I have argued thus far that it is not tenable to hold that the concept of a succession of bishops is a fourth century corruption of an earlier congregational model. Clearly, the ideas that there were bishops and that those bishops held their office as a result of a “passing along” of authority from the previous bishop existed in the first century and was firmly in place by the end of the second. It is also clear that this succession was seen as a key to the unity, authority and doctrinal fidelity of the entire Christian church very early in church history.
I have also argued that there are aspects of the selection and retention of bishops that do not fit a purely authoritarian model. It is suggested by more than one of the early fathers that the selection of bishops is done by the “suffrage” or at least with the consent of the people and that there was the possibility of removing those bishops who strayed from their responsibilities either in doctrine or morals.
It is not difficult to see why there is a difference of opinion regarding church government. Those who accept apostolic succession argue strongly for the authority of the bishops. Those who see no such authority explicit in scripture can find support for their views even in the church fathers.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Succession of Bishops - Part 2
While it is difficult to dispute that from the latter part of the first century to the Reformation the entire church was governed under an episcopal structure and that a succession of bishops was seen as a sign of the unity of the church and apostolic teaching, there were significant reasons why the Reformers grew uncomfortable with apostolic succession as it had come to be practiced in the medieval Roman church.
Some of the problems were pure historical accident. As the Roman empire faded in power and faced outside threats, people looked to the bishop of Rome for leadership and some of those bishops acted admirably under pressure. But the result was that the Bishop of Rome became a political as well as spiritual figure and as a result, much intrigue surrounded the selection of successors to the office.
The Donation of Constantine, a document which purportedly gave the Bishop of Rome full authority over significant lands held by the Roman empire and over all other bishops, did cause papal power to be consolidated. Unfortunately, the document was exposed as a forgery in the 15th century, just prior to the Reformation. And not all who ascended to the chair of Peter were necessarily worthy of the role or title to say the least. When coupled with the indulgence controversy, the well known abuses of power by bishops and popes, it is not difficult to see why suspicion of apostolic succession grew to a rejection of it.
But it is also possible that the succession of Bishops as understood by the early church is somewhat different from the view of succession that had grown in the middle ages. If so, rejection of the latter view does not require rejection of the former.
In the first place, Paul gave Timothy very clear guidelines for who should be allowed to assume leadership in the church in I Timothy 3:2-7. Such requirements as - being the husband of but one wife (not necessarily celibate), not greedy, not a new convert, able to teach - cannot be applied to many who have held ecclesiastical office in general, much less the papal tiarra. The sins that plagued the Papacy in the middle ages are well enough documented, not the least of which was the divided papacy between Rome and Avignon and the violent intrigue that surrounded it. Whatever the early fathers meant by succession, it could not have meant the power struggles and corruption that marked the papacy during much of the middle ages.
Some of the problems were pure historical accident. As the Roman empire faded in power and faced outside threats, people looked to the bishop of Rome for leadership and some of those bishops acted admirably under pressure. But the result was that the Bishop of Rome became a political as well as spiritual figure and as a result, much intrigue surrounded the selection of successors to the office.
The Donation of Constantine, a document which purportedly gave the Bishop of Rome full authority over significant lands held by the Roman empire and over all other bishops, did cause papal power to be consolidated. Unfortunately, the document was exposed as a forgery in the 15th century, just prior to the Reformation. And not all who ascended to the chair of Peter were necessarily worthy of the role or title to say the least. When coupled with the indulgence controversy, the well known abuses of power by bishops and popes, it is not difficult to see why suspicion of apostolic succession grew to a rejection of it.
But it is also possible that the succession of Bishops as understood by the early church is somewhat different from the view of succession that had grown in the middle ages. If so, rejection of the latter view does not require rejection of the former.
In the first place, Paul gave Timothy very clear guidelines for who should be allowed to assume leadership in the church in I Timothy 3:2-7. Such requirements as - being the husband of but one wife (not necessarily celibate), not greedy, not a new convert, able to teach - cannot be applied to many who have held ecclesiastical office in general, much less the papal tiarra. The sins that plagued the Papacy in the middle ages are well enough documented, not the least of which was the divided papacy between Rome and Avignon and the violent intrigue that surrounded it. Whatever the early fathers meant by succession, it could not have meant the power struggles and corruption that marked the papacy during much of the middle ages.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Succession of Bishops Part 1
After nearly thirty years of experience in evangelical congregation churches, I came to a conclusion that as evangelicals, we are certain we know what legitimate authority is not, but are far less sure we know what legitimate authority is. As I wearily asked a few members of the church I called home for fifteen years, "who, in a congregation church, is the congregation accountable to?" None of us had a good answer. But I was gradually coming to a conclusion.
For three to four years I had dabbled in the study of early church documents. I owned Bettenson's "Documents of the Early Church" and Pelikan's "Emergence of the Catholic Tradition". I bought Jurgen's "Faith of the Early Fathers - Vol 1" and poured over quotations on the internet. I read apologetics from Catholic converts like Scott Hahn and Thomas Howard as well as Orthodox viewpoints from Frank Schaeffer and Kalistos Ware. What I discovered challenged long held assumptions and forced me to alter my views.
It is an unexamined assumption of most in the American Evangelical movement that an Episcopal form of church government - that is - a structure of churches governed by Bishops, was a corruption of the early church pattern that originated after Constantine legalized Christianity and the church became entangled in the politics of the Roman empire. It is generally assumed that the early church was made up of local churches governed by councils of elders and that, on occasion, regional councils of elders would gather to debate and decide larger issues. Any notion that there was significant authority in the Episcopal office was an "unbiblical" corruption that may have existed here and there, but never became the norm until the Roman church was corrupted by power in the fourth or fifth century.
Unfortunately the evidence militates against such a view. I "discovered" what should have never been lost, that by the end of the first century a significant view of the authority of Bishops was already present and by the second century a strong argument for a succession of Episcopal authority was in full force. What is more, such a view was held and argued by many and was essentially unquestioned throughout the history of the church until the Reformation. (This does not necessarily mean that no embellishments have crept into the Roman or Eastern church over two-thousand years, but that is for another discussion).
The oft quoted statement of Clement, who died in 99 A.D. makes it clear that some sense of authority being passed through a succession of Bishops was assumed in the church by the generation which lived immediately after, if not contemporary with, the apostles.
"Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry" (Letter to the Corinthians)
It is Irenaeus, in the second century, who is most often associated with the notion that true authority in the church is passed along in some sort of succession from bishop to bishop.
"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian, Gregory, Cyprian, Gerome, Eusebius and Augustine could all be quoted, and often are, as clearly articulating a pattern of apostolic succession. Cyprian, in particular makes a statement that ought to raise the eyebrows of anyone in a purely independent congregational church. Arguing against the heretic Novatian, he appeals to the unity of the church, as evidenced by both consistent teaching and structural continuity through the office of Bishop. One cannot assume leadership in the church, according to Cyprian, unless one is a successor to a previous leader:
"...Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way" (Letters 69[75]:3 [A.D. 253]).
It would seem to me that anyone claiming authority simply on the basis of a subjective "call to ministry" who is not in some way willing to submit to the authority of the larger church would be summarily dismissed by most of the early fathers. But this does not mean that apostolic succession was an authoritarian arrangement. Gregory, echoing the Didache makes mention of the appointment of the bishop "by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression.." suggestion that Irenaeus' concern about "strife over the office of the episcopate" was well founded, and it was apparent that certain methods of selection of bishops included an idea of consent. The whole church was involved, not just those who held office. This is echoed by Jerome, Cyprian, and Clement
For three to four years I had dabbled in the study of early church documents. I owned Bettenson's "Documents of the Early Church" and Pelikan's "Emergence of the Catholic Tradition". I bought Jurgen's "Faith of the Early Fathers - Vol 1" and poured over quotations on the internet. I read apologetics from Catholic converts like Scott Hahn and Thomas Howard as well as Orthodox viewpoints from Frank Schaeffer and Kalistos Ware. What I discovered challenged long held assumptions and forced me to alter my views.
