One of my favorite memories of my honeymoon is our trip to the Vatican. It is simply amazing. It is beautiful beyond expression and utterly moving. As Molly and I toured the breathtaking city and the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica I made a little pun. “Molly do you know what this cost? The Protestant Reformation.” I, of course, am the king of bad puns. What I said, though, was true. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the Schlosskirche(Castle Church) in Wittenberg, Germany, and they spawned the Reformation. A significant part of what led Luther to write the 95 Thesiswas the sale of indulgencies (the selling of forgiveness of sin) which were used to fund the construction St. Peter’s Basilica.
In honor of the anniversary of the 95 Thesis, I have some thesis of my own. No, there are not 95 of them, I’m not that longwinded. Instead I give you 9.5 Thesis.
Thesis 1:
The Bible is the final authority for the faith and formation of the Church.
While Thesis 1 may seem obvious, it has frequently been subverted. In the time of the Reformation, the authority of Scripture was subverted by elevating Patristic interpretation of Scripture to an authority of its own and by the elevation of Papal authority to regulate the interpretation of Scripture.
In our time, the authority of Scripture is often undermined by inserting our opinions in place of Scripture’s declarations. If we are to claim the authority of the Bible, we cannot baptize behaviors the Bible rules out of bounds, nor can we cannot decide the Bible’s moral declarations are not fitting for contemporary life.
In short, if we can ignore what the Bible teaches in order to be in the “right side of history” it is not God we worship and it is not Scripture we are obeying. We have elevated our opinions to the level of revelation.
Thesis 2:
A Church without a missionary zeal is not a church.
The Church of Jesus Christ exists for to be servants of God in God’s mission of redemption for the world. C. S. Lewis put it this way,
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.
Highly underrated theologian Emil Brunner wrote, “The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.” Our faith is a missionary faith. Our faith demands and our Lord commands the message of the Good News be shared to every nation, every tribe, every tongue. We cannot rest until the Gospel has touched every life. We cannot be content with the state of our world, nor should we be. We believe the Gospel is the truth that transforms every evil structure and every heart. If we fail to share, we fail to be a church.
Thesis 3:
Current worship wars have more to do with preference than with what honors God.
Years ago, worship wars raged in Protestant congregational life. The strife over worship usually pitted young against old, contemporary against traditional, and praise bands against chancel choirs. Advocates of contemporary worship argued that their music reached the unchurched. Advocates of traditional worship argued that the words of contemporary worship music did not give the spiritual depth that traditional hymns gave.
Those arguments are largely distant now. Some churches have remained traditional, and some churches have changed to contemporary worship. Some congregations offer both kinds of worship. Others try to have a “blended” service that offers a little bit of both. I do note that the vast majority of new congregations are going with contemporary worship.
Worship style has become just another one of the factors that people look into when choosing a new congregation along with children’s programs and parking. The whole worship war has come down to preference. People choose to worship in the way they feel comfortable. There is little theological reflection that remains on worship style.
Thesis 4:
Churches and denominations cannot and should not think declining numbers are ok.
Recently, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) had to downsize their staff significantly due to declining financial support. Some of the decline in support has to do with the Coronavirus to be sure, but the decline in support pre-dates the emergence of the Coronavirus. The CBF is hardly alone. The leadership of the organization noted that every Christian denomination was going through the same struggle. While that observation is correct, the question is how should one view the situation. One member of the organization pointed to the CBF’s “bright future.” In all honesty, how can the future be bright if there is declining support as far as the eye can see?
When congregations and denominations experience a decline in support or attendance, they should be very concerned. Blithe statements about every other congregation and denomination going through the same issue should not be cause for comfort, it should be cause for action. The questions should be, “what can we do to arrest the decline” and “what can we do to grow in the future?” Managing the situation is important. More important is to get to the root cause of the issue.
Thesis 5:
We have lost a sense of the damage of sinfulness.
It is said that preachers of a previous generation believed that sin was dark, God was holy, and hell was hot. That is not said of us much anymore. Sin has been reduced. It is not seen as the destructive affront to the Creator or the destructive assault on the created order anymore. Sin, if we talk about it at all, is the disruption in the relationship between God and humans. We no longer see it as something so destructive that it merits the wrath of God. No, sin is to be treated by therapy or ignored.
There is also a tendency to hide from sin. We hid from sin by putting it outside our purview. Much of the work I see on sin now deals with sin on a societal level. Sin is now thought to found primarily in structures and systems. While sin can be found there, it is also located in the human heart. While there is global and systemic evil, sin still must always be thought of as the action of an individual also.
