28 thoughts on “The Progressive Evangelical Package”
“The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical”.
“I disagree. I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts… I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.”
But if they are both true, then there is some truth that is more whole and evangelical than the five points alone, quod erat demonstrandum. What is there to debate?
“I disagree. I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts… I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.”
Phil, you enumerated ‘five points’ on November 17.
Merry Christmas, by the way, and a Happy New Year with Romans and Galatians!
Again, there is an unusual restlessness about traditional formulations of doctrine out there. The popular and profitable ‘Four Views of…’ series and the recent ETS debate about inerrancy and its alternates show that.
But Derek Rishmawy’s OP describes this theological restlessness as classically symmetrical Mordor/Gondor polarisation–
(a) Warlords of two rival camps build rival castles.
(b) Enforcers of each warlord’s rules make the villages and countryside dangerous for all, thereby forcing the peasants run for safety to the nearest castle.
(c) Propaganda about the ruthlessness of the other warlord keeps the peasants inside,
(d) Notwithstanding what the peasants actually believe on divers matters, each warlord demands total loyalty in all things of those in the castle.
I presume that Derek regards The Gospel Coalition and those institutions aligned with it as one such castle, and alas this is not an unreasonable thought. But it normally takes two poles to polarise. Who has a Progressive Evangelical Castle competing with TGC for peasants– Rachel Held Evans?*
In the US, there is obviously a polarisation in politics that somewhat correlates to theology. One can be highly confident, for example, that a roomful of Americans subscribing heartily to the CSBI** (see text ***) will also staunchly oppose Federally subsidised health insurance for the poor. Indeed, alarm at this correlation feeds the restlessness about doctrine. Christians ask which aspects of which evangelical doctrine, exactly, makes the sickness and death of the poor (or the rising waters of climate change, or the ready availability of combat weapons, etc) so attractive to the solid bloc of evangelicals who seem to them to be supporting these ghastly things. In Christendom beyond the US, however, the polarisation of politics is not as extreme, nor is the correlation of evangelical theology to political parties quite as strong. Or do we see a formidable Progressive Evangelical castle rising above the treetops somewhere in England?
Even in the US, moreover, it seems that restless peasants are just occasionally warding off TGC enforcers with pitchforks and ridicule. They do not want to follow a warlord and build a castle, still less to rid the world of the Reformed castles in which many were born. But they probably do want to take back some of the evangelical countryside for more peaceful, compassionate, and godly folk.
And just as the personal became political, so now it has become theological. If a fine young evangelical concludes that, say, violence implicit in Penal Substitutionary Atonement has somehow made acquiescence in gun violence acceptable to his evangelical neighbours, then s/he will only listen to a defense of PSA from a pacifist Christian who has a peaceful heart. S/he will ignore an enforcer who drives up in a pickup truck with a gun rack, but will listen to the scriptural witness of a Shane Claiborne. The progressive peasants seem not to listen to lectures from log-eyed mote-pickers. Their disdain for coercive argument and compromised messengers is probably their most subversive trait. It cannot build any castles, but it might tear a few down.
“…the planet you describe on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing.”
“For SOME, by the grace of God, it is the planet we are on now.”
“For SOME, by the grace of God, [the planet {you describe} on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ] is the planet we are on now.”
Yes, Phil, either you have become a universalist, or else you are posting from a better planet than this one. The former cannot be as you read scripture, whilst the latter is just conceivable as St Paul wrote it, so the latter is less improbable. But from wherever you share your insight with us, we are blessed that you do it.
Bowman
Thanks for your comments elsewhere on this thread – I meant my SOME to be a contradiction of your ALL. Sorry if I did not make my meaning clear, which was that God has chosen SOME not ALL to be saved and he does and will bring the SOME to everlasting felicity (Article 17), a terrible truth. It is also true, a wonderful truth, that his invitation to ALL is a sincere and genuine invitation. How can these both be true? That is one of God’s mysteries. It is impossible for us to understand how they can both be true, but they are. So, we are all commanded, invited, exhorted to come to Christ. So – come and keep on coming.
Phil Almond
The scriptures have well-known sets of ‘universalist’ texts and ‘election’ texts. The ‘hypothetical universalism’ with ‘single election’ of Cameron, and after him Davenant and Amyraut, does reconcile the two sets better than the alternatives. Thus it is the traditional position of confessional Lutherans, articles-minded Anglicans, and some of the Reformed. Viewed through the lens of Tom Wright’s oeuvre, it makes intuitive sense, at least to me.
