separation

Sometimes We Fight, Part 6

January 24, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In my last post we worked through the Apostle Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2), looking for doctrinal content. Here’s what we came up with, in systematic theological terms:

Bibliology

The Hebrew scriptures are God’s Word (Ac 2.17) and therefore reliable (Ac 2.16).

Theology Proper

God directs history (Ac 2.23).
God does miracles; history includes some number of supernatural events (Ac 2.22).

Christology

Jesus did miracles (Ac 2.22).
Jesus died by crucifixion and rose again (Ac 2.23-24, 32).
Jesus continues his divine work from heaven (Ac 2.33-34).
Jesus is God (Ac 2.36).
Jesus is Christ, the fulfillment of the Hebrew messianic prophecies (Ac 2.36).

Pneumatology

There is a Holy Spirit (Ac 2.17).

Anthropology

People are sinful (Ac 2.40).

Soteriology

Salvation is available to all peoples (Ac 2.18, 21, 39).
Salvation is available freely (Ac 2.21) through repentance (Ac 2.38).

Eschatology

There is a coming “Day of Yahweh” (Ac 2.20).

When we put all this into our chart, we end up with something like this. (I’ve truncated our data slightly for simplicity’s sake.)

Where do we go from here? Well, we repeat this same process on the other apostolic sermons in Acts, filling in the other columns on our chart. A quick result might look something like this, though a more careful study—which you’ll do, right?—would yield more doctrines in the first column.

And then you see where the overlaps are—which doctrines are most emphasized in this database of sermons. For illustration purposes I’ve simply counted the number of sermons in which each doctrine appears and then sorted the list on that column, with the most common doctrines at the top. You can see that “quick and dirty” result here.

What are the biggest ideas?

The deity of Christ
Forgiveness of sins
The death and resurrection of Christ / witnesses
The reliability of Scripture
Repentance

It’s no surprise that our list includes “the gospel” as defined by Paul in 1Co 15.3-4.

Now, we’re not done yet. As I noted in a previous post in this series, we need to evaluate the other datasets that my friend Tom Wheeler identified in his dissertation, and then we need to compare all the lists we end up with to see if there are patterns there—which there are—as justification for producing a “meta-list,” which should serve as a pretty good indicator of What We’re Going to Fight About.

And then we need to decide where to draw the line. How far down the list do we decide this is a doctrine that isn’t “emphasized”? How far down the list do we go before we decide that we’re not going to fight about that one? I’d suggest that that’s a literary-analysis question: where do you draw the line at emphasis?

Tom’s dissertation has done a good job of that already. But you can do that work yourself, you know. You don’t have to be a scholar like Tom; with the Word and the illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, you have all the tools you need to do this study for yourself. Maybe you’ll notice something he didn’t. And even if you don’t, you’ll benefit immensely from the study, and you’ll approach doctrinal controversies in this polarized and freaked-out world with a calmness and a confidence that will communicate grace, mercy, and peace to all those around you.

That’s worth the effort, right?

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 3

January 14, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

As I noted in beginning this series, the Bible tells us to fight over doctrinal issues as well as sinful actions. But it also tells us to give other believers some slack as to how they interpret some biblical teachings. A significant issue in the early church was how much of Judaism ought to be retained in the Christian community. That’s at root a theological question. And in both Romans 14 and Colossians 2, Paul tells his readers to lighten up—in the latter passage, in the context of refuting a false teaching.

So when do we fight about doctrine? And when must we not fight?

The Bible itself indicates that there are different levels of doctrine. Some doctrines are more important than others. For example, Paul says, “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel” (1Co 1.17). The gospel is more central than the doctrine of baptism—or Paul’s words wouldn’t have made any sense. (Side note: that’s something you can mention to your friends who believe that you need to be baptized to be saved. If they’re right, then again Paul’s words make no sense–and may amount to malpractice.)

Further, some doctrines are more foundational than others: because you need to understand them in order to understand other things, you need to start your Christian life by learning first things first (Heb 6.1-2). It’s interesting to me that the doctrine of baptism, while less important to Paul, is still foundational, or elementary, according to Hebrews 6.

