and communion understandably played a greater role in dispensing God's grace to most Christians, since the vast majority were illiterate and the Bible did not play a large role in worship.

In the early church, the Scriptures, breaking bread, fellowship, and worship were weekly features of Christian life. God regularly uses these same means of grace today in the church. God meets us in various ways as individuals. He meets us in various ways as the corporate body of Christ. And he meets us as we serve others in mission. Devotions are a contemporary personal means of grace, usually involving prayer and searching the Scriptures. Worship, fellowship, and communion are frequent corporate means. And we serve as means of grace toward others in evangelism and service.

But God can use anything to transform us. It is even possible that God may have a special means of grace just for you as an individual believer. Perhaps there is some outward symbol connected to a special memory of your walk with God, perhaps some moment of special divine encounter. Perhaps God occasionally uses that symbol to trigger that memory and give you a sense of his presence. [4]

Some Christians journal, and their journal becomes a means of grace. If they would ever have a moment of doubt or a moment when God seems silent, their journal can remind them of special moments of divine encounter from the past.

There is no limit to how God can meet his people to transform them. He is, after all, all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present. We are embodied people. Physical actions and visible objects are usually more obvious to us than invisible things. God thus uses outward signs to administer inward graces. God uses all sorts of instruments of grace to transform his people.

Next Week: ET1: God's fundamental ethical expectation of us is love.

[1] Wesley mentions prayer and searching the Scriptures in his sermon, "The Means of Grace." Mention of baptism as a means of grace is in his sermon, "The New Birth" and Christian conference is found in his "Large Minutes."

[2] He called these "prudential" means of grace. He lists these works of mercy in his sixth sermon on the Sermon on the Mount.

[3] See n.2. I have lightly edited his language.

[4] It is of course essential that we not let any such symbol become an idol. No object is an idol if it merely triggers our thoughts of God. The object itself is not the point, including the Bible. The point is that it points us toward our relationship with God.

SA2. Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the people of God.

This is the second post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the people of God.

1. Baptism has been part of Christian practice since its earliest days. The medium of this ritual is of course water. Its symbolism is, in the first place, that of cleansing.

However, the hearts of those who come to baptism as an adult are often cleansed on the basis of faith before they reach the waters of baptism. And those who are baptized as infants have not yet exercised individual faith and, indeed, they do not yet have sins in the proper sense to be cleansed. [1] The power of cleansing for sins, done by the Holy Spirit, thus does not coincide exactly with the act of baptism such that we might say that baptism is a sacrament of cleansing in most cases.

2. On the one hand, baptism is associated with the cleansing of our sins. In the book of Acts, the absolutely essential element of that cleansing is receiving the Holy Spirit. [2] It is the moment of the reception of the Holy Spirit when our sins are cleansed. It is this "baptism" in the Holy Spirit that is the moment of our justification and initial sanctification as belonging to God. This is the true moment of adoption as God's children, of regeneration, of redemption.

But baptism, on the one hand, acts out this cleansing symbolically in the most powerful of ways. Baptism enacts ritually our death to sin and our rising to new life. In the book of Acts, baptism and being filled with the Holy Spirit go hand in hand. In Acts, they are associated events.

But we are not literally saved through baptism. This wording in 1 Peter 3:21 is figurative. Baptism in water is an outward sign of the inward grace of the cleansing of sins. But because the "inward grace" in this case is typically a different event in time than the "outward sign," we cannot say that baptism is the catalyst for this more important spiritual cleansing (although it can be).

In Acts, baptism sometimes precedes being filled with the Spirit, and sometimes it takes place after receiving the Spirit. In each case, it is the reception of the Spirit that is the moment of cleansing. In Samaria, they are baptized and believe, but it is days before they receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). In the case of Cornelius, he and his company receive the Holy Spirit before they have been baptized (Acts 10:44-48), as is usually the case with adult baptism in the world today. Paul presumably was baptized by the Holy Spirit in that order as well (Acts 9:17-18).

3. Yet baptism is not simply a memorial of an event that has already taken place. It is more than a powerful symbol. Baptism has been considered a sacrament throughout Christian history. That is to say, there is a power of the Holy Spirit associated with the event that is much more than a memorial. What is this power? What is the inward grace that coincides with the event of baptism itself?

It certainly can be the grace of cleansing. That is to say, in those few cases where one's baptism coincides exactly to being filled with the Holy Spirit, what a powerful sacramental moment that is!

True baptism always involves the grace of re-filling with the Spirit. In the book of Acts, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a one time event. It is something that can occur over and over again, especially as we face challenges that require a special "anointing" and empowerment from God (cf. Acts 4:31). We can surely say that: Authentic baptism coincides with a moment of power from the Holy Spirit, no matter what the age of the person being baptized.