And yet– do the scriptures ever explicitly acknowledge that the hypothetical and effective scopes of salvation are not the same? If not, why not? And how do we live with that silence? It seems a strange omission. Hans Urs von Balthasar concludes that, because the word we have cannot be broken, it is the Church’s duty to teach the mystery of election, but to pray until the end of time that God’s ultimate will for universal salvation might yet be done.
Postscript– Oliver Crisp’s new book ‘Deviant Calvinism’ explores the hypothetical universalist position in Reformed theology from the C16 to today.
Phil, it’s not strictly related, but you may be interested in this defense of PSA from within Tom Wright’s inaugurated eschatology. The discussion of ‘aiwnios’ is more, well, ‘down to earth’ than several that I have seen.
Bowman
I am working towards subjecting my convictions to the stress test of confronting them with the views of N T Wright and those who agree with him – but not yet. First I aim to complete an in-depth review of Romans and Galatians to get clear what is my view of the right understanding of (especially) Romans 2, Romans 5:12 – 21, Romans 7/8, Galatians as a whole, and this involves consulting all the major commentaries and articles etc.
Phil Almond
“First I aim to complete an in-depth review of Romans and Galatians… and this involves consulting all the major commentaries and articles etc.”
Should anyone read Tom Wright before reading St Paul himself? Or should anyone seriously essay Romans and Galatians without consulting the commentaries (eg Cranfield)? Me genoito! But the controversies that swirl around Wright’s reading have felled forests, and time to read is precious. The simplest path forward may be first to read the epistles, then to read Wright’s reading of them, and then to further explore whatever opposing view interests you.
For Romans N T Wrights contribution to the New Interpreters Bible Commentary is worth looking at
If evangelicalism is to mean anything, it is characterised by Bebbington’s quadrilateral of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. All these are present in the conservative evangelicalism I grew up with and current reformed movement where they are expressed in a particular way. The list of characteristics given includes anti-inerrancy, anti-perspicuity, and anti-penal substitutionary atonement. Some alternatives are given, but this shows more what they are against than what they are for. This is all very well in in the blogsphere. It is easy to see this as a move away from the essentials of evangelicalism. Where can I find this sort of Christianity expressed in a positive way, as a life changing message for Christians and non-Christians?
“This is all very well in in the blogsphere. It is easy to see this as a move away from the essentials of evangelicalism. Where can I find this sort of Christianity [Progressive Evangelical Package] expressed in a positive way, as a life changing message for Christians and non-Christians?”
Everywhere and nowhere. But I have some scepticism about this OP.
If the OP is right in what it describes, the PEP sounds like a second pole gathering ordinary fuddyduddy evangelicals who seek cognitive relief from hyperactive rigourists. Many are not so much moving away from the beliefs of their childhoods as broadening their theological base so that they can keep those beliefs. This is why the OP can also report sightings of conservatives rethinking the same points. Thus the posited “progressives” would seem to be good if unsystematic evangelicals who do in fact express Christianity in a positive way, as a life changing message etc. However, they regard rigourist enforcers as bullies, and seek saner company for the mutual support that we normally expect in the Body of Christ.
So the OP is describing polarisation in action. The “package” attributed to the PEs is not coherent, but then poles of polarisation are social constructs for safety, not intellectual systems for consistency. Attacks on them encourage more to flock to them. When the countryside becomes violent, it is best to be in a castle.
As I have said before, there are 3 closely connected but distinct questions:
Who are the Christians?
What do the Christians believe?
What are the truths of Christianity?
It is possible for people who are Christians – known to God as Christians – to deny essential truths of Christianity and/or affirm things that the truths of Christianity rule out because we can all, as imperfectly sanctified sinners, go astray doctrinally as well as ethically and morally. So I would never say to anyone who believed they are a Christian, ‘You are not a Christian’. But I would say to them, not in a bullying way, but if we were debating what the truths of Christianity are, and it was clear that they were ok to be challenged (I would assume that participation in a forum like Fulcrum was evidence of that), ‘What you believe is ruled out by the truths of Christianity’, or ‘ What you are denying is one of the essential truths of Christianity’. But if some evangelicals are seeking cognitive relief by starting to embrace some of the points in the article we are discussing, they are in danger of rejecting some of the very things which are needed for an increasingly changed life. Is it possible to seek to obey and believe the commands, promises, assurances, invitations, rebukes that the Bible records Christ as saying if we are not sure that he said them?
It occurred to me recently that we are called upon not only to trust, obey, love and fear Christ, but also to endure him, for ‘Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.’
“It occurred to me recently that we are called upon not only to trust, obey, love and fear Christ, but also to endure him, for ‘Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.’”
Phil, your whole comment makes sense, but this at the end is especially fine.
