THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MORE THAN EARNEST
Originally published in Modern
Reformation (Sep/Oct 1996)
Doctrine. Theology.
For many evangelicals these words are as pleasant
as the phrase, "impacted tooth!" That theology is
irrelevant to Christian life has essentially become a
received dogma. Nevertheless, as much as indifference
about Christian truth reigns among evangelicals, to the
same degree we have actually adopted a competing
religion, and therefore the Christian explanation no
longer interests us. If this is true, then a call to
reconsider the importance of theology is also a call to
repentance and faith.
Doctrine is "that which
is taught" from the Latin word doctrina. In my
experience however, doctrine elicits one meaning and
teaching quite another. To test the negative
associations attached to the word doctrine ask yourself,
"Would I rather attend a church known for its solid
teaching or its solid doctrine?" For most evangelicals,
a teaching church wins hands down. The word doctrine
evokes "closed," "narrow" and perhaps even "bigoted."
As a result of this
aversion to theology, evangelicals have reached a sort
of gentlemen's agreement on disputed doctrines. If it is
true that one does not discuss politics and religion in
polite company, then in evangelical circles, it is even
more impolite to broach controversial topics such as
baptism or predestination. For many evangelicals, the
present consensus about the practical necessity of
"a-doctrinal" Christianity is a sort of nirvana. In this
view, doctrinal disagreements are not important and
achieving doctrinal precision is not the true work of
the church.
A-Doctrinal
Christianity: Pious or Not?
This position seems pious. Who can disagree with the aim
of spreading the Good News? Second, doctrinal debates
have too often been conducted uncharitably with each
side concerned primarily with winning. Third, there has
occasionally arisen in the church self-appointed
doctrine police which one might call the DC crowd--the
doctrinally correct--who are interested more in being
right and making certain everyone knows they are right
than in helping one grow toward the truth. These folk
treat Christianity as a matter of accumulated secret
knowledge which they alone possess.1 When
faced with these folk it is perhaps wise to agree to
disagree. There are things about which sincere believers
can intelligently and charitably disagree. Charity is
not, however, an excuse to simply ignore. The main
branches of historic Protestantism were anything but
ignorant of the differences between themselves.
Why Theology Has
Fallen on Hard Times?
Why, for one cause for our present indifference to
theology is the widespread evangelical ignorance of the
source (Scripture) and tradition of Christian teaching.
Why? North American evangelicalism has long been
infected by modernity. In the middle of the 18th
century, the ultimate authority of God's Word came under
full-scale attack. The Enlightenment modernists asserted
the primacy and autonomy of the human mind. By the end
of the 18th century, the great German philosopher
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had convinced European
philosophy that one cannot know things, outside of the
mind, as they are in themselves (Ding an sich).
Rather, he said, reality is a convention, the picture
our mind forms of the world outside us. In this view,
God is not the Triune Creator and Redeemer who reveals
himself as the I AM, but rather the product of our
experience of him. About the same time, Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768-1834) concluded that since we
cannot know much about God directly and we cannot trust
the truthfulness of the Bible, we ought to think of
Christianity as a "feeling of divine dependence." Even
if Kant and Schleiermacher are not household names,
their ideas formed the cornerstone of modern society.
It is easy to tell what
we Americans value by the amount of money we spend on
it. College professors who teach Business, Medicine or
Law are typically more highly paid than those who teach
History. Why? Because our culture values those
disciplines which will allow our children to go out into
the world and make money. Under Kant and Schleiermacher,
our culture, including evangelicalism, has placed a
premium on that which produces immediate gratification.
This move relativizes the importance of Christian truth
in the church. When was the last time you saw a
congregation rise up in protest because the pastor
failed to preach a series of sermons explaining the
Biblical doctrine of the Trinity? If, however, the
pastor fails to preach an annual series on "How to
Improve Your Marriage," he will hear about it at the
annual meeting. J. Gresham Machen called this syndrome
the "tyranny of the practical." Substitute "immediate"
for "practical" and his meaning is clear. The mainline
churches made this trade early in this century.
Evangelical Christendom faces this crisis today. We
evangelicals do not choose churches because of doctrinal
commitments, but because of the number of programs
available to meet our felt needs. We do what makes us
feel good. We have agreed with Schleiermacher that what
really matters is what I experience. If theology doesn't
make me feel good, then, by all means, let's be rid of
it.
