By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus
As an evangelical Christian who also worked for almost 3 decades as a full time research scientist, before taking my current position here at GCTS-Charlotte, I always am very interested in media presentations on reconciling science and faith. In every case (this might be an exaggeration, but I cannot recall any exceptions), the conversation has entailed a relatively liberal, certainly not evangelical, take on Christianity, combined with a blind, dogmatic acceptance of science. A local public radio station's recent show broadcasting a conversation with a Catholic priest as a part of discussions around the pope's visit was no exception. This priest who was also an astronomer was presented as a paragon of reconciliation between faith and science.
I would like to mention some examples of, and my reactions to, the kinds of questions that typically trip people up in these discussions:
These conversations often start with a criticism and rejection of "literal" interpretations of the Bible. Often, examples are given of phenomenological language in the Bible which is then ridiculed as reflecting primitive or archaic cosmologies or understandings of natural phenomenon. This, then, is justification for rejecting historically orthodox understandings of salvation history, and God's work in creation. There is, of course, a more nuanced way to understand the Bible, which would require a more careful distinction between literal versus literalistic interpretations. Furthermore and more to the point, the same critics do not hesitate to talk about the sun rising or setting, or the stars twinkling in the night sky, without bothering with astronomical accuracy. If this were a valid criticism of historic orthodox understandings of the Bible, these critics ought not to be using phenomenological language themselves when they talk about the Earth's rotation on its axis and the effect of Earth’s atmosphere on our perception of light from the distant stars.
These conversations also typically entail judging the believability of Scripture based on what we "know" from science. At a very basic level, and from multiple perspectives, this seems doomed from the outset. First, if one is judging the believability of Scripture based on science, then one is not really reconciling science and faith. One is deifying science, and then allowing faith only to touch where it agrees with science or where science is silent. Second, the exclusion of the possibility of the supernatural from the presuppositions of science would seem to me to completely disallow science commenting on anything related to origins, miracles, or anything having to do with God's work in the world. By definition, if science presuppositionally excludes the supernatural, it cannot judge or evaluate the supernatural. Third, when considering the relationship between faith and science, it is important to consider the truth/facts of the Bible and the truth/facts of science versus our human interpretations of these. I believe a great deal of the debate and apparent contradiction and conflict derives from disagreements in interpretations of science and the Bible rather than the truth/facts of these disciplines. Finally, when the believability of Scripture is based on what we "know" from science, then what we take from Scripture is limited to whatever I idiosyncratically find a way to comfortably bring under the rubric of science.
For example, the priest on the local radio program talked about stories and myths in the Bible. It was clear that he felt free to judge Scripture and decide which stories are grounded in history and which are not (he used the word "myth" for both types of stories). The example he chose to discuss was the star of Bethlehem (he's an astronomer after all!). He seemed to believe that this was a natural phenomenon that happened to appear at that particular moment (This is the kind of argument that is often mounted with respect to the plagues of Egypt as well). I have always found this a very unconvincing argument against the miraculous: if it was not a miracle of the existence of the star, then it was a miracle of the timing of its appearance. Furthermore, however, this seems to have serious implications for one's faith: where does one draw the line? If science doesn't allow for a miraculous star to appear, it certainly does not allow for the virgin birth, which is an element of evangelical faith, or for the divinity of Jesus, which is also a critical doctrine. Is the priest going to reject these things as mythological also?
So, I am still waiting for the definitive conversation on the integration of faith and science that is true to evangelical Christianity and maintains the integrity of both faith and science. I do not believe that this is impossible, but I do believe it is impossible if one holds dogmatically to a narrowly naturalistic view of science, and holds science up as the judge of faith.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Some Explaining To Do
By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
The European Union, apparently no longer content to spend its members' money on pressing issues like the curvature of bananas, has commissioned a 2 million euro study “Explaining Religion".1 According to the project’s website, “In EXREL,a European team of leading experts is seeking a definitive scientific explanation as a basis for reconstructing the underlying historical processes of their development, as well as attempting to model future evolution.” 2 One might have imagined that such unabashed trust in Science would have had a hard time dodging the postmodernists to make it into the 21st century, but they don’t stop there. They follow the prior sentence with a vaguely Orwellian, “If successful, their efforts could provide an extremely valuable tool for future social policy planning.” All that’s missing is an exclamation mark and a Star Trek-like control collar.
