By John Jefferson Davis, PhD
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics
The following is a talk I gave on June 16th at Andover Newton Theological School at a conference on “Covenant, Community, and Sexuality” sponsored by the Boston Theological Institute. In the talk I tried to show how differences in churches and denominations on issues such as homosexuality and sexual ethics are rooted in differing understandings of biblical authority, biblical interpretation, and the nature of Christian doctrine itself – and as a result, are very difficult to resolve.
I wish to thank Dr. Rodney Peterson and the planning committee for their work in organizing this conference on “Covenant, Community and Sexuality,” sponsored by the Boston Theological Institute in partnership with Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College. The remarks that I will be sharing with you this morning come from the perspective of a faculty member who teaches at a conservative Protestant theological seminary, Gordon-Conwell, a member school of the BTI, and who, as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, has been part of a confessional body that for the last three decades has been embroiled in debate and controversy over matters of sexual ethics.
My purpose during these next twenty minutes or so is to propose, in a very schematic fashion, a “theological topography”, so to speak, of these debates over homosexuality and same-sex marriages, and to argue that the differing positions in question are based on fundamentally differing construals of authority, doctrine, and moral theology. It is the assumption of this proposal that unless these basic methodological and and presuppositional differences are recognized, it will continue to be difficult, if not impossible, for the various parties in this conversation to truly engage one another, much less reach consensus or agreement.
For the purpose of this discussion I propose to use the nomenclature of “traditionalist” and “revisionist” perspectives in these human sexuality debates. I will be using the term “traditionalist” rather than “evangelical” – the latter term commonly associated with theological positions represented by a theological seminary such as my own, Gordon-Conwell – both in an attempt to disengage the listener’s possibly stereotypical associations with this word deriving from the Christian Right and the popular media, and in an attempt to connect with a broad historical consensus on these issues that was widely shared by Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants for much of Christian history through the 1960s. I admit at the outset the limitations of any such generalized nomenclature, and invite further qualifications and nuancing of the topography that I am proposing in the discussion that is to follow.
Religious Authority and the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”
As regards the contentious issue of authority in religious communities, I propose to discuss the well known “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” as a heuristic device for analyzing the fault-lines in the current debates on human sexuality. It will be recalled that the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which may be visualized as a rectangle with the four terms “scripture”, “tradition”, “reason”, and “experience” placed at the four corners of the rectangle, point to four possible sources, in any given religious community, for the construction of doctrine and moral judgments, and the subsequent justification of these doctrines and moral judgments. Scriptures are those sacred texts that the community recognizes as constitutive for its origins, continuing life, and self-identity. “Tradition” may include formal and explicit confessional documents such as the Westminster Confession of Faith or Augsburg Confession, or informally, “hermeneutical protocols” or tacitly agreed upon ways of construing scriptures on matters that are deemed central to the community’s identity. For example, in Pentecostal churches it is assumed that the charismatic phenomena (e.g., glossolalia) in the book of Acts are operative and available in the present, while in certain conservative Protestant churches of a “cessationist” tradition, it is believed that such phenomena were only temporary and disappeared in the later centuries of church history.
“Reason,” a third component of the Quadrilateral, may be understood as a shorthand expression for “elite wisdom” that is recognized by a religious community at any given period of its history, and which operates to provide background information and assumptions for the interpretation of scriptures and the formulation of doctrine and moral judgments. For Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century “reason” was exemplified by the philosophy of Aristotle; in the modern and postmodern periods, “reason” may represent the current consensus of expert opinion in the natural and social sciences.
“Experience” is a fundamental concept that is somewhat elusive and not easily definable, but for the purposes of this discussion, it will be used to denote those immediate, affective, and largely pre-reflective human perceptions of persons, things, and events by the self and the community, that function both as a theological source and pre-understanding for the faith and life of religious communities. The visceral “gut reaction” of some to certain sexual practices, or, on the other, personal observations that, “In my experience, lesbian parents seem to be just as good at parenting as heterosexual parents” can both function, tacitly or explicitly, as “experience” for the various religious communities.
To bring the foregoing discussion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to the point, it is here hypothesized that from the point of view of a traditionalist religious community, it is their self-understanding and intent to give scripture the greatest epistemic weight relative to tradition, reason, and experience. All four elements are operative, but scripture is understood to “trump” the others in cases of real or apparent conflict. By way of contrast, from the point of view of traditionalist communities, revisionist communities are perceived as giving reason and experience epistemic and theological priority: reason and experience “trump” scripture and tradition, so to speak.
To broaden this latter point even further, it might be said that from the traditionalist perspective, warrants for authority are seen to be grounded externally to the self and to the community, while for revisionist communities (at least as perceived by traditionalists), authority is not only mediated through the self and the community, but, operatively, grounded internally in the self and its community. Both perspectives appeal to experience, but locate its grounding differently – transcendently or immanently, so to speak. On this construal of the fault lines of the current debates, the “traditionalist” and “revisionist” religious communities (both across and within given confessional boundaries) are, in effect, operating with different “decision making algorithms” in which the four elements of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are each understood differently and given differing epistemic weight. Religious communities that can not agree on a shared decision-making algorithm may find themselves stalemated in intractable doctrinal and ethical debates.
The Nature of Doctrine
In the second place, it is here proposed that traditionalist and revisionist religious communities not only hold differing doctrinal beliefs, but differing understandings of the nature of doctrine as well. On this construal of the differences, not only would it be the case that revisionist communities might dissent from one or affirmations of, say, the Nicene Creed, but further, creedal affirmations as such would be construed differently from the two perspectives in question. Traditionalist communities would presuppose some form of a “divine revelation” theory of the basis and nature of doctrine. That is to say, while all creedal formulations are in fact socially constructed in specific historical and social locations by specific human agents with specific interests, it would nevertheless be believed by traditionalist communities that the fundamental source and point of reference for doctrine in not in the self or its religious community, but external to the self, ultimately located in the being and intentionality of the deity, and mediated in scriptures perceived as bearing revelatory content.
From the point of view of these traditionalist communities, it seems that in revisionist communities doctrine is viewed, at least at the limit, as socially constructed almost without remainder, so to speak, and grounded internally in the self and in the experiences of the self-selecting community, rather than in some location external to and transcendent to the self. This latter characterization of the revisionist construal of doctrine might recall Schleiermacher’s notion of doctrine as “religious affections set forth in speech,” or George Lindbeck’s “cultural-linguistic” understanding of doctrine as those forms of religious discourse that provide internal cohesiveness and identity to a given religious community. In such revisionist understandings, doctrinal assertions may or may not make any cognitive assertions about states of affairs external to the religious consciousness of the community (e.g., “rose again [bodily] from the dead on the third day”), while in traditionalist communities doctrinal claims are understood to function not only as self-identifying modes of discourse, but as making cognitive-ontological claims as well.
From traditionalist perspectives, doctrine in revisionist communities has suffered a “hollowing out” and “lightening” of epistemic weight; doctrine is seen as being effectively replaced by social ethics - a social ethic often not markedly different from that of the prevailing secular culture. From the traditionalist point of view, a robust commitment to Christian doctrine is not only intrinsically important in terms of its cognitive, ontological, and soteriological content, but instrumentally important as well in terms of its social function in maintaining a clear sense of the community’s self-identity, distinctiveness, vibrancy of worship, and mission to the world. Seen from this perpective, religious communities such as Unitarian-Universalists would be perceived as having a rather “thin-description” in terms of their doctrinal identity, and perhaps consequently, an evisceration in the intensity and vitality of worship, and a much weakened “brand identity” that handicaps retention and recruitment of new members in the religious marketplace.