4. So baptism is memorial of the cleansing of our sins. It is also a sacrament whereby we are filled with the Holy Spirit afresh. But being filled with the Holy Spirit in the early church had another "outward sign" more directly associated with it, namely, the laying on of hands. In Samaria, when baptism in water does not lead to a baptism in the Holy Spirit, Peter and John lay hands on the Samaritans so that they will receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:17).

We find other places in the New Testament where laying hands on a person is sacramental in this way. 1 Timothy 4:14 perhaps refers to Timothy's anointing for ministry (and no doubt an associated filling with the Holy Spirit), enacted by laying on hands. Herein is thus a precedent for ordination as a sacrament, with the laying on of hands as the outward sign.

Might we not find some divine grace that is almost always associated with the event of baptism itself, though? Might we not find some inward grace that usually coincides with the act of the outward sign itself?

There does indeed seem to be a more precise grace that God does in the moment of baptism, one that we should say involves a filling with the Holy Spirit. This is the divine grace of inclusion within the people of God. Baptism in water is the outward sign, whereby God brings an individual from outside the people of God to within his people.

5. Like circumcision for males in God's covenant with Israel, baptism ritually enacts the joining of God's people. It is the threshold of inclusion. Would we say that an uncircumcised male 6 days old was an Israelite? Well, yes, in a sense. But the act of circumcision was the outward sign that confirmed it.

In the same way, a person who has exercised faith in God is already justified, is already "saved." But the act of baptism is the outward sign that confirms it and enacts the crossing from outside to inside the people of God. In this way, an infant who is baptized is seen as part of the people of God until they remove themselves. His or her inclusion is something to be lost. [3]

The act of baptism thus enacts coming from the wilderness into the camp. It enacts the transition from "not my people" to "my people." It is a sacrament of inclusion within the people of God.

This is not merely a memorial of this transition. There is a change that takes place, and the person baptized experiences this change when the baptism is authentic. It is a change that involves the Holy Spirit. Any sin is cleansed. There is an empowerment for righteousness and service.

5. Faith is always involved in sacramental baptism, although in the case of an infant it is the faith of the community that baptizes. In adult baptism, the faith of the "baptisand," the person being baptized, is essential for the baptism to be sacramental, for there to be actual change and transformation in the act. In the case of infants, the faith of the community invokes the power of the Holy Spirit over the child to insulate it from the power of Sin as he or she reaches maturity. It is a faith that commits to protect the child from the world, to which the Holy Spirit responds with power.

Baptism is thus a sacrament of inclusion into the people of God. It remembers the faith and cleansing of the Holy Spirit that has usually already taken place (or looks forward to it). But it is a moment in which the Holy Spirit fills the person being baptized. Any sin is cleansed on the basis of faith. Power is received for righteousness and service. Most of all, in baptism God leads us across the threshold into the company of God's people.

Next Sunday: SA3: Christians have varying perspectives on baptism.

[1] In its proper sense, in the sense of what brings condemnation, sin involves intentional wrongdoing. An infant does not yet have a mature enough will to do wrong intentionally. While it is common, especially among older Christian traditions, to think of a baby's original sin being cleansed in baptism, it is ultimately problematic to think that any guilt can attach to us on the basis of Adam's sin or anyone else's sin. We sin like Adam. The power of Sin has control over the world as a consequence of Adam. But we did not sin in Adam, an Augustinian misinterpretation of Romans 5:12.

[2] Prior to Christian baptism, both the ritual washings of Judaism and the baptism of John the Baptist were sacraments of cleansing. For Jews before Christ, the ritual washings enabled a person to participate in the temple worship. These were often a matter of external purity, although no doubt God met many a Jew with his grace in those moments.

The baptism of John the Baptist was not yet Christian baptism, as the event in Acts 19:1-6 makes clear. John's baptism was a baptism for Israel to repent of its sins and be washed in preparation for the arrival of the messianic kingdom. No doubt the Holy Spirit met many of those who were baptized under John with cleansing. Indeed, the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus for ministry when he participated in John's baptism (although no cleansing was necessary; Matt. 3:13-17).

[3] Rather than the unpleasant limbo we often leave such children. By denying an infant baptism, we say they are outside the camp in the wilderness for years. We take the first seven days of an uncircumcised male Israelite and stretch them out to a decade or more. They are strangers in our midst in church, present but not belonging.

SA1. A sacrament is a divinely appointed means of grace.

This is the first post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
1. A sacrament is a divinely appointed means of grace. It is a divinely appointed meeting place where God takes something ordinary and does something extraordinary in us through it. It is an instrument of God by which God transforms us in some way. It is an "outward and visible sign of an inward grace."

