June 2007 - Posts
Playing this week's RevGals Friday Five : 1. Personality tests; love them or hate them? Love them if they're just for me, hate them if someone else is using them to find out about me, like, say, the Board of Ordained Ministry. When I took my psychological...
It has been frequently observed, that very few were clear in their judgment both with regard to justification and sanctification. Many who have spoken and written admirably well concerning justification, had no clear conception, nay, were totally ignorant, of the doctrine of sanctification. Who has wrote more ably than Martin Luther on justification by faith alone? And who was more ignorant of the doctrine of sanctification, or more confused in his conceptions of it? In order to be thoroughly convinced of this, of his total ignorance with regard to sanctification, there needs no more than to read over, without prejudice, his celebrated comment on the Epistle to the Galatians. On the other hand, how many writers of the Romish Church (as Francis Sales and Juan de Castaniza, in particular) have wrote strongly and scripturally on sanctification, who, nevertheless, were entirely unacquainted with the nature of justification! ... But it has pleased God to give the Methodists a full and clear knowledge of each, and the wide difference between them.
-John Wesley Sermon 107, "On God's Vineyard"
Over at
Theolog, they have posted a short piece I wrote. They edited it some. Below you will find the piece as I originally wrote it:
Floating on a Cloud of Creedlessness
God is “greater than our creeds rehearse.” So sang the chorus at our recent United Methodist Annual Conference. “As I get older and wiser, I find that I have less articles in my creed, but more faith in God,” said another speaker, to several shouts of “Amen” from the congregation. It seems popular now to kick the creeds, those relics of an ancient past that try to limit the limitless God. A United Methodist annual conference is sure to hear several people say, “well, after all, we have never been a creedal church.”
Besides ignoring the fact that the Apostles’ Creed is part of our baptismal liturgy and that our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith are binding on all, this anti-creedalism has other problems associated with it. Take for example the statement, “God is greater than our creeds rehearse.” Such statements beg the question of what we mean by “greater.” Without any creedal context, we are at a loss to say what ‘greater’ means, except perhaps to say that it means more and more abstract, less and less concrete. (An odd claim for people of the incarnation to make). Such a vague theology would not have been sufficient to sustain the Confessing Church in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, and I doubt it would be sufficient to sustain any resistance to the totalitarian powers of today, whether they be manifest in the church growth movement, or idolatrous nationalism.
Putting aside the creeds in order to affirm God’s greatness leaves us at a loss to understand greatness as anything but more and more detached, free from any concrete specifications. Where are people standing when they make such statements? On an island of theological neutrality, a cloud of creedlessness? No, my guess is that they are firmly rooted in protestant liberalism, seemingly unaware of how that creed is shaping their anti-creedalism.
The irony is that I do believe God is greater than all our creeds. But that is itself a creedal statement. The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds teach us that God is the great “creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” Paradoxically, once we have trivialized the creeds, we have also robbed ourselves of the very means to proclaim a truly grand and glorious God, leaving us instead with the vague god of inclusivism and tolerance, a god that cannot save.
Some quick notes on the CNN special "Faith Politics" organized by Jim Wallis and Sojourners.
I was disappointed that the first questions
Soledad O'brien asked were about the conflict of
evolution with a literal 6 day creation account. Really
Soledad, couldn't you think of something more interesting to open with? Then, her next question (also for John Edwards) was about homosexuality. I was thinking, "Really
Soledad, can't you think of anything to ask about besides these sensationalistic questions?"
Fortunately,
Soledad had to yield the microphone to Jim Wallis. He asked John Edwards about poverty, and I could see that Edwards was relieved to be asked finally about something significant for him. Unfortunately, he spent most of his answer talking about how much this meant to him over the years, but not too much time talking about concrete steps he would take as president. At least the question was raised, and that's a good thing.
Soledad did finally ask Edwards an interesting question, "what is the biggest sin you have committed?" and I was hoping he would say, "voting for the war in Iraq," but he missed his chance. Instead he just said something about how he sinned all the time. Interesting observation: Edwards mentioned two separate times that he was raised in a Southern Baptist Church, but he never mentioned that he is now active in the United Methodist Church. Curious.
Barak Obama leaves the impression of being very intelligent, but he does ramble on forever. Even before
Soledad interrupted him, I was thinking, "you are just rambling,
Barak!" He did
responde nicely to
Soledad's question, "does God choose sides in a war?" by citing the famous Lincoln quote. But he was just so long-winded! (Perhaps the people in my church say the same thing about me as they are leaving church on Sunday mornings?)
Soledad told Hillary that she had never said much about her religious faith, which is not true. Note to
Soledad: just because you spent five minutes on
google does not mean you have done your research. Hillary Clinton once spoke very eloquently, movingly, and powerfully about her religious faith to the General Conference of the United Methodist Church! She talked about her Confirmation Class, her Sunday School, her
MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) and how her youth pastor helped her link her faith to the civil rights movement. But only one reference to the
MYF got mentioned tonight. She said she came from a tradition that is very cautious about wearing one's faith on one's sleeve. To me that was a cop-out. I think she missed a chance to really connect with religious persons. But later on, she came back to it when she talked about prayer, and partially redeemed herself.
All in all, not much substance to tonight's conversation on CNN, but it was good to see faith and politics being discussed by Democrats in a nationally televised forum. Thank you Sojourners!
Over at Faith and Theology, D. W. Congdon does a guest post about his
conversion from being evangelical to post-evangelical. In my opinion, what he describes is not a conversion from one thing to another, but rather a broadening and deepening of what it means to be evangelical in the first place.
Everyone has to decide what terms they want to fight for and what terms they are willing to surrender to others. I have never wanted to surrender the term "evangelical" to fundamentalists or political coservatives. As I explained
in this post, I intend never to stop calling myself an evangelical. Every year, I have to fill out a form for my district superintendent, and it always asks the pastor to describe him/herself theologically. "Evangelical pacifist" is always what I put.
Jim Wallis is one who continues to describe himself as an evangelical. He did so at the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, and I was glad to see that
he recently visited Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. For those non-Methodist readers, Asbury seminary has the reputation of being the most evangelical and the most conservative of Methodist seminaries (although it is not actually one of the 13 official United Methodist seminaries). Wallis told those gathered at Asbury, "I hear that you are a premiere conservative evangelical school." He went on to challenge them by saying, "I want to know if you are really evangelical, or just a bunch of conservatives." I think this way of contrasting evangelical and conservative gets it just right. (Curious that the IRD reported on this story, but the United Methodist News Service did not.)
Craig Carter introduces his blog
The Politics of the Cross by saying that not all labels are bad, and a label he wears proudly is "evangelical."
In his preface to The Peaceable Kingdom, Stanley Hauerwas credited much of his thought to his background as an evangelical Methodist. I've only had about one tenth of one percent of the number of thoughts that my teacher Stanley Hauerwas has had, but like him, I can attribute many of them to being raised as an evangelical Methodist. My understanding of what it means to be evangelical has grown over the years, but I always find myself coming home to it.