Moral Theology and Metaethics
As Alistair McIntyre pointed out years ago in his seminal work After Virtue, it has been increasingly difficult in our fragmented modern and postmodern contexts to find agreed-upon bases for moral judgments that transcend the confines of a given interest group, and this has become starkly evident in the human sexuality debates. Traditionalists, at the metaethical level, tend to presuppose some form of a “divine command” theory of ethics. The foundations of moral judgments are believed to be “discovered” rather than “constructed.” Revisionist communities, on the other hand (at least as seen from traditionalist perspectives), are perceived as operating on the basis of a utilitarian construal of ethics and, concomitantly, some neo-pragmatic (Rortian) epistemology. From a revisionist perspective, moral judgments can be seen as primarily if not exclusively as the social constructions of the community, the “good” and the “just” being understood as those beliefs and practices that increase the net utility and satisfaction of the self and the community. The calculus of personal and communal utility trumps any purported “divine command” from scripture and tradition, the latter of which are revisable in light of contemporary “reason” and experience. From one perspective, marriage as being limited to a human male and a human female is a divine command; from another, marriage is socially constructed and revisable in the light of new experience.
On this reading of the landscape, as in the case of doctrine, so in the case of moral theology, the fault line in the current debates would be seen to run between one perspective (“traditionalist”) that locates final authority outside the self and the community, and another (“revisionist”) that, at the end of the day, locates final authority in the self and its self-chosen community of interpretation.
Can traditionalist and revisionist religious communities seriously listen to one another, and perhaps even achieve some new form of consensus on the contentious issues of gender and sex? Recent decades do not appear to give grounds for great optimism in either regard, and the cultural momentum toward greater affinity-group segmentation driven by the internet and digital media shows little sign of abating. Real movement toward consensus would appear to be blocked by the realities of fundamentally differing “decision-making algorithms” and notions of doctrine and moral theology in traditionalist and revisionist communities.
Nevertheless, conversations such as those fostered by conferences such as this one will prove to time well spent if traditionalists broaden their horizons of concern beyond opposition to same-sex unions to a greater emphasis on the renewal and repair of existing marriages, and revisionists rediscover a more robust construal of Christian doctrine that can, when properly understood, provide a firmer and more coherent foundation for sexual ethics and religious ethics generally.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Itching Ears We Love
By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
I recently came back from a seminar that reminded me, in an ironic way, of Paul’s solemn charge and warning to Timothy: “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-- with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:1-4; Scripture citations are from the NIV unless otherwise indicated)
The seminar was called REVEAL. It was sponsored by the Willow Creek Association to explain their research based on the spiritual life survey that has been taken by 118,000 people in 420 congregations. When provided with a broad “list of benefits a church could provide” and asked to rank them in terms of importance the highest ranking benefit was “Help me understand the Bible in depth.” When asked a different question about what they wanted most from the weekend service of their church the top choice was for a service that “Incorporates relevant Bible teaching to help me with everyday life.” The third choice (out of many) was for a service that “Incorporates frequent use of Scripture” and the fourth choice was for a service that “Provides in-depth study of the Bible” (REVEAL: On the Road 2008, © WCA 2008). Three out of four of the top priorities for the worship service had to do with engaging Scripture. The ears of the people in these churches are itching for the Word of God!
In some cases it is preachers rather than the listeners who may be most tempted to think the church needs a different diet. Pastors are sometimes tempted to think careful or in-depth Bible teaching was something that an earlier generation would tolerate but that those attending church today would balk at it and want less blatantly religious teaching. The truth is that there have been too many cases of churches or Sunday School classes where in-depth Bible teaching was given but there was no life transformation to go along with it. The Bible can be and sometimes has been taught for the sake of knowledge alone (or a view of spirituality that views knowledge as being equal to spirituality), and that does not build up the church or its members. But that should not lead anyone to conclude that life change must come about some other way and not through knowledge of the Scriptures. While spiritual growth requires much more than a knowledge and understanding of Scripture (and more than private spiritual disciplines), solid spiritual growth and health will not be sustained without such a foundation. It seems the sheep understand the diet they need even if their shepherds are not always so clear about it.
The first article of the Gordon-Conwell Mission Statement reads “To encourage students to become knowledgeable of God's inerrant Word, competent in its interpretation, proclamation and application in the contemporary world.” The rationale given is as follows: “Because the teaching of God's Word is indispensable to the well-being and vitality of God's people, the Seminary has a fundamental responsibility to encourage in students a love for Scripture. The Seminary is to teach exegetical skills by which they will be able to apply Scripture effectively.” In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul exhorts Timothy to “Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately” (NET). Later he points out that the teaching of Scripture is essential if God’s people are to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17). It is the holy Scriptures “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15).
We do not believe in providing in-depth understanding of Scripture merely for the sake of intellectual curiosity, but for the essential contribution it makes, by the work of God’s grace and God’s Spirit, to our continuing transformation - the transformation of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Unsurprisingly, the REVEAL research confirms the crucial role of Scripture engagement in spiritual growth. Cally Parkinson, the co-author of REVEAL who led our seminar, told us that their research shows that exposure to (reading/study of and reflection on) Scripture, both privately and in worship, was by far the most significant and catalytic factor in people’s advancement through the stages of spiritual growth.
I am grateful to God to be serving on the faculty of a seminary that has a wonderful heritage of maintaining the highest possible standards in training Christian leaders to be careful and faithful interpreters of God’s Word. It is a heritage that, by God’s grace, we are committed to maintaining and building upon. We must (and do) teach our students much more than that, but we will never settle for anything less.
It is encouraging to hear (and to be able to spread the news) that the people in our pews long to have the Word of God read, taught and preached to them. They long to grasp its message more fully that its message might grasp their lives more completely. This is a case where pastors would do well to listen to the flock and rededicate themselves to providing them with a solid diet of clear, life-transforming biblical teaching and preaching. By the grace of God this is what the ears of our people are itching for! If we are to preach the Word even when people’s ears itch for other things instead, how much more should we be eager to do so when that is what they crave for both spiritual milk and spiritual meat? Paul tells Timothy to “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). I thank God for every preacher who is prepared to preach the Word when it is “out of season” (as we all must be) but rejoice in the news that, as a matter of fact, it is “in season” (at least as far as those surveyed are concerned)!
May God continue to multiply the numbers of those whose ears itch for the clear and undiluted preaching of his Word. Those are the itching ears we love! And may God continue to raise up faithful shepherds who will feed their flock the diet it needs to grow up “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
Associate Professor of New Testament
I recently came back from a seminar that reminded me, in an ironic way, of Paul’s solemn charge and warning to Timothy: “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-- with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:1-4; Scripture citations are from the NIV unless otherwise indicated)
The seminar was called REVEAL. It was sponsored by the Willow Creek Association to explain their research based on the spiritual life survey that has been taken by 118,000 people in 420 congregations. When provided with a broad “list of benefits a church could provide” and asked to rank them in terms of importance the highest ranking benefit was “Help me understand the Bible in depth.” When asked a different question about what they wanted most from the weekend service of their church the top choice was for a service that “Incorporates relevant Bible teaching to help me with everyday life.” The third choice (out of many) was for a service that “Incorporates frequent use of Scripture” and the fourth choice was for a service that “Provides in-depth study of the Bible” (REVEAL: On the Road 2008, © WCA 2008). Three out of four of the top priorities for the worship service had to do with engaging Scripture. The ears of the people in these churches are itching for the Word of God!
