Christless Christianity

“All the dogma and the death and resurrection of Jesus stuff was not the attraction.”
- Bart Campolo

And that's the problem.

In an interview with Jonathan Merritt, Bart Campolo, son of Tony Campolo, explains his coming out as an atheist.

It is a sad story. But Campolo's admitted ambivalence about doctrine goes a long way in explaining his current state. In his own words it was not the doctrines or truth claims of the Bible that drew him to Christianity but the struggle for justice. While justice, being an attribute of God, ought to be prized by Christians, the gospel is the matter of first importance. And according to Bart it is not the gospel which drew him to Christianity but the appeal of changing the world. However, Christianity is not a showcase for our good works. It is not a platform from which to pursue justice. Christianity is something in which to believe. Supremely it is believing upon Jesus by whose death and resurrection we are saved.

Campolo proves the words of the Apostle Paul that if not for the resurrection then our faith is in vain.

As an aside, Mr. Merritt's final sentence in the article is practically incomprehensible.

The Doctrine of Christ and Contemporary Challenges

The following panel discussion was hosted by Ligonier Ministries at the 2013 PCA General Assembly, with Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Ligon Duncan, Richard Pratt, and R.C. Sproul, moderated by Steve Nichols. It's well worth a watch:

The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Carl Trueman is an excellent ebooklet on the nature of evangelicalism and the necessity of clear confessions of faith. Anyone interested in the state of the church and the importance of doctrinal unity ought to read it.

"No frills, no spin, no soul patches"

Great piece by Carl Trueman on learning from reliable men:

Someone asked me recently why I seem so alienated from what appears to be the cutting edge in American conservative evangelicalism.Frankly, I have stopped regarding myself as an evangelical over here, in a way that I do back home. Why? Well, at a time when Christian leaders in the USA are apparently writing explicit sex books, when there are confused signals on the Trinity, when art and cultural transformation and social justice are increasingly the talking points and the kind of themes and priorities I learned from Drs. Packer and Lloyd-Jones are at best assumed, at worst eclipsed by such things - frankly, it is very hard not to feel alienated, and an alien, in such circumstances.

Re-reading Packer and Lloyd-Jones is a delight. Just basic Christian priorities laid out with no frills, no spin, no soul patches, no Barnum and Bailey pyrotechnics. For someone well into his forties, such reading perhaps provokes the occasional Charlie Kane 'Rosebud' moment; but it is a delight nonetheless. Almost thirty years on, I still have an awful lot to learn from these men, and my debt of gratitude can never be repaid.

As you age, starting to sound like your dad is bad enough; sounding like your grandad is even worse, but here goes: I am glad I am not young today. Who knows what I might be told to read?

Read the whole post HERE.

"Theology is getting more of God."

Kevin DeYoung on "why we must be unapologetically theological."

"Trifling with divine truth..."

There are some truths which must be believed; they are essential to salvation, and if not heartily accepted, the soul will be ruined.

Now, in [the early church], the saints did not say, as the sham saints do now, "We must be largely charitable, and leave this brother to his own opinion; he sees truth from a different standpoint, and has a rather different way of putting it, but his opinions are as good as our own, and we must not say that he is in error."

That is at present the fashionable way of trifling with divine truth, and making things pleasant all round. Thus the gospel is debased, and "another gospel" propagated.

I should like to ask modern broad churchmen whether there is any doctrine of any sort for which it would be worth a man's while to burn or to lie in prison. I do not believe they could give me an answer, for if their latitudinarianism be correct, the martyrs were fools of the first magnitude.

From what I see of their writings and their teachings, it appears to me that the modern thinkers treat the whole compass of revealed truth with entire indifference; and, though perhaps they may feel sorry that wilder spirits should go too far in free thinking, and though they had rather they would be more moderate, yet, upon the whole, so large is their liberality that they are not sure enough of anything to be able to condemn the reverse of it as a deadly error.

To them black and white are terms which may be applied to the same colour, as you view it from different standpoints. Yea and nay are equally true in their esteem. Their theology shifts like the Goodwin Sands, and they regard all firmness as so much bigotry. Errors and truths are equally comprehensible within the circle of their charity.

