*The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end. If your comment violates the rules stated there it will probably not be posted to this blog.*

*First read my first six posts in this series; they precede this blog post. They set forth my fundamental “principles” for living and thinking.

*Now continues a second part of this series; this series is about my reasons for being a Christian and for embracing a particular “brand” of Christianity called (as in the name of this blog) “evangelical Arminianism.” In order to understand this post you need to read the immediately preceding ones about my reasons for being an “evangelical” Christian.

9) My Third Reason for Embracing “Evangelical, Arminian Christianity”: “Arminian”

My immediately preceding post/essay explained why I am an evangelical Christian—both descriptively and prescriptively. Now, here, I turn to explanation of why I identify as an “Arminian evangelical Christian.” I have written about the meaning—to me—of “Arminian” here before, but perhaps I will now say something new that will enhance my explanation. So even if you have read me before on this topic, please consider reading this.

Again, as with “Christian” and “evangelical Christian,” Arminian is a label I (but not only I) use to describe what type of evangelical Christian I am. However, for me, anyway, it stands subordinate to “evangelical Christian.” So far as I know, and there may be exceptions I am not aware of, all true Arminians, all Arminians in the true historical-theological sense of the word, have been and are evangelical Christians in the broad sense I explained it in the two immediately preceding posts. For me, being “evangelical Christian” is much more important than being “Arminian.” However, in recent years especially, “Arminianism” has been so misrepresented and maligned by especially Calvinists—another type of evangelical Christians—that I have found it important to identify myself as such and use whatever influence I have—especially among evangelical Christians—to clarify its meaning. To explain it another way: Some years ago I realized that, at least among North American evangelical Christianity, especially among North American evangelical scholars and theologians, “evangelical Christianity” was being explained in a way that made so-called “Reformed theology,” including Calvinism, normative for authentic evangelical Christianity. Some evangelical theologians and historians were even going so far as to claim that Arminians could not be authentically, fully evangelical. That brought me “out of the closet,” so to speak, to defend my Arminian theology as fully, authentically evangelical and Christian.

A few examples of the phenomenon I am talking about that compelled me to defend my Arminian evangelical Christian heritage and theology may help readers understand my somewhat admittedly Quixotic campaign to defend Arminianism as equally evangelical and Christian (with Reformed/Calvinist theology). During my studies in a Baptist seminary I was informed by a professor that “Arminianism has historically led to liberal theology.” I knew that was not the case. I grew up among Arminian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. As I read and studied the history and theology of evangelical Christianity I found Jonathan Edwards being touted as the prototype—often to the complete exclusion of John Wesley. In 2003 a major news magazine published an article about the anniversary of Edwards’s birth without so much as a mention of Wesley who was born the same year (1703). I wrote a letter to the editor of that magazine mentioning the importance of Wesley to evangelical Christianity; it was published in the next issue. I noticed that the major trans-denominational evangelical organizations, seminaries, publishing houses, magazines, tended to favor Reformed/Calvinist evangelicalism. I definitely felt marginalized within late twentieth century and early twenty-first century North American evangelicalism’s centers of influence because I proudly wore my Arminian heritage “on my sleeve.” I was a contributing editor to Christianity Today, a major “voice” for evangelical Christians, when, in 2009 it celebrated the birth of John Calvin with an article about him in every issue. There was little to no mention of Arminius who died in 1609—in spite of the fact that I strongly suggested that CT publish at least some “nod” to Arminius and his influence that year.

I could go on and I have in earlier posts to this blog. I will finish by saying that my friend, church historian and theologian Donald W. Dayton, also an Arminian, raised this issue of the Reformed/Calvinist normativity in evangelical historiography and theology very perceptively and eloquently in Christian Scholar’s Review—a generically evangelical scholarly journal I edited from 1994 to 1999. Dayton argued for recognition of two paradigms of evangelicalism. He called them (as I now recall) the “Puritan Paradigm” and the “Pentecostal Paradigm,” but I came to call them the “Reformed Paradigm” and the “Arminian Paradigm.” The Reformed (Puritan-Presbyterian) paradigm was gradually pushing aside and ignoring the contributions of Arminian (Pietist-Pentecostal-Holiness) evangelical Christianity to the larger evangelical Christian ethos and movement.

There were several “straws” that broke this “camel’s back” and propelled me into a years-long campaign to rehabilitate Arminianism as a valid and important type of evangelical Christianity. One was when a very influential Reformed/Calvinist evangelical theologian publicly declared that Arminians can be “Christian, just barely.” Another was when an equally influential Reformed/Calvinist evangelical theologian publicly stated that one possible explanation for Arminianism among Christians is “demonic deception.” Both of those evangelical theologians, like many others, tended to equate Arminianism with Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism; they assumed that Arminians deny the priority of grace in salvation and subordinate it to the sinner’s free will. They and many others labeled Arminianism essentially “humanistic” or “man-centered.”

I have said here, in this series of posts and before, that I was born in the “thick” of North American evangelical Christianity. I well remember my father, an evangelical pastor, “marching” together with the whole city “Evangelical Ministerial Alliance” in a city-wide parade. Like all such city evangelical ministerial groups it included both Arminians and Calvinists. Our denomination was a charter member of the National Association of Evangelicals. A major transdenominational evangelical organization called Youth for Christ (Billy Graham was one of its evangelists in the 1940s and early 1950s) was an important part of my spiritual nurture. My family and church were deeply imbedded in it and it included both Arminians and Calvinists.

So, for newcomers to this blog, and for those who need a bit of review about these categories: What is Arminianism? (Here I will only talk about what Reformed church historian-theologian Alan P. F. Sell labeled “Arminianism of the heart.”) In a nutshell, Arminianism is Protestant Christian belief in total depravity (all are sinners and incapable by themselves, apart from God’s supernatural grace, of doing anything to be saved), conditional election (the “elect” are all who, enabled by God’s grace, freely choose God’s offer of salvation), universal atonement (Christ’s atoning death on the cross was for all people), and resistible grace (God’s generous offer of salvation, reconciliation with himself, through Jesus Christ can be resisted even by those God wants to save). In other words, Arminianism is belief in a generous, loving God who genuinely wants to save everyone, and has suffered and died in Jesus Christ for all people, and who, through the gospel, makes it possible for depraved, helpless sinners to say “yes” to his offer of reconciliation with himself. In other words, it is denial of the “U,” the “L,” and the “I” of the famous T.U.L.I.P. scheme of Calvinism. It is not Pelagianism, belief that sinners can save themselves by simply deciding to obey God’s law, and it is not semi-Pelagianism, belief that sinners are capable of initiating their own salvation by means of unaided free will.

For more information and understanding of classical Arminianism consult my book Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (InterVarsity Press). (I do not want to spend time describing in more detail here Arminianism. I have done that on my blog several times before and, if you do not want to read my book, at least use a search engine to find my previous blog posts expounding Arminianism and Arminian theology.)

So why am I an “Arminian evangelical Christian?” Why am I not Reformed-Calvinist?

First let me say that I consider most Reformed-Calvinist Christians as evangelical. There may be exceptions, but I have known many of them throughout my lifetime and find no reason to consider them “less evangelical” or “less Christian” than Arminians (or Lutherans—another subject I do not want to pursue here as I have done before). When I was growing up one wing of my large, extended family belong to the Christian Reformed Church; my cousins belonged to its youth group called “Young Calvinists.” We all got along just fine in spite of our disagreements about some matters of theology. I have had wonderful colleagues who were and are Calvinists; I have never insulted or demeaned their evangelical faith.

I was born into an Arminian form of evangelical Christianity and I have never found reason to “jump ship,” so to speak, into Reformed-Calvinist Christianity. I do not claim Arminianism is superior, even in terms of being “more evangelical” or “more Christian” than Arminianism. I simply think classical Calvinist theology is mistaken, even profoundly mistaken. Within it I find many problems of coherence (inconsistency) and it does not fit with my experience of God or myself. I find it to be a more problematic interpretation of the Bible than Arminianism. But I have explained all these reasons in Against Calvinism (Zondervan).

