Redefining salvation

...along with a bunch of other words. An attempt to rethink some core aspects of evangelical faith.

Imaginary regular readers of this blog (hello to my wife) may have noticed a bit of a chip on my shoulder about evangelical Christianity recently. I must be fair and acknowledge that there are many wonderful evangelicals, much that is good about evangelicalism, and much that is valuable that I've learnt from it. And I must also note that it has many and varied manifestations and not all my criticisms apply equally to all types of evangelical faith. And finally, there is much wrong with other streams and types of Christian belief - I just don't know so much about them.

I suppose the reason for my criticisms is that I have struggled to fit within mainstream evangelicalism for the past 15 years and have increasingly found that I'm not in accord with some of its core doctrines, priorities and methods - scriptural inerrancy, penal substitionary atonement, particular methods of evangelism etc. Rather than jettisoning the whole thing though, I'm trying to find ways of redefining the faith that work for me.

In the next post or two, I want to look at some key terms held dear by evangelicals and defined by them in very specific ways, and see if I can come up with re-definitions that fit better - for me at least. In no particular order...

1. Evangelicals

Evangelical definition: Proper Christians, who believe God's Word and the doctrines contained in it; who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour by faith through grace; who believe and preach the Gospel of Christ, and aspire to a life of personal holiness, good works and mission. They hold particular doctrines as of central importance - inerrancy and centrality of Scripture; the absolute Sovereignty of God; utter depravity of humans; penal substitionary atonement; exclusivity of Christ as the way to God; future judgement and hell for non-believers. Particular views of God, church, mission etc are also implied.

Re-definition: A particular type of Christian, but neither the only valid variety nor necessarily the best. Strong on theology, doctrine, teaching and a particular style of mission/evangelism, but often weak on creativity, beauty, contemplation, mystery and social justice. Negative tendencies include literalism/fundamentalism, puritanism and pharisaism, dogmatism, and over-formulaic approaches to life and faith.

2. Liberals

Evangelical definition: The opposite of evangelicals; often seen as the enemies of true Christianity. Liberals are wishy-washy and half-saved at best; they don't really believe anything, don't take the Bible literally, have lax morality and have compromised with the world.

Re-definition: As 'liber' means 'free', the positive meaning of liberal is one who has embraced the freedom of Christ and eschewed or shed the straitjacketing doctrinal rigidity of many brands of evangelical orthodoxy. Liberals are often much stronger than evangelicals on love, creativity and social justice. I've said in a previous post that I'm starting to see myself as an Evangelical Liberal.

3. The Bible

Evangelical definition: Holy Scripture; God's Word - eternal, inerrant, all-sufficient and self-interpreting, and from which can be mined doctrines to be believed, commands to be obeyed and promises to be claimed. The Bible is the believer's supreme guide and authority in life and in all matters of faith, morality, doctrine etc. If the Bible says something, it is to be taken literally if possible and to be accepted without criticism. Though notionally valuing all parts of scripture equally, evangelicals tend to place particular emphasis on the theological and doctrinal letters of Paul.

Re-definition: The Bible is a complex, multi-genre library of texts arising from the community of faith and their unfolding relationship with God. It can be seen as 'breathed' through its human authors by God, who continues to breathe afresh through the texts, bringing out new meanings, interpretations and emphases. The Bible is therefore not a fixed, static stone tablet but a living, breathing, dynamic text to be ongoingly engaged and wrestled with. Nor is it inerrant or 'perfect' in a modern historical or scientific sense; but it is nonetheless chosen and used by God for his purposes. Many non-evangelicals prefer to see the Bible as 'the Witness to the Word' rather than 'the Word of God', a title they (and the Bible) reserve for Jesus.

4. Truth

Evangelical definition: Correct ('sound') Christian doctrine as read from the Bible and expounded in propositional, expository preaching. Christian Truth is absolute, eternally fixed and unchanging. It is the opposite of error and false doctrine. Other forms of Christianity are generally deemed to have less of the truth than evangelicalism.