It was not in this way that the apostles regarded error. They did not prescribe large-hearted charity towards falsehood, or hold up the errorist as a man of deep thought, whose views were "refreshingly original"; far less did they utter some wicked nonsense about the probability of there living more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds. They did not believe in justification by doubting, as our neologians do; they set about the conversion of the erring brother; they treated him as a person who needed conversion; and viewed him as a man who, if he were not converted, would suffer the death of his soul, and be covered with a multitude of sins.

They were not such easygoing people as our cultured friends of the school of "modern thought", who have learned at last that the Deity of Christ may be denied, the work of the Holy Spirit ignored, the inspiration of Scripture rejected, the atonement disbelieved, and regeneration dispensed with, and yet the man who does all this may be as good a Christian as the most devout believer!

O God, deliver us from this deceitful infidelity, which, while it does damage to the erring man, and often prevents his being reclaimed, does yet more mischief to our own hearts by teaching us that truth is unimportant, and falsehood a trifle, and so destroys our allegiance to the God of truth, and makes us traitors instead of loyal subjects to the King of kings!

- Charles Spurgeon

HT: Phil Johnson

Don't know much about doctrine?

Who is Jesus, and why should he be worshipped? Was his death merely an example of self-sacrifice, or did he actually atone for the sins of the world? These are crucial doctrinal questions, yet many Christians in our time say they are not interested in theology or doctrine, but prefer instead to focus on what Jesus can do for us in our lives today. Is it possible to be a faithful Christian without being concerned about doctrine? (Originally broadcast June 11, 2006)

Listen to the program HERE.

Good Theology Glorifies God

From Kevin DeYoung:

John 16:12-15

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (v. 14)

If last week we looked at the importance of following Jesus with more than words, today we look at how our words about Jesus still matter. The work of the Holy Spirit is to take “what is mine”–who Jesus is and what he has done–and declare it to us.

In other words, speaking good theology glorifies God. Sometimes people say “I’m into the person of Jesus, not propositions about Jesus.” This sounds pious, but how can we have one without the other? Is your wife honored when you profess undying love for her, but describe her as a tall, blonde when she’s really a short brunette? How can you make much of God if you cannot tell me who he is? How can you magnify his character if there is no definition to it? How can you honor his worth if you don’t know why he’s worthy?

Don’t buy the “deeds not creeds” mantra. Truth matters. God does not get glory by our being uncertain and ambiguous about who he is, what he has done, and why is supremely valuable. God gets glory when we lovingly and truthfully declare theological, propositional truths about his internal excellencies, his saving work, and the weight of his glory.

The real drama...

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as 'a bad press.' We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine - 'dull dogma,' as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man - and the dogma is the drama.

- Dorothy Sayers

No unimportant doctrines

"Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith."
- J. Gresham Machen


Take time to read Al Mohler's helpful essay A Call for Theological Triage and Christian Maturity.

Let Few of You Be Teachers

I recently read with interest an article by Donald Miller in which he blames "teachers and scholars" for the divisions within evangelicalism. He is almost certainly wrong.

Miller makes a classic error in pitting "practitioners" against teachers and scholars. His argument runs something like this: Practitioners are good because they do. Teachers are trouble because they argue over details that don't matter too much.

Simplistic? Immensely so. Historically reliable? Not at all. What about Jesus who declared the imperative of belief in the truth? What about Paul? Other than Jesus has there ever been a man who more beautifully wed scholarship and practice? Augustine? Athanasius? What can we say about Luther, Calvin, or Knox? These were men committed to the right proclamation and practice of the truth. Miller's sloppy approach to the topic is inexplicable.

Owen Strachen has a thoughtful response to Miller HERE.

