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Grace and the Steps of Salvation · Scripture-ish

0:01
SPEAKER_00: This is Ed Gallagher and I am reading my essay, Grace and the Steps of Salvation.
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SPEAKER_00: The subtitle is A Brief Introduction to the Churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
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SPEAKER_00: There were two subjects we never heard about in church, Joy Wynn told me one evening.
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SPEAKER_00: She was referring to her childhood and young adulthood decades earlier,
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SPEAKER_00: roughly the 1960s, in a Church of Christ in Alabama.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure this conversation took place on a Wednesday evening because we were
0:45
SPEAKER_00: at church, which narrows down the possibilities.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: For my entire life,
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SPEAKER_00: I have gone to church every Sunday and Wednesday and no other day of the week except
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SPEAKER_00: for special events.
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SPEAKER_00: I think I spoke to Joy on a Wednesday evening because what prompted her comment
1:04
SPEAKER_00: to me was the talk I had just delivered on the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: And I seem to recall making that presentation in the middle of the week in about the year 2017.
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SPEAKER_00: I asked her which two subjects the church of her youth failed to cover.
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SPEAKER_00: And she replied, the Holy Spirit and grace.
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SPEAKER_00: Listeners with a deep association with conservative churches in America,
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SPEAKER_00: or maybe elsewhere, will understand Joy's comment.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't think its application is limited to Churches of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: but it definitely includes them, as she intended.
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SPEAKER_00: I myself am a lifelong member of Churches of Christ in the mostly southern United States.
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SPEAKER_00: Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and now Alabama.
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SPEAKER_00: My experience in churches confirms the truth of Joy's comment.
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SPEAKER_00: Many churches have had little to say about the Holy Spirit or grace.
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SPEAKER_00: Why these two topics?
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SPEAKER_00: Let's take them one by one.
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SPEAKER_00: I think the Holy Spirit is perceived by some conservative Christians
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SPEAKER_00: as too mysterious, maybe too nebulous, to provide anything firm or concrete to say.
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SPEAKER_00: So they mostly avoid the subject.
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SPEAKER_00: I understand this concern.
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SPEAKER_00: I feel the same pressure.
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SPEAKER_00: My experience of churches is among those who emphasize the Christian Bible
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SPEAKER_00: over Christian tradition.
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SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes people who emphasize the Bible against tradition.
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SPEAKER_00: The idea is that Christian tradition largely went off the rails in the centuries
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SPEAKER_00: after the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: adding all kinds of extraneous doctrines and practices to the simple message of
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SPEAKER_00: the gospel as attested in the scriptures.
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SPEAKER_00: And it is true,
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SPEAKER_00: I think,
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SPEAKER_00: that whereas there are well-developed doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit
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SPEAKER_00: among some Christian groups,
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SPEAKER_00: these are in many ways add-ons,
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SPEAKER_00: later developments, not clearly articulated in the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: If we're going to stick with the Bible rather than later traditions developing
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SPEAKER_00: from it,
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SPEAKER_00: that's going to limit what we can say with confidence about the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: You may have noticed some problems with this explanation
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SPEAKER_00: for Christian reticence regarding the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: Surely there are all kinds of ways in which even very conservative,
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SPEAKER_00: sola scriptura kinds of Christians accept as true things that are not directly said
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SPEAKER_00: in Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Not to mention denying or downplaying things that are directly said in Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, guilty.
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SPEAKER_00: Just think about the doctrine of the Trinity for a moment,
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SPEAKER_00: or whatever other doctrine you want to know.
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SPEAKER_00: There's what the Bible says,
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SPEAKER_00: and then there's your way of explaining those biblical statements,
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SPEAKER_00: putting them together into a coherent system.
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SPEAKER_00: With regard to the Holy Spirit,
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SPEAKER_00: what I can say is that church leaders I have known have tended to take
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SPEAKER_00: a rather high view of the status or person of the Holy Spirit,
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SPEAKER_00: and they will even occasionally address their worship toward the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a song we sometimes sing that has this line,
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SPEAKER_00: Spirit, we love you, we worship and adore you.
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SPEAKER_00: But these church leaders,
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SPEAKER_00: they get cagey when you ask them what the Holy Spirit actually does now.
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SPEAKER_00: They do think that he dwells in Christians and they often insist on the he and not the it.
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SPEAKER_00: They'll say he dwells in Christians, not it dwells in Christians.
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SPEAKER_00: They insist on that pronoun.