Re-definition: Jesus alone is the Truth - the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Truth is therefore not primarily propositional or doctrinal, but personal (the person of Christ) and relational. It is also not necessarily simple, systematic and fixed, but rather dynamic, paradoxical and often deeply counter-intuitive.

In the next post: Redefining the Gospel, evangelism, mission, grace, holiness...

Many ways to one God? (part 1)

A friend of mine has a saying, 'There are many mountains in the Himalayas and all of them point to God'. To a lot of Christians this just sounds like new-agey fluffiness - after all, didn't Jesus say 'I am the way... no-one comes to the Father except through me'? And some will understandably feel that if other ways did lead to God, then what on earth was the point of all the hassle of being a Christian - though this would perhaps miss the point somewhat.

While I can't perhaps go as far as my friend in believing that all roads lead ultimately to God, nor that all people will eventually be redeemed - though I do hope for that - I have moved quite a distance in that direction. I have reason to hope that many who do not know or consciously profess Christ will find themselves in God's Kingdom; and conversely I suspect that many who call themselves Christian will find their place among the chosen less guaranteed than they imagined.

Does this mean I'm becoming a wishy-washy anything-goes so-called liberal? Perhaps, but I don't believe so. Rather I'm trying to take Jesus' own words and character very seriously and not shoehorn them into watertight doctrines that don't actually hold water.

The Way, the Truth and the Life

In the next post I want to look at more of what the Bible has to say on the subject but let's start with 'I am the way, the truth and the life'. To my mind it's quite possible to interpret this verse in a way that's far from the standard 'only Christians go to heaven' version.

Yes, Jesus is the Way, but it is possible to follow a way without knowing its name or having been shown it on a map. All who, led by the Spirit, follow the true way are indeed following Jesus whether they know it or not. Similarly, Jesus is the Truth and the Truth is Jesus, so anyone who seeks the truth is surely seeking Jesus whether they realise it or not. And Jesus is the Life, but life whether spiritual or biological is a pretty mysterious thing, and those who have it may not exactly understand what it is or how they came by it.

So Jesus can truly say 'No-one comes to the Father except by me', for all who do come to the Father by whatever route will find - perhaps to their surprise - that they came in truth through Christ.

One of my favourite passages in C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories comes towards the end of The Last Battle. The young Calormene Emeth, a lifelong devotee of the pagan demon-god Tash, finds himself to his great surprise in the Narnian heaven. Aslan the Christ-Lion explains to him:

"Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me… For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him…

But I [Emeth] said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

This to me is the crux. Those who seek truth, goodness, beauty, justice and mercy will find it, for they are truly seeking God.

Love

We in the modern western church make much of right belief in a correct creed, and of following particular steps that will guarantee us a place in God's kingdom. But authentic Christian faith is not mere intellectual assent to right theories about God and salvation, nor following a five-step programme to eternal life. True belief is about who we are in the deepest place, and about the actions and attitudes towards God and other people that flow from that.

So the greatest command is simply - and almost impossibly - to love: to love God with all our heart, mind and strength; to love our fellow humans as ourselves. Those who seek to follow this law are, as Jesus said, not far from the kingdom, whatever theologies they do or don't profess. And conversely those who have not love, though they perform great miracles, are not actually on the Way of Christ at all.

My own view then is that Christ's presence and activity are not limited to those within the Christian church, and that he is often present incognito in other faiths and none. For wherever there is goodness, truth, love, kindness, honesty, generosity, compassion, or mercy, there at least to some degree is Christ. Even if all paths do not lead to him, in his grace he often chooses to meet us on whatever path we happen to be on.

Stages of faith

Faith - like life - is a journey of growth, development, becoming. There are a number of clearly discernible phases or stages to the faith journey which mirror the stages of human psychological development from infant to adult. I think this is a really important subject because so many intra / interdenominational battles and misunderstandings stem merely from people being on different stages of their journeys.