And yes, you are far more courteous in discussions of scripture than the verbal pugilists online elsewhere. Despite holding crystalised views yourself, you see clearly and acknowledge forthrightly the differences between more and less central doctrine, between holding a true doctrine well and holding it badly, and between holding a doubtful doctrine and succumbing to its hazards. In fact, to my mind you are the best of us at describing the subjectivity with which persons hold doctrines and doctrines hold them.
“If evangelicalism is to mean anything, it is characterised by Bebbington’s quadrilateral of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.”
How useful the BQ is! I have read recently through a whole series of alternate lists. All had some merit, but in the end I just came back to Bebbington.
It is true that the most important disagreements between those who regard themselves as Christians have been around for some time: the Wrath of God; Original Sin; Eternal Punishment; Predestination to Life; Penal Substitutionary Atonement, for instance. But ‘choose’ is an inadequate word to describe how many come to hold convictions to believe or reject these doctrines. Often conclusions are reached only after prolonged and even agonizing wrestling with conscience and a sense that our conviction is not something we have a choice about but is being impressed upon us by God, overcoming our natural (in the theological sense of the word) objections to the truth of the doctrines mentioned. Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement is described in the article we are discussing as ‘Anti-Inerrancy’ – in my language, is the Bible wholly trustworthy or is it not. The strongest arguments from all sides of these disputed polarized issues can be gathered from a wholly trustworthy Bible. I believe it then becomes clear that these differences cannot be ‘transcended’ or reconciled. Either the doctrines I have mentioned are true or they are not true. That is why the Indaba process discussed on another thread is flawed. Its aim is to reach agreement but on these doctrines, and others, it has to be either acceptance or rejection. Agreement is only possible if one side admits it is wrong and agrees that the other side is right.
“…the most important disagreements between those who regard themselves as Christians have been around for some time: the Wrath of God; Original Sin; Eternal Punishment; Predestination to Life; Penal Substitutionary Atonement, for instance… The strongest arguments from all sides of these disputed polarized issues can be gathered from a wholly trustworthy Bible. I believe it then becomes clear that these differences cannot be ‘transcended’ or reconciled. Either the doctrines I have mentioned are true or they are not true. That is why the Indaba process discussed on another thread is flawed. Its aim is to reach agreement but on these doctrines, and others, it has to be either acceptance or rejection. Agreement is only possible if one side admits it is wrong and agrees that the other side is right.”
Not quite. Yes, we want discussion among those who trust the Bible, and in fact, we want discussion among those who read and interpret the Bible as a whole. Yes, a proposed doctrine can be disconfirmed for lacking a prima facie warrant in scripture, as I think Phil is insisting.
But in disagreements over the doctrines he mentions, the rivals are not so much theorems deduced from scriptural axioms as ‘reasonings to the best explanation’ for the datum of the Bible as a whole. If we do trust the Bible and do read it as a whole, then we will prefer the preaching that most convincingly accounts for the text as we have it. And that means that a doctrine that does appear to have a prima facie warrant in scripture can be superseded by another such doctrine that better explains the scriptures as a whole. The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical.
Aidan Kimel’s* recent re-posts on restoring the preaching of predestination are work-a-day examples of that sort of reasoning. He trusts scripture; he reads all of the scriptures. He rightly sees thereby that the data of scripture show predestination to be a form of the gospel. Yet Orthodox preachers have said almost nothing about it, whilst Western preachers have been unable to preach it as anything but a dysangelion. Both west and east of Trieste, received doctrine is failing to do for our hearers what it did for St Paul’s hearers. Failure is failure. It makes sense to search for a formulation of predestination that does what it does in scripture.
One heuristic for seeking such a formulation tries to hear the scriptural music with ears less attuned to an augustinian key. If we trust the scriptures, and read the whole of them this a reasonable thing to do anyway. And much as we justly admire our elder brother in Christ, against whom one is nearly always going to be wrong, the truth demands that we acknowledge as Robert Jenson does (The Theology of Colin Gunton, 11-12) that St Augustine could also be disastrously wrong about major doctrine: ‘…Augustine did in fact emphatically and insistently lay down disastrous propositions, propositions that became maxims of subsequent Western theology. He did say in fact that the Cappadocian distinction of ousia/hypostasis – the very distinction that enabled the creedal doctrine of the Trinity – could be no more than a purely linguistic device, that it could tell us nothing about the reality of God. . . He did say that it was absurd, as violating divine simplicity, to think that the Father could not be what he is apart from the Son, and vice versa – thereby rejecting a foundational proposition of Trinitarian thought and worship from Tertullian on.” That being the case, evangelical fidelity to scripture demands that we be wary of any purely defensive stance on formulations from St Augustine that were his innovations in the patristic age. Indeed, the more faithful to scripture we are, the more wary of any such overdependence on a single influence we must be.
