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I’m not a Roman Catholic (although I was raised to be) but the current pope continually impresses me with his deep, spiritual and rational perspective of the Bible’s message. Just reading his latest talk on how we need to ally ourselves with Godhas brought me another step closer in the realisation that our Catholic brethren are not heretics but one cultural and historical swing of a pendulum and that the counter-swing, called the Reformation, is not the final word on Biblical exposition and sound doctrine. I’ll leave these controversial statements unexpounded for now but just look at what Ratzinger is saying:
He [Jesus] is the king of the entire universe but the critical point, the place where his kingdom is at risk, is our heart, because there God encounters our freedom.
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It is up to us to decide whether to practice justice or iniquity, whether to embrace love and forgiveness or vengeance and murderous hatred. Our personal salvation depends on this, but also the salvation of the world.
I know a good many protestants who would deny these statements but I subscribe wholeheartedly to this not because it’s Ratzinger’s message but Jesus’: Read the rest of this entry »
Salvation by faith alone is the characteristic doctrine of Protestant theology and yet, in this form, a subtle imprecise and misleading formulation of Justification by faith alone. I would not even bother mentioning it if I didn’t think that, for most people, the misunderstanding is serious and detrimental to a healthy understanding of the Bible and of God. I also found that investigating the difference between salvation and justification has shed light on some theological problems and inconsistencies I have come across.
I propose to use Paul’s writings as a basis for better understanding how justification and salvation are related because Paul’s letters are the closest thing to a systematic theology I can find in the Bible, certainly regarding salvation. I see Paul’s task as looking back on Gospel events and expounding the theological and practical implications for the early church. I see our task as doing the same thing and working out a theology and practice for today’s church. We must become acquainted then, not only with what Paul said and meant, but the meanings it would have had to the audience at the time. This is no easy task but we run the risk of reading the Bible with post-enlightenment spectacles and misunderstanding much if we don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Yeah, Christians Do Some Unexplainable Things
In his book, My Jesus Year, the Jewish author Benyamin Cohen makes a journey along the fringes of fundamental Christianity in America, particularly the Bible Belt. The result is an exposé of the strange things happening today under the banner of Christianity. This book is obviously following in the footsteps of Religiolous and other attempts at exposing Christianity as a crazy sect or farce but as with most caricatures they can sometimes backfire.
Although Cohen says “the churches inspires him to be a better Jew”, a possible sideswipe, he perhaps misses the point that Christianity is something which grew out of Judaism and bears the kind of resemblance we find between child and father or grandfather. Jesus was a Jew, indeed The Jew and all the apostles were Jews, the New Testament authors (possibly excluding Luke) were Jews – Christianity is the Following of the True Jew Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »
The Synergy of God and Man
The title of this post is unavoidably provocative. It implies that God and Man are working together in life towards some goal. Of course, many times, we work against God but the point is that sometimes we work with Him and the interplay of His actions and our actions, His Grace and our response is what we call the “Relationship with God”.
Monergistic Salvation
The Calvinistic objection will be, as I understand it, that salvation, at least, is monergistic – i.e. wholly from God and Man does not play more than a passive role. I disagree on this point and see the Bible as teaching that God is the initiator and source of salvation in sending Jesus and the Gospel and that we are active and not passive recipients. If salvation is given to us regardless of our willingness or response, as Calvinists maintain, then we have several ethical and biblical problems to solve.
Problems with Monergism
Firstly, if God is saving people by sprinkling salvation on some but not others regardless of what each individual is doing (i.e. unconditionally) we have an unjust and arbitrary salvation. Unjust because it is a great reward (eternal life) with no consideration of the actual person in question. Of course, one might say, that’s just what Christianity is all about: unearned salvation, unmerited grace. But that is not what unconditional election says: “unconditional” is not synonymous with “unearned”. One could quite easily envision an individual who received grace because he/she repented asked for it even though it was undeserved. We should be talking about Unmerited Election.
This brings me to my second point about biblical problems in which much of the Bible ceases to make sense in light of Unconditional Election. Perhaps the most common biblical theme is the exhortation to repentance and the promise of salvation if (i.e. on condition that) we call on the name of the Lord. However, if salvation is unconditional, there should be no “if”. God should have said “Do nothing, and I will save some of you”. Jesus should have said “Come all ye elect and I will give ye rest” and “Seek and you will find if you are elect“.
If I am charitable I could consider that unconditional election simply means that salvation comes by faith and not on condition of moral effort but surely the Calvinists at the Council of Dort already knew we had a description of that: Sola Fide – Justification by Faith (and not by Works) as we see spelled out especially in Romans 3 but also many other places. The phrase “Unconditional Election” is misleading and one wonders if it was not simply used because the “U” fits nicely within TULIP. I’d like to point out that “Unmerited” also has a “U”…
Nevertheless, we all know that Salvation is from and by the Lord and that we are recipients. In that sense salvation is unidirectional but this is to zoom in on one aspect and miss the seeking bits. Interestingly, there are examples of bad non-seekers who were saved - Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is the prime example and there are many others even today for whom this applies. Yet because Paul was saved whilst still persecuting Christ does not mean that those who are seeking Him can give up and wait for God to act. If this were true, Matthew 7:7 becomes false. Even IF (big “if”) Paul’s salvation was not based on his seeking Christ it does not follow that God had no reasons or that Paul was not desperately seeking God and blindly missing Christ.
