The Big Picture for Presbyterians (And Others)
Columns, The Purpose-Driven Centrist — By Tim McGeary on June 23, 2011 at 6:28 am
In early May 2011, a majority of the 173 presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) had approved a change to the ordination standards. The amendment will remove the constitutional requirement that all ministers, elders, and deacons live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness” (G-6.0106b in the church’s Book of Order). The new language reads,
“Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000). The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G.14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003). Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.”
This is a change that has been coming for some time. Four times the General Assembly of the PC(USA) had approved similar changes to ordination, and each time the local presbyteries voted against, albeit in decreasing margins of majority. This amendment has passed both voting processes, and will take effect on July 10, 2011.
Earlier this month, my church – the First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem, PA – held a town-hall meeting for the congregation to discuss the suggested course of action as voted by the Session of Elders. After a 20-minute presentation by the senior pastor, a full hour of congregation commenting took place. Most of the comments focused directly on being against or in favor of ordination of practicing homosexuals. Some broadened the discussion to argue that this change allows all variations of sexual behavior to be acceptable for ordination. Some people announced they would leave the church and denomination, while others asked that people wait out their impulses and stay in membership.
I stood up to say that I see this decision by our denomination to be a larger opportunity and challenge than simply dealing with the changes of ordination and absence of guidelines and accountability for sexual behavior. Just as important, there are published studies and surveys by polling groups, such as Pew and Barna, that indicate my generation (Gex X) and the next generation (Millennials) are not willing to draw the same lines in the sand on issues of hot button issues, such as same-sex marriage, abortion, war, and others.* The trends indicate more neutral or central stances of what previous generations have battled for or against for the purpose of encouraging open discussion, transparency, and civil communication. Surveys have shown these generations are spiritually more comfortable with questions that have no easy answers, more open to expressing doubt, and more interested in communities that have a diverse points of view. I find these trends to be relatively true in my circle of friends, and as an independent, centralist-minded person, I myself concur.
In this context, I believe the challenges of this constitutional change are bigger than the change in ordination standards. The opportunity, then, is for us to examine these issues as we decide how to continue to participate in PC(USA). I hope that those in leadership of PC(USA) churches, as well as other denominations, will approach the future by examining these three areas:
- Tradition vs Faith
- Hierarchy vs Community
- Self Survival vs Investment
Tradition vs Faith – By definition, tradition is humanly created, defined, and interpreted. It is created by someone and followed by others within the customs or beliefs passed down through generations. Traditions, however, do not define God nor our faith in God, but rather are derived by our fallible interpretations, senses, and beliefs in what has been held to be true in the past. Much of the foundations of our denomination are indeed built on tradition. The opportunity before us is to live out our faith in God, not in our traditions. We must identify specifically those things we hold closely or push aside as tradition and those things we live out in faith. We must declare that our God is great, is just, and loves overwhelmingly, and we will journey together toward our God.
Therefore, the question I raise to leadership is this: Are the actions you propose for the future as a congregation lie in traditions you hope to preserve or in faith you hope to live in?
Hierarchy vs Community – One definition of hierarchy is “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.” Much of what we read and interpret from the gospels is Jesus overthrowing the hierarchies the Jewish leaders created for themselves to separate both themselves and God from the common people. Jesus, as God himself, flattened this hierarchical separation and, moreover, turned the whole idea upside down. Jesus humbled himself and lifted everyone up over himself, the chief of the kingdom at the very bottom of the chain. He defined leadership not as authority over others but as servants under and within the community.
I commend our pastoral team for living this example out, consistently resisting the temptation to lead over us as a congregation, but instead living and serving within and alongside the congregation. I believe the greatest failure of the western Church is the CEO/Board-like nature pastors and elders have tried to lead churches, and I am thankful this has not been the case at FPC-Bethlehem. The process and setup of ordination does have the taste of elevating a person over a community, and, indeed, communities of believers often give in to the temptation to allow pastors to lead over them rather than participating with these leaders to invest in their community together. But we have wonderful examples of first-century communities who lived in community together, wholly dependent on each other. They had little-to-no knowledge of the New Testament, other than a letter actually addressed to them. But they invested in the community together and moved together, right or wrong. Sometimes they had to be corrected, and other times they were commended. I hope that we can live out community similarly.