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SPEAKER_00: But if you ask them what that means,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: they're not exactly sure how he goes about dwelling in Christians or what he does
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SPEAKER_00: in us or for us.
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SPEAKER_00: And that is because they want their thoughts on divine matters to be based on
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SPEAKER_00: a biblical proof text.
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SPEAKER_00: And while the Bible,
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SPEAKER_00: especially the New Testament is very interested in talking about the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: It says a whole bunch of stuff about the Holy Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: Still, these days,
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SPEAKER_00: many non-charismatic,
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SPEAKER_00: non-charismatic conservative Christians are dubious that the things
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SPEAKER_00: the Holy Spirit does in the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: like prophecy or speaking in tongues or healings,
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SPEAKER_00: etc., That those things are still happening.
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SPEAKER_00: They're dubious that those things are still happening.
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SPEAKER_00: And if he's not doing those things, well, what is he doing?
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SPEAKER_00: The Bible says some things, but not much.
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SPEAKER_00: So some churches prefer to talk about other things.
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SPEAKER_00: I know the Holy Spirit seems like an awfully important element of Christianity
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SPEAKER_00: to be ignored by Christians.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to explain the thought process.
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SPEAKER_00: But what about grace?
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SPEAKER_00: That one is a little different.
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SPEAKER_00: The New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: and especially Paul,
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SPEAKER_00: talks a lot about grace in such a way that it's obvious that it's supposed to apply
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SPEAKER_00: to all believers for all time.
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SPEAKER_00: Grace is the basis of human salvation from sin.
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SPEAKER_00: Humans could not achieve that salvation through any of their own activity
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SPEAKER_00: or brilliance, so God simply gave it to them.
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SPEAKER_00: That gift is grace.
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SPEAKER_00: Paul the Apostle says,
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SPEAKER_00: For by grace are ye saved through faith,
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SPEAKER_00: and that not of yourselves,
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SPEAKER_00: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
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SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians 2 verses 8 through 9.
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SPEAKER_00: How could a Christian ignore grace?
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SPEAKER_00: Grace is everything.
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SPEAKER_00: It is the entirety of Christianity.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll try to explain.
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SPEAKER_00: Even in that verse I just quoted from Ephesians,
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SPEAKER_00: written in the name of the Apostle Paul,
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SPEAKER_00: the gift of salvation comes not to everyone in the world,
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SPEAKER_00: but to certain people based on a condition, the condition of faith.
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SPEAKER_00: It's believers who receive grace.
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SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to believe
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SPEAKER_00: Let's bring in the testimony from another well-known passage in the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: this one attributed to a certain James,
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SPEAKER_00: who may be,
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SPEAKER_00: and traditionally has been taken to be,
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SPEAKER_00: the brother of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels and by Paul.
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SPEAKER_00: And here's the verse from James.
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SPEAKER_00: It's James 2.19.
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SPEAKER_00: You believe that God is one.
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SPEAKER_00: You do well.
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SPEAKER_00: Even the demons believe and shudder.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay, wait, the demons believe?
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SPEAKER_00: But they are obviously not recipients of God's grace.
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SPEAKER_00: Is mere belief enough to enjoy salvation from God?
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SPEAKER_00: Ugh, big issues.
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SPEAKER_00: For now, I offer this suggestion.
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SPEAKER_00: Though the demons know about God and Jesus...
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SPEAKER_00: And they are perfectly confident in the basic facts of the gospel.
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SPEAKER_00: They refuse to submit to the authority of God.
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SPEAKER_00: When Paul in Ephesians says that grace comes to believers,
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SPEAKER_00: he means by believers people who accept Jesus as their Lord,
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SPEAKER_00: who love God and submit to him.
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SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't apply to demons, of course.
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SPEAKER_00: That means that believing God Is not just about something happening in
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SPEAKER_00: a person's head,
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SPEAKER_00: like whether they believe in evolution or whatever, UFOs or Bigfoot.
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SPEAKER_00: It's more like whether you believe in spending time with your kids.
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SPEAKER_00: If you do, then prove it.
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SPEAKER_00: Spend time with your kids.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a behavioral element here.
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SPEAKER_00: If you believe that Jesus is Lord, then do what he says.
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SPEAKER_00: He's the one that said in John 14, 15, if you love me, then you will keep my commandments.
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SPEAKER_00: If you've got to prove your faith or love through your actions, then what does that entail?
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SPEAKER_00: It turns out that there is a significant tension between faith and works or
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SPEAKER_00: between grace and works in the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: which has led to longstanding debates within Christian history among and
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SPEAKER_00: within various churches.
