Back with Hauerwas

Whew! That was quite a fast. I haven't blogged in about two months! It has actually been a great experience. But now I'm back and I have an overwhelming amount to talk about. However, time is tight this next week so my posts will be short and filled with links. To begin, here is a great article by a Christian ethicist discussing how Protestants should NOT celebrate Reformation Day.

It's a long one but it is worth every minute you spend on it.

29 October 1995

by Stanley Hauerwas

Joel 2:23-32 – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Luke 18:9-14

Wittenberg Door

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of — or perhaps better, because of — the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office — we Protestants often forget — is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshiping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend upon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are — and will know themselves to be — mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgment on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgments against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther — at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constituted by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church. Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

(Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School.)

Fasting

I truly enjoy my online connections.

I like blogging. I love reading blogs. I tweet. I Facebook.

While these activities have many benefits, they also have drawbacks. For one, no form of online communication is equal to face-to-face communication.

For the next two weeks I will be practicing the spiritual discipline of relationships. I am going to work at be more intentional in my face-to-face time with others. As part of this spiritual practice I will also be fasting from blogging, facebook, twitter, etc.

I'm sure I'll have some interesting thoughts to write about when I return.

Shalom,
Scott

iMonk the Roman Catholic?

Earlier today iMonk made the anouncement, "If I become Lutheran, Anglican, or Catholic, it will be because I watched this too many times." I agree with iMonk.




In the words of an Orthodox Bishop,

We do not gather for worship to be entertained, to be "relevant," or to "appeal" to this group's "taste" at the expense of the whole. While humans have the need to worship, worship must offer a glimpse of the divine, not an affirmation of humanity. Worship must always be seen as focused on God, period, and not on "me."

"Enjoyment" is not a goal of worship.

The Chicken or the Egg?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

This is meant to be an unanswerable philosophical question.*

I have noticed over the last several years that evangelical churches often fall into a trap which causes me to question, "Which came first, theology or programing?" Perhaps we could just ask, "Why do we do what we do at _______ Church?" This is an important question but you may want to steer clear of actually asking it out loud. Most of the time this puts pastors and leaders on the defensive. It makes them nervous because they don't often have the answer. That is a problem.

Disregard my caution, go ahead and try it sometime. After the next Gaither concert/car show/movie night go up to your pastor and question why the church is doing the event. 9 times out of 10 you will get some quiet mumbling about fellowship. It is not fellowship.

Then go on to ask how the church is helping to provide food, clothes, and other aid to those in your community who need it. If there is more mumbling or a, "we give money to _________" response then you will have discovered that your church has fallen into the "Which came first?" trap.

I hope you will find a kind response as your pastor excitedly tells you the theological reason for _______ activity/program.

On second thought, in order to avoid an uncomfortable situation, you should probably just ask yourself the following questions.


Is your church a community that values theological exploration?

Is asking questions seen as a wonderful aspect of spiritual growth?

Can ministry models, programs, staff structures, budgeting, etc., be questioned openly? Would doing so get you labeled as a dissenter, a trouble maker, or something even more marginalizing?

Are you comfortable asking why about anything and everything?

*Unless you are talking to a Fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist. Then the answer is easy! :)

Thinking About the Atonement

Tim Geddert recently wrote a fantastic article published both in Christian Leader and MB Herald which briefly discusses the major models of the atonement. Although the article is written to members of the Mennonite Brethren denomination and as such includes a few denominationaly specific statements, it is still a wonderful explanation of what it means to be in a state of "at-one-ment" with God through Jesus.

Thinking About The Atonement

Reflections on the atonement and the questions that perplex us

By Tim Geddert

Atonement is about “getting together again,” wiping the slate clean so that a relationship is restored. It is a tragic irony that conversations about Christ’s death and resurrection sometimes drive Christians apart. Unfortunately, where there are controversies there is often a great deal of miscommunication.

The Bible provides a rich diversity of images that help us grasp the great miracle of reconciliation with God that Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplish. What a tragedy when, in our attempts to be faithful to the Bible’s authority on this central aspect of our faith, we end up speaking past each other, shrinking the Bible’s teaching to one narrow theory or quickly charging people with unfaithfulness to Scripture just because we do not quite see eye to eye.

This article is my attempt to make sense of what is going on. I pray it will be helpful in clarifying our communication and moving us forward. It might even help us get together again.