My most basic, fundamental reason for being Arminian rather than Calvinist (and those are the two main theological options among evangelical Christians—even where they do not call them by those names) is the character of God. I am not a humanist lover of free will; the only reason I believe in free will (or “freed will”—made free by God’s “prevenient grace”) is because I see it everywhere assumed in the Bible and without it God would be monstrous rather than loving (unless he saves everyone).

I often tell my students that both Calvinism and Arminianism have problems; there are mysteries deeply embedded within both views. I tell them that I can live with the problems and mysteries of Arminianism whereas I cannot live with the mysteries and problems of Calvinism. And, so far as I can see, and I have studied the matter in great depth and detail (I have shelves full of books about Reformed theology/Calvinism by noted Reformed/Calvinist theologians), whenever Calvinists attempt to “solve” the problems I see in their theology their Calvinism either becomes Arminianism (without that label) or they deepen the problems—at least for me.

I have no desire to create an Arminian hegemony of evangelical Christianity; I have said here, on my blog, and in my books that I “thank God for Reformed Christianity.” It has contributed much to my spiritual and theological life and work. My only concern has been to clear up misconceptions about Arminianism and point out the problems in Calvinism so that Calvinists or those inclined toward it can examine it carefully and critically.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me (or the guest writer). If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective, feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among especially evangelical Christians.

*The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end. If your comment violates the rules stated there it will probably not be posted here.*

*First read my first six posts in this series; they precede this blog post. They set forth my fundamental “principles” for living and thinking.

*Now continues a second part of this series; this series is about my reasons for being a Christian and for embracing a particular “brand” of Christianity called (as in the name of this blog) “evangelical Arminianism.” In order to understand this post you need to read the immediately preceding one about my reasons for being Christian.

8) My Second Reason for Embracing “Evangelical, Arminian Christianity”: “Evangelical”

My immediately preceding post/essay explained why I am a Christian—both descriptively and prescriptively. Now, here, I turn to explanation of why I identify as an “evangelical Christian.” I have written about the meaning—to me—of “evangelical” here before, but perhaps I will now say something new that will enhance my explanation. So even if you have read me before on this topic, please consider reading this.

Of course, especially in America today, “evangelical” is a much contested category and label. I care little for that controversy; it is created primarily by the popular media and even serious journalists have challenged the popular media’s misrepresentation of “evangelical” as a political category. Even if ninety-nine percent of people who call themselves evangelical should happen to also be vegetarians that would not make evangelicalism vegetarian. Evangelical is a spiritual-theological “type” of Christianity with a history and must be defined that way.

Again, descriptively, I was born into the “bosom” of evangelical Christianity. I have lived and worked within it my entire life with one relatively brief exception—my foray into “mainstream, liberal Protestantism” during my doctoral studies. Even then, however, I attended, as often as I could, an evangelical church on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. And I did my best to represent evangelical Christianity within the mainstream, liberal Protestant church and its denomination where I served as a minister.

Not only have I lived and worked within evangelical Christianity almost my entire life; I have also studied and written about it as a student and scholar. I have taught theology in three evangelical Christian institutions of higher education over thirty-five years.

But why do I remain “evangelical” when it is such a contested and widely misunderstood, even despised, category? Simply put—because I can think of no better label for the particular “brand” of Christianity I embrace.

Historically, evangelical Christianity is rooted in the spiritual awakenings among Protestants in Europe, Great Britain and North America in the early eighteenth century. These spiritual awakenings are called by various names but two representatives, prototypes of evangelical Christianity, stand out as especially signal: Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, both born in 1703. Together with others such as Count Zinzendorf in Germany and George Whitefield in England and the American colonies, they launched a worldwide spiritual renewal among especially Protestant Christians that emphasized the Bible as God’s inspired and life-transforming Word, conversion-regeneration by grace through faith as the gateway into a redeemed life, the cross of Jesus Christ as the only source of salvation, and the importance of Christian activism in missions, evangelism and social transformation. I consider any orthodox Christian, broadly defined, who embraces these hallmarks, these characteristics of “awakened Christianity,” to be an evangelical Christian—whether he or she uses that label or not.

So, moving on to prescriptive reasons why I embrace evangelical Christianity and identify myself with that ethos-brand of Christianity. I have had many opportunities to bid goodbye to evangelical Christianity. One of my most influential and persuasive spiritual-theological mentors during my doctoral studies was a convert from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. He gently invited me to join him on that journey and I half-heartedly considered it. What I mean is that I seriously looked into it without ever really intending to “make the leap.” I learned much from him and from my study of Eastern Orthodoxy that has greatly benefitted me spiritually and theologically. For example, I eventually adopted belief in theosis—“deification”—into my evangelical Christianity. However, I never was convinced that Eastern Orthodoxy is a more authentic type of Christianity than evangelical. (I have met some Eastern Orthodox Christians who I consider evangelical even though they might not appreciate me so labeling them.)

Eastern Orthodoxy is not the only alternative type of Christianity I have studied and closely encountered. As I mentioned earlier, I served for three years as a minister in a mainline, liberal Protestant church and its denomination. I studied theology with a German Lutheran theologian who I would not consider evangelical in the sense I described above. I have participated in Protestant-Catholic dialogues both in Germany and the United States. I have invited Catholic priests and theologians to speak to my classes in every institution where I have taught.

I have never discovered a non-evangelical type of Christianity that I found to be as authentically New Testament as evangelical Christianity. While evangelicalism has numerous faults and failings, especially in the ways individuals and groups express it, I find the historical-spiritual ethos of evangelicalism, broadly defined trans-denominationally, to be the type of Christianity closest to the New Testament gospel. That is not to say it has any corner on truth or spiritual power; it is only to say that no other type of Christianity has for me the “heartbeat” of primitive Christianity that I read about in the New Testament and that matters to me very much.

“Evangelical Christianity” itself comes in many “flavors” but all share the New Testament emphasis on the power of God at work transforming people’s lives by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Some evangelical Christian baptize infants; some only baptize believers. Some believe in the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible; some believe in dynamic inspiration and infallibility of the Bible. Some believe in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through supernatural “sign gifts” such as speaking in tongues; some believe such ceased with the last of the apostles and the completion of the canon of Scripture. I consider them all fellow evangelicals insofar as they embrace the New Testament gospel in its power and fullness as described above.

I do not believe evangelicals are “better Christians” solely by virtue of being evangelical; nor do I believe evangelicals have a corner on truth. There is truth in all types of Christianity. All contribute something meaningful and helpful to the body of Christ, the world wide community of people committed to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I do believe there are evangelical Christians in every denomination; no denomination has a “corner” on evangelical Christianity.

Still, and nevertheless, I find the “evangelical ethos” especially true to the New Testament and especially powerful in carrying forth the gospel of Jesus Christ. I apologize for my fellow evangelicals who give evangelical Christianity a bad name by being harsh, judgmental, overly dogmatic, mean-spirited and/or superior-minded. And I loudly decry the tendency of many self-proclaimed evangelicals to identify the gospel with a political ideology whether it be “right wing” or “left wing.” But I do not apologize for identifying with the gospel as preached by Edwards, Wesley, Whitefield, Zinzendorf and other leaders of the evangelical awakening of the early eighteenth century: “You can and must be born again in order to enter into God’s new order, the Kingdom of the heavens, now and in the future.”

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment solely to me (or the guest writer). If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective, feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among especially evangelical Christians.

Saving Hell

Now National Geographic has stepped into the evangelical debate about hell (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160513-theology-hell-history-christianity/) (I do not make URLs here hyperlinks because, for whatever reason, hyperlinks I include always lead to the wrong place. Please simply cut and paste the URL into a web browser to read the article “The Campaign to Eliminate Hell” at National Geographic’s web site.)

