A third form of liberal Christianity

David Watson, academic dean at United Theological Seminary, writes — in a much more theologically robust way — about the same topic in my last post.

In responding to an article that describes two kinds of liberal (or progressive) Christianity, Watson adds a third category:

There is, however, another type of Christianity that has attached itself to progressivism. I will call it “issues-based” Christianity. This type of Christianity leads with issues and couches the issues in God-talk. The goal of our faith is to transform society in such a way as to meet particular ideas of social justice. Salvation is primarily, then, a this-worldly social category. Issues of conversion, personal transformation, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, and eternal life are simply left out of the discussion. …

To be clear, as a Wesleyan I am thoroughly committed to the Church’s role in transforming society. My own passions in this area are mainly around people with disabilities. Our work in society, however, must be grounded in a full-bodied conception of the nature and work of the Holy Trinity. Our claims about God lead to our understanding of how we should live and what the world should look like, not the other way around. Theology must first and foremost be about God.

As I have begun to explore the issues of disability and theology, I have seen some of what Watson writes about here. The temptation is to start with people and let our conclusions about them shape or limit what are willing to say about God. I hear Watson calling for an inversion of this movement. That God-first approach is what I am trying to do in my own faith and spirituality.

A liberal, Yoderian, biblical, Wesleyan chorus

A pair of stories I linked to a few days ago has been rumbling around in my head. The British writer of the stories was diagnosing the problems of liberal Christianity and providing his prescription for a cure for what ails it.

The articles keep bouncing around in my head because of all the other voices they set to chattering as I was reading them.

The writer argues for a form of Christianity that affirms the liberal nation-state: particularly the separation of church and state and the notion that government exists to preserve and extend human liberty. But he argues that the form of Christianity that affirmed this political philosophy took a wrong turn when it tried to divest itself of “cultic” practices.

The second pillar of the new liberal Christianity is a bit more surprising. For in the past, liberal Christianity has downplayed the ritual side of religion, often seeing it as a road leading to Rome. I prefer the term “cultic” to “ritual”. Of course, I’m not advocating creepy cults that brainwash people. The word “cult” just means worship; I like it because it has a strong and rather exotic aura (whereas “worship” suggests the blandness of Songs of Praise, and “ritual” is redolent of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic tradition). The word has, in fact, a primitive aura, which is appropriate, for Christianity must step away from claiming to be the religion of rational civilisation and accept its affinity with primitive religious practice (this was Wittgenstein’s great contribution to theology).

His great hope is for liberal Christianity to recapture its cultural relevance and influence. He does not really discuss how this form of liberal Christianity would escape the Arianism or Deism that characterizes so much contemporary liberal Christianity. Somehow, it seems, cultic practices would take care of that.

I do not know if other proponents of liberal Christianity would affirm this writer’s thesis, but I did find it an interesting argument. It is one that set off other voices in my head.

As I read his piece, I could hear Stanley Hauerwas jeering in the background. A self-described high-church Mennonite, Hauerwas likes to tell Christians that if they celebrate Mother’s Day or have an American flag in the church they are practicing a form of Baalism. They thing this writer affirms as foundational, Hauerwas names a disease.

As I read, I was also thinking of those problematic passages in the New Testament where Paul and Peter urge the fledgling church to give honor to the emperor. Often these parts of the New Testament are dismissed as overtures by a persecuted church to keep the storm-troopers at bay. But I do wonder if giving honor to the emperor and affirming the liberal nation state might be more or less the same kind of move. Is the church called the way Jeremiah called Israel to settle down and work for the good of Babylon during its days of exile?

And here the third voice emerges. American Methodists have always been put in an awkward position by John Wesley’s Toryism. He wrote in strong language against the American Revolution and was a firm defender of the king and the close bond between the Church of England and the state. (Jason Vickers has written a poorly titled but interesting book on Wesley as an establishment Anglican.)

If liberal Christianity is at all what the writer in the British newspaper argues it is, it is no wonder that John Wesley fits so awkwardly into contemporary United Methodism. We are a denomination created to be a stalwart of liberal Christianity — just when all forms of Christianity were losing their cultural ascendancy. Wesley can’t be shoved into the liberal Christian box without making a bloody mess of him. This does not stop some people from doing it, of course. That they then parade around the bloody corpse of Wesley as a banner for liberal Christianity is either tragedy or farce.

These are the voices I carry around most of the time.

I came to the church through liberal Christianity. I was introduced to post-liberalism by Will Williion and Stanley Hauerwas. I discovered the Bible only well into this process, and I met John Wesley when I discerned a call to ministry. This chorus of voices still spend a lot of time in my head. There are others, but these are the loudest.

And here endeth the tour for today. Please stop by the gift shop on your way out to pick up a T-shirt or postcard.

Baptists urged to agree to disagree on Calvin

The RNS is reporting that the Southern Baptists Convention is being urged to “agree to disagree” about internal rifts over Calvinism.

