I Believe We Have Located the Problem…

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Atheism, Canada, Christianity, God, Inclusivity, Liberalism, Scripture, Theism, Truth

While all of us who minister do so only by the grace of God, and I am keenly aware of my unworthiness for this high and holy calling, I think some of the minimal qualifications of pastoral ministry are rather intuitive–such as believing in God.

The United Church of Canada has decided, apparently, that theism is not strictly necessary for pastors.  No doubt it is still desirable in the eyes of that denomination’s discerning leadership that their pastors believe in God; but it is not a deal-breaker.  That is the inescapable message of the news that the denomination has decided Rev. Gretta Vosper, an avowed atheist, will continue to pastor West Hill United Church, in Toronto.

The article linked above, from the liberal Religion News Service, is enlightening.  It begins, “Gretta Vosper is surprised to still be a minister.”  I’d imagine quite a lot of people share her surprise.  It’s a rather puzzling thing, until you follow the (il)logic.

How does the United Church of Canada justify this decision?  Why would a Christian denomination allow an atheist to shepherd a church?  The key is inclusivity.  The denominational leaders found themselves wrestling with the tension between two of their “core values”: “our faith in God” and “our commitment to being an open and inclusive church.”

So, by “inclusive” they mean not simply that they welcome different groups of people, but that they welcome people with a variety of doctrines (or lack thereof) into the clergy.  Aha.  That would create a conflict with your cherished belief in the existence of God.  The leaders of the United Church of Canada have found themselves in the embarrassing situation of wanting to affirm x and not-x at the same time.  I suppose the implication of their solution is that they will accept either x or not-x (please choose one); which is to say that the United Church of Canada believes nothing at all, or at least not with any real conviction.

How does a denomination get to such a pitiful place?  Quite obviously they have let themselves be swept along by the winds of western cultural trends and ideologies; the zeitgeist, rather than the Holy Ghost, has been filling their sails.  But it’s more specific than that.

The atheist pastor herself offers what may be the key.  In this she does a valuable service to orthodox Christianity, if we will heed it.  From the article:

Vosper was willing to go through with the hearing even if the ruling went against her.  She said she is fit for ministry in the church.

She said she believes what she was taught in seminary.

“Everything I teach is consistent with the theological training I received,” the 60-year-old said.  “I was taught the Bible was a human construction, and there is much wisdom in many texts, both ancient and contemporary.”

During her studies, Vosper said she learned that the Bible isn’t the only source of spiritual or moral authority.

“If the Bible is not the authoritative word of God for all time,” she says, “why does it take such a central position in the United Church?”

Well, I think she has put her finger right on the problem.  The rot took hold of their seminaries, particularly a rotten doctrine of Scripture, a loss of the orthodox doctrine that the Bible is uniquely inspired, completely true, and utterly authoritative.  Her seminary professors passed down to her a faith uprooted and blighted, and at whatever point in her journey it followed the logical course and became no faith at all.

But Vosper can perhaps take some comfort that the Bible does not enjoy nearly so central a place in the United Church as she feared.  If that were the case, they might have put more weight on the fact that the Bible starts with the words, “In the beginning, God…” (Gen. 1:1).

We have here a wake-up call for faithful Christians in the United Church of Canada–it might be time for an exit plan; a cautionary tale for the orthodox–guard your institutions, because what’s taught in seminary doesn’t stay in seminary; a warning for theological moderates who want to see more doctrinal inclusivity in your denominations–you might find yourselves inclusive’d all the way to atheism.

The good news is that this disease is easily preventable.  There’s a ready antidote to this poison.  There’s an extremely popular book that could be studied in seminaries to promote deep and widespread theism among the ministerial students.  “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, NASB).

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His Glory, Our Glory

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Glory, God

God is glorious.