Pietist
Evangelicalism: The Conduit of Modernity
Though several scholars of American evangelicalism have
argued that it was Princeton's alleged rationalism which
imported modernity into evangelicalism, it seems rather
that the blame must be placed elsewhere. A close reading
of the Princeton theologians will show that they were in
essential harmony with Calvin and the Orthodox Reformed
tradition on most points. There was, however, a pietist
strain in evangelicalism which was not as hardy as old
Princeton's confessional theology. Because the
organizing principle of pietism and mysticism is
experience, they were able to find common ground with
those, like Schleiermacher, who could point to personal
experience, while denying the historicity of the faith.
With this experiential bridge, they were more liable to
being co-opted by modernity.
Another legacy to
evangelicalism is a radically individualistic faith. If
one cannot be certain about the historicity of the faith
then one flees to mystical experience. Pietistic
evangelicalism replaced the "priesthood of all
believers" (access to God through Christ alone) with the
"papacy of every believer" (the sole authority of the
believer). Individualism has replaced the older
Protestant idea of divinely ordained authority located
in Scripture and in the courts of the church, and has
led to a nearly irreparable fragmentation of the
Christian landscape.
Activism--doing in
place of thinking--is another result of the influence of
modernity. We measure spiritual growth by the level of
one's religious activity. One prominent source for this
activism was Charles Finney's "New Measures" revivalism
(the altar call, the anxious bench, etc.) which
appropriated Schleiermacher for evangelicalism. The New
Measures were the triumph of method over theology,
pragmatism over principle and a wholesale rejection of
the Reformation. An activist orientation also entails an
unhappy indifference to and ignorance of history and
theology. So, evangelical congregations across the
continent anoint heretical pastors and slide into
ancient heresies long ago addressed and rejected by the
historic orthodox faith.
Why Theology is
Necessary
It is dangerous, if not impossible, to live the
Christian life in the absence of Christian truth. There
are, to be sure, happy inconsistencies--does anyone
really pray what an Arminian confesses? Nevertheless,
there are serious problems with the "a-doctrinal"
approach to Christianity. Everything one does flows from
one's view of God, history, the world, and self. If one
says, "I want to do evangelism, not theology," I should
ask, "what will you tell
them?" Whatever one tells the lost will necessarily be
doctrine.
Not all evangelicals
capitulated to modernity. Since the Reformation, there
have always been those whom one might class as
confessional evangelicals. Because our Protestant
parents believed differently, they acted differently
than us. The leaders of the Reformation worked
constantly to resolve their differences over important
issues, viz., Baptism and the Eucharist. These efforts
were usually motivated by genuine love for one another
and a strong desire to see the evangelical church
united. They saw theological dialogue as an act of
Christian charity.
These discussions took
place both in the church and the academy, in a forum
inherited from the medieval church called the
colloquium (Latin for "conference").2 A
colloquy was a structured discussion of doctrinal
differences controlled by a moderator with an agenda.
The teams met in a plenary session, then divided into
smaller groups to tackle various issues and then
returned to meet in common session to report on their
progress. Evangelicals ought to revive the system of the
colloquy. The benefit of such a system is that each
'side' is forced to sit down and prayerfully study God's
Word and the history of doctrine and decide what they
think Scripture teaches. It is only when we
self-consciously, systematically think through how we
understand God's Word and patiently, sympathetically
attempt to understand how our brothers interpret God's
Word that we are prepared to compare conclusions and to
make substantial, biblical, progress toward a common
understanding of the faith. To challenge one another,
even vigorously, over important theological questions is
an act of love. Indifference to theology implies that
the firmly held convictions of one's brothers do not
merit serious consideration. It is no mere coincidence
that the system of the colloquy fell into neglect with
the rise of modernity. Why discuss those things which
are no longer of interest?
The present state of
affairs must be changed. To decide what Scripture
teaches, what the church believes, to re-consecrate
oneself to the knowledge of our Triune God, these are
the actions of a rebel against the Kantian sterility of
modernity.
