Recently, I’ve been enjoying author Rachel Held Evans’ blog. She’s a self-professed Christ-follower, a skeptic, and the purpose of her site is “to reassess the fundamental elements of Christianity [in the] context of a postmodern environment.”
For the record, I am fascinated by, even sympathetic toward, many aspects of “postmodern Christianity.” The Gospel was never meant to be static, but to adapt within cultures. How biblical Truth has taken root in history may or may not be the watermark for its application today. Therefore, a certain sort of skepticism toward tradition and built-in flexibility is necessary when applying Scripture to our day and age. This application, however, is not without controversy.
In a post entitled A New Kind of Fundamentalist Rachel expounds upon a point that is intrinsic to much postmodern Christian thought. I’ve quoted it at length to ensure accuracy of spirit and content:
Love is fundamental. It’s more important than being right. It’s more important than having all our theological ducks in a row. It’s more important than any commitment to absolute truth or a particular hermeneutic or a “high view” (read: “my view”) of sovereignty or the Bible or faith or the Church.
Writes Greg Boyd, “For the church to lack love is for the church to lack everything. No heresy could conceivably be worse! Until the culture at large instinctively identifies us as loving, humble servants, and until the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus, we have every reason to accept our culture’s judgment of us as correct. We are indeed more pharisaic than we are Christlike.” (The Myth of a Christian Nation, p. 134-135)
What’s wrong with the church when folks like Shane Claiborne who have reputations for loving their enemies, giving without expecting anything in return, and withholding judgment can’t get speaking gigs because of their “questionable” theological positions? What’s wrong with evangelicals when surveys show that people perceive us as gay-hating, judgmental, hypocritical, and closed minded? What’s wrong when people can get kicked out of churches for getting pregnant or being gay, but not for being unloving or prejudiced? What’s wrong when folks in theological societies scream and yell at each other over a disagreement about divine foreknowledge?
We’ve labeled all kinds of things fundamental…but we’ve left out love, which is why I think it’s time for a new kind of fundamentalism. (emphasis in original)
There is much truth to Rachel’s point. Nevertheless, I find myself hedging. Why?
When Christians emphasize love as the ultimate creed, they often do so at the expense of doctrine.
Take, for instance, the issue of homosexuality. There is no doubt that Christian churches have long struggled with ministry toward and inclusion of gays. Oftentimes, Christians do veer into hate. However, it is wrong to characterize any resistance to, or condemnation of, the gay lifestyle as unloving. At some point, the student of Scripture must conclude that the Bible does not endorse the homosexual lifestyle. In fact, it condemns it. So do we sacrifice the Truth about Man and Woman, about God’s design for marriage, about the abnormality of same-sex unions, for the sake of Love? Yes, Jesus said that loving God and loving our neighbor are the pivot of all God’s commandments (Matthew 22:34-40). This, however, does not nullify the remainder of Scripture. We cannot emphasize “loving” homosexuals to the point that we compromise or discard clear biblical warnings against homosexuality.
This illustrates what I think is a dangerous tendency among postmodern Christians: The more one emphasizes Love, the more they must potentially downplay, re-interpret, or flat-out disavow certain biblical doctrines.
The fundamentals represent these core biblical doctrines. As I said earlier, these fundamentals may or may not be influenced by one’s personal preferences, and various cultural interpretations and applications throughout the ages. Nevertheless, they represent truths that have been culled from Scripture over the centuries by many devout individuals. And like it or not, these fundamentals define what it means to be a Christian. Yes, there is more to it than having all your theological ducks in a row. They will know we are Christians by our love, not by our ability to recite The Apostle’s Creed. But as much as love is the defining Christian doctrine, it is not the only doctrine.
Without “fundamentals,” there can’t be Christians. After all, being a Christian means being something. If it just means, “being loving,” then anyone can be a christian (small “c”).
- Atheists can be loving. Does this make them christian?
- Gnostics can be loving. Does this make them christian?