Grace again is God's undeserved favor toward us. We often think of God's grace in relation to the atonement and forgiveness God has made possible through the death of Jesus. Yet God gives us good gifts all the time--gifts of power, gifts of blessing, gifts of knowledge. Our lives are full of God's grace in every area.

Ultimately, of course, God has established Jesus as the basis for receiving his saving and sanctifying grace. When we speak of baptism or communion or the Scriptures as means of grace, we are speaking of them as instruments of delivery, not as the real sources or bases of that grace. They are tools that God uses to meet us and change us, but they have no power in themselves. In themselves they are only ordinary water, bread, or words. It is only their connection to God and Christ that makes them conduits of power.

2. Baptism and communion are the two sacraments generally acknowledged by Protestants. This is a list reduced from the seven sacraments of the Catholic Middle Ages, which also included marriage, ordination, penance, confirmation, and last rites.

The Protestant reaction to Roman Catholicism predictably pushed at times to the opposite extreme of its opponent. If there was a tendency in catholicism to think that the sacraments worked ex opere operato, "from the act itself," Protestants tended to emphasize the faith of the person experiencing the sacrament as key. [1]

Similarly, some Protestants abandoned the notion that there are divinely appointed means of grace at all. For example, Quakers and the Salvation Army do not normally practice either baptism or communion. In a similar vein, Baptists tend to believe that communion is only a memorial of what Jesus did, not that it is actually an instrument of divine change.

3. But surely we can all recognize that God uses all sorts of different means to make us grow. God uses trials to help us grow. God uses Scripture to help us grow. God uses prayer to change us. For Francis of Assisi, all of nature was a sacrament that God could use to transform us and lead us to sense his presence.

Surely there is thus a sense in which there are the "ordinary" sacraments like baptism, communion, Scripture, prayer, fasting, Christian worship and fellowship. [2] But then there are "momentary" sacraments where God chooses to meet us in some other way by some other means. If a sacrament is a divinely appointed means of grace, then there are as many sacraments as there are ways that God meets us and transforms us.

The key aspects of a sacrament are 1) the medium that God transforms, 2) the work that God does using the medium as an instrument, and, of course, 3) the power of God working. A fourth element is also usually involved, namely, the faith either of the person receiving God's grace or the faith of the community surrounding the person receiving God's grace.

4. The power of God is of course the absolutely necessary component in any means of grace, and in God's will the atoning death of Christ is the basis for God's grace as it relates to our salvation and sanctification. No means of grace works on the basis of the medium alone, ex opere operata. Grace is always a miracle, a divine intervention into human history.

In a sense, the Bible is not Scripture until the power of the Holy Spirit comes over it while we are reading. Exegesis, the study of the original meaning of the biblical text, does not work ex opere operata to transform us or make us more Christ-like. The water of baptism does nothing spiritual unless the Holy Spirit transforms us. The bread of communion does nothing unless God works through it.

God does not need a medium to transform and change us. God can change us of his own will and of his own accord. In that sense, not even faith is necessary for God to change us. Indeed, we can only have faith as a result of God's grace. Faith itself is a gift of God, although God empowers our wills also to be involved in it. [3]

So God can change us directly, without a medium. In that instance we would not speak of a sacrament being involved. And although sacraments typically involve faith, God can change a person through a medium even if his or her faith is not involved. This is the exception, however, rather than the rule.

The power of God is thus the essential factor in any grace administered in a sacrament, and we would not call the administration of God's grace a sacrament by definition if a medium were not involved.

5. Faith is typically involved in a sacramental event, an event in which God's grace is experienced through a divinely appointed medium. Normally, this is the faith of the person receiving the grace. If I eat the bread and drink the wine of communion, but do it without any faith whatsoever, I am unlikely to receive any benefit from God thereby. Indeed, Paul suggests that such participation can actually be detrimental to us, even cause us to become sick and die (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

Again, God can choose to change us even though we are not expecting it, even though we are not approaching the "sacred moment" with faith.

We can read the Bible only looking for raw knowledge, or only as a book of history or literature, and not be changed. In that case the Bible is only a book, with ordinary words, and not Scripture. We can sit in a worship service and have our minds on something else, and not experience the grace of God through worship. We can say prayers over a meal or before we go to bed without thinking and receive no blessing. We can say the Lord's Prayer, the creed, or any other Christian activity in which others encounter God and them not be sacraments for us.

6. Rituals in themselves are neither powerful or vain. A prayer that is repeated does not have to be "vain repetition" (Matt. 6:7, KJV), but it can be. However, the human psyche is such that ritual actions can be far more powerful than mere ideas. Symbols can be exponentially more powerful than the literal. Accordingly, the literal cannot come anywhere near as close to showing us God as the symbolic and metaphorical.