Actually, it doesn't have to be faith - these stages can apply to any ideology or worldview, including atheism. Whole countries and cultures can also exhibit these stages - for example, a revolutionary culture is at 'stage 3' as described below.

Again, this is sadly not my idea - I think M. Scott Peck came up with it, but I like reinventing the wheel - it lets me think things out for myself. So where my version differs from his, I'm sure his is right.

Stage 1 - blissful/chaotic
This equates to the baby/infant stage of development. In faith terms, this is the 'childlike' new convert - often full of blissful excitement and joy (and occasionally deep despair), and with tremendous faith, but with little understanding and responsibility and few limits. In terms of faith streams, this seems to relate most closely to the charismatic/pentecostal. In butterfly life-cycle terms, this is the newly-emerged caterpillar.

Stage 2 - fundamentalist
This equates to the toddler/child stage of development. At this stage there is a need for strict limits and consequences, and a strong sense of binaries of right/wrong, true/false, in/out, us/them, black/white. The fundamentalist stage is characterised by a degree of rigidity, dogmatism, legalism, exclusivity and literal-mindedness.

In terms of faith streams, this stage often goes with - but is not limited to - evangelicalism, particularly the more extreme end. In butterfly terms, this is the confining pupa/chrysalis. It's a vital if not always appealing stage of development, and those who are going through it deserve more tolerance than they often receive (or give).

It's worth noting that it's perfectly possible to be a fundamentalist atheist. It's also possible to be a mild and fluffy fundy - not all who hold strong and strict beliefs are intolerant bigots by any means.

Stage 3 - rebellious
This equates to the adolescent/teenage stage of development, where there is a need to rebel, to break free, to question and challenge all the rules, beliefs and authorities that were previously accepted on trust. This stage can be characterised by tremendous idealism but also violent iconoclasm, sometimes with a total rejection of earlier beliefs. People entering this phase can behave like new (anti-)converts, zealously opposing the faith they previously held. Often the stricter and more rigid the preceding fundamentalism, the stronger the rebellion against it - those whose 'stage 2' was milder and more open are less likely to turn their backs on it so violently.

In faith streams, this stage probably relates most closely to the activist / social justice stream. It also often relates to the liberal end of the fundamentalist/liberal polarity, in stark contrast to stage 2. In butterfly terms, this is the breaking out from the pupa.

Stage 4 - settled sceptic
This equates to the emerging adult phase, where rebellious adolescent idealisms gradually give way to a more reasonable, settled scepticism. At this stage there may be a gradual return of faith for those who have lost it, but it will usually be to a steadier, more rational and tolerant kind of faith.

This stage may relate to the milder, more moderate forms of evangelicalism and sacramentalism. In the butterfly life-cycle, this is the period of resting and drying of wings before taking flight.

Stage 5 - mature mystic/contemplative
This is the stage of mature adulthood, and in faith terms it is marked by a deepening of faith but often in a more open and mystical, less dogmatic and doctrinal form, less wedded to certainties and correct interpretations. In some ways it can look a little like the unboundaried childish faith of stage 1, but now it is because the boundaries have been fully internalised and can now be transcended. This is the butterfly taking flight.

The transition to stage 5 is, I think, often marked by the 'long dark night of the soul' experience, a period of darkness, doubt, discontent, even near despair before the dawn of a new and deeper faith.

People in stages 1 and 2 are apt to think that those in stages 3 and 4 have lost or compromised their faith. Though this may be true, in most cases they are simply at a different stage of the faith journey.

A few more points about the 'stages'. Firstly, it's quite common to miss out stages in development, though I think it's preferable to go through all the stages. It's also quite possible to remain stuck in a stage for many years or even the whole of life. Secondly, we can actually be in different stages at the same time but in different areas of our life - so I may be in stage 2 in my attitudes to sexual morality, at stage 3 in my prayer life, and stage 4 in my attitude to money. Thirdly, we may need to repeat some or all of the earlier stages again later. It's quite possible to slip back from stage 5 to stage 4 or even 2, and then have to go through part of the process again.

