Who Can Be Saved?

One of the most difficult theological questions Christians face today is the fate of the unevangelized. The reason this question is so difficult is that it strikes at the heart of two pillars of Christian truth. The first is that God is a God of love who wills all of his creatures to be saved. This truth, despite some Calvinists protests which I can already hear ringing in the background, is sufficiently attested to in scripture. There is the famous statement of God's love: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." To interpret this verse as applying to only a certain number of people, say a predestined elect, one has to do quite a bit of mental gymnastics in his or her interpretation of "world." A somewhat less memorized, but equally important verse comes from one of the epistles: "This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:3b-4). In addition to these verses, I think it safe to say that the entire tenure of scripture reveals a God of love who does not want any of his creation to be out of communion with him. This is the God of the cross.

The second truth, however, is the belief that only through Christ can sinners be reconciled to God. The biblical evidence on this point is equally strong. In one of his earliest sermons, St. Peter declares: "This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12). To take the verses we have already cited, God indeed loves the world but the stipulation for everlasting life is belief in Jesus. And the verse which follows 1 Tim 2:4 states: "For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus . . ."

When applying these truths to the fate of the unevangelized - that is those billions of people through history (and existing today) who never had the opportunity to hear the good news of Christ - we are left in a conundrum. For it seems that we cannot adequately maintain both of these truths. If we maintain that since God loves the world and wills the salvation of all, then he will surely provide a way for the salvation of those who have not heard the gospel. Yet the moment we affirm something like this, we put the truth that salvation comes only through Jesus in jeopardy. What is worse, we marginalize the work of the cross. For if God was able to save some humans apart from Jesus, then why did Jesus have to die? This is a theological question without an easy answer.

One of the best recent articles I have read on the subject comes from the hand of the Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles, "Who Can be Saved?". He lucidly defines the difficulty and what is at stake in our answer. Additionally, he traces the history of thought on the subject which is enlightening in itself. He concludes with an answer that I think very satisfying. If you want to read this article, click here.

Top Ten First Lines of Theological Works

Even a cursory reader of this blog will have been able to seize upon two separate loves of mine, namely, theology and literature. Of the second I have elsewhere written of my particular fancy of a well crafted first line of a story. Therefore, I thought it might be appropriate and interesting - if to no one but myself - to offer for you, in my humble opinion, the ten greatest first lines (or in some cases several) of works of theology. As always, if anyone is still out there, please feel free to critique, criticize, or offer a few of your own.

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10. "Sometime between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic. Although there are many who have not yet heard the news, it is nevertheless true: A tired old world has ended, an exciting new one is waiting recognition." -Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (I had to get some Wesleyans in here, since Wesley's own openings are usually rather bland.)

9. "It's teaching about Jesus Christ lies at the heart of every Christian theology." -Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus-God and Man (Those Germans, as we shall see, know how to write a first line!)

8. "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,' says the Lord. These are Christ's own words by which he exhorts us to imitate his life and his ways, if we truly desire to be enlightened and free of all blindness of heart. Let it then be our main concern to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ." -Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

7. "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace." -Dietrich Boenhoffer, The Cost of Discipleship

6. "The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well." -Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II (I would be remiss to not have at least one conciliar document in this list.)

5. "The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge." -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

4. "Dogmatics is a theological discipline. But theology is a function of the church." -Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (With this one sentence, Barth ushered in a new way of doing theology, one which retrieved its home, not as the academy, but as the Church.)

3. "So faith procures this for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles have handed down to us: firstly, it exhorts us to remember that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate, and died, and was raised, and in the Holy Spirit of God." -Irenaeus, On the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (Of course, the Fathers could not conceive of theology done outside of an ecclesial context, as this fine quotation shows. Plus, would one of my lists be complete without Uncle Irenaeus?)

2. "Beauty is the word that shall be our first." -Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics vol. 1 (I cheated on this one as von Balthasar, like any good German theologian, explains his first word with three hearty paragraphs)

1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." -John the Theologian

A Wesleyan Take on Advent

I am a Wesleyan, and one of the things that I love most about my tradition is the importance that we have always placed on hymnody. John Wesley never wrote a systematic theology, as many of the other great Protestant leaders (Luther, Calvin) did. But he and his brother Charles wrote a number of hymns for the people called Methodists to use in worship. Wesleyan theology comes through beautifully in the words of those magnificent hymns:

"And can it be that I should gain, an interest in the Savior's blood. Died he for me who caused his pain, for me? who him to death pursued?"

"Made like him, like him we rise. Ours the cross, the grave, the skies."

