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When Doctrine Divides Christians Who Aren't Wrong · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking
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Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this
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Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer and I'm
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Speaker 1: joined again by Dr. Ashish Varma. For those of you
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Speaker 1: who aren't watching, I'm not in the studio today and
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Speaker 1: so if my audio sounds a little bit strange, it's
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Speaker 1: because I don't have my regular nice little mic set up.
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Speaker 1: I am using a wonderful pair of wireless headphones to
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Speaker 1: do this episode. So hopefully everything will come out okay.
0:51
Speaker 1: But today we are going to be talking a little
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Speaker 1: bit about another aspect of the diagnosis that Ashish and
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Speaker 1: I have talked about previously in a previous episode. And
1:01
Speaker 1: this one is called fragmentation. And what we mean by
1:04
Speaker 1: fragmentation is really when Christians begin to pull apart, not
1:13
Speaker 1: because one group has become heretical or not because one
1:17
Speaker 1: group has done something that's inappropriate. there are appropriate times
1:24
Speaker 1: for such divisions. But in this case, what we're really
1:28
Speaker 1: looking at is the way that legitimate doctrinal positions or
1:35
Speaker 1: institutions or traditions or practices or people may end up
1:41
Speaker 1: driving us apart. And so we're really thinking about fragmentation
1:47
Speaker 1: of faithful believers from one another simply on the basis
1:52
Speaker 1: of something like a different idiom of expression as opposed
1:59
Speaker 1: to a theological error. And so that's what we're going
2:03
Speaker 1: to be diving into today. Biblically, you know, she's not
2:07
Speaker 1: talked about a number of different things. Bible passages where
2:10
Speaker 1: we might go to find something like this. Um, first
2:13
Speaker 1: Corinthians one came to mind, you know, I follow Paul,
2:16
Speaker 1: I follow Apollos. Um, she brought up, uh, Colossians, the
2:19
Speaker 1: book of Colossians and some of the doctrinal controversies there. Um,
2:23
Speaker 1: we could obviously go to Romans 14 and 15, but
2:26
Speaker 1: it almost feels like, um, part of what we're going
2:29
Speaker 1: to end up doing is we're going to end up
2:31
Speaker 1: thinking through church history an awful lot more today than
2:35
Speaker 1: maybe going to specific biblical passages and really rooting this
2:38
Speaker 1: principle in a specific biblical example, because sociologically, this seems
2:45
Speaker 1: to have happened to the church over time, whereas biblically,
2:49
Speaker 1: the divisions aren't necessarily exactly what we're talking about today.
2:53
Speaker 1: That be fair in your mind, Ashish?
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Speaker 2: I think so, yeah. I think church history is a
2:59
Speaker 2: right place to begin to understand some of the pressures
3:03
Speaker 2: we feel today to divide on very neat lines, but
3:07
Speaker 2: then also understand how the fragmentation doesn't just happen between
3:11
Speaker 2: larger movements, such as the Roman Catholics and the Baptists,
3:15
Speaker 2: but also then within Roman Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans
3:19
Speaker 2: and so on and so forth. And I think along
3:22
Speaker 2: with that, you have Maybe just a simple human reality.
3:28
Speaker 2: Probably not a human reality that we'd say exists in
3:32
Speaker 2: its best sense pre-fall. But certainly in humanity as we
3:36
Speaker 2: know it, there has been a long tendency, whether Christian
3:39
Speaker 2: or not, to begin to see very precise lines of
3:44
Speaker 2: exclusion based upon some set of circumstances. It could be
3:49
Speaker 2: something as simple as, we are the people of here,
3:53
Speaker 2: and you are not. I think about many of the
3:57
Speaker 2: groups of First Nations peoples, their names for themselves, such
4:01
Speaker 2: as the people that we call the Apaches today, their
4:06
Speaker 2: names for themselves were the people, hard stop. That's the
4:11
Speaker 2: rough translation. And their neighboring people who, by the way,
4:15
Speaker 2: looked more or less like them. So they're not thinking
4:18
Speaker 2: in racial terms the way that we do today of
4:21
Speaker 2: looks like me, doesn't look like me. But their neighbors
4:27
Speaker 2: also saw themselves as the people. But when looking at
4:30
Speaker 2: each other, they were both not the people. And that's
4:34
Speaker 2: not a First Nations thing alone. You can go anywhere
4:38
Speaker 2: in the world. You have this tendency to begin to
4:40
Speaker 2: group to the exclusion of other people. And the Christian
4:44
Speaker 2: phenomena starts to do that around ideas, which is something
4:48
Speaker 2: I think we want to talk about that's interesting and
4:51
Speaker 2: in some ways unique.
4:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll share this story just to kind of illustrate
4:55
Speaker 1: that I think the point we're getting to. But I
4:57
Speaker 1: had applied for a job with the Southern Denomination Association
5:02
Speaker 1: probably in 2005 now. So, I mean, it's been forever ago.
5:06
Speaker 1: And it happened to be in my hometown, my home county.
5:09
Speaker 1: And I was not Southern Baptist at the time. I
5:12
Speaker 1: knew one of the pastors of the church down there.
5:14
Speaker 1: He knew what I was doing as far as theological school.
5:17
Speaker 1: We talked. He felt really comfortable with me. And so
5:21
Speaker 1: I applied for this position. I was going through the
5:22
Speaker 1: interview process, but I was not Southern Baptist. I'd made
5:26
Speaker 1: the decision not to go to a Southern Baptist church
5:29
Speaker 1: where I was living and join that church for a
5:32
Speaker 1: month so that I could just have the denominational label
5:36
Speaker 1: and then go apply for this position. I just kind
5:39
Speaker 1: of figured, well, If there's doctrinal agreement, if there's an
5:43
Speaker 1: understanding that I align with the denomination, then obviously when
5:47
Speaker 1: I come down and I'm working for the Southern Baptist Church,
5:49
Speaker 1: I would be a member of the Southern Baptist Church.
5:51
Speaker 1: And at the time, I thought that seemed reasonable. But
5:55
Speaker 1: when I got to this bigger association meeting where all
5:58
Speaker 1: these different pastors and delegates from the various congregations were there,
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Speaker 1: one of the pastors stood up and said something to
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Speaker 1: the effect of, I don't want anyone in this position
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Speaker 1: who would not bleed for the Southern Baptist faith. And
6:11
Speaker 1: he said it just like that, that last part, bleed
6:14
Speaker 1: for the Southern Baptist faith was the quote. And I
6:17
Speaker 1: remember sort of thinking and processing in that moment, number one,
6:21
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to get this job because his
6:24
Speaker 1: statement was followed by a number of amens. But the
6:28
Speaker 1: second part was, I was really That was the first
6:33
Speaker 1: time I'd ever really been confronted with someone who is
6:36
Speaker 1: dividing the body of Christ in this way. That there
6:39
Speaker 1: was something so distinct, not culturally about Southern Baptists, but
6:43
Speaker 1: about the Southern Baptist faith that would create a separation
6:49
Speaker 1: where I was an outsider as a Christian, as someone
6:52
Speaker 1: who'd gone to conservative schools. I'd gone to Moody and
6:55
Speaker 1: Wheaton at that time, was pursuing, getting ready to pursue
6:59
Speaker 1: my PhD at Trinity. These are squarely evangelical institutions. These
7:04
Speaker 1: are not, you know, liberal in any sense. You know,
7:08
Speaker 1: I was not liberal in any sense. And yet I
7:11
Speaker 1: was excluded in that moment. And so I would say
7:16
Speaker 1: it wasn't about me not getting the job. Right. Plenty
7:19
Speaker 1: of reasons to say, hey, this guy doesn't understand the
7:21
Speaker 1: Southern Baptist culture. He doesn't you know, he doesn't go
7:23
Speaker 1: to a Southern Baptist church. We'd really like somebody who
7:25
Speaker 1: understands these things. So, you know, because I was going
7:28
Speaker 1: to be working across the different churches. That would have
7:31
Speaker 1: made sense to me. But the believing for Southern Baptist
7:35
Speaker 1: faith made no sense to me. I still don't fully
7:39
Speaker 1: grasp what the Southern Baptist faith is in distinction to,
7:44
Speaker 1: let's say, the Missouri Synod Lutheran faith or the Presbyterian
7:51
Speaker 1: Church USA faith or the non-denominational Bible Church faith. Those
7:56
Speaker 1: are all the same faith to me. There is only
7:58
Speaker 1: one faith. I understand there's doctrinal distinctions, but to me,
8:02
Speaker 1: those doctrinal distinctions aren't in, shouldn't be divisive in the
8:07
Speaker 1: way that it ended up being in that case. And
8:11
Speaker 1: so hopefully that illustrates a little bit of what we're
8:13
Speaker 1: trying to get at and how these things can sort
8:16
Speaker 1: of create identities on their own, where you have an
8:19
Speaker 1: in-group and an out-group. And so what ends up happening
8:22
Speaker 1: is that you're not just, um, judged less fit than
8:28
Speaker 1: someone else for a job, you're actually recognized as an
8:33
Speaker 1: alien and stranger who does not belong within this community,
8:38
Speaker 1: this body of believers. You're now excluded and outside of that.