It is an unexamined assumption of most in the American Evangelical movement that an Episcopal form of church government - that is - a structure of churches governed by Bishops, was a corruption of the early church pattern that originated after Constantine legalized Christianity and the church became entangled in the politics of the Roman empire. It is generally assumed that the early church was made up of local churches governed by councils of elders and that, on occasion, regional councils of elders would gather to debate and decide larger issues. Any notion that there was significant authority in the Episcopal office was an "unbiblical" corruption that may have existed here and there, but never became the norm until the Roman church was corrupted by power in the fourth or fifth century.
Unfortunately the evidence militates against such a view. I "discovered" what should have never been lost, that by the end of the first century a significant view of the authority of Bishops was already present and by the second century a strong argument for a succession of Episcopal authority was in full force. What is more, such a view was held and argued by many and was essentially unquestioned throughout the history of the church until the Reformation. (This does not necessarily mean that no embellishments have crept into the Roman or Eastern church over two-thousand years, but that is for another discussion).
The oft quoted statement of Clement, who died in 99 A.D. makes it clear that some sense of authority being passed through a succession of Bishops was assumed in the church by the generation which lived immediately after, if not contemporary with, the apostles.
"Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry" (Letter to the Corinthians)
It is Irenaeus, in the second century, who is most often associated with the notion that true authority in the church is passed along in some sort of succession from bishop to bishop.
"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian, Gregory, Cyprian, Gerome, Eusebius and Augustine could all be quoted, and often are, as clearly articulating a pattern of apostolic succession. Cyprian, in particular makes a statement that ought to raise the eyebrows of anyone in a purely independent congregational church. Arguing against the heretic Novatian, he appeals to the unity of the church, as evidenced by both consistent teaching and structural continuity through the office of Bishop. One cannot assume leadership in the church, according to Cyprian, unless one is a successor to a previous leader:
"...Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself. For he who has not been ordained in the Church can neither have nor hold to the Church in any way" (Letters 69[75]:3 [A.D. 253]).
It would seem to me that anyone claiming authority simply on the basis of a subjective "call to ministry" who is not in some way willing to submit to the authority of the larger church would be summarily dismissed by most of the early fathers. But this does not mean that apostolic succession was an authoritarian arrangement. Gregory, echoing the Didache makes mention of the appointment of the bishop "by the vote of the whole people, not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression.." suggestion that Irenaeus' concern about "strife over the office of the episcopate" was well founded, and it was apparent that certain methods of selection of bishops included an idea of consent. The whole church was involved, not just those who held office. This is echoed by Jerome, Cyprian, and Clement
Monday, September 19, 2005
Two Questions
My wife has rightly chastised me for focusing too much on the personal wounds which have led me to disillusionment with the present state of Evangelicalism. It is probably quite self-indulgent, and perhaps boring to some. I felt it necessary as background, my experience is something I cannot escape and something that has driven me to think, reason, pray and search. But ultimately I must turn a corner and move in a positive direction. There is a bottom line in all this.
I have been seeing the same trend for a quarter of a century toward subjective and individualistic expressions of Christian faith and have tried as a local church member to sound the alarm. As a rule my pleas have usually not been well comprehended, at other times they have been dismissed or ignored as mere "intellectual" concerns, not related to real life, as if ideas about right and wrong and truth are not "real".
We, as Christians, cannot speak to either individuals or the culture at large with any sort of moral authority if Christianity is merely another human opinion or warm experience that merely makes us feel better. For years I complained in frustration as the secular society ridiculed Christian faith as "personal/subjective" opinion and thus casually dismissed efforts to roll back laws which allowed the killing of pre-born infants and hurtled toward infanticide. I got the sense many in the church did not understand the root causes of what was happening.
Then it became clear why. Evangelicals had, by and large, accepted the very premise I was battling against. Their faith was in fact, exactly as described, a personal, subjective experience that led to an individual opinion about what was true for them. The Bible has been intentionally advertised in many evangelical circles as "love letters" to each individual to be interpreted according to his or her own needs and, as a result, not according to objective criteria of grammar, context or common understanding.
If it seems I exaggerate, consider that today only one-fourth to one-third of adults in evangelical churches believe in absolute truth and only ten per cent of teens. If truth is not absolute and objective, it is by definition relative and subjective. A casual look at the lyrics of many, if not most, of the "worship" choruses flooding the Christian music market reveals that most express feelings of closeness to "God" or a need for an experience, as opposed to affirmation of the timeless truths of the historic faith.
In recent years, many in the "emergent" church movement have swallowed theories of radical post-modernism uncritically and welcomed the idea that Christianity is one worldview among many and some even suggest it is an act of "violence" or even "terrorism" to suggest Christianity has a claim to absolute truth. Hence Christianity becomes one more opinion in a talk show saturated society, where truth is determined by who can purchase time on the airwaves and package the product most strategically.
What then is the answer? It begins with reframing the essential question.
Protestants and Evangelicals, seeking a source of authority have traditionally asked "what does scripture say?" They do so as a habitual reaction against the authoritarian misteps of the medieval Roman Church. But the result has been endless competition about how to interpret scripture. Fragmentation, division, denominationalism and in the end, despair of any hope of unity in the "universal" church is the state of affairs today.
Catholics and Orthodox, in seeking a final authority ask instead "what does the church teach?" This is a question forged in historic battles against heresy in the early centuries of the church and is repeated in the face of the endless fragmentation of Protestantism. But the result has been an inability to self-correct when tradition has strayed beyond the confines of clear texts of Scripture.
But there is a third way, suggested by Vincent of Lerins and echoed by Thomas Oden. That is to ask not one question but two, and in a particular order. The Reformers were correct in asking first, "what does Scripture say", but to counter the individualism of the age and restore our connection to the church of history, we must ask a second question, "how has the whole church understood that authoritative body of scripture across the centuries?"
By grounding the church in the first question, we avoid the tendency to allow "tradition" to stray into unsupportable areas. But by seriously considering the second, we may avoid and perhaps even roll back much of the fragmentation that has plagued the western church for half a millennium.
But this has implications many evangelicals will not welcome and Catholics and Orthodox will also find difficult to accept as well. Evangelicals will have to abandon the practice of reinventing the Christianity with every twist and turn of culture. This will have a significant impact on how evangelicals worship, on how they approach theology, eschatology, and to a certain extent, evangelism and discipleship. Catholics and Orthodox would need to reconsider the cherished belief that what the Roman or Eastern church teaches today is necessarily equivalent to what the church has always taught, to entertain the notion that like the Jewish teachers and priests of Jesus' day, at least some cherished traditions may be of men and not necessarily of God.
In short, humility is needed. Dialog is mere monologue if one assumes a conclusion before the discussion begins. Such a dialog grounds truth not in rationalism or individualism, nor does it ground truth merely in ecclesiastical authority. Truth, instead, is grounded in the revelation of Scripture, understood and affirmed by millions of believers across twenty centuries and across a multitude of cultures. Such truth is not a mere opinion. Nor is it an authoritarian decree. It's source is supernatural, attested to by the reliability of scripture itself and the historicity of the incarnation and the cross, but also attested to by the common threads of understanding that have transcended all the debates, battles, human foibles, historical circumstances of two millennia. Such truth is summarized in the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and Athanasian Creed, but is also affirmed again and again in the faith statements of many, many church and parachurch organizations. And on questions that still divide, a path toward consensus may still one day become apparent.
Francis Schaeffer correctly noted that the central question of the age was one of epistemology, how we know what we know. He correctly identified that autonomous human reason was insufficient and that irrational mysticism was even worse. He identified revelation as the ultimate point of reference which enables us to make sense of God's world. I once despaired that so few understood. And even Schaeffer mourned over the disunity of the Protestant "church before the watching world". I despaired even more when radical postmodern theorists tore down not only rationalism, but rationality as well.