And finally, development never ends in this life.

Streams of faith

I'm writing here about the Christian faith because that's my experience, but it may well apply to other faiths too.

There are a number of 'streams', pathways or expressions of faith within the Christian tradition, and each of these has a valuable contribution to make to the whole. (I believe Richard Foster's Streams of Living Water covers this subject really well, but as it's a bit chunky and I'm a bit lazy, I've not got round to reading it. :-)

Stream	Key part of human being	Key part of Bible	Emphases / focuses
Contemplative/ mystical	Soul/spirit, heart; (emotions)	John's gospel/letters; mystical prophets (Ezekiel)	'Prayer of the heart'; finding God in stillness, silence, solitude and in nature, art, music; meditation, contemplation of the divine; creativity/poetry
Charismatic/ pentecostal	Emotions (joy), spirit	Acts; miraculous elements in gospels / Old Testament	Being filled with the Holy Spirit; manifestations/gifts of the Spirit - prophecy, tongues, healing etc; power, miracles, signs and wonders; spiritual warfare and deliverance
Sacramental/ ceremonial	Body - senses; soul	O.T. ceremonies (Exodus, Kings)	Tradition, ritual, liturgy, ceremony, order, sacrament, iconography, hierarchy, saints
Evangelical	Mind, will	Whole Bible; Paul's letters	'Sola Scriptura', Bible as all-sufficient Word of God; 'correct' doctrine/theology (e.g. of atonement); need for personal salvation through faith in Christ; discipleship and personal morality; importance of preaching, teaching and missionary work (evangelism)
Activist / social justice	Emotions - compassion; Body - action	Luke's gospel; Matthew 25; prophets of justice (Amos, Isaiah)	'Social' gospel - justice for poor, liberation for oppressed, care for environment; political activism, usually left-wing

I think Foster identifies others; and I've included creative/poetic within the contemplative stream but some would see it as separate.

Each stream or pathway has something good to contribute to the whole; each also has its weaknesses and dangers, particularly in over-emphasising its own focuses to the exclusion of the others.

The streams are - can and should be - complementary, not mutually exclusive. They also often overlap - it's perfectly possible to be a charismatic evangelical, a sacramental contemplative or an evangelical activist. (It's more difficult to be a sacramental evangelical or a contemplative activist, but maybe not impossible.)

Similarly, some of the streams tend to be particularly associated with certain church denominations - e.g. Baptists tend to be evangelical, Orthodox and Catholics to be sacramental; pentecostals tend to have their own groupings like the Assemblies of God.

It's easy to look on people from a different stream as odd, or plain wrong. It would be great if we could instead see them as different in a good way, offering us fresh approaches and insights into our shared faith.

Polarities

As well as the streams, there are also the extremes or polarities - most notably the fundamentalist/liberal spectrum. Extreme fundamentalism tends to be characterised by over-rigidity and narrowness - scriptural literalism, doctrinal dogmatism, narrow exclusivism, strict moralism and often judgemental legalism. Fundamentalism is usually associated most with the evangelical stream, and least with the mystical.

Extreme liberalism in contrast is so broad and inclusive that it often loses any distinctive Christian character; often there is very little doctrine and little or no belief in God, the supernatural, miracles or the divine inspiration of the Bible.

Another polarity is that between logical/rational and emotional/intuitive/symbolic - basically left and right brain. Again, evangelicalism usually tends towards the rational end; contemplative and sacramental streams towards the intuitive/symbolic.

I susect then that people often gravitate towards a particular stream of faith (and therefore to a particular denomination) mainly because of their own personality type, and also upbringing. And also perhaps to do with what stage they are at on their faith journey, which I'll look at in my next post...