I do wonder if Miller, himself something of a bardsman-theologian, bites off a bit more than he can chew in his essay. His heart for Christian unity is commendable, but his understanding of ecclesial division seems characteristically youthful. Scripture is the Word of God; it demands careful handling (2 Tim. 2:15). From the birth of the church, Christians have given their time, their energy, even their very lives to nourish the church and keep it from error. We see this in countless historical examples: Athanasius suffering at the hands of his detractors to champion the then-fragile doctrine of the Trinity, Martin Luther risking his very life to promote the final authority of Scripture, Charles Spurgeon heroically fighting the down-grade in post-Victorian England. Courageous defense, nuanced discernment, necessary separation from false teachers—these traits don’t necessarily play well in postmodernia. They do, however, sustain and strengthen the church by God’s grace (see Rom. 12; 2 Tim. 1; 2 Pet. 2).

"No Doctrine Stands Alone"

The latest controversy over the doctrine of hell has raised the larger of issue of Christian doctrine in general. It is no surprise that there are certain doctrines, not least of all the gospel itself (1 Cor 1:18ff) which offend modern sensabilities. The project of liberal theology since Schleirmacher has been to make Christianity plausible to its "cultured despisers." This same project was carried forth by Rudolph Bultmann, Harry Emerson Fosdick and more recently by the emergent kids. The intentions to deny, ignore, or redefine key biblical doctrines are all in an effort to reach more people, which is noble. But ultimately it is a fool's errand for it does not take long to figure out that tinkering with one doctrine inevitably leads to compromises in another and so forth.

From Al Mohler:

The first issue is a changed view of God. The biblical vision of God has been rejected by the culture as too restrictive of human freedom and offensive to human sensibilities. God’s love has been redefined so that it is no longer holy. God’s sovereignty has been reconceived so that human autonomy is undisturbed. In recent years, even God’s omniscience has been redefined to mean that God perfectly knows all that He can perfectly know, but He cannot possibly know a future based on free human decisions.

Evangelical revisionists promote an understanding of divine love that is never coercive and would disallow any thought that God would send impenitent sinners to eternal punishment in the fires of hell. They are seeking to rescue God from the bad reputation He picked up by associating with theologians who for centuries taught the traditional doctrine. God is just not like that, they reassure. He would never sentence anyone — however guilty — to eternal torment and anguish.

The Christian faith is not a series of loosly connected doctrines. The Christian faith is a doctrine made up of many parts beautifully connected and interdepent.

Mohler continues:

Extending this argument further, it would surely be easier to persuade secular persons to believe in a God who would never judge anyone deserving of eternal punishment than it would to persuade them to believe in the God preached by Jonathan Edwards or Charles Spurgeon. But the urgent question is this: Is evangelical theology about marketing God to our contemporary culture, or is it our task to stand in continuity with orthodox biblical conviction–whatever the cost? As was cited earlier, modern persons demand that God must be a humanitarian, and He is held to human standards of righteousness and love. In the end, only God can defend himself against His critics.

Our responsibility is to present the truth of the Christian faith with boldness, clarity, and courage — and defending the biblical doctrine in these times will require all three of these virtues. Hell is an assured reality, just as it is presented so clearly in the Bible. To run from this truth, to reduce the sting of sin and the threat of hell, is to pervert the Gospel and to feed on lies. Hell is not up for a vote or open for revision. Will we surrender this truth to modern skeptics?

Current controversies raise this issue anew among American Christians and even among some evangelicals. Nevertheless, there is no way to deny the Bible’s teaching on hell and remain genuinely evangelical. No doctrine stands alone.

Read Mohler's entire article HERE.

"Doctrine is doxological"

Recently, Carl Trueman was interviewed by Michael Reeves on the subject of doctrine. Take time to give it a listen HERE.

I think as Christians we are exhorted by Paul to study the Scriptures, to pay heed to the form of sound words that is being passed on. So, clearly Paul understands the Christian faith to have a strong doctrinal component. I think when doctrine is correctly taught and correctly understood, it should terminate in doxology. Hearing the great truths of God proclaimed Sunday by Sunday, reflecting upon them as we hear the Bible read, or as we read it for ourselves, should ultimately drive us to our knees. Doctrine tells us who God is and who we are in his presence, and that has a most practical result: worship. The early church doctrine is in some ways is the development of the the early church's reflection on the cry of praise: "Jesus is Lord;" a reflection upon the baptismal formula of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, doctrine is doxological.

