Somewhere Between Nashville and Denver

Recently a group of very influential pastors from across the country came together and published the Nashville Statement which appears to condemn all same sex relationships. In response another group of very influential pastors have come together and published the Denver Statement which appears to affirm all same sex relationships. There will be a lot of folks who won’t speak out against the Nashville Statement because they’re afraid it will be seen as an affirmation of all same sex relationships and at the same time there will be people who won’t speak out in support of the Denver Statement for the same reason. The majority of people that I talk to about this issue don’t support or condemn all same sex relationships, but they’re stuck somewhere in the middle and usually looked at skeptically by both sides. We desperately need a Witchita Statement or even better a Witchita Conference where men and women from both sides come together. Que the Seven Nation Army clip, “I’m going to Witchita, far from this opera forever more!” Maybe it could be the conferences theme song. The rest of this post will be an attempt to briefly explain why I do not condemn all same sex relationships and why I do not affirm all same sex relationships.

There are many problems with the Nashville Statement but the reason I do not condemn all same sex relationships is directly related to the mistakes made in ARTICLE I. Sex and Parenting ARE joyful parts of a marriage, they ARE NOT essential to the purpose of marriage. It is incredibly dangerous and harmful to attribute aspects of a marriage relationship that millions of men and women cannot experience to its purpose. This is why I believe that men and women can experience physical and psychological conditions that would allow for a same sex marriage that aligns with God’s purposes. One example of this would be illustrated by a young person I met at camp this summer who was born with both male and female genitalia and they told me that their parents chose their gender at birth and they would never be able to have children. I believe this person could marry a man or a woman and that marriage could be blessed by God because gender, sex, and parenting are not essential. God’s ultimate purpose for marriage is to reflect the gospel and reveal to us the mystery that is the union of Christ and His Church. This is just one example and I believe there are many other conditions that would result in a same sex marriage that God would bless.

The reason I don’t affirm all same sex relationships is also the reason why I could not support the Denver Statement. ARTICLE IV states, “WE AFFIRM that the glorious variety of gender and sexual expression is a reflection of God’s original creation design and are aspects of human flourishing.WE DENY that such variations are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.” I do not believe that all gender and sexual expressions reflect God’s original design. I speak to far too many young men and women who are suffering from gender dysphoria as a result of sexual abuse to affirm the variety of their sexual expressions. God did not want the abuse to take place and God does not want the victims to struggle with the inevitable sexual confusion. These and many more are sexual expressions that have resulted from the fall. Some results of the fall have resulted in men and women not having the ability to experience the joy of sex and parenting and all of these conditions are tragedies that often require a tremendous amount of love, time, and prayer to overcome.

The reason I believe both sides in this debate have missed the mark is because of the methods they are using to interpret scripture. There are many passages of scripture where it was not the author’s intent for the passage to be taken at face value AND there are many passages of scripture where it was the author’s intent for the passage to be taken at face value, but the author’s intent is not the key to the passages interpretation. The key to the passages interpretation is found in the ways it sheds light or points to God’s nature as revealed in the perfect self-sacrificing love revealed in Christ.  The men and women involved in drafting the Nashville Statement have relied too heavily on authorial intent and the folks involved in drafting the Denver Statement have made the mistake of over correcting. Creating rules for faith and practice in response to corruption often results in an over correction (Many are preparing to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the greatest over correction in the history of the church!) It is my greatest desire that this post will help humanize this debate. There are many theological discussions that don’t have a strong and direct effect on the emotional well-being of men and women in the church, but this is not one of them. The men and women within the LGBTQ community deserve better. They do not deserve to be cannon fonder in yet another conservative versus liberal ecclesiastic war.  

Evangelical Interpretive Schizophrenia

EIS for short. It’s a problem that has plagued the Western Church for the past five hundred years. There is this strange belief that we can go through the Reformation, then the Radical Reformation, then the crazy roller coaster that has been North American religion for the past two hundred years, then just start quoting church fathers in defense of our doctrines. And before you start thinking the title of this article is just your typical polemic click-bait, check out Webster’s definition for the non-medical form of schizophrenia, “contradictory or antagonistic qualities or attitudes.” The two clearest examples of this theological category that come to mind are the men and women associated with The Center For Baptist Renewal (CBR) and Mere Orthodoxy (MO), and I cannot be more excited that Brian Zahnd’s new book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God has brought together two sides of the same coin. What I mean by the same coin is that the tension created by the contradictory nature of modern North American religion has brought about two very different responses. One side represented (in my mind) by CBR and MO and the other side represented by (again in my opinion) the second generation of the emergent movement with pastors like Brian Zahnd, Johnathan Martin, and Greg Boyd. If my hypothesis is true that the evangelical church is suffering from some type of interpretive schizophrenia then this forced confrontation would culminate in a never ending debate about who is reading the bible right and guess what has happened? Bingo, the debate has begun.