Because God is glorious, there is a glory to the people of God.  David underlines this so well when he rejoices in the uniqueness of God and the unique privilege of God’s people Israel:

“There is no one like you, O LORD, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.  And who is like your people Israel – the one nation on earth whose God went out to redeem a people for himself, and to make a name for yourself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt?  You made your people Israel your very own forever, and you, O LORD, have become their God.” (1 Chronicles 17:20-22)

In contrast to all our vanity, there stands the proper place for self-understanding – gratitude and awe at how richly we’ve been blessed.  God is glorious because of who He is; we are glorious because we belong to Him and are found in Christ.  God is unique by nature; we are unique by adoption, the favored children of God.

Who is like you, Almighty Lord?  And who is like the people you have bought for yourself by the blood of the Lamb?  You have redeemed us for yourself, conquering death and Satan and offering the water of eternal life to all who believe.

There is no one like you, O Lord.

Strong in Him

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God, Omnipotence, Zechariah

Zechariah 12 begins with a beautiful passage prophesying the invincibility God will give to His people in His chosen day.  The images come in succession: a cup of wine to afflict the wicked nations with drunkenness, an adamant rock against which the enemies of God smash themselves, panic and blindness upon the armies that oppose God.

The prophecy turns to the strength of God’s people, and the source of this invulnerability is proclaimed in v.5:

“Then the leaders of Judah will say in their hearts, ‘The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the Lord Almighty is their God.'”

Though the prophecy has a particularity to it, the statement is true at all times.  The strength of God’s people comes from God, and by His covenant of love with them.  When we seem weak, outnumbered, and besieged from every side, there is no cause for fear.  When we lose power and privilege in society, there is no cause for panic.  The Lord Almighty is our God.

He is strong.

We are strong in Him.

Conversations in Self-Reflective Idolatry

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Books, ELCA, God, Idolatry, Paganism, Theology

Fortress Press, the publishing house of the ELCA, has a forthcoming book that appears to be a piece of straight-up paganism.  Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology–a window, I expect, into the sort of idolatry that passes in some circles for theology.

Now, this is not a book review.  I haven’t read the book, and I don’t intend to unless for some unexpected reason it should be relevant to my parishioners; life, they tell me, is short.  To all appearances this is the sort of book I should urge people not to buy–we don’t want to reward the publishers for this sort of thing.  But do not think I am telling people not to read it; perhaps the book is good for a lark, in an ‘I laugh only to keep from weeping and anathematizing’ sense.

No, what I have to say right now is simply based on impressions, the description of the book to which I have linked.  To all appearances, at least, the book is an exercise in idolatry.  We have here two ‘theologians’ engaged in a conversation with the goal of dethroning the God revealed in the Bible–the one true God who is indeed transcendent and omnipotent and–to avoid for the moment parsing the relationship of God and gender–consistently refers to Himself with masculine pronouns.

What is God to be replaced with, in the spirituality advocated by the authors?  One appears to advocate a feminist panentheism, the other a sort of pantheism. Both are unambiguously pagan ideas.

Of the host of questions and issues that present themselves when we see an ostensibly Christian publishing house producing such a book, I would like to reflect on two:

1. Why on earth should one want to reject God as revealed in Scripture?

It seems that it all has to do with comfort.  They reject the God of the Scriptures because He doesn’t meet their perceived notions of who God should be or what will work in the world.  The chapter title “Finding a God I Can Believe In” is tremendously forthright about the idolatry being embraced here.  ‘I can’t believe in the God who has revealed Himself, so I will construct a God I can believe in.’

2. What, then, is the source of theology?

The blurb gives no indication that they try to build their case on the Scriptures in any meaningful way.  Instead, the description indicates that their experiences are the source of their theology: what has my life led me to think and feel is true?  Absent from such a hermeneutic is an understanding of the Fall, and the concomitant healthy skepticism about the capacity of the human mind and heart to faithfully understand God apart from His special revelation.

God created us in His image, and we’ve been trying ever since to turn the tables.  But all our efforts are vain and less than worthless.  We must know God as He truly is, as He has revealed Himself to be, or we will not know Him at all.  It is no wonder that the theological method modeled here has led these authors to pagan idolatry.

Exalted in Strength

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God, Omnipotence

“Be exalted, O LORD, in your strength; we will sing and praise your might.”