Over the centuries the church has recognized this distinction between less important, or central, and more important doctrines. The Reformers used the term adiaphora to refer to less important doctrinal matters, and as you can imagine, the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans disagreed on specifically which doctrines and religious practices were central and which were not. Sometimes they even disagreed within their own denominations—and it seems that worship practices were the most common area of disagreement.

In the 20^th century the early fundamentalists were so named because of their emphasis on the distinction between the Important Stuff—“the fundamentals”—and the Less Important Stuff. In the succeeding years, a lot of fundamentalists lost sight of that, and it seemed that many who called themselves fundamentalists wanted to fight about pretty much everything; but the early emphasis was on bringing together theological conservatives from widely different denominations—Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, even Pentecostals—because they agreed more with one another than with the liberals in their own denominations. They could maintain their distinctives—with conviction—but still cooperate with others who agreed with them on the core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Early on, that group published a series of books called The Fundamentals, which argued for the centrality of certain key doctrines. Though to some extent that series reflected the hot issues of its day, it served as a valuable concrete statement about which doctrines are worth fighting for.

But for most of the century there was little noticeable work done on how you decide which doctrines are fundamental and which ones aren’t. In other words, when we fight, and when we don’t. (Scholars would call that a question of “epistemology.”)

So now some professed evangelicals think that hell is not eternal, or that God doesn’t really know the future, while others think that anybody witnessed to from any version other than the King James isn’t really saved.

Yikes.

We’ve never been more in need of a set of criteria for this issue.

When do we fight about doctrine, and when must we not?

What are the fundamentals, and what are the adiaphora?

I think the Scripture gives us considerable help on that question, of course. And with further help from an old friend of mine, we’ll take a look at some of that next time.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 2

January 7, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

My previous post noted that sometimes the Bible tells us to fight over things—and sometimes it tells us to keep the peace for the sake of unity. Since both of those responses are directly commanded—and since, obviously, we can’t do both at the same time—we need to know which is which.

When do we fight? When must we not fight?

I mentioned in passing that there are actually two different areas in which we must make that decision: beliefs and behaviors. Sometimes we need to give fellow believers freedom to act in the way they choose, and other times we must seek to change their chosen way of acting. And sometimes we need to give them freedom to believe what they choose, and sometimes we must seek to change their chosen way of believing. And in both of those areas, if they will not change when they need to, then we must go to battle.

So it’s really important that we know when to fight, and when not to.

On the behavioral side, the distinction is pretty clear.

Sin.

If what our brother is doing is sinful, then we are obligated—because the body is one—to intervene and exhort him to stop sinning—to change his behavior. Jesus himself lays out the process for doing that in Matthew 18. It happens in stages, which are probably familiar to most of us. First you go alone and urge the brother to stop the sin. If he won’t listen, you take 2 or 3 witnesses. If he won’t listen to the group, you take it to the whole church.

A few comments about this process are in order.

First, we intervene not out of authoritarianism, but out of love. Whether he realizes it or not, our brother is being harmed by his sin; there’s nothing good down that road, and there’s nothing loving about letting him proceed unimpeded. We put warning signs on highways when there’s danger ahead, and nobody thinks that’s unloving; in fact, it would be unloving not to care enough to put up the signs.

But that’s not the only kind of love involved here. The body of believers can be harmed by his sin as well; sin hurts bystanders, whether by encouraging them to follow him down the road (1Co 5.6) or by damaging their reputation in the community (Rom 2.24). We intervene because we love the rest of the body as well.

Second, the process Jesus lays out is one of grace, not harshness. The steps in the process increase the pressure slowly over time, and each step occurs only if the previous step did not bring repentance. This means that you’re applying the minimum amount of pressure necessary to bring the brother to repentance. You’re not shooting a fly with a cannon; you’re not “lowering the boom” until less forceful measures have been insufficient.

Third, you’re showing grace by keeping the circle of knowledge as narrow as possible. There’s no gossip here. Even bringing in a few witnesses is an act of grace; I know of cases where the witnesses listened to the “defendant’s” story and told the accuser he was out of his mind to initiate the confrontation—that what the brother was doing was something he had a perfect right to do. The witnesses help ensure against overzealous accusers.