The question I raise to the leadership is this: Are the actions you propose for the future as a congregation based on preserving the hierarchical requirements of authority of a few over many or through a vision of how we, as a congregation, can live within these new definitions as a community and within the larger community that is PC(USA)?
Self Survival vs Investment – I believe there is nothing more shocking in the gospel than Jesus declaring in order to save your life we have to lose it. There is little, if any, scripture that can be used to justify a position of self survival. Nearly everything in the gospels prescribes living beyond our definitions of generosity in money, love, service, and forgiveness while removing all traces of judgment, violence, hate, exclusivity, prejudice. And yet our American culture, politics, and economics pushes us into self-survival mode that contradicts the gospel. I fall terribly short in my attempts to be generous in these areas.
But in a time of uncertainty as this situation brings, it would be tempting as a church for us to focus on self survival rather than continuing to invest in our congregation, our communities in our cities, around the country, and the world. If we are to live out the gospel, living in our experience of God’s overwhelming love for us, then we need to fight against this temptation to simply focus on self survival.
The question I raise to the leadership is this: Are the actions you propose for the future as a congregation focused simply on surviving as a church, neglecting our neighbors, our sister churches around us, our sister churches in PC(USA), or focused in continuing to invest in our communities, our sister churches, and the world around us? Are we running away from relationships that are now difficult, or are we becoming more generous in our love, service, forgiveness, and financial support? Are we taking positions of judgment, exclusivity, and prejudice or taking positions of openness, inclusiveness, and welcoming? Finally, are we stubbornly resisting conversation and discussion of difficult topics, or are we admitting our questions to which we have no answers, being transparent in our doubts to our community and denomination, and being open to discussion, disagreement, and commitment to continuing relationships?
I believe this situation is an opportunity for us to invest deeper in our congregation, our communities, and in the denomination. I believe it is a challenge worth embracing, a challenge to live within our faith in God to lead us closer to himself, and to show others just how great that love is.
References:
- Generation X and Work/Life Issues, Sloan Work and Family Research Network, Boston College, Volume 7(2) February 2005 http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/The…/08/The_Network_News_Interview08.pdf
- Sandfort, Melissa A. and Haworth, Jennifer G. “Whassup? A Glimpse Into the Attitudes and Beliefs of a Millenial Generation” Journal of College and Character 3(3): 2002
- “Young Adults and Liberals Struggle with Morality” http://www.barna.org/teens-next-gen-articles/25-young-adults-and-liberals-struggle-with-morality August 25, 2008
- “Americans Describe Their Moral and Social Concerns, Including Abortion and Homosexuality” http://www.barna.org/culture-articles/50-americans-describe-their-moral-and-social-concerns-including-abortion-and-homosexuality January 21, 2008
- “The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.” http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1501/millennials-new-survey-generational-personality-upbeat-open-new-ideas-technology-bound February, 24, 2010
- “The Millenials” http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1437/millennials-profile January 11, 2009
- “The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation” http://www.newpolitics.net/node/360?full_report=1 June 20, 2007
- “A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity” September 24, 2007 http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/94-a-new-generation-expresses-its-skepticism-and-frustration-with-christianity?q=generation
- The Pew Research on Millenials http://pewresearch.org/millennials/
Tags: Christianity, Community, Faith, ordination, Purpose-Driven Centrist, The Church, Tim McGeary, tradition
28 Comments
As a Gen Xer who is very averse to categorization and denominationalism I love your perspective. I would love to attend an ecumenical church, but in these United States I have yet to find one.
I realize as a parent that these boundary markers are essential to wholeness, but I am a product of my generation. I am quick to reject the black and white stances of my parents. And, I understand that these challenges you mention are truly systemic. My son will have an even greater challenge knowing what is safe to believe or doubt. The muted grays that have been my solitude must evolve into lighter and darker shades at some point in order for collective faith to be lived out in community. It’s a necessary evil.