- Carl Trueman from his interview with Michael Reeves

Discerning Lewis

Read C.S. Lewis. You will surely benefit from him. I remember reading Mere Christianity for the first time. It is a classic for good reason. However, we must be careful that in our reading of Lewis we read discerningly. This is particularly true of Mere Christianity. It reveals that Lewis was, shall we say, less than orthodox on some important doctrines. I am not calling Lewis a heretic. I have an abiding appreciation for him and his work. But there is far more to biblical Christianity than is reflected in Mere Christianity.

Thanks to Kevin DeYoung for his post "Cautions for Mere Christianity."

Let me highlight two significant problems.

Atonement, But How?

The first caution to raise concerns Lewis’ view of the atonement. Lewis believed Jesus died on the cross for sin, but he didn’t think it was important to understand the particulars of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem quite so immoral and silly as it used to; but that is not the point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor an other is Christianity. The central belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter: A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work. (57-58 [pagination varies by edition)

Later Lewis says that “Christ was killed for us” and “His death has washed out our sins” but “any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary” (59). This impatience of careful thinking about the atonement is bad enough, but then Lewis goes on to make clear that he rejects the understanding of the atonement evangelicals (and the Bible I would say) find most central and most glorious.

The one most people have heard is the one I mentioned before–the one about our being let off because Christ had volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us. Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was prepared to let us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible point could there be in punishing an innocent person? None at all that I can see, if you are thinking of punishment in the police-court sense. On the the other hand, if you think of a debt, there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not. (59)

Pay careful attention to what Lewis says in that paragraph. He does believe in a substitutionary theory of the atonement, but he rejects penal substitution. He admits that penal substitution is not quite as silly as it once sounded, but he still does not accept it. Instead, he argues that Christ pays a debt (which is true), but not as a punishment for our sakes.

Lewis’ theology of the atonement is confusing (see for example this helpful Touchstone article), but I would argue his view is more like Christus victor or ransom to Satan than penal substitution. Aslan’s death, you may recall, was a sacrifice to the Witch and was explained rather ambiguously as “deeper magic.” This is not the place to defend the critical importance of penal substitution. My point is simply that Lewis does not teach it in Mere Christianity, and in fact undermines it.

An Early Inclusivist

The second problem with Mere Christianity is Lewis’ inclusivism. Evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Further, they believe that conscious faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation (assuming we are talking about sentient beings; all Christians allow that infants and the mentally disabled may be in a different category). Lewis, by contrast, believed in what we might roughly call “anonymous Christians.” That is, people may be saved through Christ without putting explicit faith in Christ.

There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. (178)

No matter how much we may like Lewis, this is simply a profound misunderstanding of the Spirit’s mission (and a rejection of John 14:6). The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring glory to Christ by taking what is his–his teaching, the truth about his death and resurrection–and making it known. The Spirit does not work indiscriminately without the revelation of Christ in view. Arguably, the Holy Spirit’s most important work is to glorify Christ, and he does not do this apart from shining the spotlight on Christ for the elect to see and savor. Again, we see the inclusivist Lewis at the end on Narnia where Emeth, a worshiper of Tash, is accepted by Aslan for following him all along without knowing it.

Unity without truth is an illusion

Good post from Rick Phillips concerning an article in Christianity Today which offered an analysis and critique of Together for the Gospel:

Once while worshiping at a church in Africa, I heard a woman preaching the health-and-wealth gospel. If that wasn't bad enough, she was preaching from the book of Job. I feel similarly about the appeal for unity-without-truth in Christianity Today's negative critique of Together for the Gospel (T4G) . It's bad enough that the author, Bret McCracken, endorsed N. T. Wright's dictum that "nothing justifies schism" (on this, see Phil Johnson's excellent blog post) and relegated the doctrine of justification to the category of "theological minutia," commenting, "Paul, after all, speaks of justification only in a few places (Romans, Galatians, etc.)." This is bad enough, but did he have to make this argument from the book of Galatians?! When Wright and, by extension, McCracken base their appeal to unity without truth on Galatians 3:28, they, like the woman preaching the prosperity gospel from Job, fail to recognize the context. After all, Paul speaks of unity in Christ only after the apostle rejects those who differ on justification as anametha (1:9) and divides even with the apostle Peter over this matter of doctrinal "minutia" (2:11-14). This, then, is my prayer for today: Please, Lord, no more prosperity gospel sermons from Job and no more unity-without-truth appeals from Galatians!