________________
* Kimel left the evangelical wing of TEC (he’s an acquaintance of Ephraim Radner) for the OCA (Orthodox Church of America), and tries from there to make sense of the Augustinian heritage of the West.
Bowman
You posted, “The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical”.
I disagree.
I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts:
1 He has chosen in Christ before the foundation of the World certain individuals.
2 He will certainly save those individuals.
3 He will only save those individuals.
4 He has not so chosen every human being who has ever lived.
5 He invites, exhorts, commands, beseeches all human beings to come to Christ and be saved.
I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.
Statements 1 to 5 are either true or not true. They cannot be partially true.
I am not sure what you mean by the word ‘dysangelical’. Briefly googling, (EUANGELION | DYSANGELION (WISDOM FROM BARTH)) I assume that you mean ‘bad news’. If I had to choose only two words to describe the God and Christ of the Bible I would choose the words ‘terrible’ and ‘wonderful’. Terrible in their holiness, justice, sovereignty and honesty, evidenced by Moses at the bush, Isaiah in the Temple, Jacob at Luz, Peter in his fishing boat, Eli and Samuel, the Great White Throne. Wonderful in their grace, love, compassion pity and mercy, evidenced by incidents and promises and invitations too numerous to mention. To us, with our dead, sinful souls and fallen nature inclined to evil, the God and Christ of the Bible are ‘bad news’. We are utterly dependent on the showing-mercy God taking a unilateral, supernatural and irresistible subjective action in our souls, breathing new life into them, to bring us to repent and embrace the offered salvation in Christ.
Article 17 gets it right. ‘Furthermore we need to receive God’s promises in the manner in which they are generally set out to us in holy Scripture, and in our actions we need to follow that will of God which is clearly declared to us in the Word of God’.
If Fulcrum will allow it I will debate this in detail, provided the author of your article will join in.
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” Given– and I think it is– that the polarisation of ‘packages’ reflects stable differences of temperament seen in and out of religion all around the globe, we should push on to the next question– can/should/how might individuals in Christ transcend these limiting differences?
It is not a given. The differences are rooted not in differences of temperament but in different convictions about who God and Christ are, what they are like, what they have said and done, are saying and doing, will say and do in the future, which in turn are based on differences of exegesis of the revelation God has given us.
Phil Almond
Phil, I cannot quite wish that you were right about this. That would challenge God’s wisdom in giving human beings the nature we have. But I can say that the planet you describe on which all have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing. Perhaps it is the one in Revelations 21-22.
Bowman
Thank you for your reply. Two points:
For some, by the grace of God, it is the planet we are on now.
‘God’s wisdom in giving human beings the nature we have’. Back to one of the doctrines we (I think) disagree about: The nature we have now, since the Fall of Man, is inclined to evil. ‘But the natural man receives not the things of the Sprit of God; for folly to him they are, and he cannot know, because they are spiritually discerned’. ‘For the mind of the flesh is death…….’. ‘Wherefore the mind of the flesh is enmity against God…..’.
“…the planet you describe on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing.”
No, Phil. You are not a universalist; I am not a pelagian.
But yes, Phil, those beautiful verses (especially 1 Cor 2.14) are well worth the exegetical effort that we have expended on others elsewhere, whether we disagree about them or not. I hope that some essay gives us that opportunity sooner rather than later, and would feel blessed to read your thoughts on them.
“The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical”.
“I disagree. I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts… I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.”
But if they are both true, then there is some truth that is more whole and evangelical than the five points alone, quod erat demonstrandum. What is there to debate?
Bowman
Could you please kindly make clear what you mean by “the five points alone”.
Phil
Bowman
To help me to reply I would like to know, please, just what you mean by ‘five points alone’. Many thanks
Phil
“I disagree. I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts… I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.”
Phil, you enumerated ‘five points’ on November 17.
Merry Christmas, by the way, and a Happy New Year with Romans and Galatians!
On inerrancy–
Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
http://library.dts.edu/Pages/TL/Special/ICBI_1.pdf
Peter Enns
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062272027/the-bible-tells-me-so
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-Tells-Defending-Scripture-ebook/dp/B00H7LXHJQ
Andrew Wilson
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september-web-only/bible-is-more-than-mystery.html
Peter Enns
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/10/12-ways-some-evangelical-leaders-avoid-dealing-with-real-problems-in-the-bible-a-response-of-sorts-to-christianity-today/
Bobby Grow (after Matthew Levering)
http://growrag.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/peter-enns-is-he-leading-you-astray-and-natural-bible-reading/
Evangelical Theological Society 2013
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Views-Biblical-Inerrancy-Counterpoints/dp/0310331366
http://www.wordmp3.com/product-group.aspx?id=334
Again, there is an unusual restlessness about traditional formulations of doctrine out there. The popular and profitable ‘Four Views of…’ series and the recent ETS debate about inerrancy and its alternates show that.
