Evangelical Theology: Some Quibbles

I record here some issues I recently covered in discussion with an evangelical Christian regarding three important areas of theological interest: a) the question of self love and human sinfulness, b) thinking about the devil/evil, and c) death and atonement.

a) (An) 'evangelical' position: "Sin is any behavior that is done out of self-importance and self-love. We were created to love and glorify God and we owe the same love to his creations, our fellow men, but we sin in making ourselves the object of our love and glorification and in justifying our actions by those terms."

Response:
I think this profoundly misses the point. Look again at Lev. 19:18. 'Love your neighbour AS YOURSELF'. The implication being, of course, that we are naturally self loving. This is not condemned by Jesus - although it's a matter of some controversy in Augustine who (interestingly) you go on to mention in your next sentence (cf. O. O'Donovan, The problem of Self Love in St. Augustine). Anyway, the point is that we ARE the object of our love (like it or not), although not necessarily of our 'glorification' (an entirely different matter altogether). Self love isn't sinful. The wrong kind(s) of self love are sinful,as are the wrong kinds of God-love and neighbour-love.

b) (An) 'evangelical' position: "We must be wary of saying anything about Satan that isn't in the bible. Satan is not explicitly described as a fallen angel and ruler of a demonic realm called Hell, this comes mostly from Milton and worldly church traditions."

Response:
The Bible is of course the vital source for our Christian thinking. As far as I'm concerned, I have to be wary about how I think/talk about the devil with respect to more authorities than the Bible, however. I'm wary of what the Bible says, what tradition has maintained in different ecclesial contexts, what my faculties of reason tell me, and what my experience of worship and prayer reveals to me. This, by the way, is known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. If church traditions/reason/experience illumine the Bible in ways that shed true light on the text (even if this means the original biblical author wouldn't have thought/been able to think in precisely the terms in question), then I feel under the obligation of the holy spirit to make sense of the text/God's revelation with respect to them. Moreover, upon what criterion are we to know a 'worldly' church tradition from an 'unworldly' one? Aaaargh, let's not open the hermeneutical can of worms: so much is written about that and I think all parties concerned would be better off reading more elsewhere. Suffice to say it's a gloriously provocative idea that one can in any way determine what is 'worldly' and what isn't. It was upon precisely this issue that we confront the most basic challenge of Jesus to those he offended! They presumed to know what 'unworldly' (i.e. Godly) holiness was - and he (the Messiah!) didn't fit the bill. We should be extra careful, then, if we want to go down anything like the same road without an overriding sense of our human proclivities to get things profoundly wrong (as they did). To answer the question more directly, it shouldn't matter a jot that Milton imagined hell and Satan in different and more developed ways than did the biblical authors. He also thought in English. The point, in each case, is that we must judge what he has to say for its theological penetration and truthfulness: for this, we need not require his worldview to correspond exactly with that of the biblical authors. The holy spirit didn't just stop work after the biblical canon was compiled. The spirit of truth and understanding still serves to build up knowledge in the community of believers, whether in Milton or whoever else. We can't rule him out of court on principle.

c) (An) 'evangelical' position: "All throughout the bible, God makes abundantly clear that death is necessary for atonement of the inequities of sin".

Response: Look again at John 8 (Jesus' intervention to prevent the 'just' stoning of the adulteress). It's death to sin that God wants, not physical death (!). Jesus' death is necessary only because of his and the father's love (Jn. 15), not because of 'inequities', and this love extends to the lost, the outcast, and to those we consider 'enemies'. By conquering the devil in his death and resurrection, he made us 'dead to sin' so that we might 'live unto righteousness' (1. Pet. 2:24). This is true of ALL of us, Christians or not: God's love - and Christ's love - knows no limits. We can know this only if we accept the love which has been made manifest and open our hearts and 'doors' to the gift of the spirit (Rev. 3).

I accept that the sacrificial imagery of Hebrews presents a different picture. But the Bible has never spoken with just one voice and there has never been total agreement amongst Christians about exactly what Jesus' life and death 'meant'. The witness of Hebrews merely reflects this fact and I see no reason to be worried about allying oneself with other schools of interpretation if their witness appears, under the guidance of the spirit, to be more true. Jesus himself, after all, carved his own particular path through the midrashic quagmire of Torah interpretation by rejecting or suppressing some ideas and accepting or prioritising others. We must do the same.

Praying like an Evangelical

I realised last night that I really can't pray like an evangelical. Not that I often attempt to - but when in the company of evangelical Christians, it's nice to show you're willing to fit in in ways that seem ok. But small group prayers in which different subjects are picked out and God is asked this way or that? It's not a team sport and God is not a lord of the manner who needs to be persuaded this way or that. Thus, the exercise has its limitations.

My stumbling and mumbling prayers which I offer in silence, and which are complemented by the bold liturgical prayers of church services and by the Lord's Prayer, offer what is for me the most comfortable point of reference. Persuasion doesn't come into it: humility and the chance to profit from centuries of wisdom and tradition does. Which is not to say that other kinds of praying are necessarily bad or wrong. Just that when it comes to praying like an evangelical, something feels wrong, skindeep, out of order - merely touching the surface - or, at worst, profoundly missing the depth of the possibilities of prayer. This is not to disavow the wonderful possibilities of charismatic worship or experience. But it is to warn against its potential to misconstrue a relationship with God.