In some cases it is preachers rather than the listeners who may be most tempted to think the church needs a different diet. Pastors are sometimes tempted to think careful or in-depth Bible teaching was something that an earlier generation would tolerate but that those attending church today would balk at it and want less blatantly religious teaching. The truth is that there have been too many cases of churches or Sunday School classes where in-depth Bible teaching was given but there was no life transformation to go along with it. The Bible can be and sometimes has been taught for the sake of knowledge alone (or a view of spirituality that views knowledge as being equal to spirituality), and that does not build up the church or its members. But that should not lead anyone to conclude that life change must come about some other way and not through knowledge of the Scriptures. While spiritual growth requires much more than a knowledge and understanding of Scripture (and more than private spiritual disciplines), solid spiritual growth and health will not be sustained without such a foundation. It seems the sheep understand the diet they need even if their shepherds are not always so clear about it.
The first article of the Gordon-Conwell Mission Statement reads “To encourage students to become knowledgeable of God's inerrant Word, competent in its interpretation, proclamation and application in the contemporary world.” The rationale given is as follows: “Because the teaching of God's Word is indispensable to the well-being and vitality of God's people, the Seminary has a fundamental responsibility to encourage in students a love for Scripture. The Seminary is to teach exegetical skills by which they will be able to apply Scripture effectively.” In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul exhorts Timothy to “Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately” (NET). Later he points out that the teaching of Scripture is essential if God’s people are to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17). It is the holy Scriptures “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15).
We do not believe in providing in-depth understanding of Scripture merely for the sake of intellectual curiosity, but for the essential contribution it makes, by the work of God’s grace and God’s Spirit, to our continuing transformation - the transformation of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Unsurprisingly, the REVEAL research confirms the crucial role of Scripture engagement in spiritual growth. Cally Parkinson, the co-author of REVEAL who led our seminar, told us that their research shows that exposure to (reading/study of and reflection on) Scripture, both privately and in worship, was by far the most significant and catalytic factor in people’s advancement through the stages of spiritual growth.
I am grateful to God to be serving on the faculty of a seminary that has a wonderful heritage of maintaining the highest possible standards in training Christian leaders to be careful and faithful interpreters of God’s Word. It is a heritage that, by God’s grace, we are committed to maintaining and building upon. We must (and do) teach our students much more than that, but we will never settle for anything less.
It is encouraging to hear (and to be able to spread the news) that the people in our pews long to have the Word of God read, taught and preached to them. They long to grasp its message more fully that its message might grasp their lives more completely. This is a case where pastors would do well to listen to the flock and rededicate themselves to providing them with a solid diet of clear, life-transforming biblical teaching and preaching. By the grace of God this is what the ears of our people are itching for! If we are to preach the Word even when people’s ears itch for other things instead, how much more should we be eager to do so when that is what they crave for both spiritual milk and spiritual meat? Paul tells Timothy to “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). I thank God for every preacher who is prepared to preach the Word when it is “out of season” (as we all must be) but rejoice in the news that, as a matter of fact, it is “in season” (at least as far as those surveyed are concerned)!
May God continue to multiply the numbers of those whose ears itch for the clear and undiluted preaching of his Word. Those are the itching ears we love! And may God continue to raise up faithful shepherds who will feed their flock the diet it needs to grow up “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Living Together Before Marriage
By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus
Living together before marriage has become extremely common in American society. In fact, it has been estimated that over half of couples in the US will live together before marriage. Couples will report a variety of reasons for cohabiting before marriage, when asked. These range from financial considerations to convenience to simply “drifting into living together.” Concern about avoiding divorce, however, also appears to be one of the motivations for couples deciding to live together before marriage.
The divorce rate in the US continues to hover around the 50% mark, and increasing attention is being paid to factors that increase or decrease the risk of divorce.1 For example, risk of divorce increases for second marriages and if the partners are under 20 years of age. It decreases with more education, and if the woman grew up in a two-parent home. With the intention of avoiding divorce, I have heard numerous couples and individuals say that they believe it is important to live together first, to see if they are compatible. In fact, many young people believe that living together prior to marriage increases the likelihood of the marriage being successful. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Research has shown that cohabitation prior to marriage is actually a risk factor for divorce. In fact, premarital cohabitation is has been shown to be linked to multiple negative outcomes, including higher rates of physical violence, wife infidelity, and lower levels of marital quality. This has become such a clear pattern that researchers interested in marriage have begun to study the factors that contribute the “cohabitation risk”.2 One obvious factor that investigators have looked at is religiosity. It is assumed that cohabitation as well as willingness to divorce would be negatively related to how religious a person is. However, the negative effect of premarital cohabitation is apparent even after taking into account variables such as degree of religious commitment.
Markman & Stanley conceptualize two sets of forces that impact individuals in the formation and maintenance of marriages. One force encourages individuals to form and maintain the relationship and the other force increases the cost of leaving. They refer to these forces as Dedication and Constraint Commitment, respectively. Examples of dedication would be the sense of “we” or couple identity, desire for a shared future, and so on. Constraint commitment refers to the financial cost of separating or perceived low quality of alternatives. They suggest that constraints contribute to why unhappy couples stay together and marry if they are living together. Recently, they have begun to examine some of the factors that contribute to marital instability in couples that cohabit prior to marriage. In a longitudinal study of almost 200 couples, they found that men who cohabit prior to engagement were less dedicated to the women than men who did not cohabit or did so only after they were engaged. This lower dedication persisted into the early years of marriage, to the limit that the study followed the couples.
These results sound remarkably like some pop psychology, for example, that men are more reluctant than women to make a commitment to marriage. They also, however, call into question some other myths, particularly that women are likely to believe that cohabitation is a step toward marriage to a greater extent than men do. Women who cohabit with the goal of coaxing men into marrying them are misguided about the effect of this on the men’s dedication to them. Lack of dedication increases the probability of divorce.
As evangelical Christians, we are committed to marriage as a creation ordinance, and to supporting the formation and maintenance of healthy marriages. Here is a place where modern psychological science provides additional support for a biblical model of family development, with cohabitation following marriage as the pattern producing the most stable, healthy marriages. This encourages me once again that what God prohibits in Scripture, he does so not to spoil our fun but because it is best for us: these are the boundaries that enable us to grow into mature, healthy individuals who become all that God intended us to be, enabling us to honor him in all areas of life.
I have provided premarital counseling to Christian couples who are cohabiting. When I present these research findings about the effects of premarital cohabitation to them, I have been amazed at the reaction. Rather than recognizing the wisdom of God’s way, they have simply disbelieved the research. This seems to me a place where postmodern philosophy has had a deeply practical impact on how people live. When one believes that truth is relative and socially constructed, then this kind of evidence about the consequences of premarital cohabitation need not have any effect on personal choices. This reminds me how extremely important it is that we hold and teach a biblically grounded perspective on truth and the application of truth to our lives.
1Bramlett MD and Mosher WD. Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 23(22). 2002.
2G.K. Rhoades, S.M. Stanley, & H.J. Markman (2006) Pre-engagement cohabitation and gender asymmetry in marital commitment. Journal of Family Psychology 20(4), 553-560.
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus
Living together before marriage has become extremely common in American society. In fact, it has been estimated that over half of couples in the US will live together before marriage. Couples will report a variety of reasons for cohabiting before marriage, when asked. These range from financial considerations to convenience to simply “drifting into living together.” Concern about avoiding divorce, however, also appears to be one of the motivations for couples deciding to live together before marriage.