But Thomas Oden, by pointing to Vincent of Lerins, has pointed a way forward. Humility, based in scripture, but dedicated to listening to ALL of church history and not merely the faction we happen to be a part of at the moment, can lead us forward.
I have been seeing the same trend for a quarter of a century toward subjective and individualistic expressions of Christian faith and have tried as a local church member to sound the alarm. As a rule my pleas have usually not been well comprehended, at other times they have been dismissed or ignored as mere "intellectual" concerns, not related to real life, as if ideas about right and wrong and truth are not "real".
We, as Christians, cannot speak to either individuals or the culture at large with any sort of moral authority if Christianity is merely another human opinion or warm experience that merely makes us feel better. For years I complained in frustration as the secular society ridiculed Christian faith as "personal/subjective" opinion and thus casually dismissed efforts to roll back laws which allowed the killing of pre-born infants and hurtled toward infanticide. I got the sense many in the church did not understand the root causes of what was happening.
Then it became clear why. Evangelicals had, by and large, accepted the very premise I was battling against. Their faith was in fact, exactly as described, a personal, subjective experience that led to an individual opinion about what was true for them. The Bible has been intentionally advertised in many evangelical circles as "love letters" to each individual to be interpreted according to his or her own needs and, as a result, not according to objective criteria of grammar, context or common understanding.
If it seems I exaggerate, consider that today only one-fourth to one-third of adults in evangelical churches believe in absolute truth and only ten per cent of teens. If truth is not absolute and objective, it is by definition relative and subjective. A casual look at the lyrics of many, if not most, of the "worship" choruses flooding the Christian music market reveals that most express feelings of closeness to "God" or a need for an experience, as opposed to affirmation of the timeless truths of the historic faith.
In recent years, many in the "emergent" church movement have swallowed theories of radical post-modernism uncritically and welcomed the idea that Christianity is one worldview among many and some even suggest it is an act of "violence" or even "terrorism" to suggest Christianity has a claim to absolute truth. Hence Christianity becomes one more opinion in a talk show saturated society, where truth is determined by who can purchase time on the airwaves and package the product most strategically.
What then is the answer? It begins with reframing the essential question.
Protestants and Evangelicals, seeking a source of authority have traditionally asked "what does scripture say?" They do so as a habitual reaction against the authoritarian misteps of the medieval Roman Church. But the result has been endless competition about how to interpret scripture. Fragmentation, division, denominationalism and in the end, despair of any hope of unity in the "universal" church is the state of affairs today.
Catholics and Orthodox, in seeking a final authority ask instead "what does the church teach?" This is a question forged in historic battles against heresy in the early centuries of the church and is repeated in the face of the endless fragmentation of Protestantism. But the result has been an inability to self-correct when tradition has strayed beyond the confines of clear texts of Scripture.
But there is a third way, suggested by Vincent of Lerins and echoed by Thomas Oden. That is to ask not one question but two, and in a particular order. The Reformers were correct in asking first, "what does Scripture say", but to counter the individualism of the age and restore our connection to the church of history, we must ask a second question, "how has the whole church understood that authoritative body of scripture across the centuries?"
By grounding the church in the first question, we avoid the tendency to allow "tradition" to stray into unsupportable areas. But by seriously considering the second, we may avoid and perhaps even roll back much of the fragmentation that has plagued the western church for half a millennium.
But this has implications many evangelicals will not welcome and Catholics and Orthodox will also find difficult to accept as well. Evangelicals will have to abandon the practice of reinventing the Christianity with every twist and turn of culture. This will have a significant impact on how evangelicals worship, on how they approach theology, eschatology, and to a certain extent, evangelism and discipleship. Catholics and Orthodox would need to reconsider the cherished belief that what the Roman or Eastern church teaches today is necessarily equivalent to what the church has always taught, to entertain the notion that like the Jewish teachers and priests of Jesus' day, at least some cherished traditions may be of men and not necessarily of God.
In short, humility is needed. Dialog is mere monologue if one assumes a conclusion before the discussion begins. Such a dialog grounds truth not in rationalism or individualism, nor does it ground truth merely in ecclesiastical authority. Truth, instead, is grounded in the revelation of Scripture, understood and affirmed by millions of believers across twenty centuries and across a multitude of cultures. Such truth is not a mere opinion. Nor is it an authoritarian decree. It's source is supernatural, attested to by the reliability of scripture itself and the historicity of the incarnation and the cross, but also attested to by the common threads of understanding that have transcended all the debates, battles, human foibles, historical circumstances of two millennia. Such truth is summarized in the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and Athanasian Creed, but is also affirmed again and again in the faith statements of many, many church and parachurch organizations. And on questions that still divide, a path toward consensus may still one day become apparent.
Francis Schaeffer correctly noted that the central question of the age was one of epistemology, how we know what we know. He correctly identified that autonomous human reason was insufficient and that irrational mysticism was even worse. He identified revelation as the ultimate point of reference which enables us to make sense of God's world. I once despaired that so few understood. And even Schaeffer mourned over the disunity of the Protestant "church before the watching world". I despaired even more when radical postmodern theorists tore down not only rationalism, but rationality as well.
But Thomas Oden, by pointing to Vincent of Lerins, has pointed a way forward. Humility, based in scripture, but dedicated to listening to ALL of church history and not merely the faction we happen to be a part of at the moment, can lead us forward.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Objections
Some have objected to my pulling not away from, but back from, independent evangelicalism on the grounds that the division that exists in the evangelical church is largely superficial, that is division does occur, but not usually on the basis of major theological issues.
I agree in part, that the evangelical world has not as a whole repudiated essential Christian doctrine, and that division often occurs for petty and personal reasons, rather than doctrinal ones. Thomas Oden and J.I. Packer have just published a book, One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus, which attempts to show that on essential doctrine, evangelicals do have a common core of belief.
But as I look back on division as I have seen, experienced and to some degree participated in it, I have to counter that in nearly every case, division had a theological root.
One church split, in part, because of differing views of eschatology. The congregation held a pre-tribulation rapture view, that Christ would remove the church from the earth prior to seven years of judgment which precede his physical return in His second coming. The pastor held a post-tribulation view and sincerely felt that if believers, expecting to be "rescued" from such a time of tribulation were not in fact "snatched away", they would be ill equipped to deal with the struggles, suffering and persecution that might follow (assuming, as all did, that we were in fact near the "end times".) To evangelicals in the late 1970s, this was neither a petty nor a non-theological issue. And it is not insignificant that these intense debates are over a view of eschatology unknown to the church prior to the 19th century.
A second issue contributing to a major division was interpretation of scripture regarding moderate social drinking. Was it acceptable for a Christian adult to drink a beer with a friend? Romans 14 was quoted, emotionally and passionately insisting that it was wrong to cause young Christians to stumble. (It was not noted quite as strongly that Romans 14 also speaks of passing judgment on another for what he eats or drinks.)
A church struggled with division over a building program centered largely on the evangelical practice of the "faith promise". The congregation was expected to make a pledge of contributions "over and above" the normal tithe, trusting God to provide the extra on the basis of faith. The questions "faith in what? Faith for what? On the basis of what?" were not questions I asked as a young adult. I supported the project and the leadership. But the nebulous realm of undefined faith led to bitter and acrimonious exchanges about "pushing" on the part of leadership and "resisting" on the part of the congregation.
Then, in yet another situation, there was the issue of "signs and wonders" theology. According to this line of thinking, true revival comes when the Holy Spirit "moves" in power. Revival will occur when people see miracles, healings, changed lives, and things that are beyond the realm of normal experience. Unfortunately, at least one "healing" turned out to be bogus, and weekly sermons tended to use scripture as a proof text for a pre-conceived conclusion, rather than reading scripture objectively and allowing scripture to speak for itself.
Finally, in a long protracted struggle, there were issues related to authority. Where does authority come from? How far does it extend? Who gives authority and how? When can authority be questioned? If Elders are elected for a "term" by a congregation, are they accountable to the congregation? Does the pastor cast the vision for the church or does the church cast its own vision? Does the youth pastor set the tone for his program or does he try to please the parents? When conflict arises how is it resolved and by whom? Does the denomination have a right to interfere? Does the denomination have a responsibility to interfere?