For this reason, the logical word has no power beside the sacramental word. The act of worship, the act of participation in baptism or the Lord's Supper, participation in prayer and Christian fellowship--these moments have potentially life-changing effect. The pronouncement of a minister, "I pronounce you man and wife," can have a spiritual power if God is present in the moment--much more power than a dictionary definition of marriage.

Those who scorn rituals often have rituals that they do not acknowledge as such. If there is a power to their ministry, we can be sure that there are symbols and rituals present that they do not recognize as such. A church without them is likely a weak and powerless church, a Gnostic church, for this is the way God has created us, to experience him in our bodies, through physical means, in our embodiment, through material media in the world.

7. Since God is the power behind the dispersal of grace, grace can be triggered not only through the faith of the person receiving it, but also through the faith of others surrounding the recipient. Does not James 5:16 say that, "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective"? Our prayers can thus be a means of grace for others, even when they themselves do not have faith.

God has certainly used infant baptism throughout the centuries as a means of grace for the child, even though the child him or herself is not yet able to have faith. This is not a "saving grace" in that the child is not thereby "saved." But why would we not believe that God does something in this moment? [4] Indeed, is it possible that, because of the grace administered, the child could be more likely to believe later on, because the community of faith has surrounded him or her in faith as a child?

In such instances, the faith involved is the faith of the community surrounding the individual rather than the faith of the individual him or herself. When a person is unconscious in the hospital or dying, it is the faith of the person praying for them that can be a means God recognizes to heal. Anointing with oil is another example of a sacramental ritual involving a medium, by which God sometimes dispenses grace (cf. Jas. 5:14).

It is even possible for a believer to exercise faith over someone who is doubting. A person who is dying can sometimes experience doubts. A person can find it difficult to forgive themselves for something they have done. Our human minds are susceptible to dysfunction and neurosis, even psychosis. We can be enslaved to drugs or to various other addictions. At times the Holy Spirit gives power to another believer to be faith for the doubter, to be forgiveness or peace for the disquieted (cf. John 20:23; Matt. 16:19).

So while faith is typically involved in a "sacred moment" and that faith is usually the faith of the individual receiving grace, God can dispense grace through a medium of his own will and he can do so on the basis of the faith of others.

A sacrament is a divinely appointed means of grace, using some ordinary medium to transform us and dispense his undeserved, divine favor. There are ordinary means of grace that God has used time and time again throughout Christian history. But there are also divine moments where God unexpectedly meets us at some place or time and establishes holy ground on the spot, such as at a burning bush. Our faith is usually involved, but God can meet us at the time and place of his choosing, and he can do so because of the faith of others.

Next Sunday: SA2: Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the people of God.

[1] This phrase originally had to do with whether the purity of the priest administering the sacrament was a factor in the effectiveness of the sacrament's work. But the power "of the work working" itself in Protestant debate came to be contrasted with the importance of the faith of the person experiencing the sacrament.

[2] In Wesley's sermon, "The Means of Grace," he mentions the primary means of grace as prayer, searching the Scriptures, receiving the Lord's Supper, "the ordinary channels of conveying his grace to the souls of men." The reason Wesley does not mention baptism is because most anyone in England at that time would have been baptized as an infant, an act that was not repeated as an adult.

[3] Faith is the "work" God does using our will as the medium of his grace. He empowers our wills to have the capacity for faith.

[4] I would suggest that God uses "baby dedications" as means of grace in this way as well, even though such churches or individuals do not want to call the event a "baptism."

Models of the Church (Missional Church class)

I facilitated an assignment for a Missional Church class last week and was reminded of how helpful a curriculum the teams who designed our Seminary curriculum is. This assignment was suggested and written by Chris Bounds five years ago.

The source is Avery Dulles' Models of the Church. This stuff has such practical implications. Let me recook it in the way of a practically oriented Seminary. Most churches mindlessly fall into one of these categories. Let me emphasize the "mindless" part. We just assume one of these is the right way.

With Dulles, I would argue that nearly all of these are an essential part of the Church. I would say also, though, that I am comfortable with the idea that some churches, like the body of Christ, may legitimately focus on some more than others.

1. The Herald
Evangelical churches often seem to mindlessly assume that the purpose of the Church is just about converting people and preaching stuff. That is certainly part of what the Church is about. And it's fine for there to be many churches that focus on this. It just isn't the whole of what a church is.

2. The Servant
Some churches focus on helping others. This is also an essential feature of the Church, although we question whether it is the only thing an individual church should be doing.