Because we have lost a sense of the damage of sinfulness, we recoil at sin less, we preach about it less, and our people are the poorer for it.
Thesis 6:
Because we do not understand the destructive force of sin, we cannot know the depth of grace.
The Apostle Paul once said of himself, “‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,’ and I am the worst of them.” Paul knew the power of sin and regularly reflected on its destructive nature. His knowledge of sin was not academic; it was personal. Paul knew that he had sinned against God and persecuted Christ’s church. It was in the knowledge of the cost of sin that He understood the power of grace. It was the grace of God that had moved him from death to life, from darkness to light, and from being a child of darkness to being a child of God. It is in knowing the destructive nature of sin that we can understand the astounding nature of God’s grace.
Thesis 7:
We have done violence to the role of deacon.
Luke, the author of the New Testament book of Acts, records a conflict in the early church about the care of widows. In response to this problem the Church developed a great treasure: the office of deacon. The role of the deacon was to serve the Church by making sure the widows of the Church cared for. The term “deacon” comes from the Greek word diakonos,meaning something like “table waiter.” The natural role then, was serving. As centuries have passed, the role of deacon has evolved to include administration. In some congregations the deacons are the chief administrative body. Frequently, those deacons are called “servant leaders.” The New Testament does not envision this at all, and “servant leader” is found nowhere in the New Testament. If the deacons administered anything in the early Church, they administered a benevolence fund. They simply were not what we—particularly in Baptist circles—use our deacons to do. Our using of deacons in an overly administrative capacity is like using fine crystal for Tang or using the family silver to spread peanut butter on a Nilla Wafer.
Thesis 8:
The Social Justice movement is not the same as Biblical Justice.
“Social Justice” is a term we hear frequently in this time of social strife. It reflects a concern that the world is not as it should be and that social structures need reform. While social justice sounds inarguable, the problem is that the term “justice” is not self-explanatory. People use “justice” to mean all kinds of different things. Some use it to mean people should get what they merit. Others use it to mean that there should be an equitable redistribution of goods. If justice means the latter, then someone somewhere must have the power to take and distribute goods according to what he or she believes to be morally correct. In fact, much of the current social justice movement is more concerned with redistribution of resources rather than helping people to be free from structures that oppress them. For many of those in the social justice movement, poverty itself is oppression—not the consequence of oppression or individual choices. The movement is a political movement based on the use of power to achieve its version of liberation.
The Bible’s view of justice there is special concern for the needy, but the Bible does not indicate what structures would be best to alleviate their plight.
The Bible’s view of justice is that every person is accountable to the Lord, so each must be careful in the way they live.
The Bible’s view of justice is that exploitation of the poor is sinful.
The Bible’s view of justice is that government is to create a tranquil life, punish wrongdoing, and protect people from violence.
What one cannot find in the Bible is an argument for wholesale wealth redistribution. What one can find is a command to give to the poor and protect them from exploitation.
Thesis 9:
We have not properly explained the nature of God, or of the Trinity leaving ourselves with a vision of God that is too easily coopted by political forces not necessarily friendly to the Gospel.
Thesis 9 requires a longer explanation that what can be provided here, but understanding the Trinity is essential for us. This is not because the doctrine is in any sense practical, but rather that the doctrine prevents us from abusing God’s good name.
Most explanations I hear of the Trinity are fallacious. They tend to fall into the heresy of Modalism—there is one God just in three forms. You hear this in the ice analogy where God is like steam, water, and ice. Another Modalist analogy is that God is like a man who is a father, a son, and a husband. I really recoil at these.
The other mistakes I hear fall into a Tritheist heresy. God is actually three different beings who happen to be in unity. Both Modalism and Tritheism are heresies to be rejected.
We should avoid analogies about the Trinity. All of them fail. All of them. If you are struggling with the doctrine of the Trinity, chances are you are struggling with the word “person.” That term does not currently mean what it meant when the great creeds of the faith were being worked out. That explanation, however, is in for a longer post.
Right now, it is enough to know that God is above us and beyond us. God’s nature, being unattainable to us reminds us of the way God introduced Himself to Moses. God said, “I am that I am.” That phrase is where we get the word YHWH. This God remains self-contained and self-controlled. Because God’s nature is so far above our ability to know, we should be very, very, very hesitant to enlist God’s support for our personal or political opinions. God will not be the patron saint of our petty causes. Using God as such is idolatrous.
Thesis 9.5
I miss the pre-Corona world.
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