This situation with the PC(USA) is a test tube case for a much grander problem. Thank you Tim for framing this responsibly and succinctly for us all to ponder. I don’t see an easy answer, but my limited experience with this (since I’m not a Presbyterian but have visited churches in my neighborhood) sees this as an opportunity for congregations to redefine the qualifications and expectations of leaders. Taken in that light it is something that every body of Christians should revisit from time to time.
Thank you for your comments, Michael. I, too, would love to attend an ecumenical church. I have yet to find one, as well, and I don’t necessarily expect it will be easy while I’m living in the northeast/mid-atlantic region.
As a parent of two children under 5, I will admit that I’m glad when my daughter asks questions about God and what she learns in Sunday school. I love it because it challenges me to think holistically about the answer, guide her carefully through the possibilities, and leave room for an answer to develop through her experience.
I hope that rather than it become a harder problem for our kids, we can leave a foundation of church communities that offers a safe haven to questions, a respite from doubt, and examples of actively living through both questions and doubts.
Tim, one other thought I had was given the changing nature of perspective on social norms, maybe we should start now to consider whether we will be able to live in the church of our children.
In other words when our children are the leaders who are inevitably more tolerant than we are, will we be able to respect them, follow them and share a corporate faith?
I believe much of how well we follow then will depend upon how well we parent the next generation to address these very sensitive issues of identity, sexuality and leadership. It is no small or easy task, but our children will inevitably inherit these challenges.
Michael, that is a very good point. In fact, I’ve thought about this from the other perspective in making this piece public. Will my parents, aunts/uncles, former church leaders, all who influenced and nurtured my faith, respect, follow, and share this corporate faith?
I expect I was one of the youngest to share comments in the town hall I described, though while I’m in my mid-30s is maybe not surprising for a PC(USA) congregation.
I’d like to see our generation tackling this parenting issue you describe. I like that angle, and it is certainly different than the Dobson-esque influence our parents had.
Thank you for your well thought out, compassionate, and even tempered response to an issue that involves not just theological ideas and opinions, but the lives and spiritual futures of very real, very much alive, human beings. This was incredibly refreshing to read.
I appreciate that, Emily. Thank you. I struggle mightily in all three of these areas, and am prone to lazily accept tradition, put people into categories, and live as if it’s only me that matters. It seemed to make sense that this issue presses all of us, and our church organizations as an entity, into the same struggle. I hope that we can find enough people willing to walk through this carefully together.
An interesting read made more interesting because I work in a PCA church in Oregon. My question for you is this:
What do you do when the ordination standards of your Book of Church Order contradict those of the New Testament (mainly Paul’s Pastoral epistles to Timothy & Titus)?
Matt, thanks for your question and comment. I’m probably not the best to answer the question, but I’ll try not to evade it completely.
I think it’s a fair comparison (but feel free to disagree) that the way PCA and PCUSA has looked at this issue is similar to positions of the US Constitution. PCA compares to the strict, literal constitutional perspective approach and PCUSA compares to the spirit behind the constitution approach.
A pastor friend of mine shared with me a perspective that scripture is both bound and liberated by culture. The writing is bound by the culture of its day, but the spirit is liberated by the present culture. Likewise, our minds are bound by the culture of scripture, yet our hearts are liberated by our present culture. It’s a delicate balance, no?
In these contexts, I think it comes back to wrestling gracefully with scripture, tradition, the Spirit, and our community’s sense of the presence of Jesus – all revelations of God to us. All depends somewhat on human interpretation, struggle, and fallibility so grace and humility are necessary.
Tim, I have no stomach to debate homosexuality on the Internet. But I do have a question. What is it about the structure of the Bible that suggests the analogy of a constitution? I’m not in the PCA and honestly am not familiar with that line of thinking.
Apart from the suzerainty treaty of Deuteronomy, what in scripture looks similar to a constitution?
Larry, I agree it is hard to stomach a debate online about such a difficult topic, hence the big picture look of what is wrapped around it.
But my metaphor in reply to Matt wasn’t comparing the Bible to the Constitution, rather a comparison on the two common approaches to the Constitution (strict/fundamental/literal vs. the spirit/meaning-within) that are similar to how the two denominations (PCA and PC(USA) respectively) generally view scripture.