The Evangelical Liberal

A glance at my birthday books wishlist reveals quite a bit about where I am on my faith journey... titles include 'The Christian Agnostic', 'The Orthodox Heretic' and (appropriately given those two) 'Paradoxy'.

Let me reassure (or disappoint) anyone concerned - I'm not losing my Christian faith. In fact, I'd say that my faith in Christ and love for God were stronger and deeper now than they've ever been. But I feel that I'm emerging, slowly and cautiously, from the confining chrysalis of my years of evangelical doctrine, literalism and legalism ('oughtism'), into the fresh air and light of a new way of being Christian. It's a way that owes much to the contemplative and mystical streams of Christianity.

Chrysalises are good and necessary, but they are only meant for a time - they are a stage on the journey. However, growth and even metamorphosis does not have to mean turning your back on the past, rejecting what nurtured you. I'm not cutting off my evangelical roots; I'm quite happily remaining within the charismatic-evangelical Anglican church I've been part of for 16 years. Nor am I turning theologically ultra-liberal, jettisoning belief in God or miracles, the uniqueness and divinity of Christ or the reality of the resurrection.

Rather I would say I'm simply becoming more open in my beliefs and in my ways of believing; less hung up on right answers, sound doctrines, 'correct' ways of interpreting the Bible; more open to insights from other traditions and even other faiths; more open and honest about the flaws and inconsistencies in my own tradition, and about my own real doubts and struggles. I'm becoming less wedded to certainty and more open to mystery. I'm giving up my obsession with facts, proofs and systems of theology in favour of divine paradox, which I increasingly see as the creative core of living Christian faith.

I'm even open to the possibility that Christ may be present and active incognito in and through other faiths than my own. (I'm not saying that all ways equally lead to God, but that God can and does make himself known to those following other ways than mainstream Christianity.) I think my overriding sense is simply that God is greater, bigger and more than I've yet understood him - and than I will ever be able to understand.

So for now I'm happy to be agnostic about parts of my faith - agnostic merely means not knowing, and who but God can claim - or need - to know everything? And even 'heretic' comes originally from a Greek word merely meaning 'to choose' or 'to take'. Peter Rollins (author of 'The Orthodox Heretic') suggests that true orthodoxy is not so much about believing the right things, as believing in the right way - the way of love; the way of Christ.

Meanwhile it looks like all the best titles have been used so for now my own (imaginary) book will be called 'The Evangelical Liberal'. After all, 'libera' refers to freedom, and 'evangel' to the good news of Christ, and I can't find much fault with either of those.

Why the New Atheists don't get it

It seems to me that the New Atheists - Dawkins, Atkins, Hitchens, and all their other friends whose names disappointingly don't rhyme so well - are no longer classic atheists but anti-theists. Their perfectly reasonable not-believing has transmogrified into a largely irrational positive (or negative?) anti-belief, and they actively and aggressively seek to stamp out belief in God and the supernatural.

The New Atheists are brilliant, best-selling and highly entertaining, but I believe they completely and unfailingly miss the point at all levels. Here's a starter list of why - I'll try and unpack each in later posts if I get time.