8:42
Speaker 1: So like I said, hopefully that gives people a little
8:46
Speaker 1: bit of an illustration of what we're talking about here,
8:49
Speaker 1: that sort of fragmentation of the body of Christ where
8:52
Speaker 1: regardless of doctrinal agreement, my lack of affiliation with the
8:57
Speaker 1: Southern Baptist Church was really the problem. Yeah.
9:03
Speaker 2: And to be clear, I think you and I would
9:04
Speaker 2: agree that there is a value to having certain lines.
9:09
Speaker 1: Sure, sure.
9:11
Speaker 2: And there might even be a value to having certain
9:15
Speaker 2: positions that are holding up those lines on a very
9:18
Speaker 2: narrow basis. I think of a friend of mine who
9:20
Speaker 2: taught at a specifically denominational school for many years. And
9:26
Speaker 2: we had a conversation that I think we came at
9:29
Speaker 2: it from different angles. My frustration with another school was
9:33
Speaker 2: an overly narrowing of boundaries such that we were treating
9:37
Speaker 2: those super narrow boundaries as if this is the only
9:40
Speaker 2: way in which we can properly articulate belonging to the
9:43
Speaker 2: body of Christ.
9:45
Speaker 1: That's right.
9:46
Speaker 2: And I would to this day say, if that's the
9:48
Speaker 2: way that we're articulating boundaries, I think there's a problem
9:51
Speaker 2: in that.
9:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
9:53
Speaker 2: His counterpoint to me was you know accepting that that
9:57
Speaker 2: could be a problem there's a value to being able
10:00
Speaker 2: to say we have a community so he was part
10:01
Speaker 2: of the crc tradition and he wanted to say if
10:06
Speaker 2: we have a particular program or school that's committed to
10:13
Speaker 2: the historic values of the christian reformed church then we
10:18
Speaker 2: need to have people who enter into it that have
10:20
Speaker 2: a certain level of buy-in, not because what we're saying
10:22
Speaker 2: is those outside the CRC are inherently problematic in their faith,
10:27
Speaker 2: but because we're trying to uphold that. And I thought
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Speaker 2: that's a fair way of articulating it, right? So what
10:34
Speaker 2: we're trying to get at here is that when, and
10:37
Speaker 2: I'm not making a comment on the CRC, I don't
10:39
Speaker 2: know the ins and outs of this particular tradition as
10:44
Speaker 2: it relates to cooperation with others, but generally speaking, what
10:48
Speaker 2: particularly intrigues us, and I think what gets to the
10:50
Speaker 2: heart of your story that you just gave, is when
10:55
Speaker 2: there becomes levels of suspicion entering in. So that what
11:00
Speaker 2: we have now is an overly narrowing level for what
11:06
Speaker 2: counts to be a follower of Christ. Where we begin
11:09
Speaker 2: to think, oh, you're a Lutheran. Or even within Lutheran circles, oh,
11:16
Speaker 2: you're a Missouri Synod. Such that we begin to wonder,
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Speaker 2: does that mean you're even a follower of Jesus? I
11:25
Speaker 2: hear this when my kids ask questions, we're not Roman Catholic,
11:29
Speaker 2: but they begin to ask questions of, so are Catholics Christians?