Not surprisingly, there is no hint in the EXREL brochure that religion could be tapping into some objective reality. Nor is the distinction made that religious practices can have a biological component without being exclusively biological phenomena. No: explaining the physical processes is thought to well and truly Explain Religion. And this is where the real problem lies.
Many in our culture assume that an account of material process gives the definitive “explanation” of a given phenomenon. What is material is co-terminous with what is real. Thus, I may feel that I have “fallen in love”, but really I am only experiencing the effects of various hormones or pheromones or other as yet undiscovered –mones. I am far from denying that there is a physical component to love. But there is a tendency nowadays to assume that the physical component exhausts its meaning.
Getting back to the central question of religious experience, one would imagine that electrodes attached to someone freshly “slain in the Spirit” would detect diminished brain activity (though not quite so diminished, perhaps, as the brain activity of those who commissioned the EU study). But this simply tells us about the effect of a given religious experience, not the cause, and thus it does not serve to explain much of anything. Bringing in the Darwinian bandage of “survival value” might help in patching up an account of the survival of black pepper moths in industrial England, but it is stretched beyond the breaking point when it comes up against a multi-faceted phenomenon like religion.
The great irony here, of course, is that from one perspective the outlook of the EU study is profoundly unscientific. Good scientific method boils down to explaining all the data with your theory. Life as we actually experience it includes all sorts of things that cannot be ground down to mere biology: truth, beauty, justice, and love, to begin with. The practice of seeing everything in terms of material process is just an intellectually respectable way of throwing out all the data that does not fit the theory.
In short, before the EU Explains Religion, it needs to Explain Explanation. The 2 million euros might have been better spent giving the researchers some elementary grounding in philosophy.
1“Where Angels No Longer Fear to Tread”, The Economist, 3/22/08
2http://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/research/cam/projects/explaining_religion/exrel.pdf
Associate Professor of New Testament
The European Union, apparently no longer content to spend its members' money on pressing issues like the curvature of bananas, has commissioned a 2 million euro study “Explaining Religion".1 According to the project’s website, “In EXREL,a European team of leading experts is seeking a definitive scientific explanation as a basis for reconstructing the underlying historical processes of their development, as well as attempting to model future evolution.” 2 One might have imagined that such unabashed trust in Science would have had a hard time dodging the postmodernists to make it into the 21st century, but they don’t stop there. They follow the prior sentence with a vaguely Orwellian, “If successful, their efforts could provide an extremely valuable tool for future social policy planning.” All that’s missing is an exclamation mark and a Star Trek-like control collar.
Not surprisingly, there is no hint in the EXREL brochure that religion could be tapping into some objective reality. Nor is the distinction made that religious practices can have a biological component without being exclusively biological phenomena. No: explaining the physical processes is thought to well and truly Explain Religion. And this is where the real problem lies.
Many in our culture assume that an account of material process gives the definitive “explanation” of a given phenomenon. What is material is co-terminous with what is real. Thus, I may feel that I have “fallen in love”, but really I am only experiencing the effects of various hormones or pheromones or other as yet undiscovered –mones. I am far from denying that there is a physical component to love. But there is a tendency nowadays to assume that the physical component exhausts its meaning.
Getting back to the central question of religious experience, one would imagine that electrodes attached to someone freshly “slain in the Spirit” would detect diminished brain activity (though not quite so diminished, perhaps, as the brain activity of those who commissioned the EU study). But this simply tells us about the effect of a given religious experience, not the cause, and thus it does not serve to explain much of anything. Bringing in the Darwinian bandage of “survival value” might help in patching up an account of the survival of black pepper moths in industrial England, but it is stretched beyond the breaking point when it comes up against a multi-faceted phenomenon like religion.
The great irony here, of course, is that from one perspective the outlook of the EU study is profoundly unscientific. Good scientific method boils down to explaining all the data with your theory. Life as we actually experience it includes all sorts of things that cannot be ground down to mere biology: truth, beauty, justice, and love, to begin with. The practice of seeing everything in terms of material process is just an intellectually respectable way of throwing out all the data that does not fit the theory.