The convention received a report on divisions over theology that the RNS summarized this way:

The 3,200-word report calls for mutual respect among the differing factions, saying opponents should talk to each other rather than about each other, especially on social media. Churches and would-be pastors also need to be honest about whether they embrace or shun Calvinism, it said.

The story quotes an interesting passage from the report:

“We deny that the main purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention is theological debate,” it says, noting that the next generation of Southern Baptists don’t want to wonder if the denomination is “on mission or merely a debating society.”

One theologian’s favorite theologians

Roger Olson has been writing about theology recently. In one post, he listed the contemporary theologians who he thought were doing the best theology. He wrote that he did not necessarily agree with what all of these people write, but he does find them to doing good theology. He describes them as his favorites.

For Baptists—Stanley J. Grenz, Bernard Ramm, Millard Erickson, Dale Moody, James McClendon, James Leo Garrett, Paul Fiddes, Daniel Williams, Molly Marshall

For Lutherans—Robert Jenson, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ted Peters, Lois Malcolm

For Pentecostals—Amos Yong, Velli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Macchia, Steven Land, Cheryl Bridges Johns

For Methodists (United and other)—Thomas Oden, William Abraham, Kenneth Collins, Henry Knight, Susie Stanley

For Reformed and Congregationalists—Donald Bloesch, Donald McKim, Jürgen Moltmann, Alan P. F. Sell, Michael Horton, Leeann Van Dyk

For Anglicans/Episcopals—Paul Zahl, N. T. Wright, Rowan Williams, Michael Green, Christopher Hall, Edith Humphreys, Sarah Coakley

For Anabaptists—Thomas Finger, John Howard Yoder, J. Denny Weaver

For Roman Catholics—Walter Kasper, Franz Josef van Beeck, Catherine Mowry LaCugna

For Eastern Orthodox—John Zizioulas, David Bentley Hart, Bradley Nassif, Kallistos Ware

For Generic Evangelicals—John Stackhouse, Kevin Vanhoozer, Greg Boyd, Ruth Tucker, John Sanders, Scot McKnight, Clark H. Pinnock

Postliberal stumbling block

Here is where I hit a speed bump with George Lindbeck:

Thus the linguistic-cultural model is part of an outlook that stresses the degree to which human experience is shaped, molded, and in a sense constituted by cultural and linguistic forms. There are numberless thoughts we cannot think, sentiments we cannot have, and realities we cannot perceive unless we learn to use the appropriate symbol systems. … to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system, of a given religion. To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world in its terms. (emphasis added)

The quote above from his book The Nature of Doctrine highlights the language-liked aspects of religion.

What does postliberal or narrative theology mean for people with limited language or no language?

I don’t think this question falls any more sharply on postliberal theology than cognitive-propositional theology or experiential-expressive theology. But postliberalism is quite persuasive to a lot of people. Who does it exclude from the ranks of the religious?

More fundamentally, does being non-religious mean the same thing as non-Christian?

Do we choose happiness?

Dan Dick writes about the way our happiness is our decision.

Among those who self-report contentment, happiness and satisfaction — as well as those identified as happy or content by others — an overwhelming percentage (between 80-90%) report making a conscious decision to be happy, positive, and joyful.  The source of contentment for the truly content is internal, not external — they do not expect the world to bend over backwards to make them happy; true happiness comes from within.

Dick argues in his post that our happiness is a choice. It is up to us. It is something we decide.

Perhaps it is because I’ve been reading John Wesley’s sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, but I found myself wondering how these claims impacted our reading of the beattitudes:

“Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

“Happy are people who grieve, because they will be made glad.

“Happy are people who are humble, because they will inherit the earth.

“Happy are people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because they will be fed until they are full.

“Happy are people who show mercy, because they will receive mercy.

“Happy are people who have pure hearts, because they will see God.

“Happy are people who make peace, because they will be called God’s children.

“Happy are people whose lives are harassed because they are righteous, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

“Happy are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you, all because of me. Be full of joy and be glad, because you have a great reward in heaven. In the same way, people harassed the prophets who came before you. (MT 5: 3-12, CEB)

Dick seems to me to be arguing that the order of Jesus’ words are inverted. He argues that if I choose to be happy, if I make a decision to be happy, then I will have peace and joy. I’m not sure Dick would extend this to saying that choosing to be happy makes me humble and merciful, and hungry for righteousness.

But there do seem to be some important theological issues at stake here. Is happiness a choice I make that bears fruit in holy dispositions? Or does cultivating the holy dispositions — mercy, purity of heart, peace, humility, etc. — make me happy? (These questions also are in some tension with my post yesterday about dependence on God.)

I suspect part of the distinction that needs to be made here is the definition of happiness. Dick is using self-reports. Are you happy? Wesley interprets happiness as holiness. He argues that there is no real happiness that is distinct from holiness. I suspect a lot of people in America who self-report as happy would not necessarily embrace a Christian definition of holiness of heart and life as the meaning of happiness. So, these two voices might be talking past each other.