But Derek Rishmawy’s OP describes this theological restlessness as classically symmetrical Mordor/Gondor polarisation–
(a) Warlords of two rival camps build rival castles.
(b) Enforcers of each warlord’s rules make the villages and countryside dangerous for all, thereby forcing the peasants run for safety to the nearest castle.
(c) Propaganda about the ruthlessness of the other warlord keeps the peasants inside,
(d) Notwithstanding what the peasants actually believe on divers matters, each warlord demands total loyalty in all things of those in the castle.
I presume that Derek regards The Gospel Coalition and those institutions aligned with it as one such castle, and alas this is not an unreasonable thought. But it normally takes two poles to polarise. Who has a Progressive Evangelical Castle competing with TGC for peasants– Rachel Held Evans?*
In the US, there is obviously a polarisation in politics that somewhat correlates to theology. One can be highly confident, for example, that a roomful of Americans subscribing heartily to the CSBI** (see text ***) will also staunchly oppose Federally subsidised health insurance for the poor. Indeed, alarm at this correlation feeds the restlessness about doctrine. Christians ask which aspects of which evangelical doctrine, exactly, makes the sickness and death of the poor (or the rising waters of climate change, or the ready availability of combat weapons, etc) so attractive to the solid bloc of evangelicals who seem to them to be supporting these ghastly things. In Christendom beyond the US, however, the polarisation of politics is not as extreme, nor is the correlation of evangelical theology to political parties quite as strong. Or do we see a formidable Progressive Evangelical castle rising above the treetops somewhere in England?
Even in the US, moreover, it seems that restless peasants are just occasionally warding off TGC enforcers with pitchforks and ridicule. They do not want to follow a warlord and build a castle, still less to rid the world of the Reformed castles in which many were born. But they probably do want to take back some of the evangelical countryside for more peaceful, compassionate, and godly folk.
And just as the personal became political, so now it has become theological. If a fine young evangelical concludes that, say, violence implicit in Penal Substitutionary Atonement has somehow made acquiescence in gun violence acceptable to his evangelical neighbours, then s/he will only listen to a defense of PSA from a pacifist Christian who has a peaceful heart. S/he will ignore an enforcer who drives up in a pickup truck with a gun rack, but will listen to the scriptural witness of a Shane Claiborne. The progressive peasants seem not to listen to lectures from log-eyed mote-pickers. Their disdain for coercive argument and compromised messengers is probably their most subversive trait. It cannot build any castles, but it might tear a few down.
_______________________________
* http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Statement_on_Biblical_Inerrancy
*** http://library.dts.edu/Pages/TL/Special/ICBI_1.pdf
Bowman
I posted ‘For SOME………….’
Phil Almond
“…the planet you describe on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing.”
“For SOME, by the grace of God, it is the planet we are on now.”
“For SOME, by the grace of God, [the planet {you describe} on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ] is the planet we are on now.”
Yes, Phil, either you have become a universalist, or else you are posting from a better planet than this one. The former cannot be as you read scripture, whilst the latter is just conceivable as St Paul wrote it, so the latter is less improbable. But from wherever you share your insight with us, we are blessed that you do it.
http://biblehub.com/text/2_corinthians/12-2.htm
Bowman
Thanks for your comments elsewhere on this thread – I meant my SOME to be a contradiction of your ALL. Sorry if I did not make my meaning clear, which was that God has chosen SOME not ALL to be saved and he does and will bring the SOME to everlasting felicity (Article 17), a terrible truth. It is also true, a wonderful truth, that his invitation to ALL is a sincere and genuine invitation. How can these both be true? That is one of God’s mysteries. It is impossible for us to understand how they can both be true, but they are. So, we are all commanded, invited, exhorted to come to Christ. So – come and keep on coming.
Phil Almond
The scriptures have well-known sets of ‘universalist’ texts and ‘election’ texts. The ‘hypothetical universalism’ with ‘single election’ of Cameron, and after him Davenant and Amyraut, does reconcile the two sets better than the alternatives. Thus it is the traditional position of confessional Lutherans, articles-minded Anglicans, and some of the Reformed. Viewed through the lens of Tom Wright’s oeuvre, it makes intuitive sense, at least to me.
