Some postmodern innovators teach that it matters more that we love like Jesus than that we believe in him. At any rate we should not exclude good people from the kingdom just because they do not believe our Christian faith. Machen wrote that the liberals in his day insisted that “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine,” and that conservatives should focus on “the weightier matters of the law” (Christian ethics) rather than use the “trifling matters” of doctrine to divide the church.
Machen responded that doctrines such as Christ’s “vicarious atonement for sin” is not “trifling” and that Christ is not merely “an example for faith” but is “primarily the object of faith.” He explained: “The religion of Paul did not consist in having faith in God like the faith which Jesus had in God; it consisted rather in having faith in Jesus. …The plain fact is that imitation of Jesus, important though it was for Paul, was swallowed up by something far more important still. Not the example of Jesus, but the redeeming work of Jesus, was the primary thing for Paul.”
Sunday, November 01, 2009
faith v. love
Michael Wittmer:
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7 comments:
"Faith of Jesus" vs. "faith in Jesus"... hmmmm, sounds like yet another one of those unnecessary dichotomies both liberals and conservatives are so good at. Why not both/and? In claiming that Paul favored one over the other, it seems to me like Machen completely forget about Acts 28:31.
The point is that for us the faith of jesus flows from faith in jesus. Postmodern innovators have wrongly presumed the former can happen without the latter. Conversely, the latter a reality if it is evidenced in the former. Without it, there is only profession which is not authenticated.
You may be affirming a both/and, and that's great, but that doesn't seem to be what Machen is saying. He definitely appears to privilege the latter over the former, at least in that quote you gave us.
"Postmodern innovators have wrongly presumed the former can happen without the latter."
Citation?
Perhaps McCLaren's statement in The Last Word and the Word After That, p197, "turn FROM doctrine to practices" is the simplest example of what sets up what you rightly call a false dichotomy. I'm sure you are not really asking me for all of the citations since you have read and even know McLaren, Burke, Jones, Rollins (although Rollins is a little fuzzier and harder to pin down), etc... And if you really wanted these you can search this blog or I can recommend some books.
More important, what do you think?
I think postmoderns are reacting to an overemphasis (even abuse) of doctrine from evangelicals and fundamentalists. And some in that latter camp make doctrine even worse by blurring it with tradiction. That aside, some postmoderns, in their reaction, are consciously making provocative statements to counter swing the pendulum. I don't agree with that strategy but I get it. But many honestly believe that other (perhaps all) faiths will get one to God and that right behavior has a higher value than right belief.
My understanding of Scriptural truth as there is no right behavior without right belief (it may only look that way) and that right belief as merely a profession is equally untrue.
I have not seen those kinds of clear statements from 'postmodern innovators'.
As for Machen, he is absolutely not elevating one over the other. I understand him to be sequencing one before the other with the understanding that the pattern is more of a cycle throughout one's journey.
I may have that McLaren quote wrong, it's that page but I found in my other notes that it is from A Generous Orthodoxy ... anyway, it's one of them.
But to be clear, don't you agree that a major tenant of emergent theology is a focus on "being, rather than believing"?
Again, if this was a call to balance, then I get it but I do not read Emergent writings as balanced - they seem as skewed as those they are attempting to confront. And as noted before, while not elevated, I'd say there is a sequence. Christlike living is a fruit of salvation, not the cause.
You've recently commented on Mark Oestreicher's being fired from Youth Specialties. His statements are a good example of what I consider 'dangerous'.
"Does a little dose of Buddhism thrown into a belief system somehow kill off the Christian part? My Buddhist cousin, except for her unfortunate inability to embrace Jesus, is a better “Christian” (based on Jesus’ descriptions of what a Christian does) than almost every Christian I know. If we are using Matthew 26 as a guide, she’d be a sheep; and almost every Christian I know personally would be a goat."
If I'm very, very careful to not read into that, I can see it being ok. But in the absence of Emergent writers stating the other side of that coin and the plethora of similar writings, it's tough to square the overall picture with the whole of Scripture.
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