Call me strange (I know some will!), but for years I’ve had an obsession with trying to figure out why equally God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving evangelical Christians think so differently and seem so easily to become hostile to one another.  Often, it seems to come down to differing views of the Bible.  These people agree with each other about fundamental Christian orthodoxy (Christology, the Trinity, resurrection, etc.) but seem to have different attitudes toward the Bible that drive them apart.

On the surface it seems to be a disagreement over inerrancy.  But I suspect it goes deeper.  And I know some inerrantists who “line up” with those who don’t believe in inerrancy and some who don’t believe in inerrancy who “line up” with inerrantists.  I suspect the real, underlying difference is caused by different ideas of what the Bible is.

I think I detect that some evangelicals, mostly those who call themselves “conservative evangelicals,” believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord because they believe the Bible is the supernaturally, verbally inspired Word of God and it teaches that Jesus is Savior and Lord (which more than implies also God even though Scripture nowhere says it as explicitly as that). 

Then there are evangelicals who believe the Bible is the supernaturally inspired Word of God because it is the medium by which Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior (and therefore God) encounters and teaches them.  For this group of evangelicals, then, the Bible is authoritative because it is the “book of Jesus.”  Or, as Luther put it, “the cradle that holds the Christ child.” 

I won’t go so far as to accuse the first group of bibliolatry, but it does seem sometimes that their view of the Bible elevates it to a status almost alongside God.  A student quipped to me that for many Southern Baptists (and I’m sure he would agree for many others) the Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Bible.  Of course, no Southern Baptist or evangelical would say that.  He was commenting on how the bible functions in their churches and lives.

But it does seem to me, at times, that for some evangelicals, the Bible is viewed as an oracle of God permeated by some kind of supernatural power such that it is worthy of veneration (perhaps mostly in folk religion) or interpretation as every individual statement equally “God’s Word” for today (and for all times). 

This difference has played out in two events that I have witnessed.  First, when my friend Stan Grenz wrote his massive one volume systematic theology Theology for the Community of God some fellow evangelicals criticized him very harshly for including the doctrine of Scripture within the doctrine of the Holy Spirit instead of giving it pride of place at the very beginning.  He did state clearly at the beginning that, for him, the Bible is God’s Word and the supreme authority for faith and practice including theology.  But his actually discussion of its nature was under the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  This was not enough for some conservative evangelical critics who thought, apparently, he had somehow demeaned God’s Holy Word by placing the doctrine of the Bible where he did.

In 2000 the Southern Baptist Convention removed from the Baptist Faith and Message a statement that Scripture is to be interpreted through Jesus Christ. 

It seems to me this might be a watershed issue among evangelicals (and Baptists who are conservative or moderate but don’t use that label).  But it is seldom explicitly stated or explored as such. 

I believe in the Bible as God’s Word BECAUSE I believe I encounter Jesus there and am taught by him there.  For me it is the Book of Jesus.  That means it is extremely important, necessary, valuable, indispensable, but not alongside of or even in the same category (being-wise) as Jesus himself.  It is the unique written witness to Jesus and THEREFORE the book of the church.

I suspect this upsets some evangelicals because, even perhaps unconsciously, they believe in Jesus only because and insofar as the Bible contains him.  In other words, functionally, the Bible is above Jesus. 

The implications of these two approaches for hermeneutics are immense.  My view requires Christological hermeneutics.  The other view tends to lead to having to interpret everything the Bible says as as literally true as possible without exception or qualification.  When conservatives talk about progressive revelation I suspect they are borrowing from my view even as they deny it in most of what they say about the Bible and how they perform it.

Okay, I admit it.  The “you should be, too” part was just to get you to read this.  I don’t have any axe to grind about this and I’m not on a crusade to convert amils or postmils (are there any?) to historic premillennialism.  I admit that I would like to persuade dispensationalist premils to consider historic premillennialism as an alternative to “Left Behind” eschatology.

Recently a book about historic premillennialism was published entitled The Case for Historic Premillennialism: An Alternative to “Left Behind” Eschatology.  One of the editors is highly respected evangelical New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg (Denver Seminary).  I recommend it highly.

I was raised on the footnotes in the Scofield Reference Bible and on Clarence Larkin’s eschatology charts.  (I know; those references make me “old school!”)  Then, while in Bible College, I took courses on “Daniel and Revelation” and other books of the Bible and subjects that, according to my professors, pointed directly to a pretrib rapture of the church.  But I had trouble finding that in my Bible!