It’s not perfect by any means. The tacit context of Matt’s question (as I read it) is ordination of women as deacons, elders, and ministers which PCA does not allow and PC(USA) does allow.
Tim….sorry for taking so long respond. My daily schedule has been kind of full. Reading Burnside is kind of an “indulgence” of mine so it often gets pushed to the back of my schedule. All that to say, I didn’t brush off your response. Please don’t read any sarcasm or rudeness into my response…it certainly isn’t intended. But I do have some earnest questions. Not about the ordination of women into church office, but rather regarding your comments on Bible interpretation.
I would say that the “spirit behind the text” is effectively communicated by the text. I don’t think the Bible is duplicitous in that regard. I would disagree that the Bible is bound by culture. It’s certainly communicated through culture, and in culture. But God is far from limited by our social circumstances. The danger of your friends exegetical position is that it opens the door to read our perspectives into scripture, rather than allowing scripture to challenge our perspectives with the Gospel.
Matt, no worries about timing. As you can see by the history of this “column”, I’ve taken plenty of time in between this and the previous column.
I can’t really agree that scripture isn’t bound by culture. That would require a belief that the authors had foreknowledge of exponential variations of cultures yet to be developed. While I won’t wrestle on God’s ability to inspire his truth despite culture, I find it impossible to both remove my 21st-century lens of interpretation while at the same time put on the lenses of a 1st-century (and before) Jewish or Roman author.
It can, indeed, be the elephant in the room that’s hard to get past. But it is important to both admit and analyze our perspectives into scripture as well as scripture’s holistic challenge on our perspective. I recently heard/watched an interview with NT Wright who does a much better job of detailing the importance of present-day reasoning in relation to our ancient scripture.
Tim….I think the big conflict we have regarding our perspectives on the “grounding of scripture” lies with our understanding of it’s authorship.
In your response you said that, in order for scripture not to be bound within it’s cultural context it’s author would have to possess a foreknowledge of cultural development and history. We agree on that, but I would say (and I think this has ample grounding in scripture) that God himself is the author of scripture (working through, and with the old and new testament writers), and that the account of the Bible is as authoritative now, as the account of the Prophets was in the Old Testament.
I guess I’ll be the contrarian here. I’m having a hard time with this approach to Scripture. I wonder where the willingness to accommodate different sexual actions and lifestyles ends? At what point does marriage for heterosexuals become optional for ordination? If we can find ways around directive regarding homosexual conduct, isn’t it just as easy to equivocate on how sexual activity with heterosexuals should be conducted? If my pastor wants to remain single, date and sleep with whoever he happens to be with at the moment, should that be a problem? Should polygamy or polyamory be open for consideration as well?
I guess I’m not understanding how the same arguments being made to allow homosexual activity and still be an ordained minister can’t apply to virtually any sexual activity so long as it involves consenting adults who care about each other.
Thank you for your comment, Bryan. Contrary views are always welcome. But I need to admit that I’m not clear on your context. What approach to Scripture do you see that I’m taking? Or are you talking about the PC(USA)’s approach to scripture? I don’t want to assume anything incorrectly in my response.
I guess I’m sort of talking about the PC(USA)’s approach, but to some extent you seemed to be supporting it or at least allowing for it as a valid way to interpreting Scripture. But to me it seems that once you go down that path, then virtually anything is open to new and interesting interpretation.
I’m not so sure I can lump myself in or around the PC(USA)’s approach or not. I’m not sure if I mentioned in another comment or in another conversation, but I’m not (generally) a good “presbyterian” when it comes to a denominational focus.
Regardless, my intent in this piece was to look forward about where we go from here. I’m not really wanting to breakdown interpretations of lifestyles, and make lists of what is in and what is out. I think we have individual, denominational, and societal ethics to lean on for that. There are a number of ethically-accepted practices in OT that are no longer ethically accepted today. And vice versa.
Instead, let’s talk about how we move forward in this new reality. Or if you aren’t in a PC(USA) church, how do you move forward with a church that is, that may be more progressive than your church. Or more conservative?
It’s not easy to answer. I was hoping that maybe I could help start a discussion, and I’m glad you’ve taken a part in it.