We have discussed hell here many times since the birth of this blog several years ago. I find the National Geographic article relatively accurate and helpful but missing two major alternative views—to the traditional one (“eternal conscious torment” of a quasi-physical nature in literal fire).

The alternative views mentioned in the National Geographic article are: 1) no hell (traditional universalism),  2) annihilationism/conditional immortality, and 3) eternal conscious torment without literal quasi-physical torture in literal fire (hell as hopeless absence from God’s grace).

So what are the two major alternative views missing from the article?

First, some Christians who believe in hell believe it is temporal, not eternal. These Christians may disagree about the precise nature of hell’s suffering, but they agree that it is some kind of suffering from which every person will eventually be freed. This is, of course, a kind of universalism. A prime example of someone who believes this is German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (who just turned 90 and is still active as a theologian). His universalism-with-hell view is clearly spelled out in his later works including especially The Spirit of Life and The Coming of God. For Moltmann, hell is actually purgatory but not Dante’s purgatory. Everyone in hell is there voluntarily for whatever duration they choose—until they finally give in and accept God’s loving mercy and go to heaven. As I have heard Moltmann say, “The story of God is never finished with anyone”—a German theologian’s way of saying that “the Hound of Heaven” will pursue every individual to the depths of hell until they want to leave.

Second, some Christians believe hell is eternal, at least so far as we know, but it’s “door is locked on the inside” (C. S. Lewis). This is the view depicted allegorically in C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Great Divorce and repeated (at least by suggestion or implication) in Rob Bell’s Love Wins. In this alternative view, hell is not divine punishment so much as divine provision—for those who would not want to live in heaven which includes worshiping God daily forever.

I have long espoused the “Lewis view” of hell and I call it “saving hell.”

Why does hell need saving? Well, obviously, what I mean is “saving hell from the traditional view described by Dante and Jonathan Edwards and others who depicted it as the result of God’s hate toward sinners and love of his own glory including justice. Hell needs to be saved from that traditionalist view—in which God consigns sinners to eternal conscious torment without hope out of vengeance and hate—because it portrays God as less loving than God calls us to be.

Yes, I know all the arguments against my view (which is, I am convinced, that of Lewis and Karl Barth and popularized by Bell). Traditionalists, especially in the conservative Lutheran and Reformed traditions (among Protestants), argue that hell is the result of God’s justice. I agree that it is, but God’s love and God’s justice cannot be so pitted against each other than the latter makes the former meaningless. God’s justice has to be loving and that means restorative in intention. Whether anyone in hell is ever restored to communion with God is, I think, speculative. Lewis certainly suggested it as a possibility in The Great Divorce. The main point, however, is that hell is God’s “painful refuge” provided for those who he knows would hate heaven.

Not long ago I was walking my dog in a large field near my home. It used to be a golf driving range; now it is unused. There I can let her off her leash, which she loves; she knows her boundaries and never strays into danger zones. Nobody else is there (or I don’t let her off her leash). The moment I let her off her leash that day she rushed to a small, usually vacant metal shed where the driving range, when it was active, kept its lawn mowing equipment. She sniffed around it in that distinctive way that signaled something unusual about it. She had never paid any attention to it before. So I walked around to the front of the shed, which was open, and glanced inside. There lay a man who was conscious and awake but obviously homeless and very inebriated. There were oversized beer cans strewn all around him on the dirt floor of the shed.

After I took my dog home I drove to the nearest fast food restaurant and purchased a gift card and took it to the man who thanked me. Then I called a friend who directs an organization that includes a men’s shelter where homeless men can stay if they are willing to go through detox (assuming they are inebriated). He suggested I ask the man in the shed if he is willing to go into detox and then live in the men’s shelter. When I went back to the shed the man was gone and I never saw him again.

During my phone conversation with my friend who directs the organization that includes a men’s shelter I learned that he personally knows of over a hundred men in this city of about one hundred thousand who live that way—roaming around town sleeping in temporary places (under bridges, in park shelters, in sheds, etc.)—and usually decline offers to go through detox and get help (a warm, dry place to sleep, counseling, job training, etc.). Nobody can make them go through the program; the police will only put them in a cell and then release them when they are sober. Within a month after my conversation with my friend, the local newspaper reported on two homeless men found dead in public places. Both apparently died of natural causes. This is a huge problem in our society—alcoholics and drug addicts who refuse help (even avoid it), live horribly miserable lives, and eventually die relatively young.

Many of those men and women have been offered help numerous times by many people and have refused it. When I looked at that man in his squalid “living conditions” I saw a picture of hell. Heaven is communion with God; a mature person cannot be forced into it. People in hell are those to whom God says “Not my will but thine be done.” They are like the people of Jerusalem over whom Jesus, God, wept and said “How I would have…but you would not.”

This is the only concept of hell that saves it. Does it have problems? As I have said here many times before, all theological concepts have problems. When Scripture is not as clear as I wish it where (which is often the case) I choose the theological concept that has the problems I can live with. I suppose that’s what my German theology professor Wolfhart Pannenberg meant when he said theology “guesswork.” I wouldn’t put it that way, but giving him the benefit of the doubt I assume he meant that when Scripture is not perfectly clear about something and we need a model of the reality about which we are concerned we embrace the one that makes the most sense overall. And for me, the main litmus test for that embracing (or not) is the character of God and the character of God is displayed for me in Jesus Christ.

Saving hell. This is how—the C. S. Lewis way. I wish more people knew about it. I have presented it to college and seminary students for years and most of them have said they never heard it before. Apparently the author of the National Geographic article hasn’t either.

Review of The Future of Evangelicalism in America: The Definitive Scholarly Examination of Contemporary American Evangelicalism

It’s been a long time coming and way overdue when it finally arrived. A week ago I received my complimentary copy of The Future of Evangelicalism in America edited by Candy Gunther Brown and Mark Silk and published by Columbia University Press (2016). I wrote my chapter entitled “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology” (pp. 92-123) in 2012! The editors are not to blame for the delay; that appears to have been due to the publisher. (And the delay between 2012 and 2016 does not seem to have affected the content as the editors updated statistics and other information that may have changed in the interim.)

This is a comprehensive scholarly examination of contemporary American evangelicalism including its history. The statistical information is partly based on the 2008 Trinity ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) funded by Lilly Endowment. According to that social-scientific survey, approximately 80 million Americans across most denominations (including non-denominational and “nones”) identify as evangelical and/or “born again.” I have my doubts about the reliability of all 80 million people’s awareness of and commitment to “born again Christianity” or “evangelical Christianity,” but the naked statistic itself is startling given the fact that far fewer would have identified that way decades ago.

Editor Candy Gunther Brown (Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University) claims that “Since the middle of the twentieth century evangelicalism has reemerged as the normative form of non-Catholic American Christianity, supplanting what is usually referred to as mainline Protestantism.” (1) The socio-scientific research behind the book and reported in it strongly supports that claim. At the same time, I must say, it seems to me the meaning of “evangelicalism” in this claim is extremely thin. As some of the authors admit, beginning in the 1970s when Time declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical” and a self-identified evangelical Baptist was elected president of the United States, being evangelical became popular. Increasingly, however, among those who are intensely committed to historical-theological-spiritual evangelicalism (as represented by Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley), self-identification as “evangelical” has begun to wax problematic. Many serious-minded evangelicals are backing away from the label as mega-church pastors like Joel Osteen are identified with it.

I must insert here that Brown’s claim is not absolutely new. Randall Balmer has been saying something similar since at least 1989 when his popular book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture of America was published by Oxford University Press. Balmer referred to evangelicalism as America’s “folk religion.” Both Brown and Balmer regard evangelical Christianity—defined as a spiritual-theological ethos—as having been America’s grassroots form of Christianity throughout most of the 19^th century. Both agree that it waned in importance and influence, if not numbers (or percentages) throughout the middle of the 20^th century. Both books examine evangelicalism’s “reemergence” to prominence during the last quarter of the 20^th century.