-Psalm 21:13

We do not often enough praise God for His strength.  Perhaps this is because we forget how entirely dependent we are on Him, every moment of every day, for every breath of life.  The sun rises in its rhythm and we take a new day as though the universe really were a machine, able to run by itself.  We have let ourselves be tricked by the ordinariness of life into becoming functional naturalists.

But God is strong.  By His strength we live, our bodies move and our minds think and warm sunshine falls on us.  All these ‘natural laws’ depend completely upon His strength.  Be exalted, O Lord, you who are strong for us.

Even more, God has exercised His strength uniquely for His covenant people–that is, all who belong to Christ.  The strength of our Triune Creator worked also our redemption.  All the spiritual laws of our adoption, inheritance, forgiveness and salvation depend completely upon His strength.  Be exalted, O Lord, in your uncontestable strength.

We do not exalt God for our own benefit; but if we did dwell upon the strength of the Lord and give Him the praise that is His due, I think we would find a pleasant side effect: the worries of our life would seem smaller, the challenges facing us minuscule, as we gaze upon the awesome might of God.

Be exalted, O Lord.

Retrospective: The Larycia Hawkins Affair

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God, Islam, Larycia Hawkins, Pluralism, Theology

In the wake of the drama surrounding former Wheaton professor Larycia Hawkins, I offer this retrospective.  The way I see it Dr. Hawkins started out just wanting to express solidarity with Muslims, fearing that because of Islamic terrorists like ISIS there would be backlash against all Muslims.  Fair enough.  But she sent two wrong signals in doing this.

1) She decided to wear the hijab as part of her Advent worship.  I’m not an expert on Islam, but I understand that the hijab is not merely an Arabic cultural garment, it is a Muslim religious garment, and wearing it suggests that you worship Allah, which is extremely inappropriate for any Christian; to the extent that it is deliberate, might it be considered apostasy?  Wheaton decided to ignore this, which was politically wise but I think was a theological mistake.  I would expect a professor at an evangelical school to be disciplined for wearing the hijab, just as I would expect a professor at a Muslim school to be disciplined or fired for wearing a cross–especially as part of their worship for Ramadan.

2) She tweeted that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  I think at the beginning this was just poorly thought through, but instead of choosing to back off the statement when challenged she doubled down, and forced a confrontation about it.  In her tweet, she defended this theological statement by appeal to Pope Francis (?!).  Francis is not the most theologically discerning of popes in the first place.  In the second place, he’s the pope.  I thought we were protesting that whole Roman Catholic thing?  Not a good authority figure for an evangelical to pick.

Then she appealed for further support to Miroslav Volf; I’ve heard him called an evangelical, and I don’t know enough about him to say for sure, but I have my doubts–he seems more mainline to me.  In any case, he does have better scholarly credentials than Pope Francis–and he is, at least, a Protestant.  In fact, this issue is a major area of his scholarship.  His basic argument, in my understanding, is that just because Muslims don’t believe in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and all the other things they disagree with about Christianity, doesn’t mean they don’t worship the same God.  They worship the same God, they just have a lot of mistaken ideas about Him.

Volf himself entered the fray on Dr. Hawkins’ behalf, expressing this position–but more importantly, he demonstrated the level of his commitment to fair discussion by publicly slandering the Wheaton College administration, insisting that if they thought differently than him about this it was motivated not by genuine theological disagreement but by anti-Muslim bigotry.  It was a tremendous display of either hubris or absolute confusion because of the heavily politicized culture we live in.  He got called out for it in First Things (much more gently than he deserved), and like Dr. Hawkins he doubled down with a lame, “well, I could be wrong…but I’m not, the only reason I can think of that anyone would disagree with me on this is that they’re bigots.”  So, there’s Volf for you.