Orthodoxy simply means
"right thinking" or "right worship."3 Thus,
"dead orthodoxy" is an oxymoron. One cannot be truly
orthodox and spiritually dead. Only when we've stopped
believing the historic faith does it become dead. Not
surprisingly, it was Schleiermacher who first described
orthodoxy as dead. Trinitarian orthodoxy is, however, as
subtle and exciting a truth as anyone would ever wish to
meet. Our faith is full of mystery, wonder and the smell
of life, not death. Nor should orthodoxy be condemned
because it has sometimes been taught badly. I once had a
disagreeable plate of hash browns at 3:00 AM in Idaho. I
have not, however, given up on hash browns simply
because some fry cook once ruined them.
The institutional
church has been assailed for decades for its alleged
lack of relevance. To call her back to concern for truth
is asking the church to shift into reverse. To some it
may sound as if you are asking the church to commit
statistical suicide. We must be prepared to show
Christian leaders why Christian truth is the starting
place for ministry. If you are ready to walk into the
"a-doctrinal" breach of church leadership, contending
for doctrine, then perhaps God has called you to just
such a ministry in your congregation.
Recover the
Confessions and Confessionalism
We must recover our Protestant confessional background
by studying the Reformation confessions in the light of
Scripture.4 We must be prepared to lovingly,
but firmly, call the evangelical church, her leaders,
and her courts (presbyteries, synods) to account for the
abandonment of her historic doctrinal commitments.
Finally, we can return
to the Reformation system of the colloquy. One might
organize a discussion within one's own congregation or
between one's congregation and an evangelical
congregation from another tradition.5 Having
witnessed the often pathetic state of theological
discourse in evangelicalism today, I think we could
stand a few colloquia! Failing that, make a point of
meeting believers from other Reformation traditions.
Perhaps you know someone who attends an historic
Protestant church which is not being faithful to its
confessional heritage. It might be helpful to meet with
that person to discuss your confessions and their role
in the church.
Conclusion
You are reading this magazine presumably because you are
concerned about the state of the church. You have
decided to educate yourself, to read, to think and to
grow intellectually and spiritually. But just as you
probably did not come overnight to your present
understanding of the need for good theology, you should
not expect an entire congregation or its leadership to
instantly change. So be patient and humble.
That the evangelical
church will have a theology is inescapable. The question
must be whether we are committed to believing and
confessing a good, historic, confessional, theology
which is faithful to the Bible, or whether we will
accept the unhappy modernist settlement.
Notes
1 This
is the danger of gnosticism or salvation obtained
through the possession of secret knowledge which grants
one admission into an elite group. Gnosticism is an
ancient philosophy and movement which is notoriously
difficult to define. The word Gnosticism comes from the
Greek verb Ginoskein (to know) and noun Gnosis
(knowledge). Most evangelical scholars think that
Gnosticism did not become an organized movement until
just before the 200's A.D. However, the seeds of the
movement were present in the first century and its
likely that John's letters addressed some aspects of the
movement in the cities of Asia Minor. The early church
Father, Irenaeus (c. A.D. 175), wrote five books against
the Gnostic heresies. That Gnostic ideas were still in
circulation during the Reformation is evidenced by the
fact that the Belgic Confession Article 12 (1561)
repudiated Manichaeism, a later form of these false
ideas.
2 It is true that the Reformers met with
mixed success in their attempts to find unity. They did
succeed more than is sometimes recognized. Dissatisfied
with the failure of the Marburg Colloquy (1529), Martin
Bucer, Philip Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger met
secretly five years later at Constance to resolve
differences over the Eucharist. There they agreed that
Christ is eaten "by faith". At Hagenau (1540) Calvin and
Bucer signed the Augustana Variata (1541), a
significant version of the Augsburg Confession (1530)
indicating substantial unity on the supper between at
least a segment of Lutheranism and the Reformed
Churches. In 1549, the Reformed Churches in Switzerland
signed the Consensus Tigurinus marking unity on
the Eucharist. It was always Calvin's hope to see
Protestantism united against her common enemies.
3 These two concepts are not far separate.
Romans 12:2 (Geneva Bible, 1602 edition) speaks
of our 'reasonable' service to God.
4 It might be well to begin with the catholic
creeds, i.e., the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian
Creeds and the Definition of Chalcedon. I find that
about 10% of my students are familiar with the Apostles'
Creed. If your congregation does not use these Creeds it
might be well to inquire about it. One should be greatly
troubled if a church will not use the catholic creeds.
5 I have benefited greatly from virtual
colloquies through on-line conferences.