Theology as Anthropology

I don’t normally comment on Baptist politics. Frankly, I’m not all that interested. I’d rather go shopping, and I think you know my policy on shopping. But a recent row among Baptists caught my attention not so much for what they were fighting about as what they weren’t. It seems that at a recent denominational gathering of Baptists, the Presbyterian pastor turned seminary professor turned pastor again, John Killinger, created a controversy during a workshop he conducted around his new book, The Changing Shape of Our Salvation.

The presenter apparently argued for an understanding of the doctrine of salvation more along the lines of “self-realization” and “self-fulfillment” rather than salvation in some eschatological sense achieved via Christ’s atoning death on the cross (orthodox Christianity). Some who heard him were uneasy with his soteriology believing his views called into question both Jesus’ divinity and the efficacy of his atoning death. But I think they’ve missed the real issue here. It is not a matter of his views of the “how” of salvation that troubles me here; it’s the “what.” To be honest, even those of us who believe in the atoning death of Jesus haven’t the faintest idea how it actually works, and anyone who says s/he does is either dishonest or delusional. All theories about how the atonement works are just that – theories, as C. S. Lewis says, “…to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.” That’s not what bothers me here; rather it is the fact that he apparently thinks salvation is more about us than God, more man’s achievement than God’s gift, more human development than divinely-wrought transformation. Succinctly: He understands theology as anthropology.

A little context might be helpful. Over the last 50 years or so biblical scholars and theologians have debated the whole notion of whether or not the biblical soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), which is essentially and fundamentally eschatological in character, is comprehensible and relevant to contemporary people. Marcus Borg’s, Jesus: A New Vision, is characteristic of this perspective in which he, while not denying the essentially eschatological nature of the biblical soteriology, abandons it nonetheless in favor of a perspective more palatable and popular to modern persons, namely, Jesus the charismatic change agent of the contemporary culture. Borg certainly wasn’t the first to deconstruct the eschatological herald of the Kingdom of God the New Testament portrays Jesus as being. Many biblical scholars have struggled with the whole idea of salvation understood eschatologically (“saved” means “saved from”… The Wrath, Hell, Judgment, this present evil age, etc., and not just “saved for” a la salvation as “self-actualization theories”). Their reasons for abandoning the clear New Testament teaching about the eschatological nature of salvation are two, chiefly: (1) Such views are too escapist, too other-worldly, too pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye, and run the risk of abdicating the Christian’s responsibility to redeem this world rather than just living for the next; (2) Modern people have no understanding of, or appreciation for, the kind of “delayed gratification” associated with salvation in the afterlife. They’re far more interested in the here and now. Moreover, the biblical images of the eschaton (end of the world) are odd and off-putting to modern ears. Hence, it’s better just to jettison them altogether in favor of a doctrine of salvation that is more personal, possible, and practical.

But the New Testament is thoroughly and irrefutably eschatological in perspective. When Jesus says “Kingdom of God” he means “another world” breaking in and breaking through, disrupting the ordinary order of things. Jesus doesn’t come so much to “fix” this world as to announce its end and the advent of a whole new world he calls “the Kingdom of God,” a world so disquieting, unsettling, disruptive, and counter-cultural that it takes a transformation so radical, so complete that it can only be described as “being born from above.” The Spirit of God conceives this transformation; it is not merely the result of trying harder and doing better; it is not just “tweaking” the human personality here and there; it is not “human development” or “self-actualization” or “self-realization;” it is self-denial, self-destruction, death and life, and life via death (see Mark 8:34-35). Indeed, I often say that I can extrapolate one’s entire theology pretty much by how one answers a single question: “Do you believe that salvation is essentially something ‘in here’ (that is, inside me) that I must bring out to the surface, or is salvation finally something ‘out there’ (utterly beyond me, outside me, external to me) that must come inside me and change me in order to save me?” The latter is New Testament soteriology; the former is humanism (I resist the adjective “secular” as redundant). That is to say, the Christian view of salvation, everywhere attested in the New Testament, is that apart from God’s intervening and transforming grace, I am helpless, hopeless, and incapable of “self-fulfillment” and “self-actualization.” Matter of fact, “self-realization” is about the last thing I want! The more I succeed, the more I fail. Indeed, there is no “me” to be actualized or realized apart from God’s dream of “me” when He “thought me up” and brought me out of nothing into the world. Any other “me” is a fraud…or a monster. Once again, Lewis put it succinctly when he said: “…fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”

But this perspective of “theology as anthropology” is deep within the theological education community. I ran afoul of it some years ago in a faculty meeting. We were wrangling over a spiritual formation curriculum for seminary students when I expressed surprise at the document with which we were presented purporting to be a curriculum designed to “form our students spiritually.” But when I looked at the curriculum, it was heavy in behavioristic psychology, developmentalism, secular “leadership” material, and systems theory, and light on anything that could be remotely described as “spiritual” formation; indeed, there was precious little “God-language” in the document at all! That is to say, it was not about forming persons in Christ, cultivating their spiritual life, enhancing their relationship with God. It was pure developmentalism conceived in thoroughly secular and even a-theistic (and I mean that literally – "no-God") terms. It was anthropology disguised as theology. I said so, much to the consternation of the faculty. Finally, one of them, in a fit of frustration, protested with passion: “But human development is spiritual development!” There it is – theology as anthropology. I was disappointed but not surprised. As a statement of what is wrong with theological education, I couldn’t have said it better myself – theological education that isn't (theological, that is).