11:33
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, insofar as they profess Christ, of course
11:36
Speaker 2: they're Christians, right? So we think about early in the church,
11:41
Speaker 2: there's a reason that we have the genealogies of traditions
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Speaker 2: to this day, right? I'll tell my kids, there's a
11:49
Speaker 2: reason we're not Roman Catholic, and we can go into
11:52
Speaker 2: those various reasons. But that's very different than saying they
11:55
Speaker 2: are not followers of Jesus, the Son of God, the
11:58
Speaker 2: second person of the triune God, right, who came to
12:02
Speaker 2: save us from our sins, to bring about the process
12:06
Speaker 2: of reconciliation for all of creation, right? These are core issues. So,
12:11
Speaker 2: when we think about the early church where Of course,
12:13
Speaker 2: there were these important councils. We tend to know of
12:17
Speaker 2: seven of them as the ecumenical councils. And by ecumenical,
12:20
Speaker 2: we just mean that the known part of the church
12:24
Speaker 2: within the larger influence of the Roman Empire was joined
12:28
Speaker 2: together in a commitment to expressing what are those core
12:32
Speaker 2: elements of their unity, right? What made them the church
12:37
Speaker 2: that followed Jesus. There were certainly other councils and what
12:43
Speaker 2: prevented them from rising to the level of ecumenical is
12:46
Speaker 2: that the church realized they represented the interests of a
12:50
Speaker 2: local group and only a local group and couldn't rightfully
12:55
Speaker 2: be said to represent the entirety of the body of
12:59
Speaker 2: Christ versus those seven, at least again in that known
13:04
Speaker 2: Roman Empire world, represent whether you were in the Spanish
13:09
Speaker 2: regions in the far west of the empire or you
13:12
Speaker 2: were in the southernmost reaches of the African reach of
13:15
Speaker 2: the empire, or you're in the easternmost reaches in the
13:18
Speaker 2: Middle East of the empire, or as far north as Germany,
13:23
Speaker 2: or what we think of as Germany today, in the
13:24
Speaker 2: northern reaches of the empire, these claims were supposed to
13:29
Speaker 2: be something that said you could recognize the church that
13:33
Speaker 2: follows Jesus in all of these places. Now, that doesn't
13:35
Speaker 2: mean they were perfect in their proclamations and what they
13:37
Speaker 2: were doing, right? There's certainly been traditions that follow that
13:41
Speaker 2: have concerns with some of those ecumenical claims, one of
13:46
Speaker 2: them being, of course, icons. One of the ecumenical agreements
13:49
Speaker 2: was that icons were acceptable. Not all Christians today want.
13:53
Speaker 1: To affirm that.
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Speaker 2: But the point was that these were boundaries that were
13:59
Speaker 2: being erected not as a fine division between followers of Christ,
14:05
Speaker 2: but in order to demarcate what does it mean to
14:08
Speaker 2: profess Jesus as the Son of God God in the flesh,
14:11
Speaker 2: God's self, right? And reconciler of creation to God's self.
14:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think there's value in having
14:24
Speaker 1: some of the distinctions. I don't have any problem with that.
14:27
Speaker 1: I think the other part of this that I would
14:31
Speaker 1: say is a problem with the distinctions. I'll use this analogy.
14:39
Speaker 1: It's almost like inbreeding. like you only date within your
14:43
Speaker 1: own family, right? We don't do that. We like to have,
14:46
Speaker 1: you know, a broader perspective on who our kids should
14:50
Speaker 1: date or who we should marry. And like that practice
14:54
Speaker 1: went out a long, long time ago. As we form
14:58
Speaker 1: these units, it does create a dynamic in which we
15:01
Speaker 1: tend to stay within those units. We tend to stay
15:05
Speaker 1: within those boundaries. And even though we say, well, we're
15:07
Speaker 1: trying to preserve a heritage here, There's a subtle fragmentation
15:11
Speaker 1: that takes place because we're only ever really interacting within
15:16
Speaker 1: that tradition. And I think that can be also problematic.
15:20
Speaker 1: So I'm for the distinctions. I have no issue with,
15:25
Speaker 1: for instance, I know the Lutherans have a different perspective
15:29
Speaker 1: on baptism, let's say, than Baptists might. the various forms
15:36
Speaker 1: of Baptist we could throw out there. I know they
15:39
Speaker 1: have a different understanding of that. Now, is it possible
15:42
Speaker 1: that you could have a church that's practicing both forms? Sure,
15:46
Speaker 1: you probably could. But it's also not necessary that you would.
15:52
Speaker 1: And so I think that there is an appropriateness to
15:55
Speaker 1: a community of practice rooted in different doctrinal beliefs. I
16:00
Speaker 1: just happen to think that we have to put in
16:01
Speaker 1: a little bit more effort to bridge the gaps between
16:05
Speaker 1: those traditions so that the traditions don't become so insular
16:09
Speaker 1: that it ultimately develops into, even though confessionally people might
16:13
Speaker 1: not say it, like, hey, this other group isn't Christian.
16:18
Speaker 1: I think in practice it feels that way. And so
16:22
Speaker 1: there is a subtle sort of fragmentation that happens even
16:25
Speaker 1: when we form these groups. I think it's not essentially evil.
16:32
Speaker 1: I think it's a consequence of the particular structure that
16:35
Speaker 1: we've adopted. And it's something that we need to be
16:38
Speaker 1: thinking through and aware of so that we can counteract
16:42
Speaker 1: the tendency, if that makes sense. It does.
16:45
Speaker 2: Can you say a little bit more about what you
16:47
Speaker 2: think that structure is that you see it as a
16:49
Speaker 2: consequence of?