And yet– do the scriptures ever explicitly acknowledge that the hypothetical and effective scopes of salvation are not the same? If not, why not? And how do we live with that silence? It seems a strange omission. Hans Urs von Balthasar concludes that, because the word we have cannot be broken, it is the Church’s duty to teach the mystery of election, but to pray until the end of time that God’s ultimate will for universal salvation might yet be done.
Postscript– Oliver Crisp’s new book ‘Deviant Calvinism’ explores the hypothetical universalist position in Reformed theology from the C16 to today.
Phil, it’s not strictly related, but you may be interested in this defense of PSA from within Tom Wright’s inaugurated eschatology. The discussion of ‘aiwnios’ is more, well, ‘down to earth’ than several that I have seen.
http://lawrencegarcia.org/penal-substitution-as-the-final-assize-in-person/
Bowman
I am working towards subjecting my convictions to the stress test of confronting them with the views of N T Wright and those who agree with him – but not yet. First I aim to complete an in-depth review of Romans and Galatians to get clear what is my view of the right understanding of (especially) Romans 2, Romans 5:12 – 21, Romans 7/8, Galatians as a whole, and this involves consulting all the major commentaries and articles etc.
Phil Almond
“First I aim to complete an in-depth review of Romans and Galatians… and this involves consulting all the major commentaries and articles etc.”
Should anyone read Tom Wright before reading St Paul himself? Or should anyone seriously essay Romans and Galatians without consulting the commentaries (eg Cranfield)? Me genoito! But the controversies that swirl around Wright’s reading have felled forests, and time to read is precious. The simplest path forward may be first to read the epistles, then to read Wright’s reading of them, and then to further explore whatever opposing view interests you.
http://ntwrightpage.com/
Or, to watch the felling of trees from the very beginning, read this famous article by Krister Stendahl and Wright’s critique of it.
http://www.dburnett.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/The-Apostle-Paul-and-the-Introspective-Conscience-of-the-West.pdf
http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Paul_History.pdf
For Romans N T Wrights contribution to the New Interpreters Bible Commentary is worth looking at
If evangelicalism is to mean anything, it is characterised by Bebbington’s quadrilateral of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. All these are present in the conservative evangelicalism I grew up with and current reformed movement where they are expressed in a particular way. The list of characteristics given includes anti-inerrancy, anti-perspicuity, and anti-penal substitutionary atonement. Some alternatives are given, but this shows more what they are against than what they are for. This is all very well in in the blogsphere. It is easy to see this as a move away from the essentials of evangelicalism. Where can I find this sort of Christianity expressed in a positive way, as a life changing message for Christians and non-Christians?
Dave
“This is all very well in in the blogsphere. It is easy to see this as a move away from the essentials of evangelicalism. Where can I find this sort of Christianity [Progressive Evangelical Package] expressed in a positive way, as a life changing message for Christians and non-Christians?”
Everywhere and nowhere. But I have some scepticism about this OP.
If the OP is right in what it describes, the PEP sounds like a second pole gathering ordinary fuddyduddy evangelicals who seek cognitive relief from hyperactive rigourists. Many are not so much moving away from the beliefs of their childhoods as broadening their theological base so that they can keep those beliefs. This is why the OP can also report sightings of conservatives rethinking the same points. Thus the posited “progressives” would seem to be good if unsystematic evangelicals who do in fact express Christianity in a positive way, as a life changing message etc. However, they regard rigourist enforcers as bullies, and seek saner company for the mutual support that we normally expect in the Body of Christ.
So the OP is describing polarisation in action. The “package” attributed to the PEs is not coherent, but then poles of polarisation are social constructs for safety, not intellectual systems for consistency. Attacks on them encourage more to flock to them. When the countryside becomes violent, it is best to be in a castle.
As I have said before, there are 3 closely connected but distinct questions:
Who are the Christians?
What do the Christians believe?
What are the truths of Christianity?
It is possible for people who are Christians – known to God as Christians – to deny essential truths of Christianity and/or affirm things that the truths of Christianity rule out because we can all, as imperfectly sanctified sinners, go astray doctrinally as well as ethically and morally. So I would never say to anyone who believed they are a Christian, ‘You are not a Christian’. But I would say to them, not in a bullying way, but if we were debating what the truths of Christianity are, and it was clear that they were ok to be challenged (I would assume that participation in a forum like Fulcrum was evidence of that), ‘What you believe is ruled out by the truths of Christianity’, or ‘ What you are denying is one of the essential truths of Christianity’. But if some evangelicals are seeking cognitive relief by starting to embrace some of the points in the article we are discussing, they are in danger of rejecting some of the very things which are needed for an increasingly changed life. Is it possible to seek to obey and believe the commands, promises, assurances, invitations, rebukes that the Bible records Christ as saying if we are not sure that he said them?