Tim:
On the surface, the current issue with the PCUSA and its ordination practices is how it can modify requirements so that they do not reject the appointment of homosexuals to church leadership based on one’s sexual preference alone. What I enjoyed of your article was your approach to three philosophical areas that have practical implications in how we reach our conclusions. To our own demise, we often wrestle with these issues without observing their foundations which leads us to shaky conclusions.
However, I find there to be a defined approach to these issues by understanding them in light of Scripture. This is not to debate the issues of homosexuality in Scripture, but rather an attempt to understand the human condition in light of our sinfulness and God’s goodness and purpose for his creation. Yet, ultimately, I believe one question must be addressed in any debate regarding doctrine, church polity, or ordination practices: Is Scripture sufficient in directing our practical approach to Christianity? In other words, do we interpret our culture in light of Scripture, or adversely interpret Scripture in light of our culture? I think this is where the fundamental disagreement lies.
In regards to Tradition vs. Faith, you approach these elements as being in opposition to one another as though tradition is man-made whereas faith is a purer reflection of an individual’s relationship with God. Yet in Scripture, predominantly the Old Testament, we find tradition and ritual to be ordained by God. We see this in his instruction of the Passover, culminating in observance of the Lord’s Supper in the Gospels. We also find clear instructions for appropriate worship in Leviticus where the same practices of worship are being carried out in the heavenly realm described for us in Revelation chapter 5. Of course, not all of our evangelical traditions are ordained by Scripture, and so we must return to Scripture alone to determine these aspects of our faith. But we cannot divorce tradition from our faith; it is not in opposition to faith, it nurtures it.
Secondly, you deal with the supposed dichotomy of hierarchy and community, and once again I do not see these in opposition to one another. We often practice an antagonistic approach to authority due to our western context, which is to defer to the rights of the individual. However, this mindset has caused us to challenge all authority and to reject hierarchy in every possible facet. Again, we must turn to Scripture to find that God is a creator of order and purpose; for his creation to function it must rest on hierarchy. In fact, when we investigate the purposes and roles of each personhood of our triune God, we see hierarchical roles as well. Our attempt to eschew hierarchy is to choose chaos instead of order. Both religious and secular news sources report a continuing discord between church leadership and congregants. Can the church community survive if it is always in discord with its leadership? Clearly not. And it seems to me that when Christians attempt to reach consensus they adhere to the congregant’s views and not the leadership. This is not evolution of Christianity, this is entropy.
And finally, your third area dealt with Self Survival vs. Investment. We know that Christians cannot impact the world with the Gospel by entrenching itself in its own community, absolving itself from the rest of the world, and retreating from the work set before us by Jesus Christ. But Christian community is best exemplified when the individual defers to community, when community defers to authority, and when authority defers to Scripture; this is the essence of tradition working within faith and an appropriate hierarchical authority lead by individuals who meet more specific criteria rather than less.
To summarize my point of view, Christian’s fail in two areas where the church is often silent. The first is the sufficiency of Scripture. I’ve spent the last year doing significant study of Exodus, Ecclesiastes and Revelation. In narrative relationship to one another the main thematic element is God’s goodness and ultimate sovereignty. We’ve lost respect to this in liberal Christianity with its attempts to rationalize (or ultimately dismiss our depravity), and we’ve done the same in conservative Christianity with its attempts to infiltrate politics and celebrate free-market capitalism rather than justification through grace alone. The second area where the church has been silent is in the priesthood of the believer. In 2 Corinthians Paul tells us that we are to be ambassadors of the faith and to be ministers of the reconciliation. We are to speak of the joy and hope that we have in Jesus Christ alone and to celebrate it by ministering to one another in love. But to adequately practice the priesthood of the believer we must strive in our practice to attain the criteria of church elder. The most important of which is to be above reproach. We also must respect the truth that authority within the church should never be something we seek, but something to which we are appointed. God will judge those in authority more harshly than the congregant. In an order to protect the church, as well as those in leadership, criteria must be specific and arduous to maintain.
Matthew, now THAT is a hearty comment. Thank you for offering that, and your patience with my response. I’ll see if I can hit on a couple of your points, though I expect I’ll miss a few that you may want to follow up on.