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SPEAKER_00: While all churches would affirm Paul's statement of the situation in Ephesians 2.8,
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SPEAKER_00: all would say humans are saved only by grace, not works.
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SPEAKER_00: Most churches would also want to set alongside
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SPEAKER_00: that verse other New Testament statements affirming the value of works,
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SPEAKER_00: or rather the necessity of ethics.
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SPEAKER_00: What Joy meant on that Wednesday evening a decade ago was that the churches
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SPEAKER_00: of her youth had spent more time talking about human responsibility
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SPEAKER_00: And less time rejoicing in God's mercy.
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SPEAKER_00: I understand that impulse,
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SPEAKER_00: though I think it has often gone too far and most certainly needs balance.
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SPEAKER_00: What are the churches that I've been talking about?
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SPEAKER_00: The churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's start with terminology.
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SPEAKER_00: Some people in these churches self-identify as members of, quote,
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SPEAKER_00: the churches of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: and they insist on a small C when it comes to the word churches,
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SPEAKER_00: and other people Self-identify as members of the Churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: Same words, but they will capitalize the C on the word churches.
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SPEAKER_00: And others,
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SPEAKER_00: they make the word church singular,
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SPEAKER_00: that they identify as members of the Church of Christ with a capital C,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe sometimes without a capital C.
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SPEAKER_00: In that sense,
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SPEAKER_00: there is no official name for For a collection of congregations sharing
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SPEAKER_00: the peculiar set of beliefs and practices that I'll describe in a moment.
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SPEAKER_00: However, the individual congregations are almost always known as such and such Church of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: For instance, I'm a member of the Pine Hill Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama.
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SPEAKER_00: I grew up at the Penny Rowell Church of Christ in Madisonville, Kentucky.
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SPEAKER_00: When my wife and I moved to Ohio,
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SPEAKER_00: we became members of the Northeast Church of Christ in Cincinnati.
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SPEAKER_00: The idea is that these names identify not a group of churches, but merely the congregation.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a Church of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: There is,
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SPEAKER_00: in fact,
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SPEAKER_00: no denominational hierarchy or structure,
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SPEAKER_00: no organization to regulate doctrine and practice.
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SPEAKER_00: Each congregation is autonomous.
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SPEAKER_00: Of course,
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SPEAKER_00: the congregations do keep tabs on one another,
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SPEAKER_00: so it is generally known which congregations are staying true to the traditions of
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SPEAKER_00: the churches of Christ and which are not.
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SPEAKER_00: Sometimes this kind of information crosses state lines.
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SPEAKER_00: In Alabama,
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SPEAKER_00: I know about some churches of Christ who Usually the ones
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SPEAKER_00: who have abandoned certain traditional practices that are in Texas or Arkansas
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SPEAKER_00: or Tennessee or Georgia.
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SPEAKER_00: Such news sometimes comes through the grapevine.
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SPEAKER_00: Colleges and publishing companies and large retreats,
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SPEAKER_00: especially youth retreats, also bind the various congregations together.
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SPEAKER_00: There is no official denominational hierarchy, but there is a loose affiliation.
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SPEAKER_00: As for the origins of the churches of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: a traditional in-group response to this topic has been that the churches
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SPEAKER_00: of Christ had their origin in the New Testament established by Jesus 2000 years ago.
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SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a congregation will have on its church sign such and such church
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SPEAKER_00: of Christ established AD 30.
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SPEAKER_00: Even though that congregation was actually established in like 1947 or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00: The theory behind that church sign is
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SPEAKER_00: that these modern congregations are basing their doctrine and practice solely on
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SPEAKER_00: the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: And if you do only what the New Testament requires,
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SPEAKER_00: then you should be the kind of church described in the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: So you belong to the church established on the day of Pentecost in A.D.
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SPEAKER_00: 30, as described in Acts 2.
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SPEAKER_00: This idea has traditionally been termed in our churches the restoration principle
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SPEAKER_00: because the church described in the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: the Church of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: can be restored, brought back to life when people obey the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: Like restoring dinosaurs from DNA harvested from mosquitoes trapped in amber.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, this theory implies that the Church of the New Testament was lost,
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SPEAKER_00: extinct, until restored in the modern period.
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SPEAKER_00: Meaning that other Christian groups,
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SPEAKER_00: Baptists,
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SPEAKER_00: Presbyterians,
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SPEAKER_00: Catholics, etc., are not really authentic New Testament churches at all.