Because evangelicals have as the rock bottom foundation for their existence the authority of scripture, every issue is at its heart theological. And this is the problem, exacerbated by the individualism of the late twentieth century, that critics of evangelicalism most often point to. Since evangelicals generally accept the idea of the right of personal interpretation, that scripture is not the exclusive domain of the clergy, it becomes the private right of each individual to make up his or her own mind about everything.
And since we, as evangelicals, have little or no knowledge of the history of Christianity, save for a general knowledge of Luther and the Reformation, most read scripture in a historical vacuum. We lack context for our personal Bible reading and it becomes very subjective. Scripture means what we understand it to mean, and as such, it does not have the authority for "correction, reproof, and training in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16) that it should. It is an exaggeration to say, as Franky Schaeffer has, that we become our own popes, but even an exaggeration has an element of truth.
There is a passage in Vincent's Commonitorium that I wish every evangelical could memorize. "Here, it may be, some one will ask, Since the canon of scripture is complete, and is itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church? The answer is that because of the very depth of Scripture all men do not place one identical interpretation upon it...Therefore, because of the intricacies of error which is so multiform, there is great need for the laying down of a rule for the exposition of Prophets and Apostles in accordance with the standard of the interpretation of the Church Catholic (Universal)."
Vincent assumes scripture is complete, that it is abundantly sufficient. That is not the question. What he adds, he adds because even in his day, multiplicities of interpretation existed. What is needed is a standard of interpretation. What is that standard? His answer, "...we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all."
My problem is simple. I have come to understand that scripture alone as the most authoritative written record of apostolic teaching, sola scriptura, though it is a true concept, is an insufficient one. It is impossible to have a stable approach to scripture apart from the history of the church. And the more I studied the church of history, the less it looked like the congregationally governed, variety-show influenced, people focused, constantly changing organizations I had associated with for a quarter century.
I was not, and am not seeking a personal preference for something "new" or "different". I am not abandoning rationality in favor of "mystery". I am not abandoning scriptural authority in favor of ecclesiastical power. I am trying to delve more deeply into truth, to be submissive to something higher than myself, to stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. I am trying to be obedient to the teaching of the apostles. And I found I could not do that in churches where independence is the dominant guiding principle.
I agree in part, that the evangelical world has not as a whole repudiated essential Christian doctrine, and that division often occurs for petty and personal reasons, rather than doctrinal ones. Thomas Oden and J.I. Packer have just published a book, One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus, which attempts to show that on essential doctrine, evangelicals do have a common core of belief.
But as I look back on division as I have seen, experienced and to some degree participated in it, I have to counter that in nearly every case, division had a theological root.
One church split, in part, because of differing views of eschatology. The congregation held a pre-tribulation rapture view, that Christ would remove the church from the earth prior to seven years of judgment which precede his physical return in His second coming. The pastor held a post-tribulation view and sincerely felt that if believers, expecting to be "rescued" from such a time of tribulation were not in fact "snatched away", they would be ill equipped to deal with the struggles, suffering and persecution that might follow (assuming, as all did, that we were in fact near the "end times".) To evangelicals in the late 1970s, this was neither a petty nor a non-theological issue. And it is not insignificant that these intense debates are over a view of eschatology unknown to the church prior to the 19th century.
A second issue contributing to a major division was interpretation of scripture regarding moderate social drinking. Was it acceptable for a Christian adult to drink a beer with a friend? Romans 14 was quoted, emotionally and passionately insisting that it was wrong to cause young Christians to stumble. (It was not noted quite as strongly that Romans 14 also speaks of passing judgment on another for what he eats or drinks.)
A church struggled with division over a building program centered largely on the evangelical practice of the "faith promise". The congregation was expected to make a pledge of contributions "over and above" the normal tithe, trusting God to provide the extra on the basis of faith. The questions "faith in what? Faith for what? On the basis of what?" were not questions I asked as a young adult. I supported the project and the leadership. But the nebulous realm of undefined faith led to bitter and acrimonious exchanges about "pushing" on the part of leadership and "resisting" on the part of the congregation.
Then, in yet another situation, there was the issue of "signs and wonders" theology. According to this line of thinking, true revival comes when the Holy Spirit "moves" in power. Revival will occur when people see miracles, healings, changed lives, and things that are beyond the realm of normal experience. Unfortunately, at least one "healing" turned out to be bogus, and weekly sermons tended to use scripture as a proof text for a pre-conceived conclusion, rather than reading scripture objectively and allowing scripture to speak for itself.
Finally, in a long protracted struggle, there were issues related to authority. Where does authority come from? How far does it extend? Who gives authority and how? When can authority be questioned? If Elders are elected for a "term" by a congregation, are they accountable to the congregation? Does the pastor cast the vision for the church or does the church cast its own vision? Does the youth pastor set the tone for his program or does he try to please the parents? When conflict arises how is it resolved and by whom? Does the denomination have a right to interfere? Does the denomination have a responsibility to interfere?
Because evangelicals have as the rock bottom foundation for their existence the authority of scripture, every issue is at its heart theological. And this is the problem, exacerbated by the individualism of the late twentieth century, that critics of evangelicalism most often point to. Since evangelicals generally accept the idea of the right of personal interpretation, that scripture is not the exclusive domain of the clergy, it becomes the private right of each individual to make up his or her own mind about everything.
And since we, as evangelicals, have little or no knowledge of the history of Christianity, save for a general knowledge of Luther and the Reformation, most read scripture in a historical vacuum. We lack context for our personal Bible reading and it becomes very subjective. Scripture means what we understand it to mean, and as such, it does not have the authority for "correction, reproof, and training in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16) that it should. It is an exaggeration to say, as Franky Schaeffer has, that we become our own popes, but even an exaggeration has an element of truth.
There is a passage in Vincent's Commonitorium that I wish every evangelical could memorize. "Here, it may be, some one will ask, Since the canon of scripture is complete, and is itself abundantly sufficient, what need is there to join to it the interpretation of the Church? The answer is that because of the very depth of Scripture all men do not place one identical interpretation upon it...Therefore, because of the intricacies of error which is so multiform, there is great need for the laying down of a rule for the exposition of Prophets and Apostles in accordance with the standard of the interpretation of the Church Catholic (Universal)."
Vincent assumes scripture is complete, that it is abundantly sufficient. That is not the question. What he adds, he adds because even in his day, multiplicities of interpretation existed. What is needed is a standard of interpretation. What is that standard? His answer, "...we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all."
My problem is simple. I have come to understand that scripture alone as the most authoritative written record of apostolic teaching, sola scriptura, though it is a true concept, is an insufficient one. It is impossible to have a stable approach to scripture apart from the history of the church. And the more I studied the church of history, the less it looked like the congregationally governed, variety-show influenced, people focused, constantly changing organizations I had associated with for a quarter century.
I was not, and am not seeking a personal preference for something "new" or "different". I am not abandoning rationality in favor of "mystery". I am not abandoning scriptural authority in favor of ecclesiastical power. I am trying to delve more deeply into truth, to be submissive to something higher than myself, to stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. I am trying to be obedient to the teaching of the apostles. And I found I could not do that in churches where independence is the dominant guiding principle.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Sola Scriptura
I have said much about why I have been uncomfortable with the path Protestantism has taken, particularly in the last century or so. But I do not wish to be unclear. I remain "Protestant" in many ways. And I should be clear about some things I still cling to from my Protestant heritage. One is the authority of scripture.
I am always curious about the assertion of apologists for Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism that the Protestant conception of Sola Scriptura is a rationalist invention of independent radicals Reformers in the 16th century, with no basis in scripture or church history.