In short, before the EU Explains Religion, it needs to Explain Explanation. The 2 million euros might have been better spent giving the researchers some elementary grounding in philosophy.
1“Where Angels No Longer Fear to Tread”, The Economist, 3/22/08
2http://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/research/cam/projects/explaining_religion/exrel.pdf
Monday, April 14, 2008
Searching for God on Sunday Morning: Reflections on 35 Church Visits
By John Jefferson Davis, PhD
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics
Scene One: We pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center where the Flatirons Community Church was located, in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and went inside for the 5:30 p.m. Saturday evening contemporary worship service. An announcement on the television monitor in the atrium said, “If you find the volume of the music too loud, ear plugs are available at the desk in the foyer.” We sat down inside, watched the countdown video clip on the projection screen count down the seconds till the service started, and the praise band moved onto the stage precisely at the 5:30 start time – and opened the service with contemporary praise music played at deafening, ear-splitting volume. My wife Robin went back outside, got us two sets of earplugs, and later we heard a very fine expositional message from the speaker on biblical principles of marriage.
Scene Two: I quietly and discreetly crept up behind where the young mother was standing, balancing a young toddler on her hip. She had not noticed that she had dropped some of the communion bread on the floor beside her; I rescued the bread and placed it back on the table. Others were filing by one of the four tables positioned in the corners of the auditorium for the very casual, “self-service, drive-by” style of distributing the elements at the beginning of the Sunday communion service at Bridgeway Church in Denver. Near the rear of the auditorium a teenager with a bored look on his face was bending over a table near the wall, licking the remaining juice from the communion cup with his tongue. Later that morning we heard a very fine exposition of John 15 by a graduate of Denver Seminary, stressing the importance of abiding in Christ as the foundation for ministry.
These two scenes can hardly summarize, of course, the amazing range of “worship” experiences that we observed last fall in the greater Denver area, when Robin and I made a point of visiting as many different churches as possible, to observe worship styles and practices, as one of my sabbatical research projects. The 35 services we visited ranged over a very wide spectrum of American church life: from very contemporary to very traditional; from very quiet to very loud: a silent Quaker meeting; various contemporary and charismatic styles; megachurches and very small churches; Lutheran (ELCA and Missouri Synod); 5 different Episcopal or Anglican services; Anglican-Catholic; Roman Catholic; Greek and Russian Orthodox; Coptic Orthodox; Antiochian Orthodox; Presbyterian; Congregational; Nazarene; nondenominational; Willow Creek Community Church; “emerging” churches such as “Scum of the Earth,” “The Next Level,” and “Pathways,” all in Denver.
Needless to say, these visits were a real “learning experience,” and I am still in the process of digesting what I saw. I will note, however, a number of trends that I find disturbing, especially noted in the contemporary services (though not always limited to them):
Disappearance of pastoral prayer: Most of the contemporary services were built around what is known as the “frontier” or “revival” pattern of worship typical of many evangelical churches: music at the beginning, followed by a Bible message. At Willow Creek that Wednesday night there was a prayer that lasted about 35 seconds before the speaker came on stage for the message. So what’s the problem here? New Testament commands such as I Tim. 2:1,2 assume that prayer is an important part of Christian worship, and throughout church history – up until the advent of more contemporary worship styles since the 1970s – prayer has been a significant part of what Christians do when they meet to “worship.” The disappearance of prayer might suggest a loss of the sense of dependence on God that is fundamental to true spirituality, and a transition to an unspoken understanding of a “worship” service as a human performance that can be planned, staged, and executed on human power alone.
Disappearance of Scripture Reading: It was striking that in many of the contemporary services there was little reading of scripture. The preacher would typically announce a text, read it, and then preach. So what’s the potential problem here? In few instances was there an Old Testament reading or a psalm – whereas a biblical command such as I Tim. 4:13 reminds us to “devote yourself to the public reading of scripture”. More reading of scripture sets the context of the message in the larger canonical context of the biblical story of redemption, and can educate in settings where biblical literacy can be shockingly low. The focused, intentional reading of scripture as a key element of worship reminds the congregation that it is God’s word – not the human commentary – that should be the fundamental focus and authority.