You said, “Is Scripture sufficient in directing our practical approach to Christianity? In other words, do we interpret our culture in light of Scripture, or adversely interpret Scripture in light of our culture? I think this is where the fundamental disagreement lies.”
I mentioned a similar dichotomy in an earlier comment that a pastor friend of mine was discussing with me. My short answer, which may seem initially contradictory to my column, is no, scripture is not sufficient alone, but is an equal part of our approach to Christianity in combination with tradition, community, and the Spirit.
To expand that a little, the Gospel of John opens with a creation story, that the world began with the Word, the Word was God, and Word was with God. That makes the Word living, relational, and a creator of nothing into something, or more accurately chaos into order. But the living and relational elements of the Word also indicate change, give and take, back and forth. The Word is not stationary or fixed. We see this in the scores of approaches Jesus takes with those he encounters.
I think the larger scope of the library of scriptural books we have organized into the protestant canon shows those living and relational elements over the 6000+ years of described narrative. But that doesn’t mean the narrative stops at the first century.
So we do need to walk together as a community, continue to focus on Jesus as the Word incarnate, allow the Spirit to lead us as the Word as present and future breath of life for our community, as well as walk through the shadows of our traditions before us.
It’s a delicate process that hasn’t been treated very delicately at times. It’s a communal process that has sometimes experienced unilateral effects, and it’s an open process that requires us all the opportunity to participate. This is where the elements of tradition vs. faith, hierarchy vs. community, and self-survival vs investment come from for me. I don’t mean to imply these areas are equally opposed to their respective area, but represent a fork in the road that often requires a choice. Indeed sometimes they both may lead north, while one might go slightly east and the other slightly west.
I think it was in “The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier” that Tony Jones discusses an observation that many of our churches are binitarian rather than trinitatian, in that they leave out the Holy Spirit to lead in paths unseen and instead remain focused on their traditional views of God and Jesus alone. I see a similar danger if we hold only to a scriptural context and leave out all that has happened since the scripture writings were complete. Did God cease inspiring the saints to write to his Church? Did the Spirit only touch the Apostles? Does how we got from the 1st century to the 21st century not count in walking towards the 22nd century?
Maybe I just muddied the waters a little more.
Your illustration from John 1 actually strikes against your argument. The Word John was referring to was Jesus, and rather than it being a creation account, it was a Christology account (as the Son is “uncreated”). More to the point, since the Word is Jesus, it most definitely is fixed.
Hmm, I guess I wasn’t clear enough in my reply that I did indeed mean that the Word John refers to is Jesus.
Nonetheless, John does mirror Genesis 1 in his opening paragraph to reflect, not the creation of the Word (Jesus), but that the Word was the foundation of the beginning of order from chaos.
In this parallelism, John is describing the new creation of the kingdom of God, also built upon Jesus. To do so, John needs to reflect on the tradition, describe the community following the Word before them (Jesus), and show the power of the Spirit leading onward.
To be fair to us in the 21st-century, I doubt we’ve experienced anything nearly as shattering in our lives as Jesus disrupting all that they knew and understood to be of God, while piecing it all back together after his death, resurrection, and ascension. Yet at the same time, we are all still trying to piece it together still.
Hopefully we leave room to do it together in the midst of differences.
Tim:
Thanks for your response and for clarifying a position that I wish did not seem to be the perspective of so many in the west today. See, I do believe Scripture is sufficient for the sole purpose that it is God-breathed, whereas all the published volumes that have followed are not. Although they may be inspired in a way, they are still fallible because they are the works of man.
The same fallen world that Solomon writes of in Ecclesiastes is the same world we live in today… there is nothing new under the sun. The advancements of technology, life-expectancy, globalization, etc, does not change the condition of man as a sinner in need of a savior. Scripture reveals God, the state of man, and the way the broken relationship between the two can be reconciled. There are no other needs that come close, an no other possible way of reconciliation but through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is true sufficiency.
Matthew, I think the question I would ask you, which I have asked myself through much investigation, is which scripture? There is the protestant canon, which does not include twelve works of scripture in the Roman Catholic canon, which does not include four additional works in the Greek and Russian Orthodox canon.