It occurred to me recently that we are called upon not only to trust, obey, love and fear Christ, but also to endure him, for ‘Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.’
Phil Almond
“It occurred to me recently that we are called upon not only to trust, obey, love and fear Christ, but also to endure him, for ‘Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.’”
Phil, your whole comment makes sense, but this at the end is especially fine.
And yes, you are far more courteous in discussions of scripture than the verbal pugilists online elsewhere. Despite holding crystalised views yourself, you see clearly and acknowledge forthrightly the differences between more and less central doctrine, between holding a true doctrine well and holding it badly, and between holding a doubtful doctrine and succumbing to its hazards. In fact, to my mind you are the best of us at describing the subjectivity with which persons hold doctrines and doctrines hold them.
“If evangelicalism is to mean anything, it is characterised by Bebbington’s quadrilateral of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.”
How useful the BQ is! I have read recently through a whole series of alternate lists. All had some merit, but in the end I just came back to Bebbington.
Polarisation is a social process. Individuals do not fill and wrap the packages; they choose from among them.
It is true that the most important disagreements between those who regard themselves as Christians have been around for some time: the Wrath of God; Original Sin; Eternal Punishment; Predestination to Life; Penal Substitutionary Atonement, for instance. But ‘choose’ is an inadequate word to describe how many come to hold convictions to believe or reject these doctrines. Often conclusions are reached only after prolonged and even agonizing wrestling with conscience and a sense that our conviction is not something we have a choice about but is being impressed upon us by God, overcoming our natural (in the theological sense of the word) objections to the truth of the doctrines mentioned. Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement is described in the article we are discussing as ‘Anti-Inerrancy’ – in my language, is the Bible wholly trustworthy or is it not. The strongest arguments from all sides of these disputed polarized issues can be gathered from a wholly trustworthy Bible. I believe it then becomes clear that these differences cannot be ‘transcended’ or reconciled. Either the doctrines I have mentioned are true or they are not true. That is why the Indaba process discussed on another thread is flawed. Its aim is to reach agreement but on these doctrines, and others, it has to be either acceptance or rejection. Agreement is only possible if one side admits it is wrong and agrees that the other side is right.
Phil Almond
“…the most important disagreements between those who regard themselves as Christians have been around for some time: the Wrath of God; Original Sin; Eternal Punishment; Predestination to Life; Penal Substitutionary Atonement, for instance… The strongest arguments from all sides of these disputed polarized issues can be gathered from a wholly trustworthy Bible. I believe it then becomes clear that these differences cannot be ‘transcended’ or reconciled. Either the doctrines I have mentioned are true or they are not true. That is why the Indaba process discussed on another thread is flawed. Its aim is to reach agreement but on these doctrines, and others, it has to be either acceptance or rejection. Agreement is only possible if one side admits it is wrong and agrees that the other side is right.”
Not quite. Yes, we want discussion among those who trust the Bible, and in fact, we want discussion among those who read and interpret the Bible as a whole. Yes, a proposed doctrine can be disconfirmed for lacking a prima facie warrant in scripture, as I think Phil is insisting.
But in disagreements over the doctrines he mentions, the rivals are not so much theorems deduced from scriptural axioms as ‘reasonings to the best explanation’ for the datum of the Bible as a whole. If we do trust the Bible and do read it as a whole, then we will prefer the preaching that most convincingly accounts for the text as we have it. And that means that a doctrine that does appear to have a prima facie warrant in scripture can be superseded by another such doctrine that better explains the scriptures as a whole. The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical.
Aidan Kimel’s* recent re-posts on restoring the preaching of predestination are work-a-day examples of that sort of reasoning. He trusts scripture; he reads all of the scriptures. He rightly sees thereby that the data of scripture show predestination to be a form of the gospel. Yet Orthodox preachers have said almost nothing about it, whilst Western preachers have been unable to preach it as anything but a dysangelion. Both west and east of Trieste, received doctrine is failing to do for our hearers what it did for St Paul’s hearers. Failure is failure. It makes sense to search for a formulation of predestination that does what it does in scripture.