Here are the chapters in The Future of Evangelicalism in America: Introduction by Brown (a brilliant essay opening the book and previewing it), “American Evangelicalism: Character, Function, and Trajectories of Change” by Michael S. Hamilton, “Sound, Style, Substance: New Directions in Evangelical Spirituality” by Chris R. Armstrong, “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology,” by Roger E. Olson, “Evangelicals, Politics, and Public Policy: Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the Future” by Amy E. Black, “The Changing Face of Evangelicalism” by Timothy Tseng, and “Conclusion” by Brown.

Virtually every facet of contemporary American evangelicalism is covered in these chapters—from fundamentalist roots to cultural accommodation, from strict doctrinal and moral boundaries to increasing pluralism, from mostly middle class white identity to cultural-ethnic diversity, from cohesion to fragmentation, from mostly Baptist to increasing “pentecostalization.” One unifying theme of the book, based on social-scientific research, is increasing diversity among evangelicals.

One tension within the book is fully recognized and acknowledged by its authors—that between 80 million Americans’ self-identification as “born again” and/or “evangelical” and the widely accepted scholarly identification of the evangelical movement with the National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today, Inc. and the Billy Graham ministries and historians David Bebbington’s and Mark Noll’s “evangelical quadrilateral.” The latter includes, of course, “biblicism,” “conversionism,” “crucicentrism,” and “activism” as markers of the evangelical ethos. These traditional scholarly “markers” of American evangelical identity do not seem especially important to the 80 million grassroots evangelicals.

Another unifying theme of the book is hope for American evangelicalism’s future. Every chapter except one expresses optimism about American evangelicalism’s future. The exception is “The Emerging Divide in Evangelical Theology” by pessimist (or realist) Roger E. Olson who regards American evangelical theology hopelessly divided.

This is an expensive book, but it is well worth the price. (And I say that as one chapter’s author who has no prospects of any financial gain from its sales; I’ve already been paid all that I will be paid for it.) Although it is scholarly, it is not esoteric. Anyone with a college degree (or working on one) will find its chapters accessible. The main difference between this book and the numerous others recently published on the same subject (viz., “American evangelicalism”) is its basis in social-scientific research.

In my opinion, Candy Gunther Brown’s “Conclusion” is worth the price of the book. It is a substantial interpretive summary of the book’s findings supplemented by Brown’s own insights. Hoping to avoid treading on copyright, I will offer a fairly lengthy quotation to give you a “taste” of the Conclusion:

As of 2016 American evangelicalism can be characterized by its biblicism, nondenominationalism, magnetic leadership, selective adaptation to popular culture, pentecostalization, globalization, ethnic diversification, political realignment, and general change. (204) … As American public opinion on sexual practices shifted, younger evangelicals became more likely to interpret sex outside of marriage and same-sex marriage as consistent with biblical principles. If younger evangelicals can read their Bibles in a way that reverses traditional evangelical views of issues that the Bible appears to address directly, it seems unclear how much the biblical text itself will matter to biblical justifications the rising generations use to authorize adaptations to American culture. (204-205)

This is just a taste of this trenchant “Conclusion” to the book. One cannot read this book without concluding two things: 1) Today’s “evangelicalism” is not your grandfather’s or grandmother’s “evangelicalism”—although some continuity exists–, and 2) Contemporary American “grassroots” evangelicalism is strikingly adaptable to culture—as opposed to being countercultural or culture-transforming. The latter point is both positive and negative. For example, Tseng helpfully points out the increasing ethnic-cultural diversity of American evangelicalism. That’s positive; evangelicalism can adapt to and absorb racial-ethnic-cultural diversity. At the same time, however, on the negative side, without any strong, central leadership such as Billy Graham once provided, the American evangelical movement tends to become endlessly adaptable to the winds of changing culture to the detriment of its own identity.

John Piper Does It Again: My Response to “The Self-centeredness of Arminianism”

For those of you who are new to this blog or have missed reading my earlier messages here about John Piper and his many anti-Arminian messages (both in writing and in talks), let me catch you up briefly. (If you are already aware of this history or have no interest in it, please skip down to paragraph 9 below.)  I have known John Piper “from a distance” for a very long time. I first met him personally in the early 1980s when he was teaching at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was there to visit a faculty friend with an “eye” toward joining that faculty at some point in the future. My friend was a professor of theology in the college (not the seminary) and was my former professor—as a “visiting professor”—at North American Baptist Seminary (now Sioux Falls Seminary) in South Dakota. My Bethel faculty friend, who was also hoping I could eventually join the Bethel faculty, showed me around the campus and introduced me to several professors including John Piper. I had read Piper’s article about “Christian Hedonism” in HIS magazine and so was glad to meet him even though I had certain qualms about that concept. At that time Piper was little known outside Bethel College and Seminary.

My Bethel professor friend, however, knew a lot about Piper and his spiritual-theological journey and spoke highly of him then. He had been chair of the Biblical and Theological Studies Department (BTS Dept.) and had been instrumental in Piper’s coming to teach at Bethel. In 1984 my dream of teaching theology at Bethel came true; I was called and hired after a rigorous interviewing process that including much talk about “biblical inerrancy.” Bethel then considered itself a centrist evangelical institution. Millard Erickson was a professor of theology at the seminary. The college and seminary were one institution under one president at one board of regents or trustees and controlled by the Baptist General Conference—a non-fundamentalist, non-cessationist broadly evangelical denomination that I knew very well. During my many interviews I expressed concern about the BGC’s and Bethel’s Statement of Faith because it included language about the Bible being without error in the original autographs. I did not consider myself an “inerrantist” and asked everyone involved in the hiring process what “without error” means in the Statement of Faith I was being asked to sign. My Bethel theology professor friend showed me a two page, single-spaced explanation of “inerrancy” written by John Piper specifically for Bethel when he was interviewing there several years earlier. It basically said that “biblical inerrancy” means “perfection with respect to purpose.” With that I could whole heartedly agree. So, with that understanding, I was brought onto the Bethel faculty and taught theology there (mostly in the college, occasionally in the seminary) for fifteen mostly wonderful years.

During those fifteen years from 1984 to 1999 John Piper pastored nearby Bethlehem Baptist Church. I don’t recall exactly when he resigned from the Bethel faculty, but it was before I arrived in 1984. He built that BGC related church up; many Bethel students flocked to hear him preach there. They often came back telling me that Piper was preaching a version of Calvinism inspired by Jonathan Edwards, his theological hero. Throughout those fifteen years many mostly male students began to look to Piper not only as their pastor (many of them never joined his church but only attended it) but as a kind of Christian mentor—even if they never met him personally. A habit developed among the Bethel faculty of calling those students “Piper Cubs.”

I was not particularly concerned because one reason I joined the Bethel community and then the BGC was that they both embraced Calvinists and Arminians equally. During my interviewing process I did nothing to hide my Arminianism and freely told everyone that I considered myself Arminian. That was fine, I was told, because the BGC and Bethel had always allowed both. The Statement of Faith did not require or exclude either one.

The first red flag appeared the day a devoted male Piper Cub came to my office after class and said “I’m sorry to say this, Dr. Olson, but you are not a Christian.” I kindly asked him why he would say that and he responded “Because you’re not a Calvinist.” I asked him where he ever got the idea that only Calvinists are Christians and he said “From my pastor, John Piper.” Years later, during a two hour heated conversation over lunch, the inquisition I have written about here before, Piper claimed he never said that non-Calvinists could not be Christians. I told him about the student and he laughed, saying that the student, whom he knew well, must have misunderstood him.