Let me make myself clear: Finally, essentially, necessarily theology is about God. Salvation is God’s work, not ours. If it isn’t, why bother? If becoming a Christian is finally no different than joining any other club, then why bother? If the mission of the Church is merely to help you "succeed" (whatever that means) in this world, why not just stay home and watch Dr. Phil or Oprah? You don't even have to tithe! If the Church is merely a sanctified Rotary Club, as Will Willimon puts it, why bother? As Will quips: “At least the Rotary Club serves lunch and has their meetings at a convenient hour!” A soteriology that is more anthropology than theology is no soteriology at all, at least not in the New Testament sense.

Let’s let Lewis have the last word:

The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. …He invented–as an author invents characters in a novel–all the different men (and women), that you and I were intended to be. …It is no good trying to “be myself” without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. …I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call “me” can be very easily explained. …Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. (from Mere Christianity, “The New Men”)

By the Numbers

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing and gut-wrenching and soul-searching this past week over the baleful state of Baptist baptisms. Some, who actually attend Baptist churches on Sundays, have suspected for years that a little insidious inflation had been happening with Baptist’s stats. Sixteen million plus was the official line, but when you actually count who shows up “on any given Sunday” (as they say in the NFL, and which is where a lot of Baptists are, it seems, on Sundays) the number is more like a third of that. The numbers, it seems, just don’t add up. Baptists are not as different from other mainline denominations as they would have liked to believe. The numbers are declining. “Free fall” is how one put it.

Lots of reasons have been rushed in to explain this phenomenon to which Baptists had believed themselves impervious – postmodernism, secularism, paganism, narcissism, materialism, global warming (okay, I’m kidding about global warming). But while there is much debate over the causes of the decline, there is virtual unanimity over the solution – more baptisms! More baptisms mean more members; more members mean more numbers; more numbers mean more counting, and you know how we Baptists like to count!

The problem with this approach is that it confuses counting with Christian. Dunk ‘em, count ‘em, drop ‘em…but for God’s sake be sure to count ‘em. There is one obvious question no one, it seems, is raising: What precisely is being counted? The answer is clear: baptisms, not necessarily Christians. They are not the same. Becoming a Christian is not the same as joining a club (a fact that eludes many). Sorry. It’s more destructive, disruptive, disturbing than that. Listen to the New Testament images for salvation: death and resurrection; taking off and putting on; laying down and picking up. Hardly sounds like the Rotary Club, does it. Oh, and by the way, Jesus also said something about the "gate being narrow and the way being straight, and few there be who find it.” Not conducive to counting. Becoming Christian means enrolling in a Scripture-informed, Spirit-inspired, counter-cultural community that embraces a counter-value system captured in a counter-story that harbingers a new reality Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” Dunk ‘em, disciple ‘em…let God keep score. If being baptized and joining the church doesn’t actually make one "Christian," that is, enroll one in this kind of Story and enculturate one in this kind of community, then we're just counting new club members. Indeed, it’s more insidious than that. By enrolling new members into our “Christian club” and calling them “Christian” we inoculate them with just enough Christianity to keep them from ever “taking” the real thing.

Let me be perfectly clear about what I’m saying. I do not believe baptism alone produces Christians; it produces numbers to count. If what we want is more numbers to count, then “filler up!” But if what we want are more Christians, then we will have to enroll people in a Story called “Gospel” and enculturate them into a community called “Church.” That’s harder, takes longer, and can’t be done “by the numbers.”

Moratorium on "Awesome"

I’m afraid I have to call for a moratorium on the use of the word “awesome” by Christians. Let me explain.

It’s not that I don’t think the word a good one. I do. It’s just that sometimes good words can take up bad company and start hanging out with all sorts of other words that cheapen them and give them a bad reputation.

Take “awesome” for example. It means “full of awe.” The problem is: Christians no longer understand what the biblical meaning of “awe” is. It means fear, pure and simple – “fear,” as in “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). Get it?

But in contemporary Christian usage, I fear, “awesome” is far more influenced by praise choruses than Scripture, and, alas, far too many praise choruses are influenced more by popular culture than biblical faith. The current preoccupation with “awesome ad nauseam,” to the point of mantra almost, seems to have derived from a 1980’s praise chorus by the late Rich Mullins, “Our God is an Awesome God.” Mullins said the chorus was inspired by Nehemiah 1:5 (which he apparently read in the NIV), “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands….” I wish he had read it in the original Hebrew, or at least consulted someone who had. If so, he would have known that the word the NIV renders “awesome” is actually “fear” (ha nora’). Nehemiah, who knew something of Israel’s God, said of Him: “O YHWH, God of the Heavens, God great and fearful….” Anybody who claims to have been in the presence of this God and chatters away about Him with a glib little “awesome” is not talking about Nehemiah's God. Nehemiah's God will cause your knees to buckle, your mouth to dry, and your palms to sweat; He sends you reaching for the Maalox.

And so, if what we mean when we say “God is awesome” is little more than “God is cool,” then we’re not talking about the Bible’s God. The first thing the Bible’s God does to you is scare the…well, you know.

That’s what the writer of Hebrews was getting at in his fifth and final warning to Christians (one largely unheeded by contemporary Christians). In Hebrews 12:14ff., the burden of his argument is: “If you think Moses’ God scared you to death, wait ‘til you see this one!”

For you have not approached the touchable, (you’ve come to) a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a storm…indeed, so terrifying was the very sight of it that Moses said, “I am full of fear and I quiver and quake. …Therefore let us be grateful for receiving an unshakable kingdom through which we offer pleasing worship to God with reverence and fear; for our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:18-21; 29, writer’s translation).

So let’s be clear: When the Bible says that God is “awesome,” this is what it means. Pass the Maalox.