So when the issue is behavior, when do we fight? We fight only when the behavior is sinful, and then as graciously and gently as possible to achieve repentance.

We don’t fight when the issue is not sin—for example, when the person is doing something we don’t like but the Word does not condemn. There are all kinds of things that irritate me—clothing styles, hairstyles, popular expressions, lack of situational awareness, slow drivers in the left lane, Yankees fans—but I can’t be in the business of imposing my personal preferences on others. Especially when I know that some things I do irritate them as well. :-) By showing grace in those situations, I’m demonstrating love, grace, and peace that must have been given to me by someone else, because it’s certainly not my nature.

Next time—what about beliefs? Here it gets a little more complicated.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 1

January 3, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Tucked away in the tiny epistle of 2 John is a remarkable statement.

John is warning his readers (“the elect lady and her children,” 2J 1.1) about some false teachers in the region. He calls them “deceivers … who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” (2J 1.7). These are harsh words, more reminiscent of the “Son of Thunder” (Mk 3.17) than the “apostle of love” who wrote John 3.16 and 1 John. Hmmm.

And it gets stronger. This is “the antichrist,” he says (2J 1.7), and the lady must “not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works” (2J 1.10-11).

Yikes. Harsh.

There’s an interpretational question over what “receive him into your house” means, but even setting that aside, John’s very dark view of these teachers is clear.

And John is not alone. Paul (Gal 1.6-9), and Peter (2P 3.1-7), and Jude (Jude 1.3-4) all warn against false teachers, and many of those warnings include specific orders to isolate the offenders (e.g. Rom 16.17; Ti 3.9-10). Some evangelicals argue that this kind of isolation is commanded only for immoral lifestyles, and not for doctrinal disagreements; in 1Cor 5, for example, the church member is expelled for “hav[ing] his father’s wife,” and in 2Th 3 another man is expelled for not working to support his family. But I find it interesting that both of those passages include references to doctrinal as well as moral issues; in 1Cor 5 Paul orders the believers “not to associate” with several kinds of people, including not only the sexually immoral, but also the “idolater” (1Co 5.11); and in 2Th 3 Paul broadens the group of offenders to all those who live “not in accord with the tradition that you received from us” (2Th 3.6; cf. 2Th 2.15).

So. Sometimes we fight about doctrinal matters, theological disagreements. Sometimes we gird up our loins and go into battle.

But sometimes we don’t—in fact, we must not. The early churches had all kinds of doctrinal disagreements, many of which led to differing beliefs about practice—in modern language, disagreements over what sorts of things Christians could do and what sorts of things they couldn’t do. And many of those disagreements were heated and severe.

Can Christians eat pork, or should we follow the Mosaic dietary restrictions?
Should we keep the Sabbath? How about the other Jewish holidays?
Can we eat meat that’s been offered in sacrifice to idols?

All of these issues had been addressed directly in the Hebrew Bible. God lays down all kinds of dietary restrictions on his people Israel. He tells them to keep the Sabbath—that’s in the Ten Commandments, for crying out loud—and sometimes he kills them when they don’t (Num 15.32-36). And pagan idolatry was absolutely verboten; the prophets wrote whole books against it.

You can imagine how difficult the early Christians—who thought of themselves as simply Jews, delighting in the arrival of their Messiah—would have found the suggestion that things like this didn’t matter anymore. Sounds like heresy to anyone who’s read his [Hebrew] Bible.

And so we find the apostles stepping in and calling for order. And here, surprisingly, they’re not calling for isolating the “heretics.” This time they say that we need to just get along, to agree to disagree, to treat one another with respect (e.g. Rom 14.1-13; 1Co 10.23-31; Col 2.16-17). Love and church unity trump a good many doctrinal disagreements.

Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we don’t.

Now this raises an obvious question.

Which is which? How do we know which to do? When do we fight, and when must we not fight? God clearly thinks both actions are very important, at the proper times.

What are those times?

Next time, we’ll start down the path toward answering these questions.

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