Does the Trinity Prove Anything about Gender? Not Much
April 19, 2008
Amid all the arguments among Christians regarding the roles of men and women in home, church, and society, one of the most prominent nowadays is the argument from the Trinity, namely, that the way the persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) relate and are related to each other tells us something important about how men and women are related and ought to relate to each other.
And no wonder some argue this way. What a trump card! “Our view of gender is rooted in the very nature of God!”
The first troubling thing to notice here, however, is that this argument is deployed by both complementarians/patriarchalists and egalitarians/feminists.
Entering Advent: Repentance and Forgiveness (I)
November 24, 2007
As Christians enter the season of Advent—the time of the church year when we undertake an examination of our lives and repent of our sins to prepare for the celebration of the first coming (“advent”) of Jesus—we do well to consider the themes of repentance and forgiveness. There is a lot of confusion around these terms, and a lot of pain around them as well, perhaps especially as Christmastime brings to mind hurtful events and relationships in one’s life. Let’s see if we can bring a little Christmas light to bear on the subject.
Repentance and forgiveness are at the heart of the Christian faith and two of the key words in the Christian vocabulary.
Indeed, they are
• at the heart of the Gospel—we are called to repent and God promises to forgive our sins;
• at the heart of Christian prayer: “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Luke 11:4) ; and
• at the heart of Christian conduct toward our neighbours.
Yet sometimes Jesus says such odd things about forgiveness: “Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, `I repent,’ you must forgive” (Luke 17:3-4).
Notice that in this short passage we encounter multiple sins and multiple forgivenesses. Forgiveness may be necessary toward the same person over and over again.
Notice also that repentance seems to be required. But it isn’t.
Does God Care about Entertainment?
October 29, 2007
My eldest son, a fan of both films (he is a budding filmmaker) and sports (he is a nut about NFL football and NHL hockey), writes on his blog about whether God cares who wins the Super Bowl, or an Oscar, or whatever, in the field of entertainment.
(In fact, didn’t some team win some championship recently? Ah, yes: South Africa won the rugby World Cup. Or was it someone else winning something else…? Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.)
Anyhow, I refer you to his blog and the entry of October 24, “Thou Shalt Not Thank Me for Football Excellence,” with the usual parental caution that sons sometimes express themselves in ways that fathers don’t always approve–but I like what the kid has to say this time!
Jesus, I’m NOT in Love with You
September 16, 2007
One of the blights upon the hymnological landscape today is the continued presence of what we can fairly call the “love song to Jesus” genre. It’s been around as long as there has been Christian pop music–and even earlier, depending on what you make of sentimental gospel songs in the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century revivalist hymns, and especially a lot of the mystical poetry-cum-lyrics of certain medieval saints.
Today our congregation was asked to sing, “Jesus, I’m in love with you”–a line that shows up, in one permutation or another, in several songs that occur frequently in our worship leaders’ rotation.
Well, I didn’t sing it. It’s wrong, and I try not to sing wrong lyrics.
The “Win–Win–Win” Scenario of Christianity
July 21, 2007
A friend writes to ask whether God “needs” us in any way, or if he remains loftily remote from us, or something in between.
Another friend writes to ask about altruism, and whether we are somehow supposed to lay aside all concern for ourselves to care for someone else.
Fundamental to the Christian ethos is what I call the principle of “Win—Win—Win.” Shalom is an all-embracing life of mutual contribution and benefit. Therefore, individuals and groups are never finally in a situation of choosing whether to benefit themselves or others, never finally in a situation of choosing to honor God over their own well-being. Much Christian piety and preaching, I daresay, has been importantly misguided and misleading on this account, so let’s expand on this theme.
Terminology Time: What Is an “Inclusivist”?
July 8, 2007
A friend recently read my piece mentioned below, “A Bigger–and Smaller–View of Mission,” and asked this good question:
“You say you are an inclusivist (salvifically speaking). Isn’t the inclusivistic position really a gentler approach of the exclusivistic position (in the eye of a non-follower) since, at its core, it really believes that only through Christ people are ultimately saved even if they come through another religion (akin to J.N. Farquhar’s position on Christianity being the crown of Hinduism)? Or are these salvific positions to be viewed on a spectrum of pluralist, inclusivist, exclusivist? I would consider myself an exclusivist because I believe that only the true and living God ’saves’.”
There is much confusion about terms here in the scholarly literature, so no wonder my friend isn’t sure what is meant! Let’s see if what follows can help:
There’s No Such Thing as a Catholic Evangelical
May 9, 2007
Recently, Francis Beckwith, a respected philospher at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, announced his return to the Roman Catholic Church. That is interesting enough, given that Baylor is the flagship school of Texas Baptists. But Beckwith simultaneously resigned from the presidency of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and later resigned from the organization entirely.
His reported reason for the latter move was apprehension about the contentious nature of the ETS, which has been roiled by sometimes-vituperative controversies–most recently over so-called open theism (a new form of evangelical theology, promulgated by Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, and others, that suggests that the future is “open” because even God does not know it for certain).
According, however, to the acting president of the ETS, Hassell Bullock of Wheaton College, Illinois, the main issue was simply that Beckwith, as a Roman Catholic, could no longer subscribe to the ETS’s statement of faith, which includes the following clause: “the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.”
A correspondent recently wrote: “I’m more baffled than ever about the Atonement. I sometimes feel like banging my head against the wall because of the conflict between the emotion and the logic. Why do you think a loving, merciful creator would demand a blood sacrifice?”
As Christians throughout the world commemorate the crucifixion of a whipped-raw Jesus on Good Friday, and as they symbolically eat Christ’s body and drink his blood on Easter Sunday, one might well ask: What in God’s name is going on?
Faith and Magic
March 18, 2007
A correspondent recently posed a series of good, tough questions about the nature of faith. One of them had to do with just how a Christian definition of faith differs from that of magic: “Some Christians pray as though they can compel God to do their will. I would argue that doing so is very much like or identical to doing magic.”
For the record, however, Jesus does seem to sound to some ears as if he is recommending a kind of magic: “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, `Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-24)
Health-and-wealth “prosperity” preaching loves this passage. So do certain sorts of faith-healers. “Name it and claim it,” they say.
So, is faith just a combination of wishful thinking and incantation?
Shults & Stackhouse on Violence and God
February 24, 2007
I don’t know that I have met Dr. LeRon Shults, but he is a highly respected American theologian who recently took a job in Norway. He has recently posted some “work in progress” regarding the influential anthropologist René Girard and the implications of his views for Christian theology, especially of the atonement.
Many of you are about to stop reading now, and that’s fine! But for those who are interested, your servant took exception to one or two things in Professor Shults’s post and we engaged in what became a rather extended to-and-fro that the theologically-minded might find interesting here.