I had a similar response when I read the CT piece. McCracken seems to miss the point ENTIRELY.

A better analysis of the T4G conference in comparison to the Wheaton conference can be found HERE.

Doctrine: Uniting and Dividing

Justin Taylor has a very helpful post dealing with levels of doctrine moving from the absolutes to those things that are open questions. Check it out HERE.


From the ESV Study Bible:

The ability to discern the relative importance of theological beliefs is vital for effective Christian life and ministry. Both the purity and unity of the church are at stake in this matter. The relative importance of theological issues can fall within four categories:
1.absolutes define the core beliefs of the Christian faith;
2.convictions, while not core beliefs, may have significant impact on the health and effectiveness of the church;
3.opinions are less-clear issues that generally are not worth dividing over; and
4.questions are currently unsettled issues.

Where an issue falls within these categories should be determined by weighing the cumulative force of at least seven considerations:
1.biblical clarity;
2.relevance to the character of God;
3.relevance to the essence of the gospel;
4.biblical frequency and significance (how often in Scripture it is taught, and what weight Scripture places upon it);
5.effect on other doctrines;
6.consensus among Christians (past and present); and
7.effect on personal and church life.

These criteria for determining the importance of particular beliefs must be considered in light of their cumulative weight regarding the doctrine being considered. For instance, just the fact that a doctrine may go against the general consensus among believers (see item 6) does not necessarily mean it is wrong, although that might add some weight to the argument against it. All the categories should be considered collectively in determining how important an issue is to the Christian faith. The ability to rightly discern the difference between core doctrines and legitimately disputable matters will keep the church from either compromising important truth or needlessly dividing over peripheral issues.

Diagram copyright 2009 Crossway Bibles.

LACK of Doctrine Divides

Great post from Tim Challies...

Aileen and I were once members of a church that, after a few years of existence, began to de-emphasize doctrine. Some of the pastors seemed to reach the conclusion that “doctrine divides” and that the church really just needed to focus on evangelism and on “action.” They seemed to determine that a sound theological foundation held in common was unattainable and unrealistic. Therefore, doctrine should be laid aside and the church should rally around the things we had in common—a desire to reach others with the gospel and a desire to serve other people. It was a bit of a naive strategy, of course, and one that was bound to cause problems.

Soon the church began to fracture into camps—those with backgrounds in one Christian tradition began doing things in one way while people from a different Christian background began doing them a different way. For a time chaos reigned. In some small groups members of the church would serve the Lord’s Supper, in others they wouldn’t; in some small groups people were baptizing each other and serving Lord’s Supper to children. There was no standard and eventually the pastors had to step in and intervene. By then, though, it was too late and many of these small groups “defected.” Having created their own theological identity and one that was at odds with that of the pastors, some of these groups left en masse. It was an inevitable result, I think, and one that proved to me that critical importance of doctrine being held in common by members of a church. Though this happened many years ago, I still think about it quite often.

Recently I was flipping through Collin Hansen’s Young, Restless, Reformed. The book discusses some of the resurgence of Reformed theology in our day and does so, in large part, through interviews with some of the pivotal figures in this resurgence. The book contains a quote by Josh Harris that caught my attention: “Once you’re exposed to [doctrine], you see the richness in it for your own soul, and you’re ruined for anything else.”

Read the entire post HERE.

"Bigotry in modern parlance..."

"Now-a-days, if a man is very reverent towards the word of God, and very desirous to obey the Lord's commands in everything, people say, "He is very precise," and they shun him; or, with still more acrimony, they say, "He is very bigoted: he is not a man of liberal spirit;" and so they cast out his name as evil.