Living the Christian Life
Setting aside the issue of salvation I now turn to the issue of Living the Christian Life. Is it me living or God living in me? We Christians know of the exhortation to “let the self die” and the idea of “giving our lives to God”. Now, without doing a full analysis of where these Self-Death ideas come from I think it is safe to say that regardless of how much God does for me a) it is still me albeit me-in-a-changed-form and b) he is working through me and not for or instead of me (remember, I’m not talking about salvation). We do not stop being individuals when God regenerates us but instead become more truly the persons we were made to be. God perfects us but does not “delete” us and the death we die is to the old, selfish, corrupt and decaying human nature and not to our true self/soul.
Once again, this analysis, wil fall foul of the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity which, as I understand it, sees unregenerate Man as the spiritual equivalent of a corpse who can do nothing good. I’m going to leave this point uncontested at this juncture because it refers to pre-salvation and instead return to the Christian Life and ask the hopefully uncontroversial question: in what sense am I involved in what God is doing?
The Greatness of Man
There is a funny situation in one of Adrian Plass’s writings in which members of a small Christian group try to prove to each other that they are each more worthless than the next. If one person sees himself as a worm, the next will claim to be the “dirt on the worm” and so on. This kind of self-degradation is obviously not the remedy to Pride and Self-Exaltation.
God made humans in His image and our true purpose is to reflect His glory. When we put ourselves down we fall short of His glory just as much as when we vainly puff ourselves up. God does not want us to have a “positive” or “healthy” self-image – He wants us to have a true idea of who we are so that He can take us where we need to be. This true idea of self is simply called humilty.
Jesus calls us to humility but says that we are the light and salt of the world which should be on display for all to see. We are fallen humans and we should recognise this but also keep in mind the glory we hope to maintain and strive for this restoration in the only One who can get us back there.
The Great Dance
C.S. Lewis observed:
the more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become (Mere Christianity, p. 189).
To, from and for God are all things and we are one of those things which are from, for and proceeding to God. Let us not puff ourselves up but let us not live as worms passively waiting for God to act. When we act in good Faith we are acting in Him and we are His body on earth granted power and authority to shape the world. We are also intimately involved in the great interplay of love which strengthens every relationship and lifts us up to Him to whom we belong.
There is no shortage of good advice today. Self-help books line our shelves but we find ourselves nodding vigorously and yet unable to apply what we learn.
My good friend Ashton has written some deep thoughts on the important topic of how we understand some things with our minds and how, when they really sink in, we understand with our hearts. Indeed, Christians are entreated (commanded) with utmost importance to love God with our whole being: heart, mind, soul, strength. Yet, for the Greeks, the “heart” was more than just the emotions – it was the very core of a person – the center of their primary concerns. Thus if God’s truths are not changing us then either:
- We already knew them and fully understood and practiced the implications (ha!)
OR - They did not resonate with our heart’s true concern and so become real
As Christians, exposed to so much wisdom in one book or in a single preaching, we battle to get the ideas down to our hearts and into practice. The question is: why is this so, and how can we accelerate the process and grow spiritually?
I have noticed that as soon as some new knowledge hits my real concerns (my ultimate values) or gives me a hint that it (the idea) will help me achieve them I will be chasing it like a dog after a stick. If I’m not chasing it, that’s because it doesn’t help me get where I think I need to be. It misses my concerns.
So when I battle to implement forgiveness or patience I have to ask myself:
- Are my concerns already aligned with God’s will?
OR - Does my heart, my chief concern, need adjusting?
The obvious question is how heart adjustment happens and Ashton has touched on it: We can’t by sheer force of will, get new concerns. It would be like willing to will something else. What we will is not something which can be removed without something to replace it. Thomas Chalmers’ Sermon The Expulsive Power of a New Affection must be the standard work on how our hearts will always desire something (unless they are dead and we become indifferent) and we can only hope to expel vain concerns (idols) by newer, truer ones.
I can’t help but love a God who says he’ll take care of this! In Ezekiel 36:25-27 it is God, not us or our religious acts and prayers, who cleans us, gives us a new heart and pours out his Spirit so that we are able to walk in His ways. Ashton mentions 2 Corinthians 5:18 and we all know: while we were still sinners, God died for us. We didn’t clean up our act to come to God but came to Him so that he would clean us up. God takes the lead. This takes all the heat off doesn’t it?
* Of course these promises are made to His people and so we need to be sure we’ve entered into that covenant by accepting Jesus as Lord. Got Gospel yet?
Still, although God is the initiator, He works in ways which do not leave us as passive observers. When God says he’s going to change me, he involves me as opposed to snapping his fingers and having my body, mind and spirit working, in an instant, as a well-oiled machine. God is not a magician! He is a teacher and a worker of change. I have to listen, believe and act!
Ashton has described how we can emmerse ourselves in Scripture and let Truth soak into our being. This I must try sometime. What I have found helps a great deal is looking for God in and behind everything good be it Nature, people or any kind of beauty or “rightness” out there even if it is another religion(!). In general when you look for God: a) you find Him (woohoo!) and b) it does not leave you unchanged (shock!).
Getting back to the heart. I know people who tend to downplay what they call “feelings”: What is important is what the Bible says and not how I feel about it. This may be true from an impersonal point of view but cannot be applied to issues of which I am a key component i.e. the recipient. The Gospel IS true but how I react to it is of vital importance. Forgiveness is on offer but my response is key. Likewise I have to say that a person’s feelings or intuition about something, say salvation or the presence of God, cannot be neglected. It is often a more accurate indicator of reality than what they think (or try to force themselves to believe). What we believe is important and I don’t think we choose it – instead reality impresses upon us and then we believe.
In conclusion, for heart-moving change which stops us living life on the surface:
- We need important truths to be near our hearts as well as in our minds
- God is going to initialise and do it
- We get to work in this process
- It starts when we ask, seek, knock
- It takes time, be patient and enjoy the ride