Disappearance of Real Calls to Worship and Real Benedictions: In many of the contemporary services there was a very informal “walk on” greeting from the leader, and an immediate transition to the praise music – with no impression that it might the living God who wanted to call his people into his presence. Rather than a biblical benediction – in which God, speaking through the minister, places his name on his people, in a virtual summary of the gospel (“love of God, grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit ..”), at times there was a closing prayer, summary of the sermon, or closing announcements – more human words.
Disappearance of the Sense of the Holy: At one megachurch we attended, as I sat back (and relaxed) in the comfortable theater-style seat, I looked around and saw more coffee cups than Bibles in the hands of those around me. Did the large images of the praise band musicians on the “Jumbotron” monitors hanging from the ceiling focus my attention on God – or the human performers? A sense of reverence and the presence of the “holy” was more evident at some of the Catholic and Orthodox services; have we as evangelical Protestants so reacted to “real presence” sacramental views (e.g., “transubstantiation”) that our services can be marked by the real absence of the sense of the living, holy God? It’s a question worth thinking about.
One of my conclusions drawn from these church visits was that where evangelical seminaries (such as Denver and Gordon-Conwell) place great emphasis – areas such as expository preaching and sound doctrine – the graduates tend do very well indeed. In areas such as worship and music, where there is less instruction, there is a danger that the culture or thinned-out evangelical tradition of “revival” worship can take over, to the detriment of a richer understanding and practice of biblical worship.
I realized that I as an evangelical theologian need to do a great deal more of biblical reflection and theologizing on the nature and practice of worship itself – and not merely blame a “consumerist” or “entertainment oriented” culture or “modernity” for the ailments of the modern church. As part of my sabbatical research, and being “awakened from my doxological slumbers” by those 35 church visits, I wrote a paper titled “Real Presence, the Ontology of Worship, and the Renewal of the Evangelical Doxological Imagination,” in which I argue that the presence of the living God – from opening invocation to closing benediction – needs to be recognized and recovered as the central reality of biblical worship today. I have come to believe that a deep encounter with the living God in worship is the crucial foundation for the church’s success in other areas of ministry such as discipleship, evangelism, and mission; that indeed, the worship of God should be the church’s highest priority. God’s people need to be deeply impacted by God in worship before they can deeply impact the culture in mission. This article will be available in White Papers next month. During the next several years I hope to expand the article into a book, tentatively titled Searching for God on Sunday Morning.
In closing, let me recommend a book on the topic by James B. Torrance entitled Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace. It’s one of the finest recent treatments of the theology of worship, showing how Christian worship is fundamentally Trinitarian in nature – to the Father, through the Son, in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Torrance helps us avoid an understanding and practice of worship that is, in effect, “Pelagian” (done on human power alone), “Unitarian” (focused on Jesus alone, forgetting God the Father and God the Holy Spirit), and “Deistic” (treating God as distant, not as a God who is really present with and among his people). I highly recommend it.
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics
Scene One: We pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center where the Flatirons Community Church was located, in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and went inside for the 5:30 p.m. Saturday evening contemporary worship service. An announcement on the television monitor in the atrium said, “If you find the volume of the music too loud, ear plugs are available at the desk in the foyer.” We sat down inside, watched the countdown video clip on the projection screen count down the seconds till the service started, and the praise band moved onto the stage precisely at the 5:30 start time – and opened the service with contemporary praise music played at deafening, ear-splitting volume. My wife Robin went back outside, got us two sets of earplugs, and later we heard a very fine expositional message from the speaker on biblical principles of marriage.
Scene Two: I quietly and discreetly crept up behind where the young mother was standing, balancing a young toddler on her hip. She had not noticed that she had dropped some of the communion bread on the floor beside her; I rescued the bread and placed it back on the table. Others were filing by one of the four tables positioned in the corners of the auditorium for the very casual, “self-service, drive-by” style of distributing the elements at the beginning of the Sunday communion service at Bridgeway Church in Denver. Near the rear of the auditorium a teenager with a bored look on his face was bending over a table near the wall, licking the remaining juice from the communion cup with his tongue. Later that morning we heard a very fine exposition of John 15 by a graduate of Denver Seminary, stressing the importance of abiding in Christ as the foundation for ministry.