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SPEAKER_00: But corrupt forms of Christianity having added various elements to the witness of
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SPEAKER_00: the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: Churches of Christ have had a reputation for teaching that we're the only ones going to heaven.
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SPEAKER_00: A reputation that has been earned gladly for some members.
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SPEAKER_00: Shamefully for others.
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SPEAKER_00: A joke is sometimes told among members of churches of Christ who would push back
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SPEAKER_00: against the exclusivity of the traditional view.
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SPEAKER_00: And this joke,
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SPEAKER_00: I've seen a video where this joke was told and it was,
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SPEAKER_00: the joke was told in 1969 and it was already considered an old joke then.
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SPEAKER_00: It goes something like this.
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SPEAKER_00: A fella dies and goes to heaven and gets a tour from St.
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SPEAKER_00: Peter who tells him that the noisy group over yonder is the Pentecostals and
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SPEAKER_00: the room with all the smoke and incense houses the Catholics.
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SPEAKER_00: And then the noiseless room down the hall contains the churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: But you should be quiet because they think they're the only ones here.
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SPEAKER_00: By the way,
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SPEAKER_00: if you're thinking that the theory I just mentioned also implies that the gates
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SPEAKER_00: of hell must have prevailed over the church for a period of time,
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SPEAKER_00: contrary to the statement of Jesus in Matthew 16, 18, well, you might be right.
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SPEAKER_00: Alexander Campbell,
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SPEAKER_00: whom we will meet in a moment,
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SPEAKER_00: acknowledged this issue in the opening of his famous reply to the Lunenberg letter.
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SPEAKER_00: So, taking that into account,
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SPEAKER_00: sometimes in Churches of Christ there will be mentioned another idea,
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SPEAKER_00: that the true church did indeed survive over the centuries alongside
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SPEAKER_00: the corrupt Catholic Church and the corrupt Orthodox Church and
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SPEAKER_00: the corrupt Protestant denominations and whatever other corrupt groups there were.
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SPEAKER_00: The true church did survive,
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SPEAKER_00: so this theory goes, but historical sources take little account of it.
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SPEAKER_00: Back to the origins of the churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: Assuming that the theory is correct,
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SPEAKER_00: that these congregations are not part of a Christian denomination,
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SPEAKER_00: but are just the church established by Jesus,
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SPEAKER_00: restored from DNA preserved in the New Testament,
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SPEAKER_00: when did this restoration take place?
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SPEAKER_00: Certain people like Alexander Campbell in the mid-19th century were highly influential.
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SPEAKER_00: Not that Campbell himself would necessarily have agreed with that statement.
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SPEAKER_00: He was ambivalent about whether he was attempting to restore
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SPEAKER_00: the New Testament church,
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SPEAKER_00: and on occasion he explicitly denied that characterization of his movement.
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SPEAKER_00: At any rate,
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SPEAKER_00: Campbell certainly did not come up with the idea that
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SPEAKER_00: Of stripping away post New Testament additions to Christianity or trying to follow
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible closely.
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SPEAKER_00: He had his predecessors and contemporaries making the same plea,
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SPEAKER_00: but he wielded a significant influence on various churches in Virginia
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SPEAKER_00: where he lived and in Kentucky and Tennessee and elsewhere.
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SPEAKER_00: Though Campbell didn't invent the notion of grounding one's practice of Christianity
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SPEAKER_00: in the New Testament and not tradition,
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SPEAKER_00: he did emphasize certain elements he thought had been overlooked.
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SPEAKER_00: He stressed especially the way one becomes a Christian.
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SPEAKER_00: He made some important points, particularly about baptism.
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SPEAKER_00: And he stressed the operations and organization of the church.
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SPEAKER_00: To baptism and becoming a Christian, we will devote attention in a moment.
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SPEAKER_00: About the church, Campbell prioritized congregational autonomy.
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SPEAKER_00: So no bishops overseeing various congregations,
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SPEAKER_00: no synods or associations,
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SPEAKER_00: no organization at all beyond the individual congregations.
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SPEAKER_00: And he stressed the congregational structure he found in the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: So the leaders are elders and deacons.
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SPEAKER_00: And he stressed the worship practices of the earliest Christians.
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SPEAKER_00: This last point has entailed for Churches of Christ
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SPEAKER_00: that we do not have instrumental music in our worship.
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SPEAKER_00: Though the music issue actually arose only after Campbell's death in 1866.
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SPEAKER_00: So sometimes outsiders and sometimes insiders have identified our churches as the
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SPEAKER_00: a cappella churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: But I should acknowledge that the 21st century has seen some churches
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SPEAKER_00: of Christ decide that this principle has been overemphasized.