I left Bethel in 1999 partly because of John Piper. Bethel and the BGC were then in the midst of a very heated, very divisive controversy about open theism. My colleague Greg Boyd was actually tried for heresy on campus. He and his theology of open theism were exonerated and found by the jury, on which I sat, to be “within evangelical boundaries.” That only added fuel to the fire raging among BGC pastors and greater pressure came down on not only Greg but on me for defending him and his theology as not heretical.

It was clear to me then that John Piper was at the center of that controversy—at least within the BGC and Bethel. He told me to my face that he would not try to get me fired merely for being Arminian, as much as he did not like Arminianism, but that he would get me fired for defending open theism as an “evangelical option.”

After that meeting Piper and I exchanged many letters and e-mails. I read many of his books as they were published. I listened to many of his talks on tape and then watched many of his podcasts on the web. I believed I was noticing a harsher tone toward Arminianism. Students who heard him speak at Passion conferences and other places began to ask me about Piper and especially about his Calvinism. And, as they knew I am Arminian, many of them have asked me over the past seventeen years—since I left Bethel and the BGC partly to escape Piper’s influence—about what they perceive as Piper’s misrepresentations of Arminianism.

That was one reason I wrote Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (InterVarsity Press)—to correct misunderstandings and misrepresentations of true Arminianism. I made sure Piper received a copy. My main point in that book was that real Arminianism is not primarily about free will; it is primarily about the character of God. Using many quotations from Arminius himself and leading Arminian theologians since 1609 (when Arminius died) I demonstrated conclusively that true Arminianism is not obsessed with humanistic belief in free will; it is obsessed with God as revealed in Jesus Christ as loving and good and wanting all people to be saved. I have gone to great lengths there and here and in recorded talks later put up on the web to emphasize and prove that Arminianism is not what John Piper and other (mostly Calvinist) critics say it is. I have practically begged them to stop misrepresenting it as “human-centered love of free will and self-determination.”

Recently someone pointed me to yet another Piper blast against Arminianism entitled on Youtube “John Piper – The Self-centeredness of Arminianism.” It was posted to Youtube on May 19 last year (2015). So, reluctantly and with a heavy heart, I watched and listened as, once again, Piper misrepresented Arminianism.

If you watch and listen to this twelve minute clip of what must have been a longer talk, you will notice that nowhere in it (as I recall) does Piper actually say that Arminianism is “self-centered,” but someone at Desiring God Ministries (that put the clip on Youtube) interpreted it that way. I have no doubt Piper does as well. But I want to point out several things about Piper’s approach to the whole subject in this brief video clip. First of all, he ridicules Arminianism indirectly, but I’m sure the audience gets the point, by referring to himself before his own conversion to Calvinism. He was, he says, a “flaming free willer.” There can be no doubt that that is how he views Arminians—in spite of everything I have demonstrated from Arminian texts. As a lifelong Arminian I can confidently say that I have never been a “flaming free willer.” I have believed in and defended what I call “freed will” because I believe it is everywhere assumed in Scripture and without it the only alternative is divine determinism in which God monstrously (to me) “designed, ordains and governs” (Piper’s own words) every horror of human history including the fall and all its consequences including the Holocaust and hell.

In this talk Piper focuses primarily on his claim that Arminianism starts with philosophy and then rejects portions of the Bible that do not agree with a preconceived philosophy of free will. He also emphasizes that Arminians, not Calvinists, are uncomfortable with mystery and therefore cannot simply accept the paradoxes (my word for what he clearly meant) in the Bible. The message is clear: Calvinists believe whatever the Bible says and Arminians don’t. Arminians don’t, he suggests, because they place philosophy over the Bible as having greater authority.

The only evidence Piper offers for this in that talk is a second-hand account of an unnamed “evangelical philosopher” who allegedly teaches at an evangelical seminary. Someone e-mailed or texted Piper an account of a conversation with said unnamed Arminian philosopher. He reads that person’s account of his or her conversation from his cell phone. Basically, the person tells Piper that he or she heard the unnamed Arminian philosopher baldly say that the Bible is on Calvinism’s side but philosophy is on Arminianism’s side. I have to doubt that that is what the unnamed Arminian evangelical philosopher actually said. I suspect that the philosopher’s message lost a lot in the translation. I know that happens from hard experience of people misrepresenting things I said to others.

The implication of the anecdotal report is that Arminianism prefers philosophy to the Bible. Nowhere does Piper mention the many biblical passages Arminians have always relied on or how Calvinists twist and turn simple biblical passages such as John 3:16-17 to fit their systematic theology.

I believe Piper’s accusation can just as easily be turned around and used against his Calvinism: The starting point is not the Bible but a nominalistic/voluntaristic idea of God in which, in order to be God God must be all-determining.

However, while I think there is some truth in that regarding some Reformed theologians (clearly in the case of Zwingli, for example), I will not use that argument here. Here is what I will say—much to the chagrin of many Calvinists and Arminians alike: The Bible can be interpreted either way, both ways. I do not accuse Calvinists of “dishonoring the Bible” as I have heard many Calvinists say about Arminians. I can see how Calvinism (except “limited atonement”) can be derived from Scripture. I think it’s a mistaken interpretation; I think sound exegesis is on the Arminian side, but I do not say Calvinists place philosophy over the Bible or cannot be good exegetes. What I say is that if you are going to interpret the Bible that way—viz., as teaching double predestination, God as designing, ordaining and governing (rendering certain) all that happens including the fall and the Holocaust and hell itself including who will be there selected individually without free will “in the picture,”—you must swallow the “picture” of a monstrous God who gets glory out of the torturing of children and the eternal torment of people created in his own image and likeness predestined to that eternal torture without their free will decisions or choices.

I tell my students that when the Bible is not as clear as we wish it were, which is often the case (I’m not a fundamentalist), the way “forward” when you must move toward a doctrine about which the Bible is not perfectly clear you must look at all the options rooted in Scripture, good biblical exegesis, and choose the one that has the consequences you can live with. Then I tell them that there is nothing in the universe more important than that God is good in some meaningful way and not a moral monster completely unlike Jesus who wept over Jerusalem because he wanted them to embrace him but they would not.

I have heard all the objections to this approach, but they all come from a fundamentalist approach to the Bible deeply colored by a systematic theology launched first by Augustine, then promoted by the magisterial Reformers, then taught by Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge. No Christian before Augustine believed in unconditional individual election to hell or irresistible grace.

These Calvinist attacks on Arminianism are shameless and unworthy of Christian gentlemen and scholars. So much has been published in recent years about true Arminianism that anyone who continues to misrepresent it as Pelagian or semi-Pelagian or even “humanistic” or “man-centered” or “self-centered” or preferring philosophy to the Bible—is simply bearing false witness against his or her brothers and sisters in Christ. Or else he or she is ignorant. I don’t want to believe either about John Piper; I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But on what would that be based? He’s a scholar; he reads biblical and theological literature voraciously. He’s brilliant and articulate. I personally explained true Arminianism to him face-to-face. I sent him a copy of my book. So I do not believe he is ignorant. What’s left to think?

I delivered this talk at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama as part of the annual Holley-Hull Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 7. (The other lectures were at Samford University.)

A Relational View of God’s Sovereignty

Roger E. Olson

My office phone rang and I answered it. A stern voice said “Is this Roger Olson?” who which I confessed. The man introduced himself as pastor of Baptist church in the state, implying that he was a constituent of the seminary where I teach. Anyway, I got the message. “I hear you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty,” he declared. I responded “Oh, really? What do you mean by ‘God’s sovereignty’?” He said “You, know. God is in control of everything.” I decided to play with him a little. “Oh, so you believe God caused the holocaust and every other evil event in human history? That God is the author of sin and evil?” There was a long pause. Then he said “Well, no.” “Then do you believe in God’s sovereignty?” I asked. He mumbled something about just wanting to “make sure” and hung up.