To express one's theology in hymns, as the Wesleys did, symbolically expresses the truth that all true theology is never divorced from worship. And that the church is the context for theology.

With this in mind, I have decided, as part of the preparation of my own heart to "prepare him room" for the coming of the Savior this Advent, to reflect anew on the wonderful words of the beautiful, but now oft forgotten, Christmas carols. I would like to share them with my readers. So as you check in here throughout these next few weeks, do not just read the words and move on. Use these wonderful words as a means of preparing your own hearts.

Because this is a Wesleyan take on Advent, I thought it would be appropriate to start with one of Wesley's best:

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

"Hark! The herald angels sing
'Glory to the newborn king!'
Peace on earth and mercy mild.
God and sinners reconciled.

"Joyful all ye nations rise.
Join the triumph of the skies.
With angelic host proclaim:
'Christ is born in Bethlehem!'

"Christ by highest heaven adored.
Christ the everlasting Lord.
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of the virgin's womb.

"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate deity.
Pleased as man with men to dwell.
Jesus our Immanuel.

"Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace.
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healings in His wings.

"Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth.
Born to give them second birth.

"Hark! The herald angels sing.
'Glory to the newborn king!'"

The Experiment

In a previous blog, I related the classes that I will be taking this semester. The astute reader, and I know that you are all astute readers, will surely realize that the majority of my blogs this semester will have something to do with either Romans, Thomas Aquinas, or the church, as we tend to think about (and some of us) blog about the things that we are learning. There is one other area from which I will probably be crafting a lot, perhaps the majority, of my blogs. For this past Sunday a great experiment began.

Julie and I began teaching the senior high Sunday School class at our church, Trinity Pilgrim United Methodist Church. Some may call it an adventure (you never know what those kids are going to say), some may call it foolish (nothing short of three people approached me on Sunday to tell me that they had tried teaching the high schoolers and they had quit), but I prefer to call it an experiment. It is an experiment to see if the wonderful theological training I have received over the last five or six years actually "works" in church and, moreover, in the youth culture.

I am here reminded of a story that one of my seminary professors told me. Several years ago, there was an African tribe who had come to Christ through the ministry of a missionary from North America. After several years, there grew a desire that the tribe begin to lead themselves, and so they sent one of their promising young men to an American seminary in order to learn from the great minds about the bible so that he could then teach these truths to the tribe. After an absence of over four years, the tribe anxiously awaited the young man's return. When he did, they put him right into the pulpit to preach. But he was speechless. After standing there for a long time, the missionary pulled him aside and asked what the problem was. The young man said that he was not sure how to preach what he had learned to his tribe. How does "expiation" or "transubstantiation" translate? This man had to go through another course to relearn the Christian faith in his own language.

It strikes me that Julie and I are in a similar position here. We've spent the last few years learning a language and learning how to meaningfully discuss things in terms of that language. Specifically, I have spent the last few days in a quite interesting debate over the first few chapters of Romans. But this all means nothing in the context of senior highers. We, like the missionary, might be speechless in front of these kids. Unless we find a way to translate it into their language and their culture. And this is why I call it an experiment. I believe that our learning can be translated; it has to be, otherwise the academy has lost all touch with the church and has therefore become a useless entity. We have evidence that it has been translated through the years - this is why the Apostle Paul wrote in Greek (the language of the people) instead of Hebrew (the language of the faith). The question is, and the experiment will be, whether we can find the effective means to make that translation happen. If we can, then we have a chance of reaching these kids and impacting their lives with the truth of God's story. If we can't, then we might as well not waste their time - and I might as well start thinking of another profession.

We need your prayers in this experiment.

The Power of True Stories

The importance of story in the forming of Christian disciples has been a theme of late on this blog. Narrative theology is the theological discipline that most clearly articulates and expounds on these truths. Its proponents treat the bible as one continuous narrative, with a beginning, middle, and ending, and believe that the theological statements, propositions, ethical teachings, etc. cannot be removed from the narrative in which they are situated. It is this overarching narrative that gives them their meaning. And it is the narrative itself, as told in and performed by the church, that has the power to form Christians in the image of Christ.

One of the constant criticisms that narrative theology and its practitioners face is the assumption by some that a story cannot be real. In other words, if we treat Scripture as a narrative or a story, than we are effectively removing the historical referent (e.g. that Jesus of Nazareth was truly born, truly lived and truly was crucified under Pontius Pilate) from Scripture. Such a move, it is argued, relegates Scripture to the level of any other story, such as Les Miserables, which, while being a story that positively affects people, never actually happened (Jean Val Jean is not an historic figure).