• Dawkins & co utterly fail to understand the religious concepts of 'faith' and 'mystery', mistakenly equating the former with blind belief in the face of evidence and the latter with obfuscation and a reluctance to explore or investigate. No thinking Christian would accept these definitions - I'll need another post to explore what we do mean by them.
• They fallaciously assume that God is an alternative explanatory hypothesis to scientific theories of evolution, the Big Bang etc. In fact no-one except the New Atheists, the Creationists and their Intelligent Design cousins is trying to bring God into science at all, as to do so is to make a fundamental category error.
• Following from this, they misapply the Principle of Parsimony (Ockham's Razor) to 'disprove' God because it's simpler to explain the universe without invoking God. (Dawkins also badly misapplies mathematical probability in an attempt to show that God is so improbable as to be impossible.)
• They believe that if science/reason can find mechanisms or reasons for the universe, humans, consciousness, conscience etc, then God and religion are no longer valid or necessary (as they are merely wrong alternative explanations for these phenomena). In particular, if reason can suggest mechanisms for the evolutionary development of religion itself, this must render it invalid. Logically, these are non-sequiturs, based on a confusion of physical cause with purposeful or personal cause. 
• Similarly, they are commited to ontological (as opposed to methodological) reductionism, which confuses composition with meaning, failing to understand that the essence of anything is not the same as the sum of its component parts, and that (for example) a disassembled human being is no longer a person but merely a corpse.
• They fall into the profound and basic error that God is of the same type of being as imaginary mythological creatures such as fairies, goblins and unicorns. If God is God at all, he (apologies for male pronoun) is the Ultimate Reality, the eternal and infinite uncreated source, the Ground of all Being. He is not merely a 'god', simply a part of the created universe; he stands beyond and before and beside all else; 'in him we live and move and have our being'. (In this sense, they are actually right that God does not exist - technically he pre-exists, or super-exists). 
• The New Atheists are committed a priori to philosophical Materialism - the non-demonstrable presupposition that physical matter/energy is the central and sole reality. They then use this supposition to 'prove' by circular argument that God cannot exist and that any god would either have had to evolve or else be designed in an infinite regression of designed designers. (Incidentally they also fail to recognise that the whole of science is based on the premise of the universe being rationally intelligible, for which there is no scientific basis but which makes perfect sense within a theistic cosmos.) 
• They are also stuck firmly as fossils in the Modernist weltanschauung, and thus see science as the only valid truth-finding and truth-telling discourse and means of knowing, which supplants and supersedes all others. They therefore reject all other ways of knowing and understanding, such as the relational (the means by which we know people) or the poetic and symbolic (the means by which we understand truths that cannot be expressed in formulas). They also downplay or disallow alternative types of evidence and means of arriving at truth such as those employed in historical and legal discourse.
• They conveniently (and fallaciously) assume that religious texts must only be taken literally and that all true religious believers must be scriptural literalists - and therefore fools. It's unfortunate they are backed up in this by the very vocal minority of Creationists. 
• They are at a complete loss to account for religious belief in intelligent people, particularly scientists, falsely assuming that their beliefs must be somehow in spite of their intelligence.
• They make a very strange and non-demonstrable case that moderate religious belief is what allows religious extremism and fanaticism to flourish - that C of E churchgoers somehow prop up or lead to 'God hates fags' nutcases and suicide bombers (by the same argument, do moderate atheists prop up the extremists who would advocate killing religious believers?). They do not bother to distinguish between different kinds of religion or spirituality, lumping both good and bad, reasonable and ridiculous together as superstitious rubbish. This seems to demonstrate not clarity of analysis but rather lack of understanding.
• They imagine that morality, meaning, significance, purpose, human dignity and rights, true love and community can all be constructed and sustained perfectly well in the absence of theism / God. Unfortunately, both reason and experiential evidence are against them in this as I'll try and unpack later.
• They believe that religion can and should be stamped out, failing to recognise that religion is embedded in the human being as deeply as sexuality or the instinct for survival. It's particularly ironic then that the New Atheists are in some ways more deeply religious than many nominal churchgoers! I do not believe it is possible to eradicate religion from humanity even were it demonstrable that it would be desirable to do so. As the old adage has it, the correct response to mis-use is not disuse but right use, and the correct response to the abuse of religion by fundamentalists, terrorists and oppressive religious authorities is for each one of us to use the religious impulse for the common good.

Finally, and this is not an argument against their reasoning but their methods, the New Atheists have often lapsed into such unreasonable ranting aggression and arrogance in their fight against religion that they have sadly come to resemble the religious fundamentalists they deplore. Even if they were right that religion is a delusion and a scourge, their methods and behaviour in trying to rid the world of it would strongly argue to my mind against the goodness and reasonableness of their alternative. Any revolution won by such means merely replaces the old oppressors with new and more deadly ones.