My experience, based on teaching Christian theology in churches and three Christian universities over thirty-one years, is that many, perhaps most, Christians don’t know what they mean when they talk about “God’s sovereignty”—beyond “God is in control.” My concern has been to help Christians think reflectively about God’s sovereignty and arrive at beliefs about it that are biblically sound and intelligible.

My own view of God’s sovereignty is what I call “relational.” I believe in God’s “relational sovereignty.” What I want to do here, today, is explain what I mean by that and invite you to consider it as an alternative to the view of God’s sovereignty currently enjoying great popularity—the Augustinian-Calvinist view that I call, for lack of any more descriptive term, “divine determinism.” It could rightly be called “non-relational sovereignty.” Thousands of Christian young people are adopting it, often without critically reflecting on what it implies and without knowing any alternatives to it.

I identify with a different movement in contemporary theology called “Relational Theology” or “Relational Theism.” There’s no single “guru” of the movement and it’s not nearly as popular or easy to identify and describe. But it also has biblical roots and historical precedents.

In 2012 thirty theologians, nearly all self-identified evangelicals, wrote chapters in a book entitled Relational Theology: A Contemporary Introduction edited by Brint Montgomery, Thomas Jay Oord, and Karen Winslow. It was published by Point Loma Press, an imprint of Wipf and Stock publishers. The volume covers many issues of Christian theology and practice from a “relational point of view.”

It’s an excellent little book and I can recommend it highly as an introduction to contemporary Relational Theology—especially that segment of it that is evangelical. Most of the authors, maybe all of them, are Wesleyans in the evangelical tradition (or evangelicals in the Wesleyan tradition). However, one weakness I find in the book is the lack of a chapter on God’s sovereignty from a relational perspective. That is a gap I hope to fill here.

Everyone familiar with current religious movements knows about the “Young, Restless, Reformed” movement led by John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Louie Giglio (among others). Some call its theology “neo-Calvinism.” It’s actually a contemporary form of the theology of Jonathan Edwards, John Piper’s favorite theologian. Anyone who has studied Edwards or Piper knows they have a distinctive view of God’s sovereignty. It’s enjoying great popularity, especially among twenty-something Christians. According to it, whatever happens is planned, ordained and governed by God. Another way of saying that is that God foreordains and renders certain everything that happens without exception. As John Piper has said, according to his view, if a dirty bomb were to land in downtown Minneapolis, that would be from God.

Many people simply believe this view is what is meant by “God’s sovereignty” and anything else is a denial of God’s sovereignty. If God is not the all-determining reality, then he is not sovereign. Or, as Reformed theologian R. C. Sproul likes to say, if there is one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God. Or, as British Calvinist Paul Helm says, not only every atom and molecule but also every thought and intention is under the control of God.

My purpose today is not to expound this wildly popular view of God’s sovereignty or spend a lot of time critiquing it. I will do both briefly. My purpose is to expound and defend an alternative perspective on God’s sovereignty that I believe is more appealing—biblically, rationally and experientially. And it has historical appeal as well, even if it has been throughout much of Christian history a “minority report,” so to speak.

At risk of over simplifying, I will argue that there are three main views of God’s sovereignty in Christian theology. That is to say, in spite of many variations, all views tend to “come home” to one of these. Think of them as large tents under which people with different interpretations of them gather, talk, and debate. They are divine determinism, relational theism, and mediating views. The third, “mediating views,” have much in common with each other and so represent a single over-arching view even if they emphasize singular points differently.

I begin with divine determinism which I actually began describing above. According to all versions of it, all events are traceable back to God who controls history down to every detail according to a blueprint. God has never taken a risk. God micromanages history and individuals’ lives. Nothing surprises God. Nothing can happen that is contrary to God’s will.

Now, of course, there are many versions of divine determinism. Hardly any advocate of that view likes my label for it. Sproul, for example, adamantly rejects “determinism” as a descriptor of his view. However, a quick look at any major English dictionary will reveal why it’s a fair descriptor. By whatever means, even if through “secondary causes,” God determines what will happen and that determination is as Helm says “fine grained.” Nothing at all escapes it.

Some proponents of divine determinism make use of something called “middle knowledge” to attempt to reconcile it with free will. Others reject that tactic. Some attempt to define free will compatibilistically, that is as simply doing what you want to do even if you could not do otherwise. Others reject free will altogether. Some admit that this view makes God the author of sin and evil; others adamantly reject that, appealing to God’s permission rather than authorship of sin and evil. However, when pressed, they say that God’s permission of sin and evil is “effectual permission.” In any case, God still plans and renders them certain.

The second view of God’s sovereignty, the one I plan to expound here, is relational theism. Oord, one of the editors and authors of Relational Theology, defines it this way: “At its core, relational theology affirms two key ideas: 1. God affects creatures in various ways. Instead of being aloof and detached, God is active and involved in relationship with others. God relates to us, and that makes an essential difference. 2. Creatures affect God in various ways. While God’s nature is unchanging, creatures influence the loving and living Creator of the universe. We relate to God, and creation makes a difference to God.” (p. 2) Another author, Barry Callen, says of relational theism (or theology) that it focuses on “the interactivity or mutuality of the God-human relationship. God is understood to be truly personal, loving, and not manipulative. The interaction of the wills of Creator and creature are real.” (p. 7)

Relational theism or theology comes in many varieties, some of them quite incompatible at points. All share in common, however, belief that creatures can and do actually affect God. The relationship between creatures, especially human persons, and God is two-way. God is, as Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof said, the “defenseless superior power” within a genuine covenant relationship with us whose immutability is not impervious to influence but “changeable faithfulness.” According to relational theism, the God-human relationship is reciprocal, mutual, interactive. God is not Aristotle’s “Thought thinking Itself” or Aquinas’ “Pure Actuality” without potentiality. Rather, God is Pinnock’s “Most Moved Mover”—the superior power who allows creatures to resist him and becomes vulnerable and open to harm as well as joy.

One of the best descriptions of relational theism, I believe, is found in Thomas Torrance’s little book Space, Time, and Incarnation:

The world…is made open to God through its intersection in the axis of Creation-Incarnation. … But what of the same relationship the other way round, in the openness of God for the world that He has made? Does the intersection of His reality with our this-worldly reality in Jesus Christ mean anything for God? We have noted already that it means that space and time are affirmed as real for God in the actuality of His relations with us, which binds us to space and time, so that neither we nor God can contract out of them. Does this not mean that God has so opened Himself to our world that our this-worldly experiences have import for Him in such a way, for example, that we must think of Him as taking our hurt and pain into Himself? (p. 74)

In sum, then, relational theology or theism is any view that imports the creation into the life of God so that God is in some way dependent on it for the whole or part of his experience. The implications of this for a view of God’s sovereignty are enormous and take it away from divine determinism. As I will be spending the second half of this talk exploring this view of sovereignty I’ll settle now for what I have said about relational theism in general.

The third main Christian view of God’s sovereignty is what I call, for lack of a better term, mediating. These are views that attempt to combine, usually with some appeal to paradox, divine determinism with relational theism. An excellent example is the late evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch. Throughout his career Bloesch boldly expressed and defended the paradoxical nature of Christianity following Kierkegaard and Barth. In his book The Evangelical Renaissance he declared that

God knows the course of the future and the fulfillment of the future, but this must not be taken to mean that He literally knows every single event even before it happens. It means that He knows every alternative and the way in which His children may well respond to the decisions that confront them. The plan of God is predetermined, but the way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the free cooperation of His subjects. This does not detract from His omnipotence, for it means that He is so powerful that He is willing to attain His objectives by allowing a certain room for freedom of action on the part of man. (p. 53)

This may sound relational or deterministic and Bloesch reveled in that ambiguity. “The plan of God is predetermined” is deterministic; “The way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the…cooperation of His subjects” is relational.