While there may be some narrative theologians that presume such ideas, the best ones retain the historical referent, while insisting that we respect Scripture's primary genre of narrative. There must, after all, be a reason that the Gospel writers (and the writer/writers of the Pentateuch) decided to relate the historical information in the form of a story. And that reason, I think, is because story has more power than a list of facts or sayings. And in the end, Scripture was not written (or later called such by the church) simply to relay facts; it was written to form people after the image of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

In any event, it is simply untrue that stories by definition have no historical referent. Think of how great figures throughout history have been remembered in print. They are not remembered through a list of facts about their lives, but through the relating of the story of their life by biography and autobiography. The stories of the saints, when related in this manner, also have the power to change people, to point them to Christ. Yet, it would be preposterous to assume that because these lives are written as stories they must be historically false.

To make my point, I offer you, in my opinion, the ten greatest spiritual biographies/autobiographies ever written. All are written as narratives, and yet all relate the historical truths of historical figures. I recommend anyone of these works to my readers. Each of them, for different reasons, will inspire, encourage you, and point you to God.

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10. An Arrow Pointing to Heaven, Biography of Rich Mullins, written by James Bryan Smith

9. The Genesee Diary, Henri Nouwen, about his time in a Trappist Monastery

8. Life of Antony, Biography of Father Antony of the Desert Monks, written by St. Athanasius

7. Life of Macrina, Biography of St. Macrina, written by her younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa

6. Shadow of the Almighy, Biography of Jim Elliot, written by Elisabeth Elliot

5. The Hiding Place, Autobiography of Corrie Ten Boom focusing on her time in a concentration camp. (This I have not yet read but I am assured by my wife that it belongs high on this list - #5 is not high enough for her, but not yet having read it, I didn't think I could justify any higher. Incidentally, it is my next read.)

4. The Life of Saint Francis, Biography of St. Francis of Assisi, written by St. Bonaventure

3. The Story of a Soul, Autobiography of St. Therese of Liseaux

2. The Seven Storey Mountain, Autobiography of Thomas Merton

1. The Confessions, Autobiography of St. Augustine

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There are so many more deserving of mention. What spiritual biographies/autobiographies have you read that have influenced you?

The Story in Dogmatic Outline

As a narrative theologian, I am normally not a fan of propositional theology. However, in keeping with the theme of capturing the entire story of Scripture discussed of late on this blog, I found the following synopsis of that story quite fascinating. If you have a chance, let me know what you think.

Let's Leave THEM Behind

Reader, pardon the following rant.

While perusing the aisles of our local Barnes and Noble, I paused at the embarrassingly massive display of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' not so critically acclaimed Left Behind series. The series is comprised of twelve volumes chronicling the lives of four people as they make their way through the dreaded seven years of post rapture tribulation somehow managing to survive (though everyone around them dies) and, furthermore, conversing in the most unrealistic dialogue to find its way to paper since the Dick and Jane series. The twelfth novel climaxes in the second coming of Christ who, I've been told, annihilates people through lasers emanating from his eyes (which is problematic on a number of different fronts).

To my shock and utter dismay, I discovered that the pair has released a thirteenth edition of the series. Apparently, it follows the same characters through their millennial reign with Christ on earth. One wonders if the paradise of the millennial kingdom will have any affect on the reality or intelligence of the dialogue. My guess is no. This promises to be the final chapter of the story, which, of course, we have all heard before. I think that it was originally supposed to be seven volumes (one for each year of the supposed tribulation ), but then it moved to twelve when it was such a hit. Apparently some of the middle volumes took 500 pages to narrate the action of two weeks time. And in addition to the thirteen volume series, there is also a Left Behind series for kids (get um young like the credit card companies) and a three volume "pre-quil" (presumptuous at best - the last thing I care about is how Rayford Steele became a pilot or how Cameron Williams - ironically played by Kirk Cameron in the equally distasteful movies - got his annoying nickname Buck.) I mean this isn't Starwars and Rayford Steele is a poor man's Lando at best.