When I was first considering theology as a career I asked one of my beloved professors to recommend a good theology book for me to read.  He recommended and I bought Dwight Pentecost’s (Dallas Theological Seminary) Things to Come.  I read it thoroughly and couldn’t understand it.  The words were clear; it was the argument that I found murky at best.  (Pentecost was, of course, a champion of dispensationalism and pre-trib rapture eschatology.)  I agreed with the premillennialism as I found that solidly grounded in Scripture and early Christian history.  But the arguments for a pretrib rapture just no longer convinced me.

I have never given up on the premillennialism of my youth, however.  Under the influence of theologians and New Testament scholars such as George Eldon Ladd and Robert Gundry I discarded pretrib rapturism but kept premillennialism because it seems the only view that can make sense of all the OT references to a Kingdom of God on earth before the new heaven and new earth.  I won’t go into all of that here but only recommend that doubters read the new book or Ladd’s or Gundry’s excellent books on the subject.

Also, read the early church fathers Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian–all premillennialists without any idea of a secret rapture.  It seems to me that IF premillennialism was not the teaching of the apostles Ireneaus, for example, would have known that.  (He studied Christianity under Polycarp who was a disciple of John’s.)  It was the Alexandrians (known for their allegorical approach to interpretation) and Augustine (known for his neo-Platonism) who changed to amillennialism.

While in seminary I encountered the argument that premillennialism undermines social ethics–concern for this world.  People alleged that it is inherently otherworldy.  That never made sense to me.  If I envision a Kingdom of God on earth, ruled over by Jesus Christ himself, in which poverty, sickness, injustice, violence, etc., will be abolished, how can I be comfortable with those things now?  A vision of the earthly millennium (incomplete as it may be) propels me to protest against those things now that stand in stark contrast to that.

German theologian Juergen Moltmann is this kind of premillennialist.  (I have talked with him about it.  He affirmed to me that he is a premillennialist.)  He argues for Christians being in the forefront of social transformation and environmentalism because of the revelation of the coming Kingdom on earth.  I recommend his book The Coming of God.

I continually run into people, especially in the South, who think that fundamentalists have a monopoly on premillennialism.  They are ignorant of historic premillennialists such as Ladd.  They need to read the new book The Case for Historic Premillenialism.

When I was making my youthful transition to the wider evangelical world one of my guides was Vernon Grounds, long-time president of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary (now Denver Seminary).  Grounds died the other day at age 96.  He was one of the most influential evangelical statesmen in America and, among other things, an expert on Bonhoeffer.  It was via his writings that I first realized that an evangelical could actually appreciate the thoughts of a non-evangelical (in the sense of American conservative, revivalist evangelicalism).

Grounds was a generous, “big tent” evangelical who was nevertheless not hesitant to speak his mind on issues he considered controversial.  One of the best brief essays on limited atonement is Grounds’ “God’s Universal Salvific Grace” in Grace Unlimited (Bethany House, 1975).  There he wrote: “It takes an exegetical ingenuity which is something other than a learned virtuosity to evacuate these texts [viz., five NT texts teaching the universality of the atonement] of their obvious meaning: it takes an exegetical ingenuity verging on sophistry to deny their explicit universality.” 

In spite of his sharp opposition to “decretal theology” (his term and others’ for high Calvinism), Grounds was an irenic evangelical who was conversant with the wider ecumenical community and able to “take the good and leave the bad” with regard to theologians such as Karl Rahner (who he quotes approvingly in the above mentioned chapter while at the same time clearly rejecting some of Rahner’s views). 

In other words, Grounds was a model post-fundamentalist, centrist evangelical whose voice has been missed these past many years since his retirement.  May his tribe increase. 

Some years ago Stan Grenz, John Franke and I (together with several advisers) wrote a manifesto called The Word Made Fresh.  It was a call for evangelicals to step back from the brink of neo-fundamentalism and rediscover our biblical and progressive bearings (e.g., as expressed in Carl Henry’s groundbreaking 1947 book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism). Grounds was glad to sign on together with over 100 other leading evangelical scholars and administrators.

Okay, I know…”social justice” is two words!  My question is the same–when did this phrase become bad?  Do those who reject it want “social injustice?”  I can hardly imagine it (although I might think their vision of society amounts to that). 