The Church of Violence

As I was sitting today in the local church in London, talking with a friend, I heard a shout and a bang from outside the church door, where a man and a woman had been sitting, arguing. Clearly, someone had been hit. The woman - she was about 40 - rushed in to the church, crying. No one followed. My friend and I wondered what to do. We walked over and she said she had been hit and that she was afraid. I asked if she wanted help: did she want me to check if he had gone, or if he was still outside. Did he have a weapon? No, apparently. I went out to look, and as I did, the man came in. The couple began arguing with one another. It was a desperate, pitiful scene. She accused him of hitting her and of being prone to violence. He was accusing her of abusing his children. She was saying she didnt want to be with him any more. He was saying that she had to stay with him. The conversation was heated.

With the threat of more violence in mind, my friend called the police. It seemed the right thing to do. I went over to the couple and offered them two chairs at the back of the church to sit down in. This was partly a strategy to stop him from getting her against the wall, and talking right into her face. It half-worked. Soon enough, the police arrived. They asked us what had happened and we told them. If we hadn't seen the violence, nothing could be done, we were told. We hadn't seen it, but we'd heard it. But that wasn't enough.

From what I could tell, the police did an admirable job of calming things down. They parted the man and the woman from one another, and sent each went away from the church in separate directions after about 10 minutes of discussion. What more could the police do? The officer who talked to us impressed me. He was courteous and understanding and somewhere in conversation he slipped in the sage remark that 'we all have our domestic issues'. True enough. But it's still sad that physical violence so easily appeals to us as a useful means of communication: it helps us get our stubborn point across, when all else fails. And I can't think that it really does the job we want it to. Not really.

Of course, 'violence' - loosely conceived - is a fact of all human relationships. We do violence to each other's wills and inclinations when we come into contact with one another and attempt to do anything other than gratify. We strive to bend and shape others around our own agendas and presuppositions. Forms of 'violence' are enacted on humans around us in the world, all of the time, with our complicity. Some are pernicious; some are not. Most of us don't stick out our own necks out to stop what is pernicious. We are inclined not to. Such neglect of the needs of others is perhaps the grossest, and most tragic, example of what might be called 'indirect' violence. Everyone is complicit in it - some more than others.

Reflecting on some of these things a little later, I reminded myself that the Christian church was an appropriate setting for the events I witnessed: acts of human violence are never out of place in churches. Violence in the church has a strange and perhaps awkward double aspect. On the one hand, it has tended to be condemned - although perhaps not to the extent and frequency that we would like. Christians campaign for peace, mercy, love and forgiveness. Can these things truly be pursued through the use of violence, in any sense of the word? (Contextual factors have tended to decide the matter). On the other hand, it is well remembered that acts of violence give life - they are truly vital - both to the church and its congregations. The taking of the apple; the crucifixion, spearing and abandonment of Jesus; the acts of the martyrs. And, according to some theologies, the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. We can look out more broadly too: what kind of beauty, what kind of joy, what kind of pleasure would there be without violence? Theologies of the Cross, however morbid and offensive some of them are, also make this point clear.

The most fundamental truth about Christian conceptions of violence, of course, is its recognition of the bare necessity of taking violence onto oneself for the sake of others. Only then can we respond adequately to violence: in the most difficult way. Maximilian Kolbe understood this. Jesus knew it too. As did Mahatma Gandhi. be the proponents of penal substitutionary models of the atonement seem to know it: but the challenge to them is to make good on their insights, rather than simply to (try to) enshrine them in crypto-Pauline dogmas about divine wrath and - bizarrely - in foundationalist epistemic principles.

What needs to be recognised above all is that for Jesus, the overriding concern was to plug a hole in the system of violence we all inhabit. He stood in the eye of the storm and took the consequences of worldly violence onto himself. He refused to shy away from it, and refused to respond to it in kind. He refused to avenge it. He tried instead to overcome it - by serving as a revolutionary exponent of a different kind of 'violence'. This violence would be restorative and constructive. It would be concerned with building up and seeking out, not breaking down and hiding away.

The tragedy is that only Jesus and a few other humans have ever shown themselves capable of such acts of constructive, restorative violence. The decision truly to suffer in place of others, for their sake and out of the desire to address the destructive violence the world wreaks on them, is a rare decision indeed. But it is the hallmark of true, full love to engage in constructive violence. Constructive violence in self sacrifice for others is the Christian calling. And its perpetrator is the holy spirit, whose divine fruit is forgiveness and the power truly to forgive. For those of us who have only a tiny taste of the fruit of this spirit - for those of us, that is, who can't think to give of ourselves enough to taste more - we can be comforted in our measure by the saving knowledge that our Lord knows and pities our weakness and has worked and is working - both in himself and in us - to address it.