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SPEAKER_00: And they have added instrumental accompaniment to their worship.
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SPEAKER_00: Note that the grace of God was not really one of the driving forces of Campbell's movement.
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SPEAKER_00: He wanted to point out some things that he had found in the New Testament
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SPEAKER_00: about what people ought to do.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm glad he pointed these things out.
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SPEAKER_00: I think he did well in seeing some things that were truly in the New Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: But the things he and others emphasized became something like the identity of
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SPEAKER_00: the churches of Christ, focusing on human activity and not grace.
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SPEAKER_00: There was a period when many,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe most,
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SPEAKER_00: churches calling themselves churches of Christ and seeing themselves as restoring
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SPEAKER_00: the New Testament church,
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SPEAKER_00: Also emphasized in their preaching and teaching the practices and beliefs
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SPEAKER_00: that separated them from other Christian groups,
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SPEAKER_00: things that made the churches of Christ distinct.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, without a distinctive doctrine of the grace of God, there was no need to emphasize it.
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SPEAKER_00: And a generation or two or five Didn't hear much about grace in churches of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a church of Christ that emphasized grace.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, at least from age eight.
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SPEAKER_00: That was 1987, the year that the Penny Rowell Church of Christ formed in Madisonville, Kentucky.
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SPEAKER_00: Before then, my parents had been members of the Madisonville Church of Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: In 1987, there was a church split.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what you call it when people go to the same church and they get mad
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SPEAKER_00: at each other and decide they can no longer worship together.
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SPEAKER_00: Of course, if it's just a few people, you don't call it a church split.
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SPEAKER_00: It's got to be a significant percentage of the congregation that ends up leaving
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SPEAKER_00: and either going to a different church or forming a new one.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know what percentage of the Madisonville Church of Christ ended up leaving
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SPEAKER_00: in 1987, but I would guess around half.
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SPEAKER_00: My family left.
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SPEAKER_00: I should say my parents left and they took me and my older sister.
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SPEAKER_00: Part of my family stayed.
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SPEAKER_00: My granny,
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SPEAKER_00: my mom's mom,
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SPEAKER_00: and my aunt,
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SPEAKER_00: my mom's sister,
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SPEAKER_00: continued As members of the Madisonville Church of Christ until their deaths.
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SPEAKER_00: It was a hard decision to leave.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, I can imagine it was hard.
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SPEAKER_00: I wasn't involved at all in the decision-making process.
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SPEAKER_00: I was only eight.
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SPEAKER_00: Or was I seven?
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SPEAKER_00: The memory is so hazy, I'm not really even sure whether 1987 was the right year.
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SPEAKER_00: Is that the year of the split?
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was 1986.
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SPEAKER_00: But I do remember driving with my mom home from church one Sunday before the split
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SPEAKER_00: while tears streamed down her cheeks.
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SPEAKER_00: She was weeping over the thought of leaving the congregation where her own father,
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SPEAKER_00: my namesake,
25:35
SPEAKER_00: whom I never met thanks to the heart attack that took him a few years
25:39
SPEAKER_00: before I was born, he had served as an elder at that congregation.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: The impression I have is that my granny and aunt stayed behind Not so much
25:55
SPEAKER_00: because they favored the theological positions of the group that stayed,
26:00
SPEAKER_00: but because they felt like leaving would be a betrayal of a late
26:05
SPEAKER_00: and dearly loved husband or father.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: My parents felt the same, but they felt the pressure to leave even more.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: They are founding members of the Penny Rowell Church of Christ.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had known my granddad, Ed Ryden.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: I have never heard a negative word about him.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: The preacher for the Madisonville Church of Christ in the 1970s was
26:33
SPEAKER_00: a young man named Jerry Barber,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: and I've run into him here and there over the decades.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: He always tells me that my granddad was one of the best elders he's ever met.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: I believe Jerry thinks particularly of my granddad's calm wisdom,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: his commitment to scripture,
26:53
SPEAKER_00: and his love for the people in the church,
26:57
SPEAKER_00: and of course his good working relationship with the congregation's preachers.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: The pressure to leave that my parents felt had a lot to do with me and my sister.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to guide their children's theological and ecclesial formation in
27:17
SPEAKER_00: a direction different from the path followed by the congregation they had attended.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: My aunt and granny did not feel the same pressure.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: They did not have children to worry about.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: What caused the split?
27:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: I only ever had a vague idea.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And now four decades later,
27:40
SPEAKER_00: without having spent much time interviewing the principal actors involved,
27:45
SPEAKER_00: my impressions of the issues are decidedly indistinct.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: The major idea that has struck stuck with me over the decades is that
27:53
SPEAKER_00: the split had something to do with legalism and grace.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Legalism within a Christian system.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: This
28:08
SPEAKER_00: description obviously connects closely to notions already discussed,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: pitting Paul the Apostle of Grace against James and his insistence
28:18
SPEAKER_00: that faith must be accompanied by works.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure that the term legalism, at least within Christianity, is always pejorative.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: No one would ever claim to be a legalist or affirm a doctrine of legalism under that name.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: And so it's an accusation more than a theory.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: People that get accused of legalism would likely respond that their accusers are libertines.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And people who accuse others of legalism probably are more bothered
28:55
SPEAKER_00: by their opponent's apparent need to control other people.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the problem is about judging others.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Think about Romans 14 verses 3 and 4.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Then again,
29:10
SPEAKER_00: those accused of legalism would probably say the issue is more about
29:15
SPEAKER_00: whether we're living in accordance with Christ.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And so judgment is warranted.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: See Romans 16, verses 17 and 18.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: In a Church of Christ in the 1980s,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: one could make a decent guess about the issues that would generate a charge
29:36
SPEAKER_00: of legalism.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps someone forbade clapping during worship songs or condemned those who labeled
29:45
SPEAKER_00: as Christians people who attended churches other than Churches of Christ.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Or there might have been a gender element.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: An accused legalist might have prohibited women from speaking
29:59
SPEAKER_00: during adult Bible class or objected to the printing of an article by a woman in
30:05
SPEAKER_00: the church bulletin.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, to be clear,
30:08
SPEAKER_00: some of these legalist claims were strongly affirmed
30:13
SPEAKER_00: The newly established Penny Ryle Church of Christ
30:41
SPEAKER_00: Then was led by men who wanted to emphasize the truth of Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: For by grace are ye saved, not of works.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: They read Romans and Galatians and marveled together at the free gift of salvation.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: They read books by Max Lucado,
31:06
SPEAKER_00: who by the early 1990s was known in Churches of Christ as a liberal.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Without denying the importance of human behavior,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: these men made clear over and over to me and other young people at church
31:19
SPEAKER_00: that humans could do nothing whatever to merit grace.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: The very concept being an oxymoron for grace is precisely unmerited favor.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: I think these men would have told you that they themselves had been raised
31:38
SPEAKER_00: in legalistic churches and they wanted something different,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: more profound, more loving, more grace-filled for their children.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: My experience at the Pennyroyal Church of Christ in the decades before I went
31:56
SPEAKER_00: to college in 1997 It's a big part of the reason I have never gone through a process
32:02
SPEAKER_00: of deconstruction.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: The men of the previous generation did it for me.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They were deconstructing their childhood before my eyes.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to say that the Pennyrod Church of Christ in the 1990s was liberal.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: It was not, according to any sane definition of the term liberal in a theological sense.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: It did have a reputation for being liberal.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: I know not why.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: At college,
32:36
SPEAKER_00: I met someone who,
32:38
SPEAKER_00: when he took a summer intern job at a church in Kentucky,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: had been handed a file on the Penny Rowell Church of Christ with the warning
32:46
SPEAKER_00: that he should steer clear.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: He even let me see the file, but I can't remember what the accusations were.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Mostly misunderstandings, I recall.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: But to give you a feel for how conservative this so-called liberal church was,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: I distinctly remember the announcement one of our elders made from the main stage in
33:06
SPEAKER_00: the auditorium that it had been decided that there should be no hand clapping
33:11
SPEAKER_00: during worship songs.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: If instrumental music was sinful during worship, as we all knew, then so was clapping.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: The only musical instrument authorized for worship in the New Testament was the human voice.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Was the split worth it?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: But I am grateful for the theological formation provided by Penny Ryle.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: While it was made very clear to me that Christianity made demands on people,
33:44