"Bigotry, in modern parlance, you know, means giving heed to old truths in preference to novel theories; and a liberal spirit, now-a-days, means being liberal with everything except your own money—liberal with God's law, liberal with God's doctrine, liberal to believe that a lie is a truth, that black is white, and that white may occasionally be black. That is liberal sentiment in religion—the broad church school—from which may God continually deliver us."

- Charles Spurgeon

"America's Favorite Unopened Text"

In the latest issue of Modern Reformation David Nienhuis addresses the problem of biblical illiteracy among evangelicals. Dr. Nienhuis, a professor at Seattle Pacific University, has had a front row seat to this alarming problem.

In a 2004 Gallup study of over one thousand American teens, nearly 60 percent of those who self-identified as evangelical were not able to correctly identify Cain as the one who said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and over half could not identify either "Blessed are the poor in spirit" as a quote from the Sermon on the Mount or "the road to Damascus" as the place where Saul/Paul's blinding vision occurred. In each of these questions, evangelical teens fared only slightly better than their non-evangelical counterparts.

These numbers serve to underscore the now widespread recognition that the Bible continues to hold pride of place as "America's favorite unopened text" (to borrow David Gibson's wonderful phrase), even among many Christians. As a professor of New Testament studies at Seattle Pacific University, I know this reality only too well. I often begin my survey of the Christian Scriptures course by asking students to take a short biblical literacy quiz, including questions of the sort mentioned above. The vast majority of my students--around 95 percent of them--are Christians, and half of them typically report that they currently attend nondenominational evangelical churches. Yet the class as a whole consistently averages a score of just over 50 percent, a failing grade. In the most recent survey, only half were able to identify which biblical book begins with the line, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Barely more than half knew where to turn in the Bible to read about the first Passover. Most revealing in my mind is the fact that my students are generally unable to sequence major stories and events from the biblical metanarrative. Only 23 percent were able to order four key events from Israel's history (Israelites enter the promised land; David is made king; Israel is divided in two; and the people of Judah go into exile), and only 32 percent were able to sequence four similarly important events from the New Testament (Jesus was baptized; Peter denies Jesus; the Spirit descends at Pentecost; and John has a vision on the island of Patmos). These students may know isolated Bible trivia (84 percent knew, for instance, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem), but their struggle to locate key stories, and their general inability to place those stories in the Bible's larger plotline, betrays a serious lack of intimacy with the text--even though a full 86 percent of them identified the Bible as their primary source for knowledge about God and faith.

Dr. Nienhuis correctly draws a connection between American evangelicalism's tortured relationship with the Bible and theology to the so-called Second Great Awakening and the rise of revivalism.

Indeed, a good bit of the blame for the existing crisis has to fall at the feet of historic American evangelicalism itself. In his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't, Stephen Prothero has drawn our attention to various religious shifts that took place as a result of the evangelistic Second Great Awakening that shook American culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, key characteristics of which continue to typify contemporary evangelical attitudes. For instance, there was a shift from learning to feeling, as revivalists of the period emphasized a heartfelt and unmediated experience of Jesus himself over religious education. While this strategy resulted in increased conversions and the creation of numerous popular nondenominational voluntary associations, it also had the effect of requiring Christians to agree to disagree when it came to doctrinal matters. There was a corresponding shift from the Bible to Jesus, as more and more Christians came to believe that the key test of Christian faithfulness was not the affirmation of a creed or catechism, or knowledge of the biblical text, but the capacity to claim an emotional relationship with what Prothero calls "an astonishingly malleable Jesus--an American Jesus buffeted here and there by the shifting winds of the nation's social and cultural preoccupations."

The most important shift, according to Prothero, was the shift from theology to morality. The nondenominationalist trend among Protestants tended to avoid doctrinal conflicts by searching for agreements in the moral realm. Christian socialists, such as Charles Sheldon, taught us to ask not "What does the Bible say?" but "What would Jesus do?" Advocates of the Social Gospel, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, taught that it was more important to care for the poor than to memorize the Apostles' Creed.