What does atonement mean?
“Atonement,” both in the Bible and in theological discussion, has many facets. Yet the meaning of the word itself is pretty clear—it is about parties becoming “at one” (i.e., at-onement happens). The word is usually used to talk about restoring the relationship between God and people, and that is the focus of this discussion though the Bible also speaks of the restoration of all creation.

There are many aspects to a restored relationship with God, and as a result discussions about the atonement can become complicated. Theologians have put a great deal of effort into working out precisely how the death and resurrection of Jesus accomplish the atonement. Unfortunately, defenders of various views sometimes use the word atonement as though it means their view.

When I use the word atonement, it means simply “becoming reconciled with God.” Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection are not the atonement, they are the means of the atonement. Theories about how this all works are also not the atonement, they are simply our attempts to explain the atonement. What seems clear in Scripture is that there is more than one way to talk about what happens through the cross and Jesus’ resurrection.

What brings about atonement?
The Bible is very clear: Christ accomplishes the atonement and does so most centrally through his death and resurrection. On the basis of Christ’s salvation work, we can be reconciled to God. Even Old Testament saints were reconciled through Christ’s work, though they lived before it was accomplished and at a time when they could not have understood all this. Their reconciliation with God sometimes involved animal sacrifices and sometimes did not (e.g., Leviticus 4:26; Psalm 32:1-2; Isaiah 6:7).

In New Testament times we can also be reconciled with God without fully understanding how Christ’s finished works accomplish the atonement. We are called to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are clearly taught that Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Probing further, we find that the Bible gives us diverse responses and that theologians formulate diverse theories and doctrines.

What are atonement theories?
This may be oversimplified, but the main atonement theories that have been proposed throughout church history—including Mennonite history—can be differentiated like this:

• Ransom theories focus on the fact that humans (and the rest of creation) are enslaved to the wrong master until, through Jesus’ death, they are set free. The dominant image here is “manumission”—the act of setting slaves free. God ransomed Israel from Egyptian slavery and set them free. So also, through Jesus’ death, we are set free from slavery to sin and death. Some texts speak of Jesus buying us so that we can be made slaves of a new master, our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 7:23; Col. 1:13; 1 Tim. 2:6; Rev. 5:9).

• Combat theories focus on the fact that through Jesus’ death and resurrection God won the decisive victory over the evil powers: Sin (not merely my personal sins, but Sin as a power), Death and behind all of these, the Devil. The Latin expression Christus Victor is often used to speak of this (2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8). Some theologians combine these first two theories into one theory.

• Penal satisfaction theories focus on the penalty for sin that God’s righteousness demands and on the fact that Jesus took our place, satisfying God’s demand for justice (Isa. 53:5; Rom. 3:25; 5:9; 1 John 2:2). This is probably the most widely accepted theory among many conservative evangelicals today, but it has not been the most widely accepted theory by the church through much of its history.

• Moral influence theories focus on how Jesus, by willingly accepting even death as an expression of love, leads others also to choose a life of love and self-sacrifice in response (1 John 4:10,11,19).

Why pluralize “theories”?
Some readers will have noticed that I talk about “theories” in each of the four categories above. These are not four theories but four types of theories. Within each of them there are variations on a theme, sometimes even contradictory claims.

Ransom theories sometimes speculate on who was “paid off” to set us free from slavery. Did God pay Jesus to the devil? Did God trick the devil by taking the payment back again in the resurrection? Early church theologians often wisely stopped short of working out all the details—after all, it is an image, a metaphor, not an exact explanation of some salvation mechanism.

Combat theories sometimes focus mostly on the death of Jesus, emphasizing how Jesus exposed the futility and helplessness of the systems of evil and behind them, God’s ultimate enemy (cf. Col. 2:15). Others focus mostly on the resurrection as the place where Death and the ultimate Death-dealer, Satan, are decisively defeated.

Penal satisfaction theories emphasize God’s just demands and the dire consequences of rebelling against them. Jesus’ atoning sacrifice builds a bridge across the gap that our sin creates between humanity and God. Sometimes the focus is on how Jesus’ death covers our sin and changes us; sometimes it is on how Jesus’ death satisfies God’s honor and changes God’s disposition towards us.

Moral influence theories highlight the way Jesus served as a model of love, challenging us to learn to live up to that ideal. This view is inadequate as a theory of the atonement, and I will leave this category of atonement theories out of the rest of this discussion. Nevertheless, we throw out important biblical teaching if we do not emphasize the modeling function of Christ’s sacrificial death. Christ’s death was not only in our place; it was also a visible demonstration of how we also are to respond to others (1 Pet. 2:21).

