‘Has the world gone mad, or is it me?’ Reflections on still believing in conversion
I was talking to a group of friends recently about a project I hope you will hear a lot more of soon. One, who is a very successful evangelist, said in passing, ‘I met with another evangelist recently, and he started the conversation asking me if I still believed in conversion, because too many don’t!’
Read MoreMore on God as Father: thinking about adoption
I’ve been mulling over a question Krish Kandiah asked me in relation to the excellent Home for Good project: why do we make so little theologically of our adoption as children of God? Krish pointed out the lack in worship songs, originally, but it strikes me that it is just not a big theme in any recent discussion of soteriology I know, and that this seems odd given its Biblical roots and the fact that it is just wonderful good news. Yesterday, driving between snowy mountains on my way to a ministers’ conference, I suddenly realised I had a plausible answer. There is a significant debate, or perhaps better a linked series of debates, over what it means to name God ‘Father’ in English-speaking Protestantism in the second half of the nineteenth century. My best guess as to why the issue came to prominence then is that the influence of the missionary movement brought the fact that not all, or even most, people where (even nominally) Christian to acute consciousness, and so a theological distinction that had been latent became live again. The debates circled around the question, is God properly named the Father of all human beings – as various scriptures, perhaps most clearly Acts 17:28-9, seem to teach – or is God only Father to believers, those adopted by the Father because incorporated into Christ by the Holy Spirit? We might, with conscious dependence, call these different positions ‘general paternity’ and ‘particular paternity’. (Obviously, in the context of an unreflective Christendom assumption that most people are believers, even if not always very good ones, this question is of academic interest only. For the mission-minded theologian, however, it is absolutely live. As I say, I suspect that this is why it suddenly flared up in a series of debates in the nineteenth century.) Nineteenth-century universalists (or near-universalists) generally made much of general paternity, the universal Fatherhood of God, for obvious reasons; often their Calvinistic opponents denied general paternity and insisted on particular paternity only (so, e.g., George Gilfillan’s Grand Discovery (1854)); a generation later, broad church writers were interested in general paternity (e.g., Bishop Wescott’s Victory of the Cross (1888)), with similar responses. The debate died down in the early years of the twentieth century; I can see two plausible reasons for this. First, there was actually a good, convincing answer on the table, offered by James Orr – more on this in a moment – second, the theological mood seemed to have moved to a place where doubting what I have called general paternity was unacceptable, at least outside of the sort of very narrow Calvinistic enclaves that I tend to be embarrassed about liking… Of course, if one believes in general paternity, and has no account of particular paternity, the doctrine of adoption can only be meaningless. God, who is antecedently the father of all human beings, adopts believers to be children? What can that mean? I suppose most of our loss of interest in the doctrine of adoption came from this sort of assumption, although of course it would never be articulated as such. (This is supposition; an examination of commentaries and sermons on the classic NT passages on adoption would be the place to go for evidence.) Can we do better? Yes, but not by denying general paternity: there is Biblical basis for that doctrine, and giving it up invites us into the worst excesses of hyper-calvinism – a ‘god’ who loves only the elect, and so on. James Orr distinguished carefully between God’s ‘fatherhood’ of all human beings, resulting from his creating them, and God’s particular ‘fatherhood’ of believers, who are adopted as children through incorporation into Christ by the Holy Spirit. This seems to me just right, and to be a derivation of some of the theology of the divine names and the Trinity I’ve been outlining in the previous few posts here. I work it out as follows (this is me, not Orr, and this gets specific and speculative …): 1. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creates, loves, and cares for all human beings, regardless of their moral failure. Because of this, and because of Biblical texts, it is appropriate to speak of God as the ‘father’ (or indeed ‘mother’, but the Biblical data there is slightly sparser) of all human people without exception. 2. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, calls Abraham and Sarah, and from their descendants elects the Israel to be the Holy Nation, God’s own people. God shows particular care for Israel, which is expressed both in particular blessing and in particular correction; in Scripture (e.g., Hos. 11) God narrates this in...
Read MoreThe bare minimum gospel?