16:51
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think, I mean, we both worked
16:55
Speaker 1: at denominational, not denominational schools. We both worked in non-denominational schools.
17:00
Speaker 1: we both attended non-denominational schools. Wheaton College is a non-denominational school,
17:05
Speaker 1: as far as I know. You know, Moody Bible Institute,
17:09
Speaker 1: where I did my MDiv, was a non-denominational school. Trinity
17:13
Speaker 1: was associated with E3, right? But within those institutions, and
17:19
Speaker 1: they didn't, yeah, right. It was much broader. And so
17:24
Speaker 1: I would say, though, that Wheaton was, uh, more strongly
17:29
Speaker 1: academic and thus I think a bit more ecumenical. Um,
17:36
Speaker 1: Moody was, um, more closed off. And there was a
17:42
Speaker 1: sense I can remember sitting when I was doing my
17:45
Speaker 1: MDiv at Moody, sitting in the lunchroom and listening to
17:47
Speaker 1: some of my fellow MDiv students sitting there talking with
17:51
Speaker 1: the professor and basically, um, asking the question of whether
17:56
Speaker 1: Reformed theology is heretical. Moody's a dispensational school. I don't
18:03
Speaker 1: know what conclusion they ever came to, but you can
18:06
Speaker 1: see how these sort of things would raise up de facto.
18:10
Speaker 1: Because we're segmenting ourselves and because we're deciding on our
18:13
Speaker 1: own doctrinal statements, we begin to develop a vested interest
18:17
Speaker 1: in those doctrinal distinctives, as opposed to recognizing them for
18:21
Speaker 1: what they are. Plausible if not plausible, legitimate readings of
18:27
Speaker 1: the biblical text, constructed back over into doctrine, and the
18:34
Speaker 1: biblical text isn't infinitely plausible, and so it's not infinitely pliable, rather.
18:40
Speaker 1: So there are going to be boundaries, there are going
18:42
Speaker 1: to be limits to what can be developed, but I
18:45
Speaker 1: think it starts to become too insular, and you start
18:51
Speaker 1: to forget that your doctrinal formulation isn't simply plausible and legitimate,
18:59
Speaker 1: you start to think of it as authoritative and bracketing.
19:07
Speaker 1: And so you get these sort of statements that, you know,
19:16
Speaker 1: certain other positions may or may not be heretical. I
19:19
Speaker 1: would say like at one point, you know, complementarian and
19:23
Speaker 1: egalitarian issues when we talked about them during my MDiv,
19:27
Speaker 1: very similar feel. You began to think of egalitarians as heretics,
19:34
Speaker 1: not as people who held a separate position than yours,
19:38
Speaker 1: but were still Christians. You began to think of these
19:42
Speaker 1: kind of folks as the wrong kind of folks. I
19:46
Speaker 1: think it's very difficult, in other words, to construct these
19:49
Speaker 1: social relationships without creating black sheep within the social matrix.
19:56
Speaker 1: And that creates a certain level of fragmentation. It also
19:59
Speaker 1: creates a certain level of what we might call a
20:03
Speaker 1: social hierarchy, right? Where some people are more dead center
20:07
Speaker 1: and other people are more deviant. Um, I was always
20:11
Speaker 1: more deviant, honestly. I think part of it was the tattoos. Um,
20:15
Speaker 1: it's just like, I did, I did things differently. I
20:19
Speaker 1: thought differently. I acted differently. Part of it was that
20:22
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up in Christian culture. I came to
20:25
Speaker 1: it much later. So I didn't really understand what the
20:29
Speaker 1: finer points were. And so I was always a little
20:31
Speaker 1: bit more deviant, but you could, you could feel as
20:35
Speaker 1: being pushed even, you know, partly to the margins as
20:39
Speaker 1: I was, you could see how, you know, a legacy
20:45
Speaker 1: pastor's kid was going to have way different opportunities than
20:47
Speaker 1: somebody like me who's coming to this completely fresh and
20:50
Speaker 1: is a little strange is ever going to have within
20:52
Speaker 1: that community. And you could tell that I was going
20:56
Speaker 1: to get away with far less than the pastor's kid
20:59
Speaker 1: was going to get by with. Right. And so you
21:02
Speaker 1: have these sort of I think that's the dynamic that
21:05
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. And hopefully that gives a sense of
21:08
Speaker 1: the structure that I'm talking about. Whenever we divide ourselves,
21:11
Speaker 1: have a denomination, have a doctrinally distinct college of some sort, whatever. Again,
21:18
Speaker 1: those structures aren't evil. They're not bad necessarily, but we
21:22
Speaker 1: have to be aware of the dynamics that are created
21:25
Speaker 1: within them and actively work to counteract those dynamics.
21:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful. It brings up a lot of, side
21:33
Speaker 2: questions that I think are related, um, that I didn't
21:38
Speaker 2: actually expect us to go there, but I'm going to,
21:39
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it anyway. Pull me back if
21:41
Speaker 2: I go too far out. Um, I think about the
21:43
Speaker 2: work of, uh, the great 20th century theologian, George Lindbeck. Um,
21:49
Speaker 2: so his, his main work, the nature of doctrine or
21:53
Speaker 2: his most popular work, um, Which, incidentally, for those out
21:59
Speaker 2: there who know of Kevin Van Hooser, his work, The
22:01
Speaker 2: Drama of Doctrine, which is probably his most significant work,
22:04
Speaker 2: is a deliberate play off of that. In some ways,
22:06
Speaker 2: he's following in the line of what George Limbeck did,
22:09
Speaker 2: in some ways pivoting and trying to draw lines a
22:13
Speaker 2: little bit differently. But similar sorts of projects. And what
22:16
Speaker 2: is that project? Well, the project is, how do we
22:19
Speaker 2: begin to understand, in some ways, we could say the
22:24
Speaker 2: democratization of faith. Yeah. You think about the early church,
22:30
Speaker 2: which was heavily elder-driven, and elder transcended the boundaries of
22:38
Speaker 2: one particular local congregation. I think a lot of times,
22:42
Speaker 2: especially in lower church evangelical settings, we tend to think
22:45
Speaker 2: of the elders as a people in one church. And
22:52
Speaker 2: that's sort of the boundary of their influence and what
22:55
Speaker 2: they're doing. But in, in the early church, there was
22:59
Speaker 2: a much more deeply intertwined reality to the life of elders.
23:04
Speaker 2: And it's formalized in the form of thing, you know,
23:07
Speaker 2: the formal structure of bishops that eventually gives way to
23:10
Speaker 2: things like archbishops and then eventually in the Western church cardinals.
23:15
Speaker 2: And then of course the head of that ends up
23:16
Speaker 2: being in the Western church, the Pope, um, within that structure,
23:24
Speaker 2: let me say this, that structure is meant to be
23:29
Speaker 2: in some ways a protector of authority, right? Someone outside
23:36
Speaker 2: of that structure could say anything they wanted to when
23:40
Speaker 2: they pick up the Bible. Why do we count that
23:45
Speaker 2: or not count that as good teaching? And the answer
23:50
Speaker 2: can't just simply be because well, we are the people
23:53
Speaker 2: in this church with this group of elders. So that
23:55
Speaker 2: structure was meant to protect that, right? But of course,
24:00
Speaker 2: as we know, the fragmentation was already present prior to
24:05
Speaker 2: the Protestant Reformation. You have the fragmentation creeping up in
24:09
Speaker 2: the early church such that the culmination of that is
24:13
Speaker 2: a division in the East and the West between right,
24:16
Speaker 2: between those churches that began to follow the leadership of Constantinople,
24:21
Speaker 2: which became Byzantium, which becomes Istanbul. And even that set
24:28
Speaker 2: of churches has a looser sense of centralized authority, right?
24:32
Speaker 2: So you think about the churches that come out of that.
24:35
Speaker 2: The Greek Orthodox and the Ukrainian Orthodox and the Russian
24:37
Speaker 2: Orthodox and the Syrian Orthodox, among others, aren't quite so
24:42
Speaker 2: centrally unified and the way that we think of what
24:48
Speaker 2: happens in the Western church under the papacy.
24:51
Speaker 1: Right.
24:51
Speaker 2: So there are real divisions between the Ukrainian and the
24:54
Speaker 2: Russian Orthodox church that has resulted in real political issues that,
24:59
Speaker 2: that animate the lives of Ukrainian and Russian, uh, governments
25:04
Speaker 2: and citizens.
25:05
Speaker 1: Right.