SPEAKER_00: significant demands,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: It was also clear that meeting all these demands was both impossible and powerless
33:55
SPEAKER_00: to affect our salvation.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: We don't obey Jesus so that he'll save us.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: We obey him because we love him, and we love him because he first loved us.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: So while I knew what Joy meant when she said she never heard about grace at church
34:14
SPEAKER_00: when she was younger, I couldn't say the same myself.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: If you ask anyone in Churches of Christ how to become a Christian,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: one of the things that will pop into their heads is a formula we've all learned
34:32
SPEAKER_00: for just such occasions.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Not everyone will rattle off the formula like that,
34:46
SPEAKER_00: but a good many will,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: and they'll be able to point you to scriptural proof texts for each of
34:52
SPEAKER_00: the five points.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Number one,
34:55
SPEAKER_00: to become a Christian,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: first you've got to hear the gospel,
34:58
SPEAKER_00: for faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, Romans 10, 17.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Number two, then you have to believe the gospel or believe in Jesus or in God.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: For without faith it is impossible to please him,
35:13
SPEAKER_00: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them
35:18
SPEAKER_00: that diligently seek him, Hebrews 11.6.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Number three,
35:23
SPEAKER_00: you must repent of your sins,
35:25
SPEAKER_00: that is,
35:26
SPEAKER_00: turn away from them,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: acknowledge that they are wrong,
35:30
SPEAKER_00: that they are both bad for you and displeasing to God,
35:34
SPEAKER_00: and you've got to make a commitment to not sin.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: As Acts 17 verse 30 says, he commands all people everywhere to repent.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Number four, next you have to confess, not confess your sins.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: That's really a part of step three, repentance.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: But what this step is,
35:56
SPEAKER_00: step number four is confess or proclaim before other people that Jesus is your Lord.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus said in Matthew 10,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: verse 32,
36:07
SPEAKER_00: Everyone,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: therefore,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: who acknowledges me before others,
36:10
SPEAKER_00: I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And number five, finally, you've got to get baptized.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: As Peter said to the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, 38,
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Repent and be baptized,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: every one of you,
36:25
SPEAKER_00: in the name of Jesus Christ,
36:26
SPEAKER_00: so that your sins may be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: This five-fold formula, hear,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: believe, repent,
36:38
SPEAKER_00: confess,
36:38
SPEAKER_00: be baptized,
36:40
SPEAKER_00: is so well known among people in Churches of Christ that it's odd that I don't know
36:47
SPEAKER_00: who first articulated it.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: I do know that something like this formula was developed by a fellow named Walter Scott.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Not the author of Ivanhoe,
36:58
SPEAKER_00: but his younger contemporary and namesake,
37:01
SPEAKER_00: a preacher in America and close associate of Alexander Campbell.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: In the 1820s,
37:07
SPEAKER_00: Walter Scott,
37:07
SPEAKER_00: the clergyman, that's what Wikipedia calls him, Walter Scott, the clergyman.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: He devised a five-fold formula based on Acts 2.38 so
37:18
SPEAKER_00: that he could explain how one becomes a Christian.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: But his formula went like this.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Believe, repent, be baptized, remission of sins, gift of the Holy Spirit.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: He called it the five-finger exercise,
37:35
SPEAKER_00: and he taught children to say each point while counting them off on their fingers.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: It was an evangelistic technique.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: He wanted the children to go home and demonstrate the five-finger exercise
37:46
SPEAKER_00: to their parents,
37:48
SPEAKER_00: who then might be interested enough to come hear Scott preach in the evening.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Those familiar with the traditional five-fold formula in Churches
37:59
SPEAKER_00: of Christ will be surprised that a previous version of the formula,
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Scott's original version,
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Did not focus solely on human activity,
38:10
SPEAKER_00: but also mentioned two blessings received by the convert.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Scott's original version did not include a separate point for hearing,
38:23
SPEAKER_00: which he obviously thought could be presupposed,
38:26
SPEAKER_00: or confessing, which he probably understood as a constituent element of baptism.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: Throughout Christian history,
38:37
SPEAKER_00: I guess one has always made a confession of faith to solemnize one's baptism or had
38:45
SPEAKER_00: a confession made on one's behalf by a godparent.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: In Scott's five finger exercise, hearing and confessing are not explicit, but assumed.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: In Churches of Christ, the traditional five-fold formula is known as the plan of salvation.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: If you mention to someone in Churches of Christ the phrase plan of salvation,
39:10