These two scenes can hardly summarize, of course, the amazing range of “worship” experiences that we observed last fall in the greater Denver area, when Robin and I made a point of visiting as many different churches as possible, to observe worship styles and practices, as one of my sabbatical research projects. The 35 services we visited ranged over a very wide spectrum of American church life: from very contemporary to very traditional; from very quiet to very loud: a silent Quaker meeting; various contemporary and charismatic styles; megachurches and very small churches; Lutheran (ELCA and Missouri Synod); 5 different Episcopal or Anglican services; Anglican-Catholic; Roman Catholic; Greek and Russian Orthodox; Coptic Orthodox; Antiochian Orthodox; Presbyterian; Congregational; Nazarene; nondenominational; Willow Creek Community Church; “emerging” churches such as “Scum of the Earth,” “The Next Level,” and “Pathways,” all in Denver.
Needless to say, these visits were a real “learning experience,” and I am still in the process of digesting what I saw. I will note, however, a number of trends that I find disturbing, especially noted in the contemporary services (though not always limited to them):
Disappearance of pastoral prayer: Most of the contemporary services were built around what is known as the “frontier” or “revival” pattern of worship typical of many evangelical churches: music at the beginning, followed by a Bible message. At Willow Creek that Wednesday night there was a prayer that lasted about 35 seconds before the speaker came on stage for the message. So what’s the problem here? New Testament commands such as I Tim. 2:1,2 assume that prayer is an important part of Christian worship, and throughout church history – up until the advent of more contemporary worship styles since the 1970s – prayer has been a significant part of what Christians do when they meet to “worship.” The disappearance of prayer might suggest a loss of the sense of dependence on God that is fundamental to true spirituality, and a transition to an unspoken understanding of a “worship” service as a human performance that can be planned, staged, and executed on human power alone.
Disappearance of Scripture Reading: It was striking that in many of the contemporary services there was little reading of scripture. The preacher would typically announce a text, read it, and then preach. So what’s the potential problem here? In few instances was there an Old Testament reading or a psalm – whereas a biblical command such as I Tim. 4:13 reminds us to “devote yourself to the public reading of scripture”. More reading of scripture sets the context of the message in the larger canonical context of the biblical story of redemption, and can educate in settings where biblical literacy can be shockingly low. The focused, intentional reading of scripture as a key element of worship reminds the congregation that it is God’s word – not the human commentary – that should be the fundamental focus and authority.
Disappearance of Real Calls to Worship and Real Benedictions: In many of the contemporary services there was a very informal “walk on” greeting from the leader, and an immediate transition to the praise music – with no impression that it might the living God who wanted to call his people into his presence. Rather than a biblical benediction – in which God, speaking through the minister, places his name on his people, in a virtual summary of the gospel (“love of God, grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit ..”), at times there was a closing prayer, summary of the sermon, or closing announcements – more human words.
Disappearance of the Sense of the Holy: At one megachurch we attended, as I sat back (and relaxed) in the comfortable theater-style seat, I looked around and saw more coffee cups than Bibles in the hands of those around me. Did the large images of the praise band musicians on the “Jumbotron” monitors hanging from the ceiling focus my attention on God – or the human performers? A sense of reverence and the presence of the “holy” was more evident at some of the Catholic and Orthodox services; have we as evangelical Protestants so reacted to “real presence” sacramental views (e.g., “transubstantiation”) that our services can be marked by the real absence of the sense of the living, holy God? It’s a question worth thinking about.
One of my conclusions drawn from these church visits was that where evangelical seminaries (such as Denver and Gordon-Conwell) place great emphasis – areas such as expository preaching and sound doctrine – the graduates tend do very well indeed. In areas such as worship and music, where there is less instruction, there is a danger that the culture or thinned-out evangelical tradition of “revival” worship can take over, to the detriment of a richer understanding and practice of biblical worship.