3. The Institution
Dulles rightly questions whether a church can just be institution and truly be part of the Church. I agree. You could focus on one of the others, be a bit out of balance, but still be part of the Church. But if all you are is institution, you're church probably isn't part of the Church.

On the other hand, without some structure, without some ordering to the community of faith, you're like a body without a skeleton and probably won't have much impact, especially long term.

4. The Fellowship
Some churches mostly focus on the life of the community that is already there. Call it an inward discipleship focus (although the current version of Dulles has added the discipling church as another model--I prefer to keep the original five). Call it a body life focus. It is an essential feature of the Church. In the long term, however, a church that is only focused on itself is likely to dwindle and die. There are exceptions, I suppose.

5. The Means of Grace
Some churches see the church as a means by which God brings his grace to bear on people. On the one hand, we might first think of churches that focus on sacraments. On the other hand, you might actually broaden your sense of sacrament to include all the other models:

• The Church helps facilitate God's converting grace by proclamation as a herald (the first mark of the Church--proclaiming the word).
• The Church helps facilitate God's prevenient grace by its service to those in need.
• The Church is an institution because it's hard to facilitate anything without structure (the third mark of the Church--a community rightly ordered).
• The Church helps facilitate growth in grace by fellowship and discipleship within the church walls.
• The Church facilitates the sacraments, broadly conceived (the second mark of the church).

For these reasons, I agree with Dulles in his earlier editions. The "means of grace" model of the Church--if it is broadened to include the others--is the most robust, the most balanced, and indeed, the model of the Church that has the most depth.

"Means of Grace" 5

Paraphrasing continues of Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

I
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

II
Part 4
________________
6. These individuals do not really understand that great foundation of the whole Christian building: "You are saved by grace." That is, you are saved from your sins, from the guilt of them and from the power of them, by the free gift and grace of God, his sheer mercy. You are saved through the merits of God's well-beloved Son. Only in this way are you restored to God's favor and only in this way is the image of God restored in you. It does not happen because of anything you have done on your own or because you have earned it or deserved it. You are not saved by any power or wisdom or strength that is in you or any other creature. You are only saved through the free gift and power of the Holy Spirit, who is working in everything.

7. Nevertheless, the central question remains for someone who is convinced that he or she does not have salvation: "We know that this salvation is the gift and work of God, but how can I get it?" If you say to this person, "Believe and you will be saved," the person might answer, "True, but how do I believe?"

You might respond, "Wait on God."

Again, you might hear in response, "OK, but how should I wait. Should I wait and participate in the means of grace, or should I wait without participating? Should I try to use these means of grace as I wait for the grace of God which brings salvation or should I not use them while I wait?"

8. It's impossible to imagine that the word of God has not given us any direction on such an important point. We can't imagine that the Son of God who came down from heaven "for us humans and our salvation" (Nicene Creed) would not have left us without a clear sense of a question that is so connected to our salvation.

And, indeed, he did not leave us without a clear answer. He has shown us the way in which we should go. We only have to consult the oracles of God [in Scripture] and ask what is written there. And if we will simply abide with what they teach, no possible doubt will remain...

Wesley's "Means of Grace" 3

Paraphrasing Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

Part 1
Part 2
___________________
...
6. Experience shows how easily this idea spreads and insinuates itself into the minds of people. And it happens especially to those who have been awakened from the sleep of death, those who begin to feel the weight of their sins a burden too heavy to bear. Such individuals are usually impatient about their current state and are trying to find a way to escape it. They are eager to catch any new idea, any new proposal for ease or happiness. They probably have already tried these sorts of outward means and found no relief in them. Indeed, they may have experienced as a result more and more remorse, fear, sorrow, and condemnation.

Therefore, it is easy to persuade them that it is better to abstain from all these means. They are already tired of working hard, seemingly in vain. They are tired of working in the fire. They are therefore eager for any excuse to through them aside, actions in which they are finding no pleasure. They want to get up their painful striving and to sink down into lazy inactivity.

II1. In the following discussion, I want to examine in general whether there actually are any "means of grace."

By "means of grace," I mean outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this purpose, to be the normal ways that God uses to convey grace to us--grace that leads us to him (prevenient grace), grace that makes us right with him (justifying grace), and grace that actually makes us righteous (sanctifying grace)...

Wesley: "Means of Grace" 2

Paraphrasing Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

Part 1

Now Part 2
___________________
...

5. At the same time, in their zeal for the glory of God, in their attempt to recover souls from the fatal delusion that ritual acts are effective in themselves, isn't it strange that some of these individuals would speak as if "outward religion"--things like prayers, reading Scriptures, and communion--is completely meaningless and has no place in following Christ? Certainly it was because they were strongly convinced that the abuse of these "ordinances," these God-ordained activities, had spread across the whole church and almost driven true religion out of the world. It isn't surprising at all that they have not always been careful enough as they have expressed themselves. If you weren't careful, someone listening might think they were saying that all outward actions were completely useless and not actually designed by God to be the normal way God conveys his grace to our souls.