- Animists can be loving. Does this make them christian?
- Pantheists can be loving. Does this make them christian?
- Even Satanists can be loving. Does this make them christian?
At what point are we required to have more than just a commitment to Love to actually be a Christian?
I fear that the “new kind of fundamentalism” Rachel and others are advocating is a fundamentalism without absolutes, a fundamentalism shorn from historic Christianity, a fundamentalism, really, without fundamentals.
I agree with you, Mike. This new "love" philosophy evolves into enablement. Within the perfection of God who IS love, there is also discipline, rebuke, instruction, and core knowledge of who He is and who we're not without Him. In this body of flesh we war against that demonstration of love which is God. We like what and who we like and love and mold our lifestyles accordingly. We profess to know what love really is and then we abuse it. There is the necessity of not only "feeling" and "showing" that love but living within its definition in Christ. Christ told the adulterous woman: Go and sin no more. That is love with compassion and instruction and definition. There are lines and boundaries which are fenced around true love. Sinful things do not enter in. Whenever we make sweeping generalizations of one or more points of theology and doctrine, we tend to lose another. It's a given that we're supposed to operate out of a base point of love, but to basically equate that love as enabling or embodying sin is a falsehood.
Good post, Mike.
I think some of the error of postmodern thought is reflected in that Greg Boyd quote. He said, in part, "until the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus."
The implication is that these were practicing tax collectors and prostitutes. But Scripture indicates those who came to Jesus stopped cheating others and made restitution, and that they were to "go and sin no more."
Jesus's love was not divorced from His standard of holiness. He didn't love because they changed, however. They changed because He loved. And for those who didn't change? He called them vipers.
Yes, it is rather convenient how often we leave the "hard" sayings of Jesus out of the equation. He talked about hell more than any other Bible figure, thinned the crowds with harsh rhetoric, and made difficult demands upon His followers. This notion that the "loving Jesus" was all-inclusive is simply false.
Amen, Mike. Well said. Great comments from Nicole and Becky, too. Thanks for posting this.
Nicely written. The question I've always had with postmodern thought (isn't EVERY thought after the past present…POSTmodern?) is what IS the definition of "love"? Scripture itself uses four forms: agape, phileos, eros and sarx. They are very different. Even in English, I can say I "love" my mom, I "love" my wife, I "love" pizza and I "love" STARTIDE RISING — but they all have different absolute meanings. So if "love" is our fundamental, WHICH love is it?
Nice point, too, Guy.
Paul did not say, and the greatest of these is doctrine. He said love. So did Jesus. That's good enough for me. As for the Bible being clear about homosexuality … please read something, anything, from a different point of view than conservative fundamentalist.
Jesus and Paul taught the supremacy of love, however they did not teach it to the exclusion of doctrine. In fact, the same Jesus who taught us to "love one another" also said He was the only way to the Father (Jn. 14:6) and that we would die in our sins if we do not believe Who He claimed to be (Jn. 8:24). The Jesus you reference said many such "hard" things along with His teachings on love. Which ones of these do we exclude in place of love?
SOmewhere along the way, you're going to have to develop a hierarchy of values. You can't have everything in the NT of equal importance. So what is most important? How do we decide that? Is it in exclusion to doctrine? What does it mean to love one another and then to have doctrines that essentially say that your actions or behaviors or sexual orientation makes you less than human? I don't deny that these are hard questions, and everyone of us has to answer them. But if the "greatest of these is love" does not mean that the greatest value is love, then I am completely lost.
Jesus seemed more concerned about religious leaders and their hypocrisy than their sexual orientation. If being a Christian means following Jesus, then why can't we take that as a starting point. On this, I think Rachel is spot on.