I realized that I as an evangelical theologian need to do a great deal more of biblical reflection and theologizing on the nature and practice of worship itself – and not merely blame a “consumerist” or “entertainment oriented” culture or “modernity” for the ailments of the modern church. As part of my sabbatical research, and being “awakened from my doxological slumbers” by those 35 church visits, I wrote a paper titled “Real Presence, the Ontology of Worship, and the Renewal of the Evangelical Doxological Imagination,” in which I argue that the presence of the living God – from opening invocation to closing benediction – needs to be recognized and recovered as the central reality of biblical worship today. I have come to believe that a deep encounter with the living God in worship is the crucial foundation for the church’s success in other areas of ministry such as discipleship, evangelism, and mission; that indeed, the worship of God should be the church’s highest priority. God’s people need to be deeply impacted by God in worship before they can deeply impact the culture in mission. This article will be available in White Papers next month. During the next several years I hope to expand the article into a book, tentatively titled Searching for God on Sunday Morning.
In closing, let me recommend a book on the topic by James B. Torrance entitled Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace. It’s one of the finest recent treatments of the theology of worship, showing how Christian worship is fundamentally Trinitarian in nature – to the Father, through the Son, in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Torrance helps us avoid an understanding and practice of worship that is, in effect, “Pelagian” (done on human power alone), “Unitarian” (focused on Jesus alone, forgetting God the Father and God the Holy Spirit), and “Deistic” (treating God as distant, not as a God who is really present with and among his people). I highly recommend it.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Gospel: Is Wright Wrong? Yes and No...
By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
N.T. Wright is one of the most creative – and important – Christian theologians of our day and even when I don’t agree with him I am usually grateful for the thought-provoking stimulation he provides. Perhaps in future postings I’ll discuss other areas where I think he is right and/or wrong, but I thought I would right this first one about things I think he has gotten right and things he has gotten wrong about the gospel message itself.
Wright criticizes popular Christian descriptions of the gospel for being to anthropocentric. They make it sound as though it’s all about us. God loves us. God sent Christ to die for us so we could have eternal life. We get eternal life and other wonderful blessings through the gospel. He argues that gospel is not really about us at all. According to him it is “is a fourfold announcement about Jesus” (What St. Paul Really Said [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 60):
1. In Jesus of Nazareth, specifically in his cross, the decisive victory has been won over all the powers of evil, including sin and death themselves.
2. In Jesus’ resurrection the New Age has dawned, inaugurating the long-awaited time when the prophecies would be fulfilled, when, when Israel’s exile would be over, and the whole world would be addressed by the one creator God.
3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel's Messiah, her representative king.
4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow.
It is, moreover, a double and dramatic announcement about God:
1. The God of Israel is the one true God, and the pagan deities are mere idols.
2. The God of Israel is now made known in and through Jesus himself.
According to Wright it is the Spirit-empowered proclamation of this Christ-centered and God-centered message that results in the salvation/regeneration/conversion of (some of) those who hear. It results in personal salvation and justification but is not about either of those subjects. For Wright it is a mistake to make the gospel about (or even to include in the gospel message, it seems) the terms by which men and women come to experience the blessings of the reign of this wonderful Lord.
This is one of those many places where I think Wright is both right and wrong at the same time. He is right that the gospel message is Christocentric and not anthropocentric. As Paul says, “We do not proclaim ourselves [or yourselves, we might add], but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). It isn’t primarily about us. It is primarily about Christ. The fundamental Christian confession is not “I am saved” or “You can be saved” but “Jesus [Christ] is Lord!” And I think he is right that many evangelicals have turned it into a message that is primarily about how we get what we need rather than about the person of Christ and how God has acted in Christ to set this world right and bring himself the glory that he is due. After people are told “the gospel” they know they have found the key to forgiveness and eternal life but all too often have no clue that the gospel has implications for all of life. After mentioning that the Lordship of Christ is at the heart of the gospel I have had Christian leaders ask me what relationship there might be between the gospel and the Lordship of Christ. No wonder young Christians might not understand what is going on when after they trust in Christ we come back and tell them that they need to start living a different kind of life – the life to which Christ has called them.