Indeed, it is possible that some of these holy voices did themselves fall extensively into this position. I'm thinking especially here of those who were cut off from these ordinances, not by choice, but in God's providence. Some  were forced to wander the earth with no place to live, even living in the caves and crannies of the earth. Since they were able to experience the grace of God directly, because they were deprived of these outward means in the Church, some might easily have jumped to the conclusion that grace would still be given to those who intentionally stay away from them...

Wesley - "The Means of Grace" 1

Yesterday I started paraphrasing one of John Wesley's sermons, "On a Catholic Spirit." However, I found that someone else has already done a fine job of that here. There are a few other Wesley resources there in modern English.

A man named Teddy Ray has also done three of Wesley's sermons in contemporary English ("Salvation by Faith," "The Almost Christian," and "Awake, Thou That Sleepest"). Ken Kinghorn has published all of them in modern English in three volumes.

Rather unmotivating, but I'm willing to give a new sermon a try, one that isn't represented above on the web (Kinghorn's is only in book form). I thought I'd start over with one that Wesley Seminary MDIV students read in their first semester spiritual formation course, "The Means of Grace."
____________________
Scripture: Malachi 3:7
"You have gone away from my decrees and have not kept them."

I. 1. Are any decrees from God now, since the gospel brought life and immortality to light? Under the Christian dispensation, are there any usual channels, any means of grace that are ordained by God now?

This question would never have been asked in the early church by the apostles, except by some pagan who came to Christ out of the blue with no knowledge. On the contrary, the whole body of Christians were agreed that God had instituted certain outward means, certain paths by which he conveyed his grace into the souls of humanity. [1] The early church's constant practice of these sorts of actions makes this claim beyond dispute for as long as "all believed and had all things in common" (Acts 2:44). And, "They continued firmly in the teaching of the apostles, in breaking bread together, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42).

2. But in time, when "the love of many waxed cold" (Matt. 24:12), some began to mistake the means of grace for an end in itself. [2] They began to think that faith and religion [3] was about those outward actions themselves rather than having a heart that is renewed to be like God, for the image of God in us to be renewed. [4] They forgot that the goal of every commandment of God is "love, from a pure heart" with a "faith that isn't faked" (1 Tim. 1:5). The goal is for us to love God with all our heart and our neighbor like ourselves. It is to be purified from pride, anger, and evil desire by "faith in the working of God" (Col. 2:12).

Nevertheless, some seemed to think that there was something about these outward actions in themselves that would make them pleasing and acceptable to God, even though the heart of faith does not lie in these outward means, even though they did not show the same concern for the more important commands of God--justice, mercy, and the love of God.

3. In this case, it is clear that individuals who abused these means of God's grace were not using them in the way that God intended them to be used, for the reasons God instituted them. Rather, that which was meant to make them whole actually became a cause of failure. They were so far from receiving any blessing from them. Rather, they were bringing down a curse on their heads. So far from growing "more heavenly," more like God in their hearts and the way they lived--the purpose of these outward actions--they became "twice as much a child of hell" as before (Matt. 23:15).

Then as an over-reaction, when others saw that these actions did not change these children of the Devil, they began to say that these actions were not tools for facilitating God's work in us at all, that they were not means of grace at all.

4. In most of Christian history, the number of those who abused these channels of God's transforming power was far greater than those who ended up despising them. Yet in recent history, certain individuals have arisen who would also throw them away who have made this way of thinking into a more significant movement. [5] Here I have in mind individuals of great understanding, sometimes with considerable learning, people who seem to be people of love. These are people who in practice are well acquainted with true, inward religion. Some of them have been shining lights, people who were famous in their time, people who have stood in the gap against the tide of ungodliness, the kind of people that the church of Christ needs.

At first, these holy and noble individuals did not intend to do anything more than to show that outward religion is worthless unless it also involves a religion of the heart, because "God is a Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). Therefore, external worship is worthless unless it is accompanied by a heart devoted to God. But if it is accompanied by this heart, then these outward actions God has put in place bring a great benefit. Then they advance us in holiness (being pure in our hearts).

But when these actions do not advance inward holiness, they are useless and pointless. They are less than pointless. Indeed, when they have nothing to do with our hearts, they are a complete abomination to the Lord....

[1] It might be helpful to get on the table right off the bat what Wesley is talking about here. He is talking about actions like prayer, searching the Scriptures, communion. As "means of grace," Wesley believed that God especially transformed people as they prayed, read the Bible, and partook of the Lord's Supper. As will be clear, he did not think this happened automatically, but he would have said people were transformed more often when doing these things than when doing other things.