It is a sad commentary on our times when a phrase associated with compassion and the betterment of society becomes a term of approbrium.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a shame how some are trying to cast this positive and powerful concept in a bad light.  I hope thinking people will reject that attempt.

Actually, of course, “social justice” is any concept of improving the social order for the good of all people.  It can be and has been used by neo-conservatives as well as progressives.  To be honest, however, it has been linked in the last century especially with progressive movements to establish the common good against rabid individualism.

Surely Martin Luther King, Jr. was a champion of social justice.  When contemporary ultra-conservatives reject “social justice” are they rejecting the civil rights movement?  Perhaps, but I doubt they would want to say so publicly.

Christians especially should be in the forefront of movements for social justice, whether primarily religious or primarily secular.  (That is, we should join with secular people whenever we recognize what they are working for is the genuine betterment of all people.)

This semester, as most, I will be teaching students about the great Baptist social reformer Walter Rauschenbusch–a personal hero of mine (even thought I do not agree with all of the ways in which he handled theology and doctrine).  Also they will read and we will discuss Reinhold Niebuhr, Gustavo Gutierrez and John Howard Yoder.  (Yoder had his own vision of social justice that did not extend to “managing history,” but clearly included a kind of socialistic vision for the church.)  I will also have students read and discuss Michael Novak’s powerful book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.  All that in a course on “Christianity and Social Justice.”

My fear is that this good term “social justice” will be demonized like so many other good terms to the point that it will be virtually impossible to reinvest with its original valuable meaning.  Christians of all political persuasions should stand up and say a loud and resounding “No!” to those who use it pejoratively.

The God of the Bible (Leviticus 25, Amos, etc.) is clearly a God of justice.  Poverty offends God.  How to eradicate poverity (to the greatest extent possible) is something about which we Christians can disagree and keep working toward agreement through dialogue.  But a guest column in my local newspaper yesterday virtually declared that the poor are to blame for their own poverty and should not be our or the government’s concern.

Christian churches of all kinds should vocally condemn such implicit social Darwinism (which I believe lies behind the current condemnations of “social justice”).  One church may prefer “soup, soap and salvation.”  Another one may prefer “community development.”  Yet another may prefer “liberation theology.”  But all are into social justice in some way. 

To our evangelical opinion shapers I say: Please stand up and deliver a resounding rebuke to those who attempt to demean social justice.

Recently I heard about a new church someone is starting on a university campus.  It is St. John Cantius Community Church.  (John Cantius is the patron saint of scholars.)  The services will be held in the library.  The minister must have a Ph.D. and tenure.  Scripture readings will be from the original languages and Latin.  All music will be classical or from the finest contemporary hymn writers (e.g., Brian Wren).  Worship will be on Sunday mornings and last exactly 80 minutes (the usual time length for most university classes).  Various creeds will be recited followed by critical responses by religious scholars.  The sermons will be written presentations with two critical responses followed by a panel discussion.  All worship leaders will be required to wear academic regalia.  The church will be governed by a board of regents (elders) all of whom must have tenure.  Once monthly a benevolence offering will be taken and the money donated to the American Association of University Professors to defend academic freedom.  Ads for this new church declare “ALL WELCOME!”

Some have raised questions about the legitimacy of such a church.  But the founders argue that the scholarly academy is a true culture and that academics often do not feel comfortable in other churches.  Their hope is that this new church will draw into it people who probably would not go to any other church.  They point to the plethora of special interest, “niche” churches and argue that theirs is nothing new except they have identified a new niche.  If there can be churches especially for men, women, young people, old people, cowboys, punkers, postmoderns, college students, homeless people, rich people, truckers, motorcycle enthusiasts, etc., why can’t there be a church especially for academics? 

One critic has argued that churches should be as inclusive of the community as possible and that the unity of the church should be the Holy Spirit and the gospel and not some special human interest.  This critic argued that such niche churches (exploding in numbers all across the country) are really “ministries” more than true churches if the early Christian church is to be the norm.

One commentator stated that such reactionary theological criticism is both outdated and too late.  The church growth movement proved that identifying a “target audience” and building a church on it works.  And we now know the importance of culturally contextualizing the gospel.

Since hearing about St. John Cantius Community Church I saw a billboard in a large metropolitan area advertising a church for people 50 and over.  An ad for it declared that all music will be hymns and gospel songs.  (No “praise and worship choruses.”)  Again, the billboard announced “ALL WELCOME!”