You didn't comment on what I really think was the more significant and unfortunate part of your piece and that was your comments on homosexuality. There is an odd progression there. You first talk about the clear biblical warnings against homosexuality. I've studied the issue from all sides and I find the biblical texts anything but clear. And I find it hard to believe that anything that was in the writer of Leviticus or Paul's mind even has a bearing on our questions about, for example, same sex marriage. Then you move on to talk about "disavowing certain biblical doctrines." So now when we speak about what it means to love gays, we are in the area of doctrine, not just warnings. So my question is, how do we move from a few very confusing ambiguous texts that seem to be dealing with a rather narrow range of sexual behavior to clear biblical warnings and then to doctrine?
I don't expect an answer to this in your blog. But I wish you would step back, take a deep breath, give thanks for "The Apostles Creed" that holds us all together and lighten up just a bit. 😉
Well-reasoned arguments, John, and I appreciate your spirit. While I agree with your "hierarchy of values" point, and that love is preeminent there, I'd disagree on how that shakes out in application, specifically in areas where the Bible DOES impose moral boundaries. While the "supremacy of love" must guide our approach to any individual, that does not mean we endorse or sanction their behavior. Jesus, on several occasions, urged someone to "Go and sin no more" — the woman caught in adultery is a good example of this (Jn. 7:53-8:11). While He did not condemn her, He did not let her off the hook either. What she did was "sin" and he urged her to stop doing it. So being loving does not mean we should wink at, even worse, sanction sinful conduct.
I think the NT bears that out as it addresses church discipline and excommunication. Jesus gave guidelines for excommunication in Matthew 18:15-20 as well as the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 5:1-13. So both of these figures who taught the supremacy of love also said there were guidelines for conduct amongst Christians… some of those guidelines being removal from a church and "shunning" by the believing community. I think this provides a paradigm for how love and "law" (little "L") should work together. Being loving does not require the removal of moral, ethical, sexual boundaries. In fact, Hell is the ultimate evidence that God can be both loving and just.
Re: My comments on homosexuality. In my post, I simply used homosexuality as an example of what potentially happens when we let love be the overriding factor in approaching same-sex relationships. I could have used other examples. I would disagree with your assertion that God's view of homosexuality is relegated to "a few very confusing ambiguous texts." And inevitably, Christians who disagree about homosexuality divide over what the Bible actually says. I'm guessing we would disagree about those standard texts. In my experience, this divide over what the Bible says is critical, because someone — on one side or the other — must be seriously mis-reading texts to maintain their position. The divide is just too stark.
While I would agree that prohibitions against same-sex relationships are not on the level of "doctrine," they nevertheless provide a paradigm for moral / sexual conduct. The section of Scripture I mentioned above (I Cor. 5:1-13), shows that excommunication can occur when "sexual immorality" (vs. 1) is involved (in the case of the Corinthians, it had to do with incest). Even though few biblical sexual guidelines would be considered doctrine (would any?), they nevertheless provide a framework for ethics in community. And, once again, this was written by the man who said "…the greatest of these is love" (I Cor. 13:13). So my point here is, just because the biblical guidelines for sexual conduct are not on the level of the Apostle's Creed, this is not a license for playing loosey-goosey with those biblical guidelines.
John, I appreciate your comments and taking time to visit my blog. Grace to you!
Well, I'm late to the conversation, but I wanted to let everyone know that since writing the first post to which Mike referred, (A New Kind of Fundamentalist), I've added some new thoughts on a more recent post, (Review of "Deep Church" + Your Thoughts on Creeds) that addresses the issue of doctrine.
I'm still trying to work it all out, of course, but I do believe that affirmation of core doctrines should go hand-in-hand with love.
By the way, one's position on homosexuality is not, in my opinion, an issue of core doctrine.
Rachel, thanks so much for visiting. I agree that "affirmation of core doctrines should go hand-in-hand with love." Sometimes, though, I think we approach it as an either/or situation. And as I said in my second comment to John, I also don't believe one's position on homosexuality is an issue of "core doctrine." However, we'd be wrong to then interpret the biblical guidelines for sexual conduct in a less definitive manner. Thanks again for visiting and congrats on your book!