[2] Here Wesley might have had in mind both the Roman Catholic Church of his day as well as, no doubt, many in his own church, the Church of England or Anglican Church. Wesley of course lived in the 1700s.

[3] The word religion has taken on a negative connotation today, so I have added the word faith here. It is important to realize that this condemnation of the word "religion" is just a recent fad of language in certain Christian circles. To critique Wesley for using the word religion is only to be ignorant of how the connotations and meanings of words change over time.

[4] The image of God in us for Wesley especially refers to the part of us that, when God restores us, is like God, especially when it comes to goodness (the moral image of God in us).

[5] I have considerably expanded this sentence to give context. Wesley is thinking here of the Anabaptist movement of the 1500s, 1600s, which continued in his day and has persisted to the present. They would reject "means of grace" altogether as a concept.

Scripture as Sacrament (theology series)

In lieu of my Sunday theology posts, I've thought about doing some of my own kind of MOO (minus the C in course).  Eventually, I hope to have the equivalent of several "courses" on my tutorial blog, including a systematic theology one.  Maybe on Sundays to continue with theology...

John Wesley quote--"Means of Grace"

Spiritual formation class this week is reading Wesley's 16th sermon: "The Means of Grace." In keeping with Wesleyan theology, Wesley's signature is a collection of standard sermons rather than a systematic theology--practice and formation oriented rather than theoretical and informational. Long made fun of by snobby modernist intellectuals, we wear it at the beginning of the twenty-first century with pride.

Came across this quote today: "We know that there is no inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord's Supper; but that it is God alone who is the Giver of very good gift, the Author of all grace; that the whole power is of Him, whereby, through any of these, there is any blessing conveyed to our souls" (Vol. 5, 188).

Pagan Christianity 9-10: Tithing and Sacraments

Two chapters from Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity today:

The previous posts were:

1. Viola's Preface
2. Barna's Introduction
3. The Church Building
4. The Order of Worship
5. The Sermon
6. The Pastor
7. Sunday Go to Meeting Clothes
8. Music in the Church

And now for the two chapters for today. Two more weeks and we'll be done, d.v.

Chapter 8: “Tithing and Clergy Salaries: Sore Spots on the Wallet”
As usual, Viola is half right and half extreme. The first part of this chapter has to do with tithing, the giving of a tenth of one’s income to the Lord. Underlying his position is of course the fact that he is concerned about giving one tenth to the church. He does not believe in “institutional” churches, so we would expect him to have a sharp distinction in his mind between giving to a church and giving to the Lord.

His bottom line is that “tithing, while biblical, is not Christian” (183). He is mostly right, but I think at least a quarter wrong. Is tithing biblical? Yes, he says, because we find it in the Old Testament. It is not Christian, he would say, because it is not required in the New Testament. He is right that the New Testament does not require a tithe of Gentile believers. Where he is wrong is to suggest that, for this reason, tithing is unchristian.

My problem with Viola’s interpretation is thus not that he is wrong on his read of the New Testament—for the most part at least. He is very much stuck in a naïve version of the “old perspective” on Paul, as most pop speakers like him are. Paul’s teaching on the Jewish Law is far more complex than the simple categories with which Viola operates, as our ongoing review of N. T. Wright’s book on justification shows.

So Viola is right that the Old Testament tithe was an agricultural rather than a monetary tithe. He is right that it was for Levites and the poor in general (I have serious questions about his 23.3% gig--there are probably layers of Old Testament tradition involved on these sorts of issues, where you have differing traditions about what the tithe was more than things to combine with each other). He is right that the New Testament never binds the tithe rule on Gentile believers. Jesus does affirm the Pharisees for tithing their spices in Matthew 23, but they were Jews.

The New Testament urges giving proportional to God’s blessing, but never sets an amount or a percent (e.g., 2 Cor. 9:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).

Where Viola is wrong, as always, is to jump from 1) the Bible does not require it to 2) it is wrong for a church to require it. Just as there were Nazirites who bound themselves to a different way of life, there is nothing wrong with denominations binding together into distinct identities. Paul’s principle with regard to the Sabbath was “one person considers one day above a day; another considers every day the same” (Rom. 14:5). Both need to get off the other’s back. Viola gives proportionately; Wesleyans tithe. I affirm you Viola. Get off our backs.

I might say, by the way, that I have serious doubts about statements like these, “Not a few poor Christians have been thrown into deeper poverty because they have felt obligated to give beyond their means” (179). If anything, churches struggle financially because people don’t tithe, not because everyone’s sending themselves to the poor house because they’re tithing.