First I want to make yet another defense of why Brian Zahnd is not a “Marcionite” or a “neo-Marcionite” or a “semi-Marciontite” or whatever other term someone might have labeled him in the time it has taken me to write this post. Then I want to suggest that it is a difference in eschatology that is ultimately fueling our inability to see each other’s interpretations clearly. The reason we’re so quick to label Brian a Marcionite like Mark James has recently done in his guest post at MO here, is because we have distanced ourselves from scripture. If we saw the revolutions of the 18th and 19th century as prophetic judgements against the principalities that came to power through the dark ages no one would be accusing Brian of heresy. If we saw events that happened in the past five hundred years as God exercising his wrath against evil empires in the same way that we saw God exercising his wrath against evil empires in scripture it would be easier for us to view his judgement and wrath as the natural consequences of those empire's sins. But because we create such a divide in our minds we superimpose a different kind of direct wrath on those events in the Old Testament. And the reason creating that divide is so easy for us is our faulty eschatology. In our rush to find patristic sources that verify our current interpretations we often skip over the ones that would make us question ourselves.

There is undoubtedly no greater illustration of this point than Jerome. Poor Jerome, his translation of the Old Testament was the chosen favorite of Rome and the Reformers but they both rejected his eschatology and the Reformers rejected his opinion on what should and should not be in the bible.  The later observation is even more evidence regarding my EIS theory, because if we consider ourselves men and women who take the bible seriously, which seems to be a core tenet of evangelicalism, we sure have a hard time deciding what is and is not the bible! There seems to be no greater theological tragedy than the fact that Athanasius’ On the Incarnation and Jerome’s commentary on Daniel are not required reading in every single bible college in our nation (neither of which were required at both of the bible colleges I left). Jerome clearly saw Daniel’s interpretation of “the image” as referring to empires culminating in Rome and the rock that grew into a mountain filling the earth as Christ and His Church. This is important because many of the church fathers had an eschatology and an interpretation of the book of Daniel and Revelation that agrees with Brian Zahnd. God’s judgement and wrath was carried out against evil empires like Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, Great Britain, France, and Russia through the natural consequences of their sinful actions.

P.S. The bible colleges I left were Moody Bible Institute and Indiana Wesleyan University even though I’m not sure whether IWU considers itself a bible college and I didn’t make it to the higher level courses because their obsession with the inductive bible study method was border line cruel and unusual punishment.  

P.P.S It is my hope that further study into the relationship between the Reformers and the Eastern Orthodox Church will help shed light on the pattern of thought mining the fathers in defense of our own doctrines that exists in the Protestant church. An incredible resource for this further study is a collection of correspondence between the Tubingen theologians and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Jeremiah II in the book Augsburg and Constantinople.

P.P.P.S. (As those this article wasn’t incendiary enough, I’m including a post post post script) It is also my hope that works like David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament will help to break the interpretive stranglehold that the evangelical community has had on scripture. A great review of this translation by Brad Jersak can be seen here.   

Truth from a Disc Jockey, Lies from a Preacher

I watched two videos today on the topic of racism and they could not have been more different. The first was a Q&A session with one of the most famous pastors in the United States, John MacArthur. Matt Emerson shared this clip on Twitter and gave his thoughts on the generational gap that seems to exist regarding race relations in our culture. In his comments MacArthur made the assertion that the tragic events in Charlottesville had nothing to do with race, but the wickedness of the human heart and its constant desire for violence. He went on to praise his own actions during the civil rights movement and criticized civil rights activists in Charlottesville. I live in Terre Haute, Indiana and every day I see confederate flags hanging in the windows of houses and flying from the backs of pickup trucks. I point this out because I disagree with Emerson about the gap he pointed out being a generational one. I see it as a geographic problem and not between North and South, because I live above the Mason Dixon Line, but between rural and urban. Many young people that I know who live in rural communities believe that most of the problems minorities faced during the civil rights era have been resolved. But young men and women from urban neighborhoods see the continued inequality up close and personal every day.