On the one hand I sympathize. Liberal Protestantism has, on the one hand, turned the scripture into a pliable document which has been twisted to support virtually every faddish political cause of the 20th century, not the least of which are condoning abortion and endorsing ordination of practicing homosexuals. On the other hand, many Evangelicals, particularly during the New Age era, were content to use the scriptures as a sort of sanctified ouija board, gleaning subjective "personal" guidance from obscure passages with no regard whatsoever for grammar, syntax, context, historical background or any sense of the history of the church's long understanding. Today scripture is often seen as a self-help text from which only "positive" messages can be harvested leaving the husks of the hard sayings of scripture behind.
But to say, as many advocates of the primacy of "tradition" do, that the Bible was a product of the church, is a bit of an exaggeration, to say the least. And to say that the history of the church had no conception of scripture being an ultimate authority by which all else should be judged simply ignores evidence to the contrary, exhibit A being the very word "canon".
The term canon means measuring rod. In saying scripture is the canon the early church established a standard of teaching by which all other teaching must be judged. What the reformers, for all their faults and excesses, had in mind was simply to allow the canon to be the canon.
Lest I neglect to offer at least a bit of support for this contention, I should quote scripture itself to start. Deuteronomy 30:10 is just one Old Testament example of the typically Jewish understanding that written scripture has a unique authority, saying, "if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." It should be clear to anyone who reads scripture that the authority of written revelation is assumed from cover to cover.
Jesus constantly argued with the Pharisees, the advocates of "tradition" of his day, by quoting scripture. "It is written" is his constant refrain. He chides them, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me," (John 5:39) I do not think Jesus meant to totally discredit tradition, that is, the "passing down" of truth from one generation to the next, but he said much about scripture in a way that acted as a check on abuses of tradition, which were rampant in Jewish Pharasaism.
Paul clearly articulates the concept of a "canon" in 1 Cor 4:6, "Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.' So written documents clearly are authoritative and are intended as a limit on subsequent teaching.
For those who need patristic evidence, I could quote Cyril from the fourth century:
"For concerning the divine and sacred Mysteries of the Faith, we ought not to deliver even the most casual remark without the Holy Scriptures: nor be drawn aside by mere probabilities and the artifices of argument. Do not then believe me because I tell thee these things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth: for this salvation, which is of our faith, is not by ingenious reasonings, but by proof from the Holy Scriptures." (The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril 4.17)
Gregory of Nyssa, also in the 4th century articulates the concept of scripture as canon: " ...we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet (dogma); we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings." (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody: Hendrikson, 1995), Second Series: Volume V, Philosophical Works, On the Soul And the Resurrection, p. 439). Gregory of Nyssa
And Athanasius seems perilously close to arguing for a supposedly "modern" concept of inerrancy: "We, however, who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to the merest stroke and tittle, will never admit the impious assertion that even the smallest matters were dealt with haphazard by those who have recorded them, and have thus been borne in mind to the present day." (Athanasius, Orations 11.105)
Augustine bluntly points out that the writings of the fathers, though valuable, are in no way equal to scripture. "As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises ...Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. ...In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. (Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, book 11.5)
When the Reformers looked at what they believed to be significant changes in the understanding of the Eucharist, the novel additions of teachings on Purgatory, indulgences, and excesses in ecclesiastical authority, they argued simply that the canon should be the canon, that scripture should be the measuring rod by which those teachings should be evaluated. They were doing exactly what the Bereans were commended for in Acts 17. "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
Converts and apologists for Orthodox and Catholic traditions are correct to point out the excesses of Protestant abuse of scripture (which began almost immediately after the start of the Reformation). They are not correct to blame the excesses on Sola Scriptura itself. Sola Scriptura is simply a restatement of what the church had laid down as a standard in the fourth century, that Scripture is the Canon, the measuring rod.
Rather than tear down Sola Scriptura, I would wish that Roman Catholic advocates of Holy Tradition would heed the words of Vatican II document Dei Verbum a bit more closely, "This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." (Dei Verbum 2)
The Pope formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger once said that Dei Verbum attempts to "take into account, to the widest possible extent, the points made by the Reforchurch'srchs and was intended to keep the field open for a Catholic idea of Sola Scriptura." (Thomas G Guarino, Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture, Quoted in "Your Word is Truth", ed. Colson and Neuhaus, p 86)
And as Orthodox Theologian Georges Florovsky has stated, echoing the fifth century figure Vincent of Lerins, "Tradition was actually Scripture rightly understood. And Scripture was for Vincent the only, primary and ultimate, canon of Christian truth." (Quoted in Eastern Orthodox Theology ed. Daniel B. Clenendin, p 99)
Sola Scriptura does not mean the Bible is my personal property to be read outside the understanding of the whole of church history. Evangelicals should be most severely chastised for allowing this travesty of subjectivism to flourish. Catholic and Orthodox believers have every right to challenge these excesses and many Protestants make the same point. But Sola Scriptura does mean the church has a responsibility to restrict itself to what can be reasonably gleaned from scripture. Where teachings develop in any tradition that seem to have no basis in the written text, according to scripture and many of the early fathers, we have a right to demand proof or reject such teachings as false, or at best, unnecessary.
Which is why, though I am uncomfortable with evangelical excesses, I am unwilling to let go of this particular Protestant distinctive.
I am always curious about the assertion of apologists for Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism that the Protestant conception of Sola Scriptura is a rationalist invention of independent radicals Reformers in the 16th century, with no basis in scripture or church history.
On the one hand I sympathize. Liberal Protestantism has, on the one hand, turned the scripture into a pliable document which has been twisted to support virtually every faddish political cause of the 20th century, not the least of which are condoning abortion and endorsing ordination of practicing homosexuals. On the other hand, many Evangelicals, particularly during the New Age era, were content to use the scriptures as a sort of sanctified ouija board, gleaning subjective "personal" guidance from obscure passages with no regard whatsoever for grammar, syntax, context, historical background or any sense of the history of the church's long understanding. Today scripture is often seen as a self-help text from which only "positive" messages can be harvested leaving the husks of the hard sayings of scripture behind.
But to say, as many advocates of the primacy of "tradition" do, that the Bible was a product of the church, is a bit of an exaggeration, to say the least. And to say that the history of the church had no conception of scripture being an ultimate authority by which all else should be judged simply ignores evidence to the contrary, exhibit A being the very word "canon".
The term canon means measuring rod. In saying scripture is the canon the early church established a standard of teaching by which all other teaching must be judged. What the reformers, for all their faults and excesses, had in mind was simply to allow the canon to be the canon.
Lest I neglect to offer at least a bit of support for this contention, I should quote scripture itself to start. Deuteronomy 30:10 is just one Old Testament example of the typically Jewish understanding that written scripture has a unique authority, saying, "if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." It should be clear to anyone who reads scripture that the authority of written revelation is assumed from cover to cover.
Jesus constantly argued with the Pharisees, the advocates of "tradition" of his day, by quoting scripture. "It is written" is his constant refrain. He chides them, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me," (John 5:39) I do not think Jesus meant to totally discredit tradition, that is, the "passing down" of truth from one generation to the next, but he said much about scripture in a way that acted as a check on abuses of tradition, which were rampant in Jewish Pharasaism.
Paul clearly articulates the concept of a "canon" in 1 Cor 4:6, "Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.' So written documents clearly are authoritative and are intended as a limit on subsequent teaching.