SPEAKER_00: they will immediately think, hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing there about grace.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: The plan of salvation is all about human activity.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: This approach could easily be interpreted as legalism.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: The other prominent name for the formula raises the specter of legalism further.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: If we don't call it the plan of salvation, then we'll probably call it the steps of salvation.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: As if God doesn't come to rescue us, but we need to step up to him.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: It is common to describe the steps of As a ladder stretching up from earth to heaven
39:58
SPEAKER_00: with the rungs of the ladder labeled hearing,
40:02
SPEAKER_00: believing, repenting, confessing, getting baptized.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: God stays home.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: We climb up to him.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: It's all about human effort.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: Legalism.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: No, no,
40:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's the right way to interpret the five-fold formula or the phrases
40:24
SPEAKER_00: that And listen,
40:29
SPEAKER_00: the use of a ladder to represent Christian spirituality ascending to God with
40:36
SPEAKER_00: the rungs of the ladder labeled with things we need to do is not unique to churches
40:43
SPEAKER_00: of Christ.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: It's actually quite common in medieval Christianity.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe that's not the best defense against the charge of legalism,
40:52
SPEAKER_00: that it's common in medieval Christianity, but stick with me.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: One of the most important works of Eastern Christian spirituality is
41:00
SPEAKER_00: the early 7th century work called Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus
41:08
SPEAKER_00: with its 30 steps.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Or there is the Ladder of Monks written by
41:15
SPEAKER_00: the 12th century Carthusian monk Guigo II defining the four steps of Lectio Divina
41:23
SPEAKER_00: as a way of approaching the divine.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Earlier,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: at the turn of the 3rd century,
41:29
SPEAKER_00: the soon-to-be martyr Perpetua had a vision of a ladder leading up to heaven,
41:36
SPEAKER_00: and the way to climb the ladder was by submitting to death.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Or for Irenaeus in the 2nd century,
41:44
SPEAKER_00: it was the Holy Spirit that serves as our ladder of ascent to God.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: And today it is quite common to encounter a program for self-improvement
41:56
SPEAKER_00: that includes 12 steps.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Granted,
42:00
SPEAKER_00: these ladders are of different types,
42:03
SPEAKER_00: but they are all ladders that people need to climb in order to reach a goal,
42:09
SPEAKER_00: often an encounter with God.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: For all these ladders,
42:15
SPEAKER_00: and certainly for the plan of salvation,
42:17
SPEAKER_00: the required human effort does not eliminate the On the contrary,
42:25
SPEAKER_00: the latter itself is provided by grace.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: And every particle of our effort is enabled by grace.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: And God's valuing our feeble effort is itself grace
42:45
SPEAKER_00: because our effort has no independent value and is in any case empowered by God
42:53
SPEAKER_00: who gives life to our bodies like God.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: A young child who draws a picture for his daddy,
43:01
SPEAKER_00: which the father proudly displays in his office,
43:04
SPEAKER_00: knowing that it could never hang in the Louvre.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: Our effort has value only because God chooses to value it.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: That's grace.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: And yet, our effort does please God, which likewise makes that effort valuable to us.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Everyone I know in Churches of Christ would agree with Rose of Lima,
43:38
SPEAKER_00: the early 17th century Catholic who declared, quote,
43:41
SPEAKER_00: that there was no other means of mounting to heaven but by the ladder of the cross.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I'll admit that perhaps the phrases plan of salvation or steps
43:56
SPEAKER_00: of salvation are unfortunate since they bring to mind a formulation
44:01
SPEAKER_00: that focuses exclusively on human effort.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Still, I am comfortable with these expressions because they are intended
44:09
SPEAKER_00: to highlight one small but important piece of Christianity.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: How humans respond to God's offer of grace.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: It is problematic.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: No, it's fatal.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: If we come to think of this five-fold formula as encompassing the main point
44:30
SPEAKER_00: of Christianity or the main part of the gospel.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: No, the main point can only be about Jesus Christ,
44:38
SPEAKER_00: his self-emptying character,
44:41
SPEAKER_00: his current reign at God's right hand,
44:45
SPEAKER_00: and his invitation to us to reign alongside him.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: But when the question is,
44:54
SPEAKER_00: what must we do to be saved,
44:57
SPEAKER_00: not what has God done so that we can be saved,
45:01
SPEAKER_00: but what should we do,
45:06
SPEAKER_00: it is appropriate to follow Walter Scott's lead and answer in the words
45:12
SPEAKER_00: of Acts 2.38.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Or by means of the later formula adapted from Scott's exercise,
45:20
SPEAKER_00: the formula known intimately by all members of Churches of Christ.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: The original five-finger exercise assumed,
45:32
SPEAKER_00: instead of explicitly naming the elements of hearing and confessing,
45:38
SPEAKER_00: Any proper understanding of the gospel would affirm that the plan or steps
45:44
SPEAKER_00: of salvation also assumes the grace of God,
45:50
SPEAKER_00: not just as the foundation of everything else,
45:56
SPEAKER_00: but as the all-encompassing reality in which we live today.