In what sense is Jesus our substitute?
The Bible presents the atonement through Jesus’ death on the cross as a “substitutionary atonement.” When Jesus died for us, he died to take our place, to do what we could not do, to accomplish what we could not accomplish. Now this is the most important point I want to make: All the major atonement theories present Jesus as our substitute!

Ransom: We could not buy back our own freedom from slavery to sin and death, so Jesus paid the price and set us free—free to be Christ’s slaves. Jesus did what we could not do; in paying the price he was our substitute!

Conquest: We were too weak to defeat our enemies (and of course God’s); only God acting in and through Jesus could defeat the power of Sin and Death, could defeat the archenemy, Satan, and therefore deliver us from Satan’s dominion. Jesus did what we could not do; in overpowering the enemy, he was our substitute!

Penal Satisfaction: The penalty for sin is death; if we had needed to pay for our sins, death would have been our final fate. But Jesus paid the penalty for us; he became our substitute.

Why so confusing?

There are two reasons why all this gets confusing at times. First, many who prefer the penal satisfaction theory call it “substitutionary atonement.” That is very unfortunate, because in fact all three of the theories are about the atonement and all of them present Jesus as our substitute. To charge those who favor other theories over penal satisfaction with denying substitutionary atonement is just plain wrong.

Second, because some theologians defend only one theory and argue that only that one theory can be right, they typically highlight the positive aspects of their chosen theory and exaggerate problems with the ones they reject. That makes it very difficult for ordinary Bible readers to know who’s right. It is hard even to know what the main theories are because they are described so differently by supporters and by critics. Fighting tooth and nail for a theory obscures the fact that the Bible majors on images, symbols and narratives, while we split hairs over philosophical concepts and formulas.

Does the Bible favor penal satisfaction?
Those who favor the penal satisfaction theory often claim it is the central picture, the main story line, what really happened. Other images are not rejected but interpreted within the penal satisfaction framework. What I find in Scripture is a strong focus on all three major theories and references to many more symbols and images besides these.
Some respond, “But does the Bible not say over and over again, ‘Christ died for our sins’ implying penal satisfaction?”

The answer is that it does not. Most of the verses in the New Testament that say, “Christ died” end with something like “for the ungodly” or “for us” or “for all” or “for the brother” (e.g. Rom. 5:6,8; 2 Cor. 5:14; 1 Cor. 8:11). Only a few refer to sins, and when they do they sometimes explicitly define a theory of the atonement other than the penal satisfaction theory.

A clear example of this is Hebrews 9:15: “He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins.” Moreover the Old Testament sacrifice that is most closely associated with Jesus’ death on the cross is not the “sin offering;” it is the “Passover lamb.” And that sacrifice was not to atone for Israel’s sins; it was a substitute for the firstborn.

God accepted Israel’s Passover sacrifice and thus defeated their enemies (combat theory) and rescued them from slavery (ransom theory). Yes, Jesus died for our sins. But Jesus also died to defeat Sin, and Jesus died to set us free from Sin.

What really happened is that God accomplished the atonement through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is something like an innocent party paying a legal debt for the truly guilty, something like a victorious warrior defeating Sin and Death, something like a new master ransoming someone out of slavery. Out of these images and metaphors we construct theories and doctrines. But the theories and doctrines need to be responsive to all the biblical images and metaphors in order to offer a balanced statement of what God did through Christ.

Some suggest that the penal satisfaction theory must be the main theory, because Jesus’ death is portrayed as a sacrifice. But not nearly all sacrifices in the Bible have to do with removing sin. The Passover sacrifice was more about combat and liberation than about paying the penalty for sin. Some animal sacrifices were acts of thanksgiving and praise. Some were part of a cleansing ceremony. Some celebrated covenant making.

When sacrifices were about sin, the focus was on removing the sin or satisfying God’s justice more than it was on appeasing God’s wrath. Actually, outside the book of Hebrews, Jesus’ death is called a sacrifice very rarely: once in Romans 3:25 where a form of penal satisfaction may be in view, once in 1 Corinthians 5:7 where a ransom theory is implied and once in Ephesians 5:2 where neither theory is clearly present (compare Eph. 5:2 with Phil. 4:18).

What’s next?
So where do we go from here? We dialog about these things by trying to communicate as clearly as possible. We listen charitably to each other and refrain from crying heresy as soon as someone appears to reach conclusions we have questions about. We go back to the Bible and see what it says.