The second video I watched was from a good friend of mine named Ryan Harvey. He shared the video on his podcast here. He discussed the controversy that is still swirling around Colin Kaepernick, but even more importantly, in my opinion, he discusses the truth about why people who have different opinions about these issues can’t ever come to an agreement. I don’t know if it was his intention or not but his comments also shed light on why the church in the US is so divided and weak. Often times men and women who have risked their lives for the flag, or what our flag represents, feel that their experiences objectify their opinions. This is why politicians roll out wounded veterans every time they are making a controversial decision regarding our military. This is true, however, of all of us not just veterans. We think that our experiences have given us a unique and clear picture of what is true and because we trust our experiences more than those of people who are much different than us it can be very difficult for us to change our minds about almost anything. To make the problem even worse we often speak out strongly about things that our unique experiences make us feel confident about, and once we’ve spoken out boldly about something it’s next to impossible for us to listen to someone who disagrees. Brian Zahnd has a powerful message, Jesus by Night, about an old pastor named Nicodemus who was confronted with the reality of having to change his mind about what God was like even though he had taught people his whole life something different. It is my prayer that men and women across our nation, myself included, will develop the humility necessary to not only hear but to truly listen to those that disagree with us.  

Response to "The Review"

As a father of seven, a full-time minister, and a part-time farmer I have to work very hard at finding time to read. I hesitantly put down my copy of Ephraim Radner's Brutal Unity, in order to read Brian Zahnd’s Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God. I say hesitantly because I have stated before and continue to believe that Brutal Unity may be the most important book for the church in this generation. However, Radner may now have some competition, not from SITHOALG, which is powerful and much needed, but from the firestorm of conversation it has generated between different traditions within the church. I thought it would only take me a few days to read, since SITHOALG is a short book, but then came the review. That's right, in the furthest reaches of the blogosphere and twitterverse it has come to be known by those two words alone, The Review. I follow an extremely eclectic group of people on twitter and my feed was filled with love and hate for Derek Rishmawy’s review. Derek pointed out many things that I had thought myself while reading and I agreed with many of his criticisms. That being said he also made some fairly egregious mistakes, but none were as offensive as the length. My goodness, Athanasius completed his masterwork On the Incarnation in just a few more pages than it took Rishmawy to review a two hundred and seven page book. I had to download the PDF and print it from our church computer just to make it through. So, along with responding to Derek’s criticisms this article is a plea for a restoration of dialectic brevity.

If you’re anything like me when you read John 3:18, “whoever does not believe is condemned already,” your mind probably assumes that John is referring to atheists, agnostics, or adherents of other religions but that would be a mistake. Most atheists that I have spoken with do not believe BECAUSE what they heard was not the gospel. I agree with Derek’s final sentence that the gospel really is at stake. And he was right that many of Jesus’ parables and teachings do describe wrath and judgement. What he failed to point out, however, is that Jesus’ harshest rebukes and threats of judgement and wrath were reserved for religious leaders who had prayed and thought deeply about what God is like. Many of those leaders had heard the true gospel. The Holy Spirit had revealed to them the infinite depth of God’s love and mercy, but they rejected it. Yes, Jesus says that those who mistreat the poor will experience God’s wrath but the New Testament overwhelmingly points out that it is those who claim to be teachers and mislead people about God’s true nature that will experience the most severe punishment. After all, it is the son who has spent the most time with his father, in the parable of The Prodigal Son, who experiences the most pain at the party.

Take another parable Derek mentions, The Vineyard Owner and the Wicked Tenants, where the vineyard owner clearly represents God the Father and the wicked tenants represent the men and women God has entrusted to care for his kingdom. It is the wicked tenants who experience the wrath of the owner of the vineyard, not the owner’s son. The owner’s son experiences the wrath of the tenants not the wrath of his father. This is important because it highlights the fact that Rishmawy’s theology actually comes up short under the microscope he is using to criticize Zahnd. Penal Substitutionary Atonement is actually the view that does not take sin seriously enough. Yes, men and women will experience the natural consequences of their sin in this life, as Derek and Brian agree, but it is only in the Orthodox system, that Zahnd supports, where sinners experience the consequences of their sin in the next life. Reformed theologians would have you believe that Christ takes the personal punishment “for specific crimes by specific sinners against specific victims” on the cross, but they have a very difficult time explaining what that punishment is. We already agreed that it isn’t the natural consequences of our sin because we all continue to experience those even after coming to faith. And when pushed about whether they believe Christ took the punishments of sinners, as they believe the punishment will be (actual rejection by God and separation from his love) they deny that as well. In the Orthodox view we see that Christ has not taken the punishment of the Father but that we all must face the final judgement.   