There are so many areas that deserve reflection and criticism. In the first place, the series exhibits horrible theology. A few points to mention here: 1) The rapture (the premise on which the entire series is based) is a relatively recent theological idea, developed in the 1830s. None of the church Fathers or reputable theologians today believed in such an event. The Scriptural grounding for it is dubious and is often taken out of context. Additionally, it assumes a position toward suffering that contradicts the entirety of the New Testament. It assumes that God will spare his church of the final tribulation - God never promises we will be spared of any suffering! In fact, he promises that we will have suffering. Why should we assume that we will be spared of the great suffering? 2) The books are extremely critical of the Catholic Church as a whole. In fact, most (if not all) Catholics are left behind in the first volume. This includes the Pope and the Cardinals. The Pope than quickly becomes a corrupt leader of a one world faith that is basically Unitarian. This view of the Catholic Church is ignorant and presumptuous. It assumes that all Catholics have no understanding of Christ, salvation, and the like and that all evangelicals (or whatever tradition the books are endorsing) do. What an incredibly arrogant stance! Also, it shows a lack of understanding of the tenants of the Catholic Church, first and foremost of which would be the unique position of Christ as the way to the Father - if any denomination today is going to stand against a growing tide of inclusivism and diminishing of the role of Christ, I believe it would be the Catholic Church. 3) Any number of concerns could be further added, including a horrendous eschatology, which assumes a unique place for Israel (Galatians 3:28 aside) and the rebuilding of the temple in paradise. Apparently LaHaye and Jenkins never read the book of Hebrews. But these are issues for another blog, as they are too big to dispute and tackle here.

In addition to poor theology, I question LaHaye and Jenkin's motives in writing the series. Certainly it began well intentioned, but why the ridiculous proliferation of books? Why continue to write these novels and stretch them into such a long, expensive series? I hope that I am wrong, but it seems that much of the motivation was profit, which in my mind is untenable. But for some reason, Christians continue to make these best sellers! It saddens me that this is the kind of material that is so widely popular amongst Christians today, while names like Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the like are absent from most Christian bookstores.

Finally, I am disturbed by the low level of literature (if it can be called that) that is present in the books. As I said above, the dialogue is unrealistic. Moreover, the characters are paper thin, and the predicaments that they get into are often solved by unrealistic means. Why must we excuse this poor writing? As Christians, we should demand the best in everything, but so often we settle for something much less simply because it is, or purports to be, Christian.

To end my short rant in this vein (I thank the reader for his or her indulgence), I'd like to appropriate and alter a bit a line from the show King of the Hill: "Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins, you're not making Christianity better, you're making literature worse."

Unpopular Theology

In an age of the church when popular theology, fed by numerous best selling Christian books and consistent messages from various pulpits, holds that God wants to bless us beyond our wildest imagination, and that he is the "Wish Fulfiller" and the "Dream Giver", the message of the martyrs still stands in stark contrast. The martyrs remind us that God's blessings are not always in this world. The following quotation is from the seventh century Father Maximus Confessor who, for all of his faith, piety, and devotion to God, had his tongue cut out and his right hand cut off:

"Pray through the Lord that God might perfect his mercy with our lowliness, and that He might teach us that those who sail along with Him experience a savage sea, like a ship which is driven about by winds and waves but stands firm and unshakable."

I also keep a quotation from Francis Asbury near my desk that challenges me on a daily basis:

"The more troubles I meet, the more convinced I am that I do the will of God."

I don't imagine that this kind of theology will ever be popular or will ever make the best seller list, but I do believe that it is true.

What is Theology?

I've come to believe that this question is critical for any follower of Christ to answer. For many, the ubiquitous authors Grenz and Olson immediately come to mind, will tell us that "everyone is a theologian." I'm not sure if I agree with that statement, but nevertheless it begs the all important question, what then is theology? I found the following anecdote, to which I am indebted to Father Alexander Golitzin, extremely helpful.

The standard Lexicon for classical Greek (Liddell and Scott), despite voluminous entries spanning pages and pages of miniscule type, lists only two definitions for theologia as used by the classical writers: 1. stories about the gods; and 2. rational discourse about divinity. We might identify our own thoughts with one of these two definitions. However, the standard Patristic Lexicon (covering the language of the Greek Fathers of the early centuries of the church) has five to six pages of entries following theologia. Theology was obviously a rich word to the Fathers, and one which acquired a number of different senses. The definitions take on a hierarchy of importance. To summarize, they are (in ascending order of importance): 1. rational discourse about divinity; 2. Holy Scripture (sometimes called "The Theology"); 3. the liturgy of both the angels and the church on earth (in other words, worship); 4. the visio dei or vision of God; and 5. Trinity, the highest form of theology.

What strikes me about the Fathers' use of theologia is that our place, if we have a place at all, is at the very bottom of this list, the rational discourse. But this rational discourse does not exist for its own benefit, a fact we can often forget in our loquaciousness. The purpose of the theology we do, insofar as it has a purpose, is merely to lead people to the higher forms - the Scriptures and the liturgy - where the Triune God will be experienced and seen. A very good reminder to all of us who aspire to be theologians.