The divorce rate in the US continues to hover around the 50% mark, and increasing attention is being paid to factors that increase or decrease the risk of divorce.1 For example, risk of divorce increases for second marriages and if the partners are under 20 years of age. It decreases with more education, and if the woman grew up in a two-parent home. With the intention of avoiding divorce, I have heard numerous couples and individuals say that they believe it is important to live together first, to see if they are compatible. In fact, many young people believe that living together prior to marriage increases the likelihood of the marriage being successful. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Research has shown that cohabitation prior to marriage is actually a risk factor for divorce. In fact, premarital cohabitation is has been shown to be linked to multiple negative outcomes, including higher rates of physical violence, wife infidelity, and lower levels of marital quality. This has become such a clear pattern that researchers interested in marriage have begun to study the factors that contribute the “cohabitation risk”.2 One obvious factor that investigators have looked at is religiosity. It is assumed that cohabitation as well as willingness to divorce would be negatively related to how religious a person is. However, the negative effect of premarital cohabitation is apparent even after taking into account variables such as degree of religious commitment.
Markman & Stanley conceptualize two sets of forces that impact individuals in the formation and maintenance of marriages. One force encourages individuals to form and maintain the relationship and the other force increases the cost of leaving. They refer to these forces as Dedication and Constraint Commitment, respectively. Examples of dedication would be the sense of “we” or couple identity, desire for a shared future, and so on. Constraint commitment refers to the financial cost of separating or perceived low quality of alternatives. They suggest that constraints contribute to why unhappy couples stay together and marry if they are living together. Recently, they have begun to examine some of the factors that contribute to marital instability in couples that cohabit prior to marriage. In a longitudinal study of almost 200 couples, they found that men who cohabit prior to engagement were less dedicated to the women than men who did not cohabit or did so only after they were engaged. This lower dedication persisted into the early years of marriage, to the limit that the study followed the couples.
These results sound remarkably like some pop psychology, for example, that men are more reluctant than women to make a commitment to marriage. They also, however, call into question some other myths, particularly that women are likely to believe that cohabitation is a step toward marriage to a greater extent than men do. Women who cohabit with the goal of coaxing men into marrying them are misguided about the effect of this on the men’s dedication to them. Lack of dedication increases the probability of divorce.
As evangelical Christians, we are committed to marriage as a creation ordinance, and to supporting the formation and maintenance of healthy marriages. Here is a place where modern psychological science provides additional support for a biblical model of family development, with cohabitation following marriage as the pattern producing the most stable, healthy marriages. This encourages me once again that what God prohibits in Scripture, he does so not to spoil our fun but because it is best for us: these are the boundaries that enable us to grow into mature, healthy individuals who become all that God intended us to be, enabling us to honor him in all areas of life.
I have provided premarital counseling to Christian couples who are cohabiting. When I present these research findings about the effects of premarital cohabitation to them, I have been amazed at the reaction. Rather than recognizing the wisdom of God’s way, they have simply disbelieved the research. This seems to me a place where postmodern philosophy has had a deeply practical impact on how people live. When one believes that truth is relative and socially constructed, then this kind of evidence about the consequences of premarital cohabitation need not have any effect on personal choices. This reminds me how extremely important it is that we hold and teach a biblically grounded perspective on truth and the application of truth to our lives.
1Bramlett MD and Mosher WD. Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 23(22). 2002.
2G.K. Rhoades, S.M. Stanley, & H.J. Markman (2006) Pre-engagement cohabitation and gender asymmetry in marital commitment. Journal of Family Psychology 20(4), 553-560.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Visionary Dreaming?
By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute
A big God requires that we think big. Perhaps the reason our churches aren’t thriving is because we haven’t thought big enough? Right?
So, we set big goals for ourselves and our places of ministry, our churches. BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goals—is the battle cry from a couple of years ago. Big Hairy Audacious Goals for prayer: (“It’s not enough for a few people to pray. Imagine what God could do if thousands of people prayed for the same thing at the same time, preferably at the same place?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for evangelism: (“Pick a number, any number; how many dare we save for Christ?”) Big Audacious Hairy Goals for missions: (“Dare we strategize campaigns that would encompass whole countries, even entire continents?”). “We receive not because we ask not.”
To drive these goals, we, of course, need a vision. A neighborhood corner store kind of vision will not do. We need a mega-store, WalMart-Home Depot kind of vision. We need an expansive vision, a great vision that matches the bigness of God. Dare I say, to truly honor God, we need a vision that explores the very frontiers of God’s providence in our lives? “If there is no vision, the people perish.”
And, of course, a big vision requires a certain type of leader. Big, thick, deep voices are required to not only think and articulate big, deep, expansive thoughts, but also provide the will to see these mega-visions through to their end. Leaders need to be out front, way out in front of their organizations, calling their people to the kind of obedience required to fulfill these big visions. We need more big daydreamers, daydreamers for God’s glory.
In the midst of all this mega-vision casting we hear a thin small voice: “God hates visionary dreaming.” Come again? A wisp of a voice it is, indeed, almost inaudible. Have we heard him right? The logic of the words runs so counter to the current orthodoxy of obedience. There it is again: “God hates visionary dreaming.”
Allow me to put the words into context, quoting from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together: “God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself. Accordingly, he stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”
Bonhoeffer's creaky, more than 60-year-old words about Christian community fall like a thud on the current evangelical landscape. They just do not add up in our current economics of obedience. The words sound downright counter-intuitive to what we know of the way God works in our lives and expects of us. But are they wrong?
Perhaps Bonhoeffer's words expose a growing theological presumption on our part, a presumption driven by a deficient understanding of who God is in the economy of His design for His world. As well intended as our big designs are on behalf of God and His Kingdom, are they not sometimes tainted ever so lightly with our own hubris? Does God need us to fulfill His Kingdom here on earth? Certainly. By an act of His grace, He has providentially written us into His grand redemptive story. But, does He really need us in the ways we often design for Him? I sometimes think if God were somehow written out of the big plans we have for Him in fulfilling His Kingdom, it would take an uncomfortable amount of time for us to realize His absence. At the end of the day, our grand designs for God are wonderfully expendable.
Perhaps the net effect of our well-intended pandering to do great things for God is that our big goals and big visions and big plans sometimes overshadow the hard work of obedience. Cast our eyes back to the narrative of Scripture and Church History. What is the pattern we see? Do we really see the great imprint of God’s work in redemptive history as the product of well-conceived, humanly orchestrated, BHAG plans? Not really. More times than not, God’s story is one of steadfast, obedient people being caught up and transformed by a divine plan that extends far beyond their own best intensions. It may be that God’s work is periodically manifested in wonderfully dramatic fashion. More often than not, however, the work of God is an exercise in plain, hard obedience.
But, finally, Bonhoeffer's words are mostly directed toward church leaders. Leadership is a delicate thing, isn’t it? Looking across the landscape of the church today, don’t we see enough examples of leadership blinded by ambition, but falsely camouflaged as faithfulness? This is not to say that Christian leaders with big, deep visions aren’t sincere, but, isn’t this the point? Sincerity is a dangerous gatekeeper to what is truthful and right. Our hearts are so vulnerable to our own self-deceptive ways.
What is the antidote to this self-deception for those of us in leadership roles in the Church. Joseph Stowell’s observation at a recent lectureship in chapel comes to mind. He observes that, contrary to what we would guess by looking at row upon row of books on leadership at Borders and our neighborhood Christian bookstore, the New Testament really speaks very little about being a good leader. There really is so little biblical evidence for the need for big visionary dreamers. The clarion call of the Gospels is all about being good followers. This is what Jesus asks of us: to be humble dreamers with enough sense to follow Him.