Does it include the Septuagint or the Masoretic versions of the OT, or a blending of the two, as some modern translations have done.
And how do we apply the early Christian fathers who vehemently disagreed with each other about exactly which books went into the canon(s) and which did not. Timothy Beal, a Christian and religion studies scholar at Case Western Reserve University, just published a very readable history of the Bible detailing this conflict-ridding process of putting the Bible together – from the early centuries after Christ to today’s marketing of Bibles. It’s called “The Rise and Fall of the Bible.”
The scripture has dirt from human hands all over its life, and is far from the pedestal of perfection we want to put it on, most importantly the fact that we still do not have any single original copy of the books, but pieces from here and there put together as best as scholars could do.
The entire process has required tradition, a community tuned into the workings of Jesus, and the Spirit to lead from day one. Why should it be any different now? And how is that a western idea?
Tim:
Thanks for the response and the questions you pose. I would like to answer each briefly, yet try to avoid generalities. In regards to the question of “which Scripture?”, we must first acknowledge that the works of the New Testament are agreed upon by Western, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Eastern traditions. Of course, I’m not including the Marcion canon for it was heretical or Gnostic books, or the Book of Mormon, for these works are at great odds with the traditional New Testament… not just in form, but with the attributes of God described therein.
The disagreements deal with the Old Testament and generally regard the addition of Jewish historical works (i.e. Maccabees). Furthermore, it must be said that the Protestant canon does not contain any work that is not included in any other traditional canon. Perhaps the Protestant canon does not include all of God’s inspired works, but according to Christian tradition, each book in the Protestant canon is inspired (not merely inspirational). The arguments of early church fathers as to what was included in the canon were not disagreements based on agenda and interpretations of where to direct a religion, but to astutely incorporate works that were routinely accepted and verified in the early church. For instance, a debate raged for the inclusion of Hebrews not for its content, but because of the mystery as to its authorship. To put it succinctly, early church fathers were going to err on the side of caution… we would be wise to practice such caution, especially in light of the many books that simply twist the message of Scripture so that it may tickle our ears.
Although I have seen The Rise and Fall of the Bible at the bookstore, I’ve not read it yet; therefore, to its specifics I must plead ignorance. However, based on the reviews and other works by Beal, I conclude that his approach to historical criticism of the Bible would be akin to Dale Martin or Bart Ehrman, which is an approach victimized by Western thought.
With many privileges and consequences, the western hemisphere is no stranger to Christianity due to Constantinianism. This familiarity has bred contempt and rather humbling ourselves as the finite attempting to understand the infinite, we limit the scope of theology to those things which we can understand with reason. This is particularly a western practice. Robert Webber strikes a great case for the detriment of Christianity in his book Ancient-Future Faith when we fail to accept the mystery of God. Also, Philip Jenkins has a great series of works on world evangelism. In his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity he makes the astute observation that the gospel is changing the lives of people in the southern hemisphere more than ever. In fact, Christians are having far better success in Africa because the idea of a mysterious God connects with their culture’s understanding of spirituality, rather than being dependent upon reason alone.
The biggest failing of Christianity in America has been its historical rejection of intellectualism, and so I believe that the pursuit of knowledge is something that must be encouraged within the church. However, as a product of the reformation, I adhere to Scripture in its sufficiency to tell me who God is and the reality of my depravity apart from the work of Christ. And any person or book that claims to represent Christianity must be held up to Scripture for its authenticity, and they are most often found lacking.
Matt, you may be interested in “The Heresy of Orthodoxy” by Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger
Matt – I’ll need to check out that book, too. Too many books on my “To Read” shelf…
Matthew – I appreciate the tension you describe in your reply. It’s not easy, and I am trying to feel it out, too. I come from a protestant background that both disdained intellectual pursuit that might conflict with Scripture and the mysterious and mystical appreciation of God. To move out of the corner brings me into uncharted territory of competition between the high intellectual and the charismatic spiritual. I hope that I’m settling nicely in the middle, but I realize there is no real solid middle.
Nonetheless, conversations like these are helpful, and I’m glad you’ve contributed.
Thanks for the recommendation, it looks good. I’ll order it this week.