And if you ask me, we allow the Bible to use a variety of metaphors and images of the atonement. I think we are better off if we accept the best of all the theories than if we limit Scripture by pressing all its claims into our narrowly defined boxes. “Jesus died for us!” That is the main thing.

Want to know where to go for the best concise statement on the atonement that I can find anywhere? Go to the Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith, Article 5. Our denomination has adopted this statement, and it is a good one. It encourages us to accept the breadth and depth of the whole witness of Scripture to this central aspect of our faith.

Your Mission: "Resacramentalize Evangelicalism"

This post originally appeared on iMonk. Once I read it I knew I had to repost it here for all of you because it so wonderfully mirrors my some of my own thoughts. Please take the time to read this fantastic evaluation of evangelicalism.

The discussion about the atheist’s report of attending a Planetshaker’s worship experience could be repeated a thousand times a week here at IM, and has been in various forms down through the 8 year history of this site.

Our Irish Catholic friend Martha, not being familiar with American evangelicals, had an epiphany in the middle of the discussion that’s worth reprinting:

Now see, here is the part that makes my head spin.

And I don’t want to sound like a proselytizing Catholic who’s criticizing the non-Catholics, because that’s not my intent, and we’re just as bad in the other direction.

But I did have a real moment of cognitive dissonance (fancy term, heh?) when I tumbled to it that by “worship leader”, people meant the person in charge of the music.

I was going “But…but.. the pastor? minister? whatever you call the guy on the altar? okay, you don’t call it an altar, probably, but… but…”

And that’s the head-spinning bit for me. Prayer isn’t worship, listening to the Scriptures isn’t worship, the service of the Lord’s Supper/Communion isn’t worship.

Worship means singing along (or more like, reading some of these posts, sitting and listening) to sub-rock songs. Worship means having a band (an actual band, with drums and guitars) playing and a soloist warbling.

That’s worship? Or a rock concert for the formerly hip and the non-hip (amongst whom I’d include myself, so not sneering)?

Seriously, as an interested, fascinated, and rather frightened outsider, when did “worship = watered-down secular music” become the equation?

I informed Martha she had just come to the point of understanding the evangelical lamentation that goes on around here better than 90% of evangelicals. (I tried this out on my Facebook page and the response was quite different than the IM audience.)

Evangelicals have an issue with sacraments. Mention the word to them and they start fidgeting in their seats and thumbing their Bibles.

It’s an interesting historical story. A sacrament is something in the physical world that mediates or communicates the presence, power, promises and/or grace of God. Various Christian theologies approach the exact language and reality differently, but the essence of sacramentalism is that if X is present or Y is done, then God is somehow present and at work, no matter what else may be happening.

When Luther called for reformation in Rome (and when Rome later excommunicated him for his criticisms), Luther deserted almost none of his core Catholic sacramentalism, even though he rejected strongly the abuses associated with many of the church’s seven sacraments. His views on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were quite similar (not identical) to what Catholics believed. Luther reduced the sacraments to three. Anglicans and Presbyterians to two. All these reformation churches kept some version of pre-reformation sacramental thinking because it was Biblical.

For example, the reading/preaching of the Word is described in clearly sacramental ways in reformation theology. The announcement of forgiveness (absolution) is a sacrament for Lutherans. The arrangement of the church facility itself reflected sacramental thinking and an order connected to the presence of God.

Because of this kind of sacramentalism, reformation churches tended to want to simplify worship and to hold on to the prominence of the sacraments in worship without the distractions they believed had accumulated in Roman Catholicism. Sacramentally related aspects of worship itself were also prominent. This led to a distinctive way of thinking about who was the church, what was happening in gathered worship, when and how was God at work in the world and so forth. The font, the table/altar, the scriptures and the pulpit were the anchors of worship in reformation Christianity.

The evangelical movement (yes Lutherans, I know, but it’s too late) had a different view of sacraments. One can see it in movements as disparate as the radical reformers, the Puritans and the Methodists. By the time the evangelical movement is fully birthed in the Wesleyan revival and eventually in the frontier and Pentecostal awakenings in America, the new focus has become the present action of the Holy Spirit, but not tied to the sacraments. It is the emphasis on the present work of the Holy Spirit in ways that are powerful and effective, but much less predictable and consistent. The Spirit now was coming in relation to other factors: what was preached, how men prayed, the genuineness of desire for revival, the seriousness of repentance, etc.