What do you think?

Do first impressions matter?

My Indiana colleague Adam Roe wrote an interesting post a few days ago about the way reading Augustine helps us understand John Wesley. (I find reading the church fathers always helps me understand Wesley.)

Roe is concerned in his post that starting our exposure to Wesley with his first standard sermon “Salvation by Faith” sets the wrong tone for understanding Wesley’s theology. It obscures the degree to which Wesley’s theology starts and as built upon a foundation of joy in God.

The key to tying all this together is “glory and joy.” Wesley and Augustine share a sense that the heart is involved in a loving, glorious, joy-filled relationship both individually and within the context of the City of God, the church. This, for me, fundamentally changes Wesley. Rather than a call to severe works-righteousness, it places the emphasis back on being loved by God, and responding in love.

I found Roe’s point interesting because it brought back to my mind the first exposure I had to Wesley. The first sermons of his I remember reading — maybe not actually the the first ones I read but the first ones I remember — were “A Caution Against Bigotry” and “Catholic Spirit.” Although I find those two sermons are often mis-read by 21st century readers, they do set a different tone for me than if I had started with “Salvation by Faith” and “Almost Christian” and “Awake, Thou That Sleepest.”

That may be, in part, why when I read “Salvation by Faith” now, I notice that even there Wesley speaks of salvation as being about joy and love and peace.

They are also saved from the fear, though not from the possibility, of falling away from the grace of God, and coming short of the great and precious promises. Thus have they “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. They rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts, through the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them.” And hereby they are persuaded (though perhaps not at all times, nor with the same fullness of persuasion), that “neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate them from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It would be an interesting inquiry. Does the way in which we first encounter Wesley change how we experience his theology?

What the Pope said

Some folks appear to be losing their minds over words from Pope Francis this week.

Here is a story from the best web site I know that writes about the intersection of religion and journalism. It basically says that Francis is Catholic.

Comments make two good points.

One, Catholics don’t jumble together the words redemption, salvation, justification, and sanctification the way we Protestants often do.

Two, the big deal was really more about an internal Catholic debate over what we would call limited vs. unlimited atonement.

Taking the angle of internal Catholic disagreement, it is more to do with refuting Jansenism, that is, the idea that Christ only died for pro multos (“for many”, not “for all”, which is a controversial phrase for some in the translation of the Mass).

In other words, the death of Christ only redeemed a certain portion of humanity, those chosen beforehand to be redeemed (the elect, more or less) and involves double predestination. To symbolise this, Jansenist crucifixes position the arms of Christ upwards or upright, to denote that only some are included, rather than opened on the cross in the traditional manner to denote that all are redeemed by the deah of Christ.

Pope Francis is reiterating the idea of the natural law (think of the Jewish concept of the Noahide Laws) which ‘is written on the human heart’ and constrains all humans, whether or not they have received news of the Gospel. Atheists, other religions, everyone – we are bound to do certain things and refrain from others due to the fact of our humanity. The duty to do good is one of them – this is not ‘buying your way into heaven by good deeds’, it is not the same as salvation, but it is fulfilling one of the ends for which we were created.

Newbigin on the false gospel

From Lesslie Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks:

A preaching of the gospel that calls men and women to accept Jesus as Savior but does not make it clear that discipleship means commitment to a vision of society radically different from that which controls our public life today must be condemned as false.

Wesleyan take on predestination

Asbury Seedbed has published an excellent summary of the Wesley approach to predestination.

Read it here.

Here is the summary the post offers of the Wesleyan Arminian position on predestination:

 

• It was on the basis of these two areas of concern that Wesley advocated for his evangelical Arminian position on predestination, which can be outlined in the following six points:
  • Total depravity is affirmed by Wesley, meaning that the fallen human being is completely helpless and in bondage to sin. Contrary to popular misconception, Wesley does not believe that fallen human beings have an inherent freedom of the will.
  • The atonement is universal in scope.  Christ’s death was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, not only an elect few, as proposed by five-point Calvinism.
  • Prevenient (or preceding) grace is universally available. God’s grace is present in our lives before we turn to Christ in faith, and this grace restores a measure of freedom so that we can respond to his gracious gift.  This is how Wesley could affirm that all human persons were free to respond to the gospel in spite of total depravity—but note that the freedom which humans possess is a measure of freedom (not absolute freedom in all respects), and it is freedom-by-grace, not an inherent endowment of fallen humanity.
  • Grace is resistible and can be rejected, to our own destruction.  God is actively drawing all people to himself, but his grace is not coercive.
  • Predestination is therefore based on God’s foreknowledge, not his will.  That is, God corporately predestines all those who respond in faith to salvation, and by foreknowledge he knows who will respond.  Yet the response of each person is truly theirs, because God’s foreknowledge does not cause their response.
  • Assurance of salvation is given by the Holy Spirit, who witnesses directly to our adoption as children of God through Christ, and whose fruit in our lives also provides confirmation that we are God’s children.