When someone in this life becomes aware of the truth of God and experiences the pure power of his presence their reaction is much like Isaiah during his encounter described in Isaiah chapter six, or the princess in George McDonald’s Lilith when the slow worm buries itself deep within her bosom. God’s glory reveals to us the reality of our own nature and the pain associated with that revelation would be unbearable if it weren’t for God’s presence. You see this is the reality of God’s wrath in the next life. When we cross over and experience the beatific vision (Orthodox not Catholic version, no time to distinguish or we would end up with a twenty one page review) it will be an almost unbearable agony for some and an almost unbearable ecstasy for others. It will be ecstasy for those like Lazarus, agony for those like the rich man, and possibly unbearable for those who claimed to be teachers and led men and women astray. Please let me explain. Someone who was born into sin, never hears the gospel, committs horrendous atrocities, then meets God face to face will weep and gnash their teeth as they realize the depth of their sin. But it will be like nothing compared to men and women who heard the gospel, who felt the pull of the Holy Spirit calling them to change their minds, and yet they refused. This is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, this is the greater strictness, and this is the wrath of the owner of the vineyard.       

This is the meaning of wrath in the scriptures and in the Eastern tradition, but when you are overly dismissive of half of Christian history, tradition, and theology you miss it. You miss the depth of their thinking because you never fully engage with it and Rishmawy ultimately ends up as guilty of the sin he is accusing Zahnd of committing. This is also the reason why N.T. Wright has had to work so hard at convincing Western Christianity of the basics of Orthodox Eastern Christianity. You simply can’t understand Orthodox Christianity in its fullness through cursory readings and western criticisms. You have to do the difficult work of studying Eastern theologians throughout history. The truly sad part of this entire debate is the reality that when all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed there truly is only a hairs width between Derek and Brian’s theology, but the width of that hair makes all the difference in this life and the next.

All Arminians are Calvinists and all Calvinists are Pantheists

Arminians are Calvinists and Calvinists are pantheists. This may come as a shock to you but based on two articles that were shared recently the vast majority of Western Christians are really pagans they just don’t know it. Earlier this week Scot Mcknight shared an article on Calvinism stating that, “when you confuse Providence and Determinism, the transcendent gets collapsed into the creation.” and it “…becomes indistinguishable from pantheism…” You can read his full article here. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of suggesting that the church fathers agreed with his position, but he didn’t explain the philosophical underpinnings of their views. This left the door open for Calvinist detractors to critique two popular Arminian systems of thought, Molinism and the Best Possible World theory (BPW) put forth by Gottfried Leibniz, and detract they did! Derek Rishmawy posted an article he had written where he suggested that love was to generic a reason for God to allow suffering. Then two days later he shared an article written by Rev. Dr. Mark Jones titled "Why All Arminians are Calvinists." Dr. Jones supports this claim by giving a brief overview of Molinism and stating that because God, in the Molinist system, made his eternal creative decrees based on his knowledge of future contingencies, specifically knowing who would and would not come to faith, Arminianism is basically an “anonymous” Calvinism. You can read Rishmawy’s article here and “no time for love” Dr. Jones’ article here. I won’t go into all of the details about how misguided their critiques are but in short Rishmawy implies that having a generic reason like love or free will for pain makes suffering pointless, his word not mine, and towards the end of Dr. Jones article he seems to be arguing that Arminians don’t believe in any form of election and if they do they are somehow magically Calvinists.

I can still remember the first few times I tried explaining Molinism and BPW to a new friend of mine who happened to be Eastern Orthodox. I thought the systems were the perfect balance between Arminianism and Calvinism and if only the whole world knew it the Protestant church would be reconciled and it would usher in the second coming. You can imagine my surprise when he replied that it all sounded a little to utilitarian and that he had stopped thinking of God as working in those ways. At first his response frustrated and confused me. It wasn’t until many years later when I read a chapter in “The Brothers Karamazov” titled “Rebellion” that I realized BPW was not a silver bullet theodicy that would bring even the most ardent atheists to faith, and considering it's one of my all time favorite chapters I can't help but include a passage. "Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is." After Dostoevsky I began reading the works of Gregory Palamas and I realized what my friend had meant about an overly utilitarian ontology. I am not sure about McKnight's particular view of election but Arminianism, Molinism, and Open Theism are not the only options for those rejecting Calvinism. During my own wrestling with these issues I realized something else. The theological trenches between Protestant denominations were dug much deeper than I had first imagined and there’s no silver bullet to solving those dilemmas either. Most people agree that a difference of opinion regarding these issues does not justify institutional division within the church but the longer we go unjustly divided the harder it is for us to repent and admit we’ve been wrong. It’s much easier to spend ever increasing amounts of time and resources devoted to furthering our own tribes and by extension our own theological systems because in the words of Isaac Everrett, “the sword is much lighter than the plow.”

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