Director, The Ockenga Institute
A big God requires that we think big. Perhaps the reason our churches aren’t thriving is because we haven’t thought big enough? Right?
So, we set big goals for ourselves and our places of ministry, our churches. BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goals—is the battle cry from a couple of years ago. Big Hairy Audacious Goals for prayer: (“It’s not enough for a few people to pray. Imagine what God could do if thousands of people prayed for the same thing at the same time, preferably at the same place?”). Big Hairy Audacious Goals for evangelism: (“Pick a number, any number; how many dare we save for Christ?”) Big Audacious Hairy Goals for missions: (“Dare we strategize campaigns that would encompass whole countries, even entire continents?”). “We receive not because we ask not.”
To drive these goals, we, of course, need a vision. A neighborhood corner store kind of vision will not do. We need a mega-store, WalMart-Home Depot kind of vision. We need an expansive vision, a great vision that matches the bigness of God. Dare I say, to truly honor God, we need a vision that explores the very frontiers of God’s providence in our lives? “If there is no vision, the people perish.”
And, of course, a big vision requires a certain type of leader. Big, thick, deep voices are required to not only think and articulate big, deep, expansive thoughts, but also provide the will to see these mega-visions through to their end. Leaders need to be out front, way out in front of their organizations, calling their people to the kind of obedience required to fulfill these big visions. We need more big daydreamers, daydreamers for God’s glory.
In the midst of all this mega-vision casting we hear a thin small voice: “God hates visionary dreaming.” Come again? A wisp of a voice it is, indeed, almost inaudible. Have we heard him right? The logic of the words runs so counter to the current orthodoxy of obedience. There it is again: “God hates visionary dreaming.”
Allow me to put the words into context, quoting from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together: “God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself. Accordingly, he stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”
Bonhoeffer's creaky, more than 60-year-old words about Christian community fall like a thud on the current evangelical landscape. They just do not add up in our current economics of obedience. The words sound downright counter-intuitive to what we know of the way God works in our lives and expects of us. But are they wrong?
Perhaps Bonhoeffer's words expose a growing theological presumption on our part, a presumption driven by a deficient understanding of who God is in the economy of His design for His world. As well intended as our big designs are on behalf of God and His Kingdom, are they not sometimes tainted ever so lightly with our own hubris? Does God need us to fulfill His Kingdom here on earth? Certainly. By an act of His grace, He has providentially written us into His grand redemptive story. But, does He really need us in the ways we often design for Him? I sometimes think if God were somehow written out of the big plans we have for Him in fulfilling His Kingdom, it would take an uncomfortable amount of time for us to realize His absence. At the end of the day, our grand designs for God are wonderfully expendable.
Perhaps the net effect of our well-intended pandering to do great things for God is that our big goals and big visions and big plans sometimes overshadow the hard work of obedience. Cast our eyes back to the narrative of Scripture and Church History. What is the pattern we see? Do we really see the great imprint of God’s work in redemptive history as the product of well-conceived, humanly orchestrated, BHAG plans? Not really. More times than not, God’s story is one of steadfast, obedient people being caught up and transformed by a divine plan that extends far beyond their own best intensions. It may be that God’s work is periodically manifested in wonderfully dramatic fashion. More often than not, however, the work of God is an exercise in plain, hard obedience.
But, finally, Bonhoeffer's words are mostly directed toward church leaders. Leadership is a delicate thing, isn’t it? Looking across the landscape of the church today, don’t we see enough examples of leadership blinded by ambition, but falsely camouflaged as faithfulness? This is not to say that Christian leaders with big, deep visions aren’t sincere, but, isn’t this the point? Sincerity is a dangerous gatekeeper to what is truthful and right. Our hearts are so vulnerable to our own self-deceptive ways.
What is the antidote to this self-deception for those of us in leadership roles in the Church. Joseph Stowell’s observation at a recent lectureship in chapel comes to mind. He observes that, contrary to what we would guess by looking at row upon row of books on leadership at Borders and our neighborhood Christian bookstore, the New Testament really speaks very little about being a good leader. There really is so little biblical evidence for the need for big visionary dreamers. The clarion call of the Gospels is all about being good followers. This is what Jesus asks of us: to be humble dreamers with enough sense to follow Him.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Welcome to Your Nightmare
By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
It's my dream, but many of you have had it too: I am enrolled in a college course, it's more than halfway through the semester…and I have done nothing. No lectures. No reading. No thinking. In its most virulent form, the dream pops up every week or two; the semester marches on even in dreamland, but I continue to do nothing.
I suspect seminary graduates may have their own variation on this nightmare. You are tucked away in your study, happily going about your sermon preparation, when you feel a cold breath on the back of your neck. You turn in horror to see the ghost of J. Gresham Machen, or the spectre of Bill Mounce, standing behind you. He speaks no word, but only points to your Greek New Testament sitting unused on your bookshelf, and then disappears. You awake in a cold sweat.
Let me offer a few words of encouragement for those of you drowning in a sea of Greek Guilt (those of you with Hebrew Humiliation will have to wait for now). First of all, remember that you can derive all sorts of benefit from reading the Greek text even if you can't tell a passive periphrastic from a Pittsburgh Penguin. In fact, if you do nothing but notice repeated words in the Greek text, you will find your sermon preparation is made easier, not more difficult, by examining the original text. More often than not, the New Testament writers make their main point clear the same way you make your own main points clear: by repeating them.
Here are few quick examples. We all know the story of the Wee Little Man, Zacchaeus. (You can repeat the lyrics in your head here now to refresh the tale.) But did you know that Luke says literally that “Zacchaeus was seeking to see Jesus…” (Luke 19:3)? When you work your way to v.10, you see the same word appear: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” With that simple observation, you come upon the heart of the story: Zacchaeus is indeed seeking Jesus…but Jesus' seeking of Zacchaeus is deeper and truer and more enduring than Zacchaeus' seeking of Jesus could ever be.
Luke does something similar back in chapter 4, when Jesus speaks to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. In v.19, Jesus concludes his Scripture reading from Isa. 61:1 by saying he is proclaiming “the acceptable year of the Lord”. The word for “acceptable” is dektos (and its importance is highlighted by the fact that it is the final word of the quotation). When Jesus goes on to rebuke the crowd and say, “No prophet is accepted in his home town…” (v.24), “accepted” is, you guessed it, dektos. This gives us the central tension of the story: God is now willing to accept people into his kingdom, but the people of Nazareth are unwilling to accept his king.
Paying attention to repeated words can also help make sense of bigger portions of Scripture. If you read carefully through Philippians, for instance, you will see that much of the vocabulary in the “hymn to Christ” in 2:5-11 is picked up in the rest of the letter. Perhaps the most striking example comes in 2:30, where Paul says that Epaphroditus came “unto death” for his faith in Christ. While of course Epaphroditus recovered from his illness, it is no coincidence that the phrase Paul uses is identical to the one he uses in 2:8 to describe Christ's death. The lesson is clear. Epaphroditus is living out Christ's story, and the Philippians are to go and do likewise.
Be encouraged! None of this is beyond your grasp. With a little work brushing up what you already know, you can make your sermon preparation simpler, faster, and more faithful to the intent of God's word. That sounds like a dream come true.