I’ve been involved in a discussion recently, connected to the excellent Evangelical Alliance Confidence in the Gospel campaign, which raised, amongst other issues, the question ‘what is essential to a gospel presentation?’ I understood the reason the question was on the table – are their certain things that, if they are not included, make an account of the Christian gospel simply inadequate – a ‘bare minimum gospel’? – and I sympathise with the concern: of course there are ways of calling people to faith that are so misleading, or just so anaemic, that they need to be criticised. That said, this way of presenting the question was one I struggled with. The good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ His Son, the gospel, changes absolutely everything, or so I believe. There is no human possibility left untransformed, no human story that does not now have different possible endings. Sometimes we will not be able to see immediately how the gospel is transformative of this or that reality; sometimes we will honestly disagree about the nature of transformation brought by the gospel, but I cannot begin to conceive of an adequately Christian presentation of the gospel that does not hold out such far-reaching consequences, at least potentially. Now of course, some of these consequences will be more central than others. We might disagree on how the gospel transforms our diet (Rom. 14:13-21) without that being a major problem; disagreeing, however, on how the gospel transforms our attitude to the ancient covenant practice of circumcision is, or at least once was, extremely serious (Gal. 5:2-6). There are some truths of the gospel that are more central, some truths indeed that are absolutely central: the triunity of God; the true humanity and true deity – and the true Lordship – of our Lord Jesus Christ; the sinfulness of humanity; salvation available only by God’s grace, through Christ’s sacrifice; the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; the privilege and responsibility of adoption into God’s family; … In a proper process of Christian initiation, one would want to insist that each of these points is covered, and also that other points, perhaps less central to the gospel, but important for Christian initiation, are dealt with – I am here thinking of local practices of discipleship and being church: homegroups are not central to the gospel, for example, but if they are the primary mode of caring for and discipling believers in the particular church fellowship that a new convert is joining, they become a matter of importance; equally, for someone joining a Baptist (or other congregationalist) fellowship, explaining the practice of church meeting is very important, but hardly central to the gospel. This, however, is an account of what must be covered in a process of Christian initiation; a gospel presentation is not, of itself, a process of Christian initiation, or at least not necessarily. A gospel presentation can be an invitation to a journey to find out more; as such its content needs to be true and worthwhile, but can be really very partial, and certainly does not have any required content. I can see three possible rejoinders to this. The first I will call the ‘elevator pitch‘ question: ‘But if you only had 30 seconds to explain the gospel to someone, what would you say? – that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’ The second we can call the ‘moment of conversion’ question: ‘Yes, you might interest people in all sorts of ways, and there is much truth you want them to believe – but what makes the difference between death and rebirth? What is the one thing that must be believed for someone to be truly converted – that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’ The third might be described as the ‘power of the Spirit’ issue: ‘The Holy Spirit empowers true gospel preaching; what is the thing that must be said to be confident that the Holy Spirit will be at work? that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’ It seems to me the ‘elevator pitch’ is a non-question, except in a very particular circumstance (described later). If you only have a minute or two to speak to someone about following Jesus you should do exactly what you would do if you had an hour or a day: find how the promises of Jesus relate to the most pressing felt need in her life, and press that so that she will want to find out more. There is no ‘bare minimum gospel’ on this telling, just a responsibility to be wise (and to seek...
Read MoreRob Bell (insert stupidly large number here)
In chapter 5, ‘Dying to live,’ Bell turns to give an account of the atonement. He begins with a reflection on the ubiquity of the symbol of the cross, and the slogan, ‘Jesus died on the cross for your sins.’ (122) But what does that mean? Bell explores a ‘multiple metaphors’ view of the atonement, where different stories are told, which each hint at a part of the truth. It’s no secret that I think this is just the right way to approach atonement theology (see any of several publications on the theme); having tried to write a popular-level book on this theme it is humbling and irritating in equal parts to see someone who can really communicate have a go: Which perspective is the right one? Which metaphor is correct? Which explanation is true? The answer, of course, is yes. So why all the different explanations? For these first Christians, something massive and universe-changing had happened through the cross, and they set out to communicate the significance and power of it to their audiences in language their audiences would understand. And so they looked at the world around them, identifying examples, pictures, experiences, and metaphors that their listeners and readers would have already been familiar with, and then they essentially said: What happened on the cross is like… a defendant going free, a relationship being reconciled, something lost being redeemed, a battle being won, a final sacrifice being offered, so that no one ever has to offer another one again, an enemy being loved. (127-8) Yeah, what he said… (And notice that penal substitution stands first in Bell’s list. He really is an old fashioned evangelical if you just scratch a little below the surface!) There are problems. When Bell turns to sacrifice, his account repeats where he was in The Gods Aren’t Angry DVD (you’ve not seen The Gods Aren’t Angry? Go and buy it. Now. Watch it, repeatedly. Not for the theology, which is old-fashioned Religionsgeschichte stuff, long discredited, but because this is an utterly stunning lesson in public speaking. Seriously, if Steve Jobs could communicate like this, we’d have been spared Windows completely. If Obama could communicate like this, we’d never have heard of Sarah Palin). Sacrifice, on this account, is something natural to humanity, a way of appeasing divine forces; Jesus offers the final, perfect, sacrifice, and so brings an end to every human attempt to appease an angry deity. I confess I don’t like attempts to force the endlessly diverse religious traditions of humanity into an interpretative scheme; it smacks too much of a totalising ‘I know what your religion is really about’ approach, which should have died with colonialism. Unfortunately, it seems strangely resilient in most traditions of liberal theology. Evangelicalism has generally been less arrogant, and with due respect to Bell, I would rather we continued in that. There are problems. Bell repeats Aulen’s old canard about Christus Victor being the ‘central, dominant understanding of the cross’ for ‘the first thousand years or so of church history’ (128). Sorry, but it just wasn’t. Aulen was wrong, and eighty years on, we ought to have got hold of that. In the (theologically sophisticated) East, sacrifice, eucharist-as-medicine, and Platonic physicalism were roughly equally dominant on my reading, with sacrifice receding and physicalism advancing as we move from the third century to the seventh. I struggle to find any dominant metaphor in the West – they just aren’t asking that question. The narrative moves from cross to resurrection. Bell opens with the line ‘it’s important to remember that resurrection after death was not a new idea’ (130). This is true, but not in the way Bell means it. The resurrection of the dead was a burning expectation in (some strands of) the Judaism of Jesus’ day, built on profound reflection on the justice of God in the face of endless experiences of persecution, and the gospel accounts need to read in the light of those discussions. Bell, however, offers a strange nature-mysticism instead. ‘[T]he leaves drop from the trees and the plants die … And then spring comes, and they burst into life again.’ (130) ‘The cells in our bodies are dying at the rate of millions a second, only to be replaced…’ (131) Sorry, but this isn’t the right context to talk about resurrection in the Biblical view. Easter is not an example of a general pattern of death-and-rebirth, it is a shocking and decisive intervention into the created order which changes everything. Bell gets the universality of the change, and is good on it (‘A gospel that leaves out its cosmic scope will always feel small’ (135)),...