The second half of the chapter is where Viola really jumps the shark. Viola’s attempt in the “delving DEEPER” section to dodge the clear implications of 1 Timothy 5:17-18 that assemblies should support their elders materially are completely unconvincing, “the worker is worth their reward.” The same in 1 Corinthians 9—a passage that Viola almost completely avoids. It is appropriate to support materially those who “tread the grain” for them.

The early church did come to have a ministry structure, and Paul admonishes churches to support these leaders materially. Indeed, Paul considers it an obligation. I'm not saying that institutional churches have a good record with money. But as usual Viola throws the baby out with the bath water.

I don't have a problem with the ministers in the house church movement who are supporting themselves. I respect and affirm them. But Viola is the one being unbiblical when he suggests they do not have a "right" to the material support of those to whom they minister, even if like Paul they do not use that right.

Paul, by the way, probably did so to avoid the strings of patronage. Viola mentions the occasional conflict of interests when you need to preach on a topic that steps on the toes of heavy contributors in the church. That situation does bear directly on Paul's practices.

Chapter 9: Baptism and the Lord's Supper: Diluting the Sacraments
The first half of this chapter is on baptism and found me wondering what Viola's background was before he went house church. I wonder if he was Disciples of Christ or Baptist because this chapter seemed to be on a slightly different traditional trajectory than some others, which have seemed much more straight Anabaptist.

First he dismisses infant baptism out of hand. I have come to prefer it. It is interesting because in some ways it would fit with Viola's community focus. In this chapter, for example, he really rejects the "sinner's prayer" (he really hates Moody for some reason). And he rejects the language of a personal relationship with Christ. There is a possible world in which Viola's emphasis on community and disdain for individualism would lead him to affirm infant baptism.

Since I'm on individualism, Viola is of course right that the sinner's prayer was invented to give people a path to becoming a Christian and is not exactly found in any one place in Scripture. And he's right that the emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ is a peculiarly contemporary American phenomenon. As usual, his delving DEEPER section (was this section in the first edition? I suspect he is answering real questions from people) is more balanced. Yes, "We certainly should make our own confessions of faith" (198).

The "diluting" of baptism for Viola is the thinking that the sinner's prayer is basically it. Interestingly--because it seems out of keeping with the trend of the rest of the book--Viola wants a person to be baptized ASAP after coming to faith. But I think he makes too much of the connection between baptism and being "saved" in the New Testament. Receiving the Spirit is the definitive marker of becoming a Christian in Acts, Paul, and Hebrews. Paul de-emphasizes the importance of the act in 1 Corinthians 1.

And again, Viola wrongly assumes that we have to do everything exactly the way the earliest Christians did. Yes, let's baptize soon after a person receives the Spirit. Immersion? Why not, I like the symbolism. Infants? I prefer it because 1) baptism does not save (1 Pet. is figurative), 2) I believe it fits the corporate formulation of identity reflected in the early church, and 3) it says our children are in the church and that we are guarding their souls until they are old enough to decide for themselves what faith path their own life will take. I will tolerate you holding our children out a three story window of faith until they are old enough to ask you to kindly let them come into the safety of the house if you will tolerate my affirmation of God's prevenient grace and predilection to save rather than to damn.

Then of course Viola gets to communion. Yes, it was originally a meal. Yes, I find the individual crackers and cups of juice highly perverse when one primary meaning of the meal is "because there is one bread, we are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). Hard to see how individual cups and wafers convey the unity of the body at all but in an American context simply reinforces the false idea that we are only in a personal relationship with Christ. The corporate dimension is primary, the personal dimension secondary. Viola is right here.

I think Viola is part right and part wrong on examining ourselves. What the Corinthians were to examine is whether they rightly discerned the body of Christ as they ate, namely, the church. Were they in proper relationship to their brothers and sisters as they partook. So it was an examination of corporate sin Paul had in mind rather than individual sin.

Nevertheless, there is a power to the abbreviated "meal" we now take that I believe God has sanctioned. What could be wrong with taking this moment, indeed many moments to examine your own life in terms of sin and righteousness? There is a place for the "pot luck," but I can't remember any that were as powerful spiritually as some moments I've had in communion.

So the eucharistic service is a development from the New Testament in some ways, but it is so powerful that I have to believe it is a God ordained one. Viola's assemblies are losing something if they abandon the possibility of God ordained "sacred moments" (sacraments) like communion where ordinary bread and juice can become catalysts for the "real" presence of Christ. Yes, he's always there. Yes, you can experience his "real" presence anywhere.

But God seems to have given this particular place and time His approval, as with baptism. And God has the right to create a thousand other "sacred moments" on the spot whenever and wherever He chooses.