http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/recovering-the-good-news-of-predestination/
One heuristic for seeking such a formulation tries to hear the scriptural music with ears less attuned to an augustinian key. If we trust the scriptures, and read the whole of them this a reasonable thing to do anyway. And much as we justly admire our elder brother in Christ, against whom one is nearly always going to be wrong, the truth demands that we acknowledge as Robert Jenson does (The Theology of Colin Gunton, 11-12) that St Augustine could also be disastrously wrong about major doctrine: ‘…Augustine did in fact emphatically and insistently lay down disastrous propositions, propositions that became maxims of subsequent Western theology. He did say in fact that the Cappadocian distinction of ousia/hypostasis – the very distinction that enabled the creedal doctrine of the Trinity – could be no more than a purely linguistic device, that it could tell us nothing about the reality of God. . . He did say that it was absurd, as violating divine simplicity, to think that the Father could not be what he is apart from the Son, and vice versa – thereby rejecting a foundational proposition of Trinitarian thought and worship from Tertullian on.” That being the case, evangelical fidelity to scripture demands that we be wary of any purely defensive stance on formulations from St Augustine that were his innovations in the patristic age. Indeed, the more faithful to scripture we are, the more wary of any such overdependence on a single influence we must be.
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* Kimel left the evangelical wing of TEC (he’s an acquaintance of Ephraim Radner) for the OCA (Orthodox Church of America), and tries from there to make sense of the Augustinian heritage of the West.
Bowman
You posted, “The contrast is not between false and true, but between a truth that is partial or dysangelical and one that is whole or evangelical”.
I disagree.
I am convinced that God has revealed to us these facts:
1 He has chosen in Christ before the foundation of the World certain individuals.
2 He will certainly save those individuals.
3 He will only save those individuals.
4 He has not so chosen every human being who has ever lived.
5 He invites, exhorts, commands, beseeches all human beings to come to Christ and be saved.
I am also convinced that he has not revealed to us how statements 3 and 5 can both be simultaneously true.
Statements 1 to 5 are either true or not true. They cannot be partially true.
I am not sure what you mean by the word ‘dysangelical’. Briefly googling, (EUANGELION | DYSANGELION (WISDOM FROM BARTH)) I assume that you mean ‘bad news’. If I had to choose only two words to describe the God and Christ of the Bible I would choose the words ‘terrible’ and ‘wonderful’. Terrible in their holiness, justice, sovereignty and honesty, evidenced by Moses at the bush, Isaiah in the Temple, Jacob at Luz, Peter in his fishing boat, Eli and Samuel, the Great White Throne. Wonderful in their grace, love, compassion pity and mercy, evidenced by incidents and promises and invitations too numerous to mention. To us, with our dead, sinful souls and fallen nature inclined to evil, the God and Christ of the Bible are ‘bad news’. We are utterly dependent on the showing-mercy God taking a unilateral, supernatural and irresistible subjective action in our souls, breathing new life into them, to bring us to repent and embrace the offered salvation in Christ.
Article 17 gets it right. ‘Furthermore we need to receive God’s promises in the manner in which they are generally set out to us in holy Scripture, and in our actions we need to follow that will of God which is clearly declared to us in the Word of God’.
If Fulcrum will allow it I will debate this in detail, provided the author of your article will join in.
Phil Almond
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” Given– and I think it is– that the polarisation of ‘packages’ reflects stable differences of temperament seen in and out of religion all around the globe, we should push on to the next question– can/should/how might individuals in Christ transcend these limiting differences?
It is not a given. The differences are rooted not in differences of temperament but in different convictions about who God and Christ are, what they are like, what they have said and done, are saying and doing, will say and do in the future, which in turn are based on differences of exegesis of the revelation God has given us.
Phil Almond
Phil, I cannot quite wish that you were right about this. That would challenge God’s wisdom in giving human beings the nature we have. But I can say that the planet you describe on which all have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing. Perhaps it is the one in Revelations 21-22.
Bowman
Thank you for your reply. Two points:
For some, by the grace of God, it is the planet we are on now.
‘God’s wisdom in giving human beings the nature we have’. Back to one of the doctrines we (I think) disagree about: The nature we have now, since the Fall of Man, is inclined to evil. ‘But the natural man receives not the things of the Sprit of God; for folly to him they are, and he cannot know, because they are spiritually discerned’. ‘For the mind of the flesh is death…….’. ‘Wherefore the mind of the flesh is enmity against God…..’.
Phil Almond
“…the planet you describe on which ALL have open hearts, do exegesis of revelation, are convicted by it, and through it know God and Christ sounds very appealing.”
No, Phil. You are not a universalist; I am not a pelagian.
But yes, Phil, those beautiful verses (especially 1 Cor 2.14) are well worth the exegetical effort that we have expended on others elsewhere, whether we disagree about them or not. I hope that some essay gives us that opportunity sooner rather than later, and would feel blessed to read your thoughts on them.