But what about his argument?  Do Muslims worship the true God, they’re just very confused about Him?  I think if we’re going to say that, we would have to say that every religion, at least every monotheistic religion, really worships the true God as long as they believe one thing about Him that Christians also teach.  So if I create my own religion, and tell you that I worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, the God of Joshua and Daniel…who is also an enormous and delicious pepperoni pizza, I can say to you “we worship the same God.”  And you say to me, “no we don’t!”  And I say, “sure we do, we both worship the God of Abraham” and you say to me, “no, we don’t, because my God is a Trinity, immortal, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, etc…and your god is a pepperoni pizza!”  Well, I could go on with this silliness.  My point is that to the extent that the claim to worship the same God is true, to that same extent it’s almost meaningless.  And I think the claim is meant to mean something, something significant, something that creates a sense of solidarity.

In the end, I look at the Scriptures and I see gods who shared certain characteristics with the Christian God; Baal, for instance, was thought to have power over the skies.  The true God has power over the skies.  So did God regard worshipers of Baal as worshiping Him?  No, He regarded them as worshiping idols, in opposition to worshiping Him.  The story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel expresses this eloquently.  That’s why I think Volf, and Dr. Hawkins, are wrong, and that being wrong on this matter is equating God with an idol.

Now, as I thought about this matter, over time, two questions troubled me.  Providentially, the Gospel Coalition put out excellent answers to what I consider the thorniest aspects of the issue:

What about the Jews?

What about the Athenian “unknown god”?

So, the Wheaton administration went forward, and set in play a process that could lead to Dr. Hawkins’ termination.  Some students protested and expressed support for her–well, protesting is the thing to do when you’re a college student.  Far more disappointing is that some faculty took a stand by Dr. Hawkins; their concerns may have been more about due process and academic freedom than theological agreement with her statement, but nonetheless it sends the wrong message.

One of them in particular was willing to be quoted in that ultra-liberal standard, Religion News.  As might be expected, race and gender are brought in by those who wish to impugn the administration’s motives.  But now a Wheaton professor has stooped to the level of assuming bad faith on the part of the administration–if he qualifies it with the suggestion that it may be unintentional.  How very penetrating his insight must be, to see through people’s actions to their subconscious motivations.  Granted he’s a psychology professor, but my wife has insisted to me that a degree in psychology does not confer the ability to read minds.  Perhaps only when you get a doctorate?

But a couple of questions come to mind:

A) Is the truth really incapable of surmounting gender and racial differences?  Isn’t it possible that propositions (such as “Jesus is God” or “Allah is not God”) can transcend these boundaries and be understood and affirmed by people of any race or gender?  Aren’t there Christians of every race and both genders who would agree that Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God?

B) Is Mangis correct to identify the problem as Hawkins not sounding like a white male American evangelical?  Consider the two luminaries she appealed to first in defense of her position: Pope Francis (white, male, not American, not evangelical), Miroslav Volf (white, male, American–but Croatian by birth, evangelical?).  It seems her position has a very fine white male pedigree.  The media gives ample evidence of how American it is.  So perhaps the real question is whether her statements sound like the views of an evangelical–which, I believe, has been the problem all along.

And, in the end, the titanic clash wound down, with Wheaton and Dr. Hawkins deciding to go their separate ways.  In my opinion, it leaves the door far too open to the idea that she wasn’t wrong to say what she did, or that the administration was wrong to discipline her.  But that’s where things have landed.

 

Glorious

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Creation, Glory, God, Humanity, Mercy, Power

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

So begins–and ends–the 8th Psalm.  Bookmarked by this exultation, David marvels a the greatness of God’s creation; and especially how, in light of this greatness, God has given such honor to human beings, who are nothing next to Him.

We’re inclined to make our achievements a source of pride.  Mastery over the created environment perhaps more typically makes humans see ourselves as large.  But the psalmist finds humility even in rulership.  Seeing that God has given people headship over the created world directs David’s thoughts not to the greatness of humans–glorious among creatures–but of God, our incomparable Creator.

He is glorious.  What a wonder is this created cosmos we live in, how exquisitely crafted from the tiniest of molecular details to the spreading vastness of galaxies.  And He is gracious from the very first, giving His human creatures headship over the world He made, despite our smallness.

The intertwined excellences of God’s power and grace that are showcased in the drama of redemption display themselves even in creation.  This is the might and character of the Holy One.

Glorious.