25:06
Speaker 2: Nevermind the other Eastern Orthodox churches and the West you
25:10
Speaker 2: have ultimately, I mean, you have, you have a lot of, uh,
25:15
Speaker 2: back and forth. I think yesterday or maybe today was
25:18
Speaker 2: the anniversary of the death, I believe, of the last
25:23
Speaker 2: alternate pope in the Western world. So you have this
25:26
Speaker 2: period known as the Babylonian captivity of the church where
25:29
Speaker 2: there's multiple people claiming to be pope. So the history
25:33
Speaker 2: pre-reformation of the papacy isn't even quite as unified as
25:38
Speaker 2: we might be led to believe. And that different set
25:42
Speaker 2: of popes also brings about Different sets of cardinals that
25:46
Speaker 2: support that pope, which means a different set of structure
25:49
Speaker 2: as to what bishops have to and priests have to
25:53
Speaker 2: report to, right? But ultimately, you get the Protestant Reformation,
25:57
Speaker 2: and the Reformation brings in that deepest sense of fragmentation,
26:01
Speaker 2: particularly in the Western Church, that just starts to explode, right?
26:06
Speaker 2: Especially in the Americas, and especially in the United States,
26:09
Speaker 2: and especially in upstate New York in the early 1800s.
26:13
Speaker 2: something was in the water in upstate New York, but
26:15
Speaker 2: you get this explosion of denominational differences that to this
26:19
Speaker 2: day has continued to run amok, right? Our denominations aren't
26:25
Speaker 2: done dividing. They continue to divide and the issues are
26:28
Speaker 2: newer and newer. And what George Limbeck wanted to say
26:31
Speaker 2: is how do we begin to understand how this doctrine
26:35
Speaker 2: functions in this increasingly fragmented reality? How does someone who's
26:40
Speaker 2: nevermind two different groups of Lutherans. How does someone who's
26:43
Speaker 2: a Lutheran begin to communicate with someone who's a Baptist?
26:47
Speaker 2: They have very different starting points. They have very different
26:49
Speaker 2: understandings of political reality. And I don't mean Democrat or Republican,
26:53
Speaker 2: but I mean, how does the church relate to the
26:58
Speaker 2: ongoing civil life of its practitioners?
27:01
Speaker 1: Right.
27:03
Speaker 2: They have very different understandings of centralized authority. And those
27:07
Speaker 2: are precursors to the more obvious things, the very different
27:10
Speaker 2: understandings of things like how does baptism work? How does
27:17
Speaker 2: the Lord's Supper work? What precisely is the thing going
27:22
Speaker 2: on when we say that someone is justified by faith?
27:28
Speaker 2: Even as we talk about Baptists and Lutherans, for instance,
27:31
Speaker 2: being members of the Protestant larger umbrella, they still don't
27:36
Speaker 2: actually quite precisely agree right so you have these things
27:39
Speaker 2: that some people would say is overly academic discourse called
27:42
Speaker 2: the ordo salutis the order of salvation you have all
27:45
Speaker 2: these different ways of formulating that's really trying to get
27:48
Speaker 2: at what's going on when we say grace touches someone
27:53
Speaker 2: how significant is faith and what exactly is going on
27:58
Speaker 2: in faith right luther was and the lutheran tradition in
28:00
Speaker 2: some parts are very concerned for intellect intellectualizing works Is
28:06
Speaker 2: faith just an intellectual work in ways that I think
28:10
Speaker 2: many evangelicals and neo-evangelicals and neo-Calvinists don't seem to have
28:14
Speaker 2: the same level of concern about that? This is all
28:18
Speaker 2: to put a very fine point on what George Lindbeck's
28:20
Speaker 2: problem was. And what he's trying to work through with
28:24
Speaker 2: his ecumenical mindedness is how can we begin to honor
28:29
Speaker 2: that these traditions form in specific ways, in specific places,
28:33
Speaker 2: with specific vocabularies? That aren't precisely the same as the
28:38
Speaker 2: use of maybe the same terms in other traditions, right?
28:45
Speaker 2: While allowing for the possibility of learning from each other,
28:50
Speaker 2: talking to each other, recognizing that we're all speaking of
28:55
Speaker 2: the same Jesus in the same historic ways as the
28:59
Speaker 2: Son of God, second person of the Trinity, incarnate in
29:02
Speaker 2: the flesh as fully God, fully man, right? And so
29:09
Speaker 2: his nature of doctrine is trying to work through those.
29:11
Speaker 2: And Kevin Van Hooser's follow-up, The Drama of Doctrine, is
29:14
Speaker 2: really trying to do the same thing with his own
29:17
Speaker 2: emphases of saying, what does this mean when we get
29:19
Speaker 2: to scripture? If the papacy has the structure of ultimately
29:24
Speaker 2: saying what the College of Cardinals and the papacy decide
29:28
Speaker 2: is ultimately what's canonized as the teaching of the church.