Associate Professor of New Testament
It's my dream, but many of you have had it too: I am enrolled in a college course, it's more than halfway through the semester…and I have done nothing. No lectures. No reading. No thinking. In its most virulent form, the dream pops up every week or two; the semester marches on even in dreamland, but I continue to do nothing.
I suspect seminary graduates may have their own variation on this nightmare. You are tucked away in your study, happily going about your sermon preparation, when you feel a cold breath on the back of your neck. You turn in horror to see the ghost of J. Gresham Machen, or the spectre of Bill Mounce, standing behind you. He speaks no word, but only points to your Greek New Testament sitting unused on your bookshelf, and then disappears. You awake in a cold sweat.
Let me offer a few words of encouragement for those of you drowning in a sea of Greek Guilt (those of you with Hebrew Humiliation will have to wait for now). First of all, remember that you can derive all sorts of benefit from reading the Greek text even if you can't tell a passive periphrastic from a Pittsburgh Penguin. In fact, if you do nothing but notice repeated words in the Greek text, you will find your sermon preparation is made easier, not more difficult, by examining the original text. More often than not, the New Testament writers make their main point clear the same way you make your own main points clear: by repeating them.
Here are few quick examples. We all know the story of the Wee Little Man, Zacchaeus. (You can repeat the lyrics in your head here now to refresh the tale.) But did you know that Luke says literally that “Zacchaeus was seeking to see Jesus…” (Luke 19:3)? When you work your way to v.10, you see the same word appear: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” With that simple observation, you come upon the heart of the story: Zacchaeus is indeed seeking Jesus…but Jesus' seeking of Zacchaeus is deeper and truer and more enduring than Zacchaeus' seeking of Jesus could ever be.
Luke does something similar back in chapter 4, when Jesus speaks to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. In v.19, Jesus concludes his Scripture reading from Isa. 61:1 by saying he is proclaiming “the acceptable year of the Lord”. The word for “acceptable” is dektos (and its importance is highlighted by the fact that it is the final word of the quotation). When Jesus goes on to rebuke the crowd and say, “No prophet is accepted in his home town…” (v.24), “accepted” is, you guessed it, dektos. This gives us the central tension of the story: God is now willing to accept people into his kingdom, but the people of Nazareth are unwilling to accept his king.
Paying attention to repeated words can also help make sense of bigger portions of Scripture. If you read carefully through Philippians, for instance, you will see that much of the vocabulary in the “hymn to Christ” in 2:5-11 is picked up in the rest of the letter. Perhaps the most striking example comes in 2:30, where Paul says that Epaphroditus came “unto death” for his faith in Christ. While of course Epaphroditus recovered from his illness, it is no coincidence that the phrase Paul uses is identical to the one he uses in 2:8 to describe Christ's death. The lesson is clear. Epaphroditus is living out Christ's story, and the Philippians are to go and do likewise.
Be encouraged! None of this is beyond your grasp. With a little work brushing up what you already know, you can make your sermon preparation simpler, faster, and more faithful to the intent of God's word. That sounds like a dream come true.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Templeton 2008 Science for Ministry Initiative
By John Jefferson Davis, PhD
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics
David Horn and I recently returned from a conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation in connection with the foundation’s new “Science for Ministry” initiative. The Templeton Foundation is sponsoring a series of grant funded initiatives that would encourage seminaries and other parachurch and educational organizations to think in more focused ways about how ministers could be more effectively trained and supported to minister in a culture so heavily influence by modern science and technology. During the next several months Dave and I will be revising an earlier proposal that would involve producing my course “Frontiers of Science and Faith” to be made available online, and developing focused seminars and pastor’s sabbaticals that would bring together pastors, working scientists, and seminary professors to engage with issues raised by modern science. Our hope is to leverage the existing infrastructure of the Ockenga Institute for continuing and distance education, and to be able to serve alumni like you in new ways.
The conference was attended by a broad spectrum of evangelical and mainline schools including Princeton, Pittsburgh, and Austin Theological seminaries, Asbury, Gordon-Conwell, Calvin, Moody, the Trinity Forum, Baylor, Regent College, the Alban Institute, and others. The speakers and workshops addressed a broad range of topics including creation and evolution, the preaching and teaching of biblical texts relating to modern astronomy and cosmology, the nature of scientific research, new discoveries in neuroscience, stem cell research, global warming and the environment, and much more.
I think it would be fair to say that we both came away from the conference with fresh energy that should stimulate my teaching in these areas and David’s planning for future continuing education events.
If you would like to know more about the work of the Templeton Foundation and this initiative, you can visit their website at www.templeton.org. Excellent resources in the area of modern science and the Christian faith can be found at the website of the American Scientific Affiliation, www.asa3.org. If you are interested in doing some reading this summer in the area of science and the Christian faith, I would mention my own book, Frontiers of Science and Faith: From the Big Bang to the End of the Universe (InterVarsity Press), and a new book by Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (Templeton Foundation Press).
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics
David Horn and I recently returned from a conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation in connection with the foundation’s new “Science for Ministry” initiative. The Templeton Foundation is sponsoring a series of grant funded initiatives that would encourage seminaries and other parachurch and educational organizations to think in more focused ways about how ministers could be more effectively trained and supported to minister in a culture so heavily influence by modern science and technology. During the next several months Dave and I will be revising an earlier proposal that would involve producing my course “Frontiers of Science and Faith” to be made available online, and developing focused seminars and pastor’s sabbaticals that would bring together pastors, working scientists, and seminary professors to engage with issues raised by modern science. Our hope is to leverage the existing infrastructure of the Ockenga Institute for continuing and distance education, and to be able to serve alumni like you in new ways.
The conference was attended by a broad spectrum of evangelical and mainline schools including Princeton, Pittsburgh, and Austin Theological seminaries, Asbury, Gordon-Conwell, Calvin, Moody, the Trinity Forum, Baylor, Regent College, the Alban Institute, and others. The speakers and workshops addressed a broad range of topics including creation and evolution, the preaching and teaching of biblical texts relating to modern astronomy and cosmology, the nature of scientific research, new discoveries in neuroscience, stem cell research, global warming and the environment, and much more.
I think it would be fair to say that we both came away from the conference with fresh energy that should stimulate my teaching in these areas and David’s planning for future continuing education events.
If you would like to know more about the work of the Templeton Foundation and this initiative, you can visit their website at www.templeton.org. Excellent resources in the area of modern science and the Christian faith can be found at the website of the American Scientific Affiliation, www.asa3.org. If you are interested in doing some reading this summer in the area of science and the Christian faith, I would mention my own book, Frontiers of Science and Faith: From the Big Bang to the End of the Universe (InterVarsity Press), and a new book by Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (Templeton Foundation Press).
Monday, May 5, 2008
The Gospel: Is Wright Wrong? Yes and No... (Part 2)
By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament
In my previous post I addressed a key aspect of N. T. Wright’s view of the gospel that I thought was right and important, namely that it is not an anthropocentric message, but a Christocentric message. It isn’t fundamentally about us, but about Jesus Christ as Lord. To preach the gospel is not to preach an abstract system of salvation but to preach Christ, especially Christ as Lord (cf. Philippians 1:7-18).
I agree with much of what Wright has to say about the gospel, and think he offers important correctives to popular evangelical approaches that lead people to think it is about how we can get eternal fire insurance or that it is all about how God will help us be successful and prosperous in this world. In their book, Cat & Dog Theology (Waynesboro, GA: Authentic Lifestyle, 2003), Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison develop a theological insight from a joke about cats and dogs: “A dog says, ‘you pet me, you ,feed me, you shelter me, you love me, you must be God.’ A cat says, ‘you pet me, you ,feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be God’” (p. 15). Too many evangelicals have a cat theology in which God’s grace to us in Christ is taken as evidence that Christianity is all about us after all. But we are not at the center of the universe. Christ is.
While I agree with much of what Wright says about the gospel I have a problem with his insistence that it is simply a message about Christ. It seems to me that his understanding of the gospel leaves out something that must be included. And Paul’s letter to the Galatians is very concerned about precisely the part that Wright leaves out. There is no real evidence that the false teachers Paul is concerned about in Galatia were teaching a different message about who Christ is or what he had done than what Paul was saying. They did not deny that he had died for our sins, been raised from the dead and was Israel’s Messiah and Lord over all creation. It seems on those points they were on the same page as the apostle Paul. Where they differed, however, was in what they taught about how one needed to respond to that wonderful news about Christ the Lord. In their view it was not sufficient to turn to Christ in faith (a faith that would be manifest in obedience as well), but it was also necessary to become Jews through circumcision and obey the Law of Moses. It was not their message about Jesus himself that was different, but their message about the required response. Still, Paul describes such a message as “another gospel” – a false gospel (Galatians 1:8-9). This suggests Wright is working with a truncated version of the gospel when he strictly limits its contents to statements about Jesus and resists including within the gospel message the parts that explain how – on what terms – it becomes good news for us. Paul anathematizes the false teachers in Galatia for preaching a false gospel when the primary difference seems to have been regarding the necessary response to Christ’s death, resurrection and lordship, not Christ’s nature or role as Lord or the narrative of his death and resurrection.
In fact, there are a number of other texts that suggest that in an important sense the gospel message is in fact a message about us. In Galatians 3:8 Paul indicates that “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” Here the gospel is not only identified with God’s promise to bless all the nations (Genesis 12:3), but Paul says it is based on God’s intention to justify the Gentiles by faith. So the gospel is not only a story about Jesus Christ, but also has to do with the blessings we receive and with justification in particular. Wright wants to sharply distinguish between the gospel and the doctrine of justification. He emphasizes that the preaching of the gospel is not the same as the message of justification. He is right to say they are not synonymous but implies a greater distinction between them than Paul’s own language suggests. Galatians 3:8 is exhibit A to that effect. The whole argument of his letters to the Romans and Galatians also reinforces the strong relationship between the two. Surely one of Paul’s purposes in the writing of Romans is to expound his understanding of the gospel for the sake of Roman Christians who have no first-hand knowledge of it. The gospel is what Paul is talking about both in Romans 1:1-6 and in 1:14-17 and in 1:14-17 it is explicitly the relationship between the gospel and justification that is highlighted. Wright has argued that actual the nature of the gospel is given in 1:1-6 and that 1:14-17 brings in the related but different issue of its effects. But the bulk of Romans 1-8 (at least) is dedicated to unpacking the contents of 1:16-17 and the understanding of justification that flows from Habakkuk 2:4, Genesis 16:5 and other OT texts (see the outline for chapters 1-8 in Cranfield’s commentaries and the discussion of the relationship between 1:16-17 and the following chapters (especially 3:21-22) in the first chapter of Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith). When Paul wants to expose the Romans to the nature of his preaching of the gospel he spends a large chunk of his time explaining his understanding of justification.
A similar thing happens in Galatians. In Galatians 1:8-9 Paul makes it clear he is concerned about people preaching a different gospel, a false gospel. In Galatians 1:11-12 he emphasizes the divine rather than human origin of his gospel message. The fact that Paul gives so much attention to the issue of justification in 2:16-5:11 is because his gospel can hardly be separated from his teaching on justification. Paul’s gospel and his teaching on justification are not exactly the same thing, but, to steal the language of the Chalcedonian definition on the two natures of Christ, one might say there is no “confusion, change, division, or separation" between justification and the gospel in Paul’s thought.
Romans 10 does a fine job of revealing the Christocentric nature of the gospel message as well as the fact that it includes an explanation of the required response to the message about Christ and is tied to justification so that while the message of the gospel may not be exactly the same as the doctrine of justification they are quite closely related. In Romans 10:5-18 the message of Christ’s death and resurrection is referred to as “the word of faith that we proclaim” (v. 8; this and other scriptural quotations in this posting are from the ESV). And Paul insists that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9). Note the scriptural verses Paul quotes from the OT to back up this understanding of the gospel in the following verses. In v. 11 Paul cites from Isaiah 28:16: “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame" and in v. 13 he cites Joel 2:32: “"everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." In v. 15 he cites Nahum 1:15: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" In v. 16 he points out that “not all obeyed the gospel.” The texts from Isaiah and Joel, like the quote from Genesis 12:3 in Galatians 3, stress the role of and the blessings experienced by those who believe, those who call on the name of the Lord. The Nahum text confirms that what Paul has been discussing throughout the passage is the preaching of the gospel – “the good news.”
While this posting focuses on Wright’s view of the contents of the gospel message and not on the strengths and weaknesses of his views on justification (despite the close relationship between the two) I feel the need to point out in passing that I think Wright is also wrong to argue that justification is not entrance language. (“Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian” What Saint Paul Really Said [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 125.) God’s declaration that we are righteous is a speech act which actually makes it so, rather than simply a recognition of something that was already true before the statement is made. Wright seems to recognize this on page 98 of What Saint Paul Really Said (“for the plaintiff or defendant to be ‘righteous’ in the biblical sense within the law-court setting is for them to have that status as a result of the decision of the court”; emphases his), but the rest of his discussion leaves that insight behind. We could also bring up the evidence pointed out by Simon Gathercole and others that E.P. Sanders’ understanding of first century Judaism (which Wright seems to accept without qualification) does not do justice to all the evidence available (see Simon J. Gathercole, Where Is Boasting?: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Response in Romans 1-5 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002]). Again, a full full-fledged discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of Wright’s understanding of justification would require a much longer treatment and will not be undertaken here.
Wright often uses a rhetoric that of the type “It [whatever the theological topic is] is not this [whatever the common view has been] but that [his new understanding]. Usually I find myself agreeing that he has put his finger on something very important and has made a point that needed to be made. Often, however, I also conclude that his new dichotomy does not really do full justice to the issue. In this case he is right to point out that the gospel does not consist of an abstract theory of salvation and is not really about us and our blessings, but about Christ – his death, resurrection and reign – but it also includes the blessings that our ours as by faith we participate in his death, resurrection and reign. And the nature of the appropriate response to the message about Christ is essential enough to the gospel itself that to get that wrong is to preach a different gospel, a false one. I’m grateful for Wright’s informed and stimulating writings on so many important issues even though I don’t think he always gets things exactly right. But then I don’t suppose I do either. Through much of my Christian life I’m sure my own understanding and teaching of the gospel reinforced the idea that I was at the center of God’s universe (good old “cat theology”) and failed to emphasize the point that Christ is the center of the universe and to understand that is to understand that life only makes sense if he is at the center of our own personal universe as well. Did I really understand the gospel back then? Well, yes and no…
Associate Professor of New Testament
In my previous post I addressed a key aspect of N. T. Wright’s view of the gospel that I thought was right and important, namely that it is not an anthropocentric message, but a Christocentric message. It isn’t fundamentally about us, but about Jesus Christ as Lord. To preach the gospel is not to preach an abstract system of salvation but to preach Christ, especially Christ as Lord (cf. Philippians 1:7-18).
I agree with much of what Wright has to say about the gospel, and think he offers important correctives to popular evangelical approaches that lead people to think it is about how we can get eternal fire insurance or that it is all about how God will help us be successful and prosperous in this world. In their book, Cat & Dog Theology (Waynesboro, GA: Authentic Lifestyle, 2003), Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison develop a theological insight from a joke about cats and dogs: “A dog says, ‘you pet me, you ,feed me, you shelter me, you love me, you must be God.’ A cat says, ‘you pet me, you ,feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be God’” (p. 15). Too many evangelicals have a cat theology in which God’s grace to us in Christ is taken as evidence that Christianity is all about us after all. But we are not at the center of the universe. Christ is.
While I agree with much of what Wright says about the gospel I have a problem with his insistence that it is simply a message about Christ. It seems to me that his understanding of the gospel leaves out something that must be included. And Paul’s letter to the Galatians is very concerned about precisely the part that Wright leaves out. There is no real evidence that the false teachers Paul is concerned about in Galatia were teaching a different message about who Christ is or what he had done than what Paul was saying. They did not deny that he had died for our sins, been raised from the dead and was Israel’s Messiah and Lord over all creation. It seems on those points they were on the same page as the apostle Paul. Where they differed, however, was in what they taught about how one needed to respond to that wonderful news about Christ the Lord. In their view it was not sufficient to turn to Christ in faith (a faith that would be manifest in obedience as well), but it was also necessary to become Jews through circumcision and obey the Law of Moses. It was not their message about Jesus himself that was different, but their message about the required response. Still, Paul describes such a message as “another gospel” – a false gospel (Galatians 1:8-9). This suggests Wright is working with a truncated version of the gospel when he strictly limits its contents to statements about Jesus and resists including within the gospel message the parts that explain how – on what terms – it becomes good news for us. Paul anathematizes the false teachers in Galatia for preaching a false gospel when the primary difference seems to have been regarding the necessary response to Christ’s death, resurrection and lordship, not Christ’s nature or role as Lord or the narrative of his death and resurrection.
In fact, there are a number of other texts that suggest that in an important sense the gospel message is in fact a message about us. In Galatians 3:8 Paul indicates that “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” Here the gospel is not only identified with God’s promise to bless all the nations (Genesis 12:3), but Paul says it is based on God’s intention to justify the Gentiles by faith. So the gospel is not only a story about Jesus Christ, but also has to do with the blessings we receive and with justification in particular. Wright wants to sharply distinguish between the gospel and the doctrine of justification. He emphasizes that the preaching of the gospel is not the same as the message of justification. He is right to say they are not synonymous but implies a greater distinction between them than Paul’s own language suggests. Galatians 3:8 is exhibit A to that effect. The whole argument of his letters to the Romans and Galatians also reinforces the strong relationship between the two. Surely one of Paul’s purposes in the writing of Romans is to expound his understanding of the gospel for the sake of Roman Christians who have no first-hand knowledge of it. The gospel is what Paul is talking about both in Romans 1:1-6 and in 1:14-17 and in 1:14-17 it is explicitly the relationship between the gospel and justification that is highlighted. Wright has argued that actual the nature of the gospel is given in 1:1-6 and that 1:14-17 brings in the related but different issue of its effects. But the bulk of Romans 1-8 (at least) is dedicated to unpacking the contents of 1:16-17 and the understanding of justification that flows from Habakkuk 2:4, Genesis 16:5 and other OT texts (see the outline for chapters 1-8 in Cranfield’s commentaries and the discussion of the relationship between 1:16-17 and the following chapters (especially 3:21-22) in the first chapter of Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith). When Paul wants to expose the Romans to the nature of his preaching of the gospel he spends a large chunk of his time explaining his understanding of justification.
A similar thing happens in Galatians. In Galatians 1:8-9 Paul makes it clear he is concerned about people preaching a different gospel, a false gospel. In Galatians 1:11-12 he emphasizes the divine rather than human origin of his gospel message. The fact that Paul gives so much attention to the issue of justification in 2:16-5:11 is because his gospel can hardly be separated from his teaching on justification. Paul’s gospel and his teaching on justification are not exactly the same thing, but, to steal the language of the Chalcedonian definition on the two natures of Christ, one might say there is no “confusion, change, division, or separation" between justification and the gospel in Paul’s thought.
Romans 10 does a fine job of revealing the Christocentric nature of the gospel message as well as the fact that it includes an explanation of the required response to the message about Christ and is tied to justification so that while the message of the gospel may not be exactly the same as the doctrine of justification they are quite closely related. In Romans 10:5-18 the message of Christ’s death and resurrection is referred to as “the word of faith that we proclaim” (v. 8; this and other scriptural quotations in this posting are from the ESV). And Paul insists that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9). Note the scriptural verses Paul quotes from the OT to back up this understanding of the gospel in the following verses. In v. 11 Paul cites from Isaiah 28:16: “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame" and in v. 13 he cites Joel 2:32: “"everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." In v. 15 he cites Nahum 1:15: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" In v. 16 he points out that “not all obeyed the gospel.” The texts from Isaiah and Joel, like the quote from Genesis 12:3 in Galatians 3, stress the role of and the blessings experienced by those who believe, those who call on the name of the Lord. The Nahum text confirms that what Paul has been discussing throughout the passage is the preaching of the gospel – “the good news.”
While this posting focuses on Wright’s view of the contents of the gospel message and not on the strengths and weaknesses of his views on justification (despite the close relationship between the two) I feel the need to point out in passing that I think Wright is also wrong to argue that justification is not entrance language. (“Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian” What Saint Paul Really Said [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 125.) God’s declaration that we are righteous is a speech act which actually makes it so, rather than simply a recognition of something that was already true before the statement is made. Wright seems to recognize this on page 98 of What Saint Paul Really Said (“for the plaintiff or defendant to be ‘righteous’ in the biblical sense within the law-court setting is for them to have that status as a result of the decision of the court”; emphases his), but the rest of his discussion leaves that insight behind. We could also bring up the evidence pointed out by Simon Gathercole and others that E.P. Sanders’ understanding of first century Judaism (which Wright seems to accept without qualification) does not do justice to all the evidence available (see Simon J. Gathercole, Where Is Boasting?: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Response in Romans 1-5 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002]). Again, a full full-fledged discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of Wright’s understanding of justification would require a much longer treatment and will not be undertaken here.
Wright often uses a rhetoric that of the type “It [whatever the theological topic is] is not this [whatever the common view has been] but that [his new understanding]. Usually I find myself agreeing that he has put his finger on something very important and has made a point that needed to be made. Often, however, I also conclude that his new dichotomy does not really do full justice to the issue. In this case he is right to point out that the gospel does not consist of an abstract theory of salvation and is not really about us and our blessings, but about Christ – his death, resurrection and reign – but it also includes the blessings that our ours as by faith we participate in his death, resurrection and reign. And the nature of the appropriate response to the message about Christ is essential enough to the gospel itself that to get that wrong is to preach a different gospel, a false one. I’m grateful for Wright’s informed and stimulating writings on so many important issues even though I don’t think he always gets things exactly right. But then I don’t suppose I do either. Through much of my Christian life I’m sure my own understanding and teaching of the gospel reinforced the idea that I was at the center of God’s universe (good old “cat theology”) and failed to emphasize the point that Christ is the center of the universe and to understand that is to understand that life only makes sense if he is at the center of our own personal universe as well. Did I really understand the gospel back then? Well, yes and no…
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