I know a number of believers have found themselves deeply convicted upon reading Wright’s exposition of the gospel and realizing how man-centered their own understanding of the gospel had been. I’m afraid I would have to count myself among them. To just slightly modify the words of Matt Redman’s song, “The Heart of Worship” (©1999 Thankyou Music) we have responded by saying
I’m coming back to the heart of the gospel
And it’s all about You
It’s all about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You
It’s all about You, Jesus
I don’t actually think Wright’s exposition does full justice to the whole gospel message as Paul presents it. I’ll have to wait until my next post, however, to point out some of the things that I think Wright gets wrong. For now it’s enough for us to consider whether or not our presentation of the gospel has tended to put the accént on the wrong sylláble and has obscured the centrality of Christ in the gospel message.
Associate Professor of New Testament
N.T. Wright is one of the most creative – and important – Christian theologians of our day and even when I don’t agree with him I am usually grateful for the thought-provoking stimulation he provides. Perhaps in future postings I’ll discuss other areas where I think he is right and/or wrong, but I thought I would right this first one about things I think he has gotten right and things he has gotten wrong about the gospel message itself.
Wright criticizes popular Christian descriptions of the gospel for being to anthropocentric. They make it sound as though it’s all about us. God loves us. God sent Christ to die for us so we could have eternal life. We get eternal life and other wonderful blessings through the gospel. He argues that gospel is not really about us at all. According to him it is “is a fourfold announcement about Jesus” (What St. Paul Really Said [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 60):
1. In Jesus of Nazareth, specifically in his cross, the decisive victory has been won over all the powers of evil, including sin and death themselves.
2. In Jesus’ resurrection the New Age has dawned, inaugurating the long-awaited time when the prophecies would be fulfilled, when, when Israel’s exile would be over, and the whole world would be addressed by the one creator God.
3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel's Messiah, her representative king.
4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow.
It is, moreover, a double and dramatic announcement about God:
1. The God of Israel is the one true God, and the pagan deities are mere idols.
2. The God of Israel is now made known in and through Jesus himself.
According to Wright it is the Spirit-empowered proclamation of this Christ-centered and God-centered message that results in the salvation/regeneration/conversion of (some of) those who hear. It results in personal salvation and justification but is not about either of those subjects. For Wright it is a mistake to make the gospel about (or even to include in the gospel message, it seems) the terms by which men and women come to experience the blessings of the reign of this wonderful Lord.
This is one of those many places where I think Wright is both right and wrong at the same time. He is right that the gospel message is Christocentric and not anthropocentric. As Paul says, “We do not proclaim ourselves [or yourselves, we might add], but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). It isn’t primarily about us. It is primarily about Christ. The fundamental Christian confession is not “I am saved” or “You can be saved” but “Jesus [Christ] is Lord!” And I think he is right that many evangelicals have turned it into a message that is primarily about how we get what we need rather than about the person of Christ and how God has acted in Christ to set this world right and bring himself the glory that he is due. After people are told “the gospel” they know they have found the key to forgiveness and eternal life but all too often have no clue that the gospel has implications for all of life. After mentioning that the Lordship of Christ is at the heart of the gospel I have had Christian leaders ask me what relationship there might be between the gospel and the Lordship of Christ. No wonder young Christians might not understand what is going on when after they trust in Christ we come back and tell them that they need to start living a different kind of life – the life to which Christ has called them.
I know a number of believers have found themselves deeply convicted upon reading Wright’s exposition of the gospel and realizing how man-centered their own understanding of the gospel had been. I’m afraid I would have to count myself among them. To just slightly modify the words of Matt Redman’s song, “The Heart of Worship” (©1999 Thankyou Music) we have responded by saying
I’m coming back to the heart of the gospel
And it’s all about You
It’s all about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You
It’s all about You, Jesus
I don’t actually think Wright’s exposition does full justice to the whole gospel message as Paul presents it. I’ll have to wait until my next post, however, to point out some of the things that I think Wright gets wrong. For now it’s enough for us to consider whether or not our presentation of the gospel has tended to put the accént on the wrong sylláble and has obscured the centrality of Christ in the gospel message.
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