I think that many theologians and non-theologically trained Christians alike tend to embrace a kind of ambiguous, paradoxical view of God’s sovereignty. I often hear the same person say “Oh, well, God knows what he’s doing” and “People have free will, you know” in different circumstances—the former to comfort in grief and the latter to get God off the hook when evil raises its ugly head.

Relational theology or theism lends itself to a particular view of God’s sovereignty that is neither deterministic nor paradoxical. Divine determinism of any type cannot explain how God is good in any meaningful sense or how people are responsible for the evil they do. Mediating theology, theologies of paradox, cannot explain the consistency of God’s comprehensive, meticulous providence with genuine free will and prayer playing a role in the outworking of God’s plan. Relational sovereignty, which is what I will call the view of God’s sovereignty derived from relational theism, seeks and finds consistency and flexibility.

What I want to outline for you and recommend to you is a non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty. It is not rooted in process theology which, while relational, detracts too much from God’s transcendence. Process theology is one form of relational theology, but not all relational theology is process. Process theology denies God’s omnipotence which is its main failing. From that flow other flaws such as its denial of any eschatological resolution to the struggles of history and eventual end to evil and innocent suffering. Process theology, in my opinion, sacrifices too much of the biblical portrait of God and, in the process, robs us of hope for the world. It is right in much of what it affirms but wrong in much of what it denies. It rightly affirms God’s vulnerability and the partial openness of the future; it wrongly denies God’s power to intervene in human affairs to rescue, heal and defeat evil.

No doubt some critics will regard my own non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty as an unstable middle ground between divine determinism and process theology. I hope to show that it is not unstable or incoherent and preserves the best of both of those alternative perspectives while avoiding their fatal flaws.

Rather than focusing on proof texts of Scripture or philosophies, this relational view of God’s sovereignty arises out of and is justified by a synoptic, canonical, holistic vision of God drawn from the biblical narrative. Obviously I do not have time now even to summarize “narrative theology,” but I will mention a few of its major points.

Narrative theology regards stories and symbols as vehicles of truth. The Bible contains propositions, but it is not primarily a book of propositions. It is primarily a book of stories and symbols from which propositions can be drawn. The Bible is the story of one great “theodrama.” Its purpose is to identify God for us and transform us. Transformation is its first and highest purpose though it does also contain information.

Narrative theology refuses to treat the Bible as a “not-yet-systematized systematic theology” which is how I believe too much conservative evangelical theology treats it. No system can replace the Bible which always has new light to reveal and more truth into which to guide us.

Narrative theology resists too much philosophical speculation into matters beyond our possible experience and beyond the biblical narrative which is not about God-in-himself but about God-with-us. Narrative theology resists metaphysical compliments paid to God that cannot rest on the portrayal of God in his own story.

Finally, narrative theology insists on taking the whole biblical story into account when theology attempts to derive truth about God.

A relational view of God’s sovereignty begins not with philosophical a prioris such as “God is by definition the being greater than which none can be conceived” or “If there’s one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God” but with God as the personal, loving, self-involving, passionate, relational Yahweh of Israel and Father of Jesus Christ.

This God is not aloof or self-sufficient in himself or impassible. His deity, as Barth taught us, is no prison. And as Jürgen Moltmann has taught us, his death on the cross is not a contradiction of his deity but the most profound revelation of it. And that because this God is love.

Does this all mean that God needs us? Not at all. This God could have lived forever satisfied with the communal love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but he chose to become vulnerable in relation to the world he created out of the overflowing of that love. Is that just a metaphysical compliment unnecessarily paid to God or a truth necessary to the biblical story of God with us? I would argue it is the latter. A God who literally needs the world is a pathetic God hardly worthy of worship.

The key insight for a non-process relational view of God’s sovereignty is that God is sovereign over his sovereignty. The missio dei is God’s choice to involve himself intimately with the world so as to be affected by it. That choice is rooted in God’s love and desire for reciprocal love freely offered by his human creatures. None of this detracts in any way from God’s sovereignty because God is sovereign over his sovereignty. To say that God can’t be vulnerable, can’t limit himself, can’t restrain his power to make room for other powers, is, ironically, to deny God’s sovereignty.

Allow me to use the words of Torrance again to express this view of God and God’s sovereignty. Contrary to classical theism,

If God is merely impassible He has not made room for Himself in our agonied existence, and if He is merely immutable He has neither place nor time for frail evanescent creatures in His unchanging existence. But the God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as sharing our lot is the God who is really free to make Himself poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich, the God invariant in love but not impassible, constant in faithfulness but not immutable. (p. 75)

There is a doctrine of God’s sovereignty subtly included in those phrases about God’s vulnerability. Torrance’s vulnerable God cannot be the all-determining reality of classical theism and Calvinism. Such a God has not really made room for us in his existence, his life, whatever certain neo-Calvinists might say. Rather, the God of Torrance and relational theism is the God who makes himself partially dependent on his human partners so that our history becomes his, too.

What does that mean, then, for God’s sovereignty? First, the relational God of the biblical story is not, to quote Baptist theologian E. Frank Tupper, a “do anything, anytime, anywhere kind of God.” (A Scandalous Providence, p. 335 ) Second, however, the relational God of the biblical story is a powerful God who lures, persuades, cajoles and occasionally overrides the wills of people. He is the “superior defenseless power” in the covenant relationship he has established with us.

I argue that such a view of God’s sovereignty, one that sees God as truly relational with us, that views us as genuine partners with and sometimes against God, can support and give impetus to commitment to participation in the mission of God. The picture of God as invulnerable, static, unmoved, all-determining derived from much traditional Reformed theology, for example, undermines participation in the mission of God towards God’s kingdom because it makes our participation with God superfluous. We are then seen as pawns rather than knights.

Am I, then, advocating so-called “open theism?” Not necessarily, although I think that’s far superior to classical theism in many ways. Relational theism and its attendant view of God’s sovereignty are larger than just open theism which is one form of relational theism. The view I have outlined here goes back at least to German mediating theologian I. A. Dorner in the middle of the 19^th century who helped Protestant theology complete the Reformation by reconstructing the doctrine of God inherited and left virtually untouched by the Reformers. According to Dorner, God is historical with us and we are created co-creators of history with God. Listen to Dorner after he has expressed his view of God’s ethical immutability in which he changes in relation to creatures, not in his nature but in his “thoughts and his will”:

To be sure, God does not hand over the reins of government to the faithful; but neither does he want to make them automatons [robots], beings resigned to a determined will. From the very beginning, he has preferred to give his friends a joint knowledge of what he wills to do…and to deal historico-temporally through them as his instruments, which as personalities may co-determine his will and counsel. (Quoted in Claude Welch, God and Incarnation, p. 116)

This is, so far as I have discovered, the best brief theological expression of a truly relational view of God’s sovereignty that I have found in Christian thought. The only correction I would offer is to the use of the word “instruments” for created personalities that “co-determine” God’s will and counsel. To contemporary ears, anyway, “instruments” sounds like “pawns” which is clearly not what Dorner intended.

Finally, in sum, then, a relational view of God’s sovereignty is one that regards God’s will as settled in terms of the intentions of his character but open and flexible in terms of the ways in which he acts because he allows himself to be acted upon. Only such a view of God’s sovereignty does justice to the whole of the biblical drama, to God as personal, to human persons as responsible actors and potential partners with God in God’s mission.

Whatever Happened to the Christian Mind?