29:32
Speaker 2: These are the non-negotiables. Protestants don't have that. So we
29:37
Speaker 2: continue to say, well, what the scriptures say, but.
29:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
29:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:03
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah when I think that when we think about
30:08
Speaker 1: some of this we're part of what I'd like to
30:11
Speaker 1: guard against is kind of what we've ultimately called conditions
30:16
Speaker 1: and I think inversion is a condition here so there's
30:21
Speaker 1: the fragmentation that happens because we are disagreeing we decide
30:27
Speaker 1: to part amicably and And as we part amicably, we
30:31
Speaker 1: create communities around these doctrinal distinctions that now don't communicate across.
30:38
Speaker 1: And there's an insularity that happens and a language, for
30:43
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, that develops. Because what was it?
30:48
Speaker 1: A cultural linguistic approach that Lindbeck did, right? I think
30:52
Speaker 1: I'm remembering that correctly. This basically... A Lutheran is going
30:59
Speaker 1: to talk through these things and mean something different by
31:01
Speaker 1: the terms that are used than a Baptist or a
31:05
Speaker 1: non-denominational person or whomever. They just have a slightly different language.
31:10
Speaker 1: The words are often the same, but the concepts underneath
31:13
Speaker 1: those words are slightly different. And so as we sort
31:17
Speaker 1: of faction off, what we begin to lose is the
31:21
Speaker 1: willingness and or ability to wrestle with those terms. and
31:26
Speaker 1: to really deeply understand what the other person is saying.
31:30
Speaker 1: So there's either sort of this sort of anemic acceptance
31:32
Speaker 1: that what they're saying is what we're saying, or there's
31:36
Speaker 1: just an unwillingness to engage it because they're obviously wrong.
31:41
Speaker 1: So I think that part sort of develops. But then
31:44
Speaker 1: I think there's this other sort of problematic condition or
31:48
Speaker 1: dynamic that comes into this, which is inversion. All of
31:52
Speaker 1: a sudden, the doctrines, is no longer conversant with other
31:57
Speaker 1: communities or with the biblical text itself. And so there's
32:02
Speaker 1: a sense in which what's inverted is if the Bible
32:06
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a top, it's supposed to be
32:08
Speaker 1: the final authority for life and faith governing the way
32:11
Speaker 1: that we think and believe, the doctrine is sort of
32:15
Speaker 1: slipped on top of it so that now the Bible
32:18
Speaker 1: is read solely through this grid. And when there's a
32:23
Speaker 1: text that creates problems for a doctrine, it is, uh, domesticated,
32:30
Speaker 1: let's say, right. To the doctrinal stance that's put on
32:36
Speaker 1: top of it. Um, there's probably a number of different
32:40
Speaker 1: instances we could go to for this. Um, I'll go
32:44
Speaker 1: for a, a quasi controversial one, I guess, but, um,
32:51
Speaker 1: you know, when we think about something like, um, We've
32:55
Speaker 1: talked about this, how she's God in time. One of
32:59
Speaker 1: the passages I almost always go to is Genesis 22.
33:02
Speaker 1: And so there's a hermeneutic approach. I'll explain this for
33:06
Speaker 1: people on the podcast. There's a hermeneutical approach that would say, hey,
33:10
Speaker 1: we value grammar and genre and historical understandings of the test.
33:17
Speaker 1: And so it's the historical grammatical hermeneutic. Even if you
33:20
Speaker 1: haven't heard that phrase, you've probably seen this done. And
33:24
Speaker 1: so the question becomes is then how do you balance genre, grammar,
33:31
Speaker 1: historical context, cultural milieu in which, you know, a given thing,
33:36
Speaker 1: you know, when do you bring in for your Old
33:38
Speaker 1: Testament interpretations, when do you bring in ancient Near Eastern cognates,
33:41
Speaker 1: those kind of things. And students, usually when I'm teaching
33:46
Speaker 1: early hermeneutics classes, they think they have a general idea
33:49
Speaker 1: of this and they think that the grammar, the smallest
33:52
Speaker 1: sentence structure, should always be privileged, right? What the text
33:56
Speaker 1: says should always be the first thing. And so I
34:01
Speaker 1: take him to Genesis 22, and Abraham is about to
34:04
Speaker 1: plunge the knife into Isaac's chest, and the angel of
34:06
Speaker 1: the Lord comes down, speaking for God and says, now
34:09
Speaker 1: I know that you are one who fears God. And
34:14
Speaker 1: you just sit back and you're like, grammatically what this
34:16
Speaker 1: means is that now, not before, now, God knows. He
34