Read MoreRob Bell, Love Wins 4
Chapter 1 of the book is entitled ‘What about the flat tire? [sic…]’ It is an example of the questioning methodology recommended in the preface: for twenty pages, Bell offers a stream-of-consciousness meander around questions concerning the accounts of how salvation is achieved, and what that says about God. The purpose of the chapter is unstated, and (to me) unclear; is Bell wanting to validate the questions he imagines his readers might come to the book with? Or is he wanting to disturb the reader who believes that she has all this sorted out on the basis of what she has learned of the historic Christian tradition? (Or perhaps both?) The first is a noble purpose: it is a service to your readers (or hearers) to say to them ‘it’s OK, you’re allowed to wonder that. It’s not a dumb question, it doesn’t mean you’re not saved – stick with me and we’ll see if we can find some answers together.’ But you have to make good on the promise, discuss the issues you’ve allowed them to formulate clearly and obviously. To say ‘great question – that’s a real problem, isn’t it?’ and then not to offer any further reflection by way of answer is no help to anyone. I suppose in doing this my approach would be more analytic than Bell’s; I’d want to tabulate the questions raised, say ‘we’re going to discuss these in chapter 2, these in chapter 4, and so on.’ The point of this would be to make sure that the questions were followed up on and (just as important) that the reader could find her way to where they were followed up on. My concern with Bell’s more discursive approach is that, on several issues, having invited the question, he offers nothing further in the book. This is simply unkind to a reader. The second purpose can also be appropriate. If the assumed orthodoxy is in fact wrong (and there is some of this in the chapter – see next post), then it needs to be gently and lovingly deconstructed and remade. Even if it is right, faith should be encouraged to think, and there are times when an unreflective acceptance of this or that should be challenged. If God’s people are to be effective in displaying and declaring the good news of Jesus to the world, they need to be able to give reasons for the hope they have within them. All that said, the wise pastor is careful in introducing questions people have not yet asked. Being ready to help them to explore more deeply is one thing; introducing them to problems they had never imagined and might not be able to cope with is another. The chapter begins with the tale of a Gandhi quotation in an art show in church that became famous through the promotional video. A written comment (anonymous – aren’t they always?) asserts that Gandhi is in hell. Bell queries the certainty of the comment; are we so sure that only a ‘select number’ will ‘make it to a better place’? (2). What kind of God would make that the deal? A similar story follows, about a teenager, a self-declared atheist, dying in a car accident, prompting the comment ‘So there’s no hope then.’ Bell asks ‘No hope? Is that the Christian message?’ (3). (I’ll say more about this in the next post.) These two stories prompt him to articulate a series of questions about access to salvation. Who has hope, and why? He mocks, quite unpleasantly, the idea of an ‘age of accountability’ (p. 4; I don’t know I’ve ever met anyone who believed in an age of accountability; but maybe in the USA some do?), and wonders about what gets you to be a part of the ‘in-crowd’: luck, or upbringing, or baptism, or church membership? If, as some claim, it is saying a sinner’s prayer, then what about those who said it and didn’t understand it, or no longer believe it? All of this strikes me as profoundly unhelpful. Processes of Christian initiation are well-defined in all major Christian traditions, typically including (in some order) repentance of sin and personal profession of faith, catechesis, baptism, reception into church membership, ongoing sacramental participation, and continued practices of discipleship. Whilst there is a hypothetical question sometimes raised about the eternal destiny of someone whose participation in this process of initiation is incomplete or in some way imperfect, the question is usually left unanswered, with an appeal to the mercy and righteousness of God, and our inability to second-guess that. If Bell has a question about the appropriateness of a well-ordered...
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