Yes, I know, this has been asked before—numerous times and by many Christian philosophers and theologians. A relatively recent classic on the subject is Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994). Francis Schaeffer, especially in his early works, decried Christian anti-intellectualism. Recently a friend sent me this statement by A. W. Tozer, an evangelical preacher and writer of a previous generation (than mine or my parents):

“There is, unfortunately, a feeling in some quarters today that there is something innately wrong about learning, and that to be spiritual one must also be stupid. This tacit philosophy has given us in the last half century a new cult within the confines of orthodoxy; I call it the Cult of Ignorance. It equates learning with unbelief and spirituality with ignorance, and, according to it, never the twain shall meet. This is reflected in a wretchedly inferior religious literature, a slap-happy type of religious meeting, and a grade of Christian song so low as to be positively embarrassing.”

Recently I’ve been re-reading an old book I read many years ago—Hardness of Heart by Edmond Cherbonnier (who, by the way, is still alive at age 97!). The book is a study of the Christian doctrine of sin but begins with a scathing critique of relativism. Cherbonnier scorns the fact that some Christians cannot detect blatant paganism when they encounter it. (One example he gives in this book from the 1950s is an annual Easter performance of Wagner’s “Parsifal” routinely recommended even by some Christians as a “Christian-themed opera.”)

I absolutely hate to come across as a hyper-critical, “old-school,” Christian curmudgeon, but I have so often overheard Christians talking about Christian themes in movies, plays, novels, and other elements of popular culture that I groan inwardly. I remember well in high school being taught by my wonderful English literature teachers that any fictional character with the initials “J.C.” was a “Christ figure.” Whatever happened to discernment?

Just because a piece of popular culture, or even a classic, deals with perennial issues of human existence such as sin and salvation, life’s ultimate concerns, does not make it “Christian-themed.” But I digress…

I grew up in one of the most anti-intellectual of all Christian denominations, and yet…at least my spiritual mentors, for all their faults, emphasized what Hans Frei called allowing the Bible to “absorb the world.” (Or maybe that phrase was coined by Frei’s colleague George Lindbeck to describe Frei’s idea of the Christian mind in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.) From childhood I was trained to “see” the world “as” God’s world and to think about all reality in relation to the Bible’s story of God, creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Sure, there was a lot of confusion mixed in there, but the basic idea was to practice what James Sire called “discipleship of the mind.” After I extricated myself from fundamentalism I still found that to be an essential element of Christian living. Sadly, for too many Christians, it is not.

The problem is not just one of ignorance as in “not knowing facts.” That’s bad enough. Too many Christians, including conservative-evangelical Christians, don’t even know the Bible. How many can even find a book, chapter and verse in the Bible without being told the “page number in the pew Bible?” No, the larger problem is confusion of the Christian story with other stories. We live in a pluralistic culture and I celebrate that. But I also celebrate Christians in this pluralistic culture knowing and understanding their own story—the story of God and us told in the Bible. Unfortunately, many Christians know popular culture better. I know many Christians who saw the 1998 movie “What Dreams May Come” starring Robin Williams and thought it was a “beautiful depiction of life after death.” In fact, its depiction of life after death was a mish-mash of beliefs with no coherence and little to no concurrence with the Bible’s view.

Too many Christians today are so afraid of being called “fundamentalist” or “fanatic” that they flee from memorizing Scripture or learning doctrine, to say nothing of daring to call something parading as “Christian” false. And they not only see no value in, but positively avoid, forming a coherent Christian worldview in conversation with the great minds of Christian history: Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, Richard Hooker, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, Walter Rauschenbusch, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Carl Henry, Stanley Hauerwas.

I have taught Christian theology for thirty-four years at three Christian universities and spoken in many Christian institutions of higher learning and churches. I have met many wonderful Christians determined to practice “discipleship of the mind,” to develop a biblical-Christian worldview and see the world through that lens. But I have also met many who simply don’t care, who think being Christian is emulating Jesus in terms of being a nice person. Even some Christian professors spout ideas they learned in graduate school that absolutely conflict with basic Christianity. And they don’t seem to worry about it when it’s pointed out to them. More often than not, pointing it out to them gets one labeled a member of the “evangelical thought police.”

When I taught Christian theology (mostly historical theology) at an evangelical Christian liberal arts college there was a strong emphasis on “integration of faith and learning.” And yet some of my faculty colleagues resisted the idea. Some ridiculed it. And some responded with benign neglect. I will never forget being taught in a faculty workshop led by a Communications professor that “If they haven’t learned, you haven’t taught.” Besides being simply stupid, that maxim is biblically false—however widely believed it may be by Communications and Education experts. It falls into conflict with the biblical-Christian doctrine of sin. I’m not talking about any specific doctrine of sin; I’m talking about the Bible’s teaching that we are all prone to willful ignorance—especially in spiritual matters. What I wanted to stand up and ask my colleague and the others in that workshop was “What about Jesus?” Nothing could possibly be clearer than that he taught and many of his listeners didn’t learn.

I’m not pointing the finger at one person or discipline; I’m using that as one example out of numerous possible ones. Another colleague, a computer science professor, told me he views God as a great “cosmic computer.” Another colleague, a social scientist admitted that he does not believe in miracles or anything supernatural. An anthropology professor told me there is no trans-cultural gospel. I could go on and on. (These examples are drawn from all three of the Christian universities in which I have taught.)

We live in a Christian subculture in America (I won’t speak for others) that has fallen into gross ignorance of basic Christian philosophy, metaphysics, worldview. We do not train ourselves or our young people to “see” the world “as”—God’s good but broken creation. Most Christians’ minds are a confused mess of ideas drawn more from popular culture than Scripture or Christian tradition. The evidence is near total lack of critical discernment with regard to popular culture and messages labeled “spiritual,” “moral,” even “Christian.” For the most part, unfortunately, only fundamentalists care about clear cut Christian ideas and critical discernment toward popular culture and messages labeled “religious” or “spiritual.” We moderates care about ethics and spirituality, but not doctrine or worldview. Christianity, we say, is a “way of life” but not a way of thinking. Is it any wonder we adopt naturalism and New Age ideas? Some of us are more interested in the Enneagram than the Nicene Creed!

Recently I was told in public that the problem I point to is the result of deviation from biblical inerrancy. Nonsense and balderdash. (For a counter example see Scottish theologian James Orr’s outstanding classic The Christian View of God and the World [Eerdmans, 1954]. Orr did not believe in biblical inerrancy but was a great Christian thinker nonetheless.) Unless “biblical inerrancy” just means belief that the Bible is the unique, inspired, and authoritative Word of God. But I know many Christians who would gladly confess belief in even the strictest sense of “biblical inerrancy” and still revel in willful ignorance, anti-intellectualism, gullibility and rejection of clear Christian thinking. The underlying problem is cultural populism and anti-intellectualism invading the churches. We have, as Tozer suggested, dumbed Christianity down to near emptiness.

The solution is simple. Go back and start over. Wipe away the last quarter to half century of sole emphasis on “practical Christianity” to the exclusion of Christian discernment. Start teaching children the Bible, not just “Bible stories.” Return to memorizing key portions of the Bible and singing songs and hymns with meaningful lyrics. Teach everyone that God expects us to worship him with our minds, not just our feelings. Institute catechism classes. Gently but firmly correct church members who protest that “All our ideas about God are equal.” Re-invigorate the idea that biblical-theological education is a must for pastoral leaders and that sermons ought to teach as well as inspire. Encourage “life groups” to study Christian books that teach and stretch the mind. Invite theologians and biblical scholars to speak in the church and (pastors) urge the people to attend. A few years ago I visited a church where the pastor routinely devoted ten to fifteen minutes of the Sunday morning worship service to a mini-talk by a visiting and invited Christian scholar. It’s a beginning.

Christianity in America has by-and-large been reduced to folk religion. A folk religion is a spirituality divorced from tradition and critical thinking. It thrives on clichés, evangelegends, and feelings (mostly of comfort). It lacks intellectual rigor, concern for coherence (among beliefs), thrives on spiritual stimulation devoid of discernment, and regards everyone as an “expert” in his or her own spirituality. The result is a loss of credibility and influence and, tragically, eventually of the gospel itself.