Evangelicals now tend to view the reformation churches as “assuming” all kinds of things that may not be true. Listen to a modern evangelical describe what’s wrong with mainline churches: they are “dead.” The people are unconverted. God isn’t present. It’s all empty ritual. They need revival and a true visitation of the Spirit. This is evangelicalism evaluating its parent and finding her seriously wanting. Like all adolescents, we can hope for improvement with maturity.

Now I am an evangelical, and I believe that the present power of the Spirit is crucial. I believe religion can be dead, and it concerns me whenever there is not evidence of Jesus shaped fruit coming from people who claim to belong to Christ by baptism, etc. I believe much of the glory of the new covenant is exactly at the point of the Spirit doing, through the Gospel of Jesus, a transformative work so that Gospel-love for God and mercy for people is evident in lively ways. It concerns me deeply that the reformation churches often seem conflicted over what it means to be a “Great Commission” people beyond baptizing their own children. These are genuine evangelical concerns that I affirm.

But evangelicals are in sacramental chaos, and the results are quite obvious. Evangelicals are “re-sacramentalizing” in an uncritical and unbiblical way. The Planetshakers article was good evidence, but you can see and hear it everywhere.

What are our evangelical sacraments? Where will evangelicals defend the idea that “God is dependably at work?”

-We have sacramentalized technology.
-We have sacramentalized the pastor and other leaders.
-We have sacramentalized music. (i.e. the songs themselves and the experience of singing.)
-We have sacramentalized leaders of musical worship.
-We have sacramentalized events. (God is here!)
-We have sacramentalized the various forms of the altar call.
-We have sacramentalized the creation of an emotional reaction.

We’ve done all of this, amazingly, while de-emphasizing and theologically gutting baptism. (I’m not buying everyone’s baptismal theology here. I’m simply saying the standard approach now is nothing more than could be accomplished by having someone jump through a hoop.)

We’ve done this while reducing the Lord’s Supper to a relatively meaningless, optional recollection. (And being deeply suspicious of anyone making it more than a glorified sermon illustration.)

We’ve done this while removing any aspects of sacramentalism from our worship and even our architecture. (Public reading of scripture, hymns, tables/altars, baptisteries, pulpits.)

And we’ve given over to whomever wants to speak up the power to say what God is saying, what God is doing, what God is using, what God thinks of whatever we’re doing, what the Spirit is up to and so on.

For example, in the next three months, you can bet your remaining life savings that someone will tell us that God is NOW using church X or method Y or person Z because the official discernment squad said so. (And ditto for saying what God is not doing, who God is not using, etc. from the discernment squad on the other side of the street.)

What’s the answer?

We need to re-sacramentalize our worldview in its entirety. Go read some Anglicans or Catholics about that. We’re ridiculously secularist and modernist in so much of our thinking, and so selective and inconsistent in our idea of how God relates to physical things.

We need to reclaim sacramental thinking in the church and not be such knee jerk opponents of the idea that God dependably uses the physical, sensual rituals Jesus endorsed. We can still argue about the exact way these sacraments operate, but we need to approach preaching, the scriptures, baptism and the Lord’s Supper with a sense that God has committed himself to these things. Yes, faith is the response and No, I am not arguing in favor of everyone’s idea of efficacious sacraments. But many of us have evangelical roots that were far more friendly to the sacraments than we are. We should reclaim those roots and study them closely.

We should adopt a post-evangelical approach to seeing the resources of the broader, deeper, more ancient faith as connected to our own traditions. Again, read some Lutherans, Anglicans and Catholics. Understand that the history of Christianity didn’t start in 1969. See what’s been stored away in our past that we’ve overlooked. Especially read the older evangelical writings on the LS, Baptism and the actual theology and practice of gathered worship.

Find some way to slow down our commitment to pragmatism. Every discussion like this features several people who are leading worship in churches they believe have gone off the rails, and they don’t know how to stop the insane, rampant, “Big Picture/Big Noise” mentality. You just have to say, “we’re going to slow down and think. We’re going to have some theology of worship that evaluates rather than justifies what we’re doing.”

Go visit some reformation churches. Consider how the sacramentalism they’ve held on to could influence your own understanding of worship and the church and enhance your mission of creating/teaching disciples.

Don’t just imitate the latest thing, the latest technology or the latest worship guru. Boldly be a Biblically committed servant and leader. Simplify. Be God centered and God aware. Resacramentalize your own thinking and leadership.

Your mission, IM readers, is to “resacramentalize evangelicalism.”

Theo-Drama = Reading Barth in the Bath

This video is fantastic. Although it has something for everyone, the theology nerds that read this blog will love the Barth references as well as... well just watch.



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