Christians schooled in this rather anti-intellectual, common-denominator evangelistic approach to faith responded to the later twentieth-century decline in church attendance by looking not to more substantial catechesis but to business and consumer models to provide strategies for growth. By now we're all familiar with the story: increasing attendance by means of niche marketing led church leaders to frame the content of their sermons and liturgies according to the self-reported perceived needs of potential "seekers" shaped by the logic of consumerism. Now many American consumer-congregants have come to expect their churches to function as communities of goods and services that provide care and comfort without the kind of challenge and discipline required for authentic Christian formation to take place.

Nienhuis continues with a helpful critique of certain models of Bible teaching and concludes with some suggestions for leading Christians into substantive biblical literacy.

So what then shall we do? What is biblical literacy? Coming to an agreed-upon definition is itself part of the problem. I think all would agree that, at base, it involves a more detailed understanding of the Bible's actual content. This requires: (1) schooling in the substance of the entire biblical story in all its literary diversity (not just an assortment of those verses deemed doctrinally relevant); (2) training in the particular "orienteering" skills required to plot that narrative through the actual texts and canonical units of the Bible; and (3) instruction in the complex theological task of interpreting Scripture in light of the tradition of the church and the experience of the saints. The survey courses we teach at SPU seek to do these very things. But in the end we want to do more than fill believing heads with objective knowledge about the Bible; we want to empower our whole community--students, faculty, and staff--to buck the cultural trends and take up the spiritual discipline of reading Scripture. It is not enough for a Christian university to function as an outpost of the academy; it must also take up the task of serving the church by becoming an abbey for spiritual growth and an apostolate for cultural change. Through our newly established Center for Biblical and Theological Education, we are working to create a reading program--a lectionary of sorts--that will contribute to the formation of readers who come to cherish a relationship not with the "astonishingly malleable Jesus" of American culture, but with the particular God whose story is related in the Bible and celebrated in the Christian church. We want to create a community ethos of habitual, orderly, communal ingestion of the revelatory text. We do so in the hope that the Spirit of God will transform readers into hearers who know what it is to abide before the mirror of the Word long enough to become enscripturated doers; that is, people of faith who are adept at interpreting their individual stories and those of their culture through the grand story of God as it is made known in the Bible.

Read the entire article HERE.

The fading discipline of biblical discernment

The landscape of contemporary evangelicalism has become a garbage heap littered with all manner of heresy and sentimental sappiness. Exactly how this has come about may be debated but it is certainly related to both the failure of preachers to proclaim the whole counsel of God and American Christians desire to be spiritual entrepreneurs accountable to nothing higher than the quiver in their liver.

Al Mohler offers a timely and devastating critique of The Shack with emphasis upon the spiritual and intellectual climate that makes such aberrations possible.

In the shack, "Mack" meets the divine Trinity as "Papa," an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and "Sarayu," an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. "Papa" is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed...

While the literary device of an unconventional "trinity" of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. "Papa" tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity "spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God." Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. "Papa" tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, "he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being." When Jesus healed the blind, "He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone."

While there is ample theological confusion to unpack there, suffice it to say that the Christian church has struggled for centuries to come to a faithful understanding of the Trinity in order to avoid just this kind of confusion -- understanding that the Christian faith is itself at stake.

Jesus tells Mack that he is "the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu." Not the only way, but merely the best way.

In another chapter, "Papa" corrects Mack's theology by asserting, "I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it." Without doubt, God's joy is in the atonement accomplished by the Son. Nevertheless, the Bible consistently reveals God to be the holy and righteous Judge, who will indeed punish sinners. The idea that sin is merely "its own punishment" fits the Eastern concept of karma, but not the Christian Gospel...

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals -- and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.

The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books -- we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment. This will require us to identify the doctrinal dangers of The Shack, to be sure. But our real task is to reacquaint evangelicals with the Bible's teachings on these very questions and to foster a doctrinal rearmament of Christian believers.

The Shack is a wake-up call for evangelical Christianity. An assessment like that offered by Timothy Beal is telling. The popularity of this book among evangelicals can only be explained by a lack of basic theological knowledge among us -- a failure even to understand the Gospel of Christ. The tragedy that evangelicals have lost the art of biblical discernment must be traced to a disastrous loss of biblical knowledge. Discernment cannot survive without doctrine.

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