For those who need patristic evidence, I could quote Cyril from the fourth century:
"For concerning the divine and sacred Mysteries of the Faith, we ought not to deliver even the most casual remark without the Holy Scriptures: nor be drawn aside by mere probabilities and the artifices of argument. Do not then believe me because I tell thee these things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth: for this salvation, which is of our faith, is not by ingenious reasonings, but by proof from the Holy Scriptures." (The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril 4.17)
Gregory of Nyssa, also in the 4th century articulates the concept of scripture as canon: " ...we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet (dogma); we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings." (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody: Hendrikson, 1995), Second Series: Volume V, Philosophical Works, On the Soul And the Resurrection, p. 439). Gregory of Nyssa
And Athanasius seems perilously close to arguing for a supposedly "modern" concept of inerrancy: "We, however, who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to the merest stroke and tittle, will never admit the impious assertion that even the smallest matters were dealt with haphazard by those who have recorded them, and have thus been borne in mind to the present day." (Athanasius, Orations 11.105)
Augustine bluntly points out that the writings of the fathers, though valuable, are in no way equal to scripture. "As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises ...Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. ...In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. (Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, book 11.5)
When the Reformers looked at what they believed to be significant changes in the understanding of the Eucharist, the novel additions of teachings on Purgatory, indulgences, and excesses in ecclesiastical authority, they argued simply that the canon should be the canon, that scripture should be the measuring rod by which those teachings should be evaluated. They were doing exactly what the Bereans were commended for in Acts 17. "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
Converts and apologists for Orthodox and Catholic traditions are correct to point out the excesses of Protestant abuse of scripture (which began almost immediately after the start of the Reformation). They are not correct to blame the excesses on Sola Scriptura itself. Sola Scriptura is simply a restatement of what the church had laid down as a standard in the fourth century, that Scripture is the Canon, the measuring rod.
Rather than tear down Sola Scriptura, I would wish that Roman Catholic advocates of Holy Tradition would heed the words of Vatican II document Dei Verbum a bit more closely, "This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." (Dei Verbum 2)
The Pope formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger once said that Dei Verbum attempts to "take into account, to the widest possible extent, the points made by the Reforchurch'srchs and was intended to keep the field open for a Catholic idea of Sola Scriptura." (Thomas G Guarino, Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture, Quoted in "Your Word is Truth", ed. Colson and Neuhaus, p 86)
And as Orthodox Theologian Georges Florovsky has stated, echoing the fifth century figure Vincent of Lerins, "Tradition was actually Scripture rightly understood. And Scripture was for Vincent the only, primary and ultimate, canon of Christian truth." (Quoted in Eastern Orthodox Theology ed. Daniel B. Clenendin, p 99)
Sola Scriptura does not mean the Bible is my personal property to be read outside the understanding of the whole of church history. Evangelicals should be most severely chastised for allowing this travesty of subjectivism to flourish. Catholic and Orthodox believers have every right to challenge these excesses and many Protestants make the same point. But Sola Scriptura does mean the church has a responsibility to restrict itself to what can be reasonably gleaned from scripture. Where teachings develop in any tradition that seem to have no basis in the written text, according to scripture and many of the early fathers, we have a right to demand proof or reject such teachings as false, or at best, unnecessary.
Which is why, though I am uncomfortable with evangelical excesses, I am unwilling to let go of this particular Protestant distinctive.
Division
We live in a fallen world and some division between sinful and selfish people is inevitable. In fact, even in the earliest accounts of church history, arguments and all out verbal warfare can be seen. But my experience in evangelical churches over 28 years has been marred by too many instances of heart-wrenching discord and separation between people who were at one time close. Only one out of the six evangelical churches that I have been associated with has avoided some sort of major power struggle and the wreckage these battles have left in terms of broken relationships and wounded families, particularly among the young, is very hard to comprehend.
As a young man of nineteen, I witnessed a Pastor and mentor leave a church ostensibly to become a missionary, but the reality was he was under duress. During the same spring, the pastor of the church near my hometown, which was the first non-Catholic church I had ever attended, was forced out based in part on differences of opinion on end times Bible interpretation and the social drinking of an adult son of the Pastor.
A few years later the church I attended in California split over a building program. This was preceded by the less than delicate termination of employment of an associate and youth pastor.
Two years later, a church I attended was led by a pastor with just a high school education. He fell under the spell of “signs and wonders” theology. Misuse of scripture and at least one bogus healing went unchecked and uninvestigated by the leadership. At that point I was feeling bewildered. But a job change led to a relocation and I saw 12 years of peace in two different churches.
Then it happened again. Differing views of authority vs a habit of independence, much miscommunication, and some personal issues precipitated a split in another church. An attempt was made to rebuild, one that I was determined to participate in. For five years I poured myself into the task. There was the work of, “casting a new vision”, redrafting a constitution and charting a course, and a new pastor was called. His intentions were good, but it was quickly apparent that his view of the new constitution was unfavorable, and the vision statement the church had worked months to draft was unwisely discarded. Influenced by the strategies of church growth gurus, ambitious programs were undertaken and in a short time key families, mine included, were exhausted. Tensions rose and yet another pastor resigned.
After the departure of another youth pastor, something in me finally snapped. The emotional strain of trying to resolve conflicts and stay on course proved too much. It was during this time, that I started to wonder if it was even possible to maintain a healthy congregational church. I asked in one Elder meeting a simple question. In congregational churches the leadership is accountable to the congregation. “Who”, I asked, “is the congregation accountable to?” We all sat in silence. No one, amazingly, had ever really asked the question.
It is not that I believe the faith or sincerity of Free Church evangelicals is in question. Rather, I finally have come to conclude evangelicals have been victims of their own ingenuity, constantly trying to invent a better mousetrap, suspicious of the excesses and abuses of the past. The unfortunate events of the middle ages and the acrimony of the Reformation have made it impossible for evangelicals to see anything good in the historical church since the day the last bit of ink dried on the New Testament epistles up till Luther's revolt against Rome.
But as a result of the independence and fear of the abuse of absolute power, a pattern of absolute autonomy has produced the opposite evil. The average evangelical pastor manages to remain in a particular church on the average about two years. The concern many of the evangelical converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy raise is the difficult to refute objection that there are now over 25,000 different evangelical denominations. Division is the rule, not the exception.
I cannot get around the fact that the first church split occurred more than a half century before Protestantism. Protests by Catholic and Orthodox apologists about Protestant disunity are taken with a grain of salt. Unity is not in our nature. Perfection is not a realistic expectation.
But there are too many painful reasons not to at least feel uncomfortable in the evangelical protestant “congregational” tradition – if one has in mind any concept of a church which “the gates of Hell will not stand” against.
For many months I sat in church with a suffocating weight crushing my spirit. Experience is a hard teacher at times. It was becoming clear to me that though absolute power might corrupt absolutely, too much autonomy could never produce stability. There has to be a better way.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Authority
I have been attempting to document my reasons for drifting away from the loose and independent evangelicalism I have been associated with for most of the last 28 years. I discussed the tendency to evaluate truth on the basis of experience and the excesses this has led to. I need to add to that an issue that Orthodox converts like Franky Schaeffer have rather mercilessly pointed out - a poor conception of authority that has led to endless division and as a result a lack of moral authority in the culture at large. My experience confirms his criticisms, even if I cannot quite embrace his final conclusion...
Protestantism is founded on a simple principle. That principle is that no authority-figure in a religious organization deserves unquestioned allegiance. If someone in authority should stray from the clear teaching of the apostles, then their authority is false and even a lowly German Monk should have the right to question him. It could be said, on the positive side, that this shift in thinking in the church had a huge impact on larger culture, further paving the way for a move from the divine right of kings to an acceptance of constitutional democracy. But that move toward democracy and away from the pure authority of the episcopate is most obvious in free church evangelicalism.
Unfortunately this movement away from Episcopal authority may have produced side effects we still do not understand. Our somewhat democratic way of dealing with the issue of authority in many churches means that anybody with a Bible and a title or even a subjective ”call” can claim spiritual authority. Much of my own experience has been marred by constitutional conflicts, varying interpretations of roles of officers, and in the end if one does not agree with the way things are done it is easy enough to simply leave and go elsewhere (which I admit I have done in some cases). The actions of one group of leaders, presumably taken with much thought and prayer can easily be overturned by a subsequent group of leaders on the basis that they felt "led by the Lord" in a new direction. Was the old direction not "led by the Lord"? How do we verify such a thing? Who do we trust? How do we submit? Certainly human leadership can be wrong and decisions sometimes must be reversed, but the balance between change and stability seems almost non-existent.
And on the other hand, pastors and others in church leadership seem to face the opposite temptation. Once entrenched in a position of authority, many find it easy to insist that their directives be followed at all costs and without question. They see a somewhat military “chain of command” that one dare not resist. If a pastor teaches heresy or abusively rules over the lives of those under his charge, there seems no reasonable recourse for those in the congregation to employ. No amount of reasoning, hard evidence and scriptural argument can dislodge such a leader from his doctrinal, intellectual or political viewpoint. Once he believes his view is “God’s way”, the argument is in effect over – or perhaps just beginning.
In either scenario, the tug of war between leadership and the lay people all too often leads to division. Without clear guidelines for establishing leadership and holding leadership accountable, many evangelical churches face an almost impossible task to remain unified. It should be noted that this tension is not completely unique to evangelicalism, or Protestantism. But the proliferation of denominations is both a cause and symptom of the problem.
Is the problem that individualistic American evangelical lay people just don’t know how to submit to proper authority within legitimate roles? Or is part of the problem that many of those in “authority” are not suited for or worthy of the roles they fill? Probably both in many cases. Because authority today is fully grounded in the “me and my Bible” mentality, the legitimate individual response exhibited by the Berean church in carefully checking the teaching of even the Apostle Paul against their Old Testament scriptures can quickly become a subjective witch hunt where folks want teachers who will “tickle their ears”. If they don’t get what they want they establish opposing camps and the battle escalates.
On the other hand, undisciplined preachers quite often do abuse scripture in their preaching and abuse their roles in practice. And if even the most well-meaning of laypersons should raise an objection, they may be accused of “resisting God”, “resisting the Holy Spirit” being divisive, being tools of Satan. Often these accusations come subtly in the form of sermon allusions, but the pattern is the same. Instead of leadership by men whose desire is to serve, there are just enough wolves in clerical clothing whose thirst for power is difficult to bridle that a level of distrust between laymen and leadership has developed that may never be overcome.
In Protestant circles, authority is supposed to be grounded in Scripture and men are supposed to derive their authority from some combination of biblical principle, demonstrated leadership ability, endorsement from other leaders and some level of consent from the congregation they oversee. Each denomination fine-tunes that mixture according to its own recipe. The further the denomination is removed from the first days of the Reformation, the more limited the authority of the leadership.
Catholic ecclesiology, on the other hand, teaches that even a priest who is immoral or a heretic can, because of his office, dispense valid sacraments. One salutes the office, not the man. Hence division is not as prevalent, though my experience with Catholicism is enough to validate division can manifest itself in covert as well as overt ways. It is well known that even some popes have been both immoral and heretics and those under them submitted grudgingly to their authority, or simply ignored them. One tends to think that Luther was right in insisting that such men should not be in authority.
Yet we live in the days of the opposite extreme. We think, as evangelicals, that we know what legitimate authority is not, but we find it difficult to say with any degree of comfort what legitimate authority is. I am weary of the battles. There has to be something more stable than mere congregationalism. I am a big fan of democracy, but democracy is messy business. I am no longer convinced that is what Christ, Peter and Paul had in mind for the church...
Protestantism is founded on a simple principle. That principle is that no authority-figure in a religious organization deserves unquestioned allegiance. If someone in authority should stray from the clear teaching of the apostles, then their authority is false and even a lowly German Monk should have the right to question him. It could be said, on the positive side, that this shift in thinking in the church had a huge impact on larger culture, further paving the way for a move from the divine right of kings to an acceptance of constitutional democracy. But that move toward democracy and away from the pure authority of the episcopate is most obvious in free church evangelicalism.
Unfortunately this movement away from Episcopal authority may have produced side effects we still do not understand. Our somewhat democratic way of dealing with the issue of authority in many churches means that anybody with a Bible and a title or even a subjective ”call” can claim spiritual authority. Much of my own experience has been marred by constitutional conflicts, varying interpretations of roles of officers, and in the end if one does not agree with the way things are done it is easy enough to simply leave and go elsewhere (which I admit I have done in some cases). The actions of one group of leaders, presumably taken with much thought and prayer can easily be overturned by a subsequent group of leaders on the basis that they felt "led by the Lord" in a new direction. Was the old direction not "led by the Lord"? How do we verify such a thing? Who do we trust? How do we submit? Certainly human leadership can be wrong and decisions sometimes must be reversed, but the balance between change and stability seems almost non-existent.
And on the other hand, pastors and others in church leadership seem to face the opposite temptation. Once entrenched in a position of authority, many find it easy to insist that their directives be followed at all costs and without question. They see a somewhat military “chain of command” that one dare not resist. If a pastor teaches heresy or abusively rules over the lives of those under his charge, there seems no reasonable recourse for those in the congregation to employ. No amount of reasoning, hard evidence and scriptural argument can dislodge such a leader from his doctrinal, intellectual or political viewpoint. Once he believes his view is “God’s way”, the argument is in effect over – or perhaps just beginning.
In either scenario, the tug of war between leadership and the lay people all too often leads to division. Without clear guidelines for establishing leadership and holding leadership accountable, many evangelical churches face an almost impossible task to remain unified. It should be noted that this tension is not completely unique to evangelicalism, or Protestantism. But the proliferation of denominations is both a cause and symptom of the problem.
Is the problem that individualistic American evangelical lay people just don’t know how to submit to proper authority within legitimate roles? Or is part of the problem that many of those in “authority” are not suited for or worthy of the roles they fill? Probably both in many cases. Because authority today is fully grounded in the “me and my Bible” mentality, the legitimate individual response exhibited by the Berean church in carefully checking the teaching of even the Apostle Paul against their Old Testament scriptures can quickly become a subjective witch hunt where folks want teachers who will “tickle their ears”. If they don’t get what they want they establish opposing camps and the battle escalates.
On the other hand, undisciplined preachers quite often do abuse scripture in their preaching and abuse their roles in practice. And if even the most well-meaning of laypersons should raise an objection, they may be accused of “resisting God”, “resisting the Holy Spirit” being divisive, being tools of Satan. Often these accusations come subtly in the form of sermon allusions, but the pattern is the same. Instead of leadership by men whose desire is to serve, there are just enough wolves in clerical clothing whose thirst for power is difficult to bridle that a level of distrust between laymen and leadership has developed that may never be overcome.
In Protestant circles, authority is supposed to be grounded in Scripture and men are supposed to derive their authority from some combination of biblical principle, demonstrated leadership ability, endorsement from other leaders and some level of consent from the congregation they oversee. Each denomination fine-tunes that mixture according to its own recipe. The further the denomination is removed from the first days of the Reformation, the more limited the authority of the leadership.
Catholic ecclesiology, on the other hand, teaches that even a priest who is immoral or a heretic can, because of his office, dispense valid sacraments. One salutes the office, not the man. Hence division is not as prevalent, though my experience with Catholicism is enough to validate division can manifest itself in covert as well as overt ways. It is well known that even some popes have been both immoral and heretics and those under them submitted grudgingly to their authority, or simply ignored them. One tends to think that Luther was right in insisting that such men should not be in authority.
Yet we live in the days of the opposite extreme. We think, as evangelicals, that we know what legitimate authority is not, but we find it difficult to say with any degree of comfort what legitimate authority is. I am weary of the battles. There has to be something more stable than mere congregationalism. I am a big fan of democracy, but democracy is messy business. I am no longer convinced that is what Christ, Peter and Paul had in mind for the church...
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Experientialism
I need to document some of the reasons I have long felt a certain "cognitive dissonance" with evangelicalism. One of the key problems for me has been that I have long watched the evangelical movement increasingly adopting the notion that truth is determined by experience.
It seems more and more that evangelicalism is steeped in feeling over fact, and relationship over reason.
Yet this presents a problem: If my “experience” is different from the prevailing flow, is there something wrong with me? In my early evangelical days, I devoured books by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer and others, books that tried to show the reasonableness of Christianity, its historicity, that it can be demonstrated to make sense and be true to reality. I spent hours looking into apologetics from understanding the first chapters of Genesis to the evidence for the resurrection to the logical defenses of the existence of God. I thought everyone would find such things relevant, interesting, vital to a solid faith. To this day, that intellectual foundation has been the source of a lasting commitment to God and the scriptures.
As the years went on I found more and more that I was the exception to the rule. Today, the emphasis of evangelical Christianity is on “relationship”. If one has a good experiential “sense” of being in communion with God, that is the vital thing, perhaps the only thing. Evidence matters little, in part because more and more evangelical leaders have swallowed the mystical post-modern notion that our understanding is so imprisoned in our subjective perceptions that evidence can never be looked at objectively. As a result our churches are primarily built on methods of providing a positive "experience" and a good group of social acquaintances and emotional support.
When I was young the criticism of the church was that it was too much of a “social club”. Today, that is exactly what seems to be the desired goal in church growth strategies. Provide a good hook to get folks in the door and surround them with people who will smother them with affection, and you will have made a convert – at least for a time. It works. But it works for cults as well and has no necessary connection to the question of whether Christianity is true.
If one has an “experience” with something that is alleged to be of the Holy Spirit, then that is all the proof that person feels is needed of the validity of the event. But if one detects doctrinal deviation in the teaching and dares to call it to the attention of those in charge, he will be quickly dismissed or even denounced as one who “resists the Spirit”. I am not exaggerating in this case. I have been treated in this way more than once. Truth is no longer determined by reason and evidence. Truth is determined by feelings and pragmatic instant results. In this way parts of the evangelical church are not at all different from the worst of the postmodern fringe or the New Age cults.
I should stress that some of this is a reaction to the cold intellectualism of the “modern” period, where “head knowledge” ruled the day and had no connection to real life. But Biblical and historic Christianity must not be confused with modernism. Modernism at least shares the belief implied in scripture that there is an objective world that can be understood rationally. But modernism denies the source of that objectivity and had no way to sustain it. The men of the enlightenment tried to base everything on reason and in the end reason alone could not sustain the load. For historic Christianity, reason was a God-given tool, nothing more. And objective truth was not based on reason itself but on the God who created all of reality. For the radically postmodern mind, reason is an illusion. And many evangelicals today are products of this extreme postmodern mindset.
Postmodern people react against modernism with extreme skepticism toward reason. In one encounter, an evangelical friend told me that seeking theological education was a sure way to be influenced negatively by the “wisdom of men”. He was involved in a fairly extreme Pentecostal church. I asked if his Pastor had sought any theological training. He said no. I asked how this pastor managed, then, to prepare a simple sermon. His answer was that he did not need to prepare, the Holy Spirit just revealed the words to him as he spoke. I asked then, why did this pastor even need the Bible, the scriptures themselves?
His reply – “he doesn’t need the Bible”.
“That’s heresy”, I replied. At which point he started to reconsider his position.
Such an example may seem extreme to the evangelical in a middle-American small town church. It is not extreme at all in reality. One can find plenty of examples on the religious airwaves, on the religious bookshelves and one can be relatively certain that at least one church in most any town wanders near the edge of such experiential nonsense.
And the problem is it trickles down. We want an “encounter” with God, a feeling of being loved and accepted and evangelical programming has become adept at providing it. We provide a warm community, a carefully crafted Sunday morning service that makes us “feel” close to God. But the level of doctrinal and biblical illiteracy betrays the shallowness of the ultimate product.
As many as 91 out of 100 evangelical teenagers no longer believe there is such a thing as an absolute truth. How can one believe in God and not believe in an absolute truth? Does God both exist and not exist? One can reconcile that seeming discrepancy only if God is just a “personal experience” and not an objective reality. This is becoming the norm for evangelicals.
But a God who only exists in my head is no God at all, he is merely an idea, and such believers should be pitied, not put on a pedestal. As Paul said, “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor 15:14)
It seems more and more that evangelicalism is steeped in feeling over fact, and relationship over reason.
Yet this presents a problem: If my “experience” is different from the prevailing flow, is there something wrong with me? In my early evangelical days, I devoured books by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer and others, books that tried to show the reasonableness of Christianity, its historicity, that it can be demonstrated to make sense and be true to reality. I spent hours looking into apologetics from understanding the first chapters of Genesis to the evidence for the resurrection to the logical defenses of the existence of God. I thought everyone would find such things relevant, interesting, vital to a solid faith. To this day, that intellectual foundation has been the source of a lasting commitment to God and the scriptures.
As the years went on I found more and more that I was the exception to the rule. Today, the emphasis of evangelical Christianity is on “relationship”. If one has a good experiential “sense” of being in communion with God, that is the vital thing, perhaps the only thing. Evidence matters little, in part because more and more evangelical leaders have swallowed the mystical post-modern notion that our understanding is so imprisoned in our subjective perceptions that evidence can never be looked at objectively. As a result our churches are primarily built on methods of providing a positive "experience" and a good group of social acquaintances and emotional support.
When I was young the criticism of the church was that it was too much of a “social club”. Today, that is exactly what seems to be the desired goal in church growth strategies. Provide a good hook to get folks in the door and surround them with people who will smother them with affection, and you will have made a convert – at least for a time. It works. But it works for cults as well and has no necessary connection to the question of whether Christianity is true.
If one has an “experience” with something that is alleged to be of the Holy Spirit, then that is all the proof that person feels is needed of the validity of the event. But if one detects doctrinal deviation in the teaching and dares to call it to the attention of those in charge, he will be quickly dismissed or even denounced as one who “resists the Spirit”. I am not exaggerating in this case. I have been treated in this way more than once. Truth is no longer determined by reason and evidence. Truth is determined by feelings and pragmatic instant results. In this way parts of the evangelical church are not at all different from the worst of the postmodern fringe or the New Age cults.
I should stress that some of this is a reaction to the cold intellectualism of the “modern” period, where “head knowledge” ruled the day and had no connection to real life. But Biblical and historic Christianity must not be confused with modernism. Modernism at least shares the belief implied in scripture that there is an objective world that can be understood rationally. But modernism denies the source of that objectivity and had no way to sustain it. The men of the enlightenment tried to base everything on reason and in the end reason alone could not sustain the load. For historic Christianity, reason was a God-given tool, nothing more. And objective truth was not based on reason itself but on the God who created all of reality. For the radically postmodern mind, reason is an illusion. And many evangelicals today are products of this extreme postmodern mindset.
Postmodern people react against modernism with extreme skepticism toward reason. In one encounter, an evangelical friend told me that seeking theological education was a sure way to be influenced negatively by the “wisdom of men”. He was involved in a fairly extreme Pentecostal church. I asked if his Pastor had sought any theological training. He said no. I asked how this pastor managed, then, to prepare a simple sermon. His answer was that he did not need to prepare, the Holy Spirit just revealed the words to him as he spoke. I asked then, why did this pastor even need the Bible, the scriptures themselves?
His reply – “he doesn’t need the Bible”.
“That’s heresy”, I replied. At which point he started to reconsider his position.
Such an example may seem extreme to the evangelical in a middle-American small town church. It is not extreme at all in reality. One can find plenty of examples on the religious airwaves, on the religious bookshelves and one can be relatively certain that at least one church in most any town wanders near the edge of such experiential nonsense.
And the problem is it trickles down. We want an “encounter” with God, a feeling of being loved and accepted and evangelical programming has become adept at providing it. We provide a warm community, a carefully crafted Sunday morning service that makes us “feel” close to God. But the level of doctrinal and biblical illiteracy betrays the shallowness of the ultimate product.
As many as 91 out of 100 evangelical teenagers no longer believe there is such a thing as an absolute truth. How can one believe in God and not believe in an absolute truth? Does God both exist and not exist? One can reconcile that seeming discrepancy only if God is just a “personal experience” and not an objective reality. This is becoming the norm for evangelicals.
But a God who only exists in my head is no God at all, he is merely an idea, and such believers should be pitied, not put on a pedestal. As Paul said, “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor 15:14)
Devastation
This is not a news blog, but I cannot let the devastation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas go by without a word of concern. Let us all focus on helping and healing now and leave the political sniping about who is to blame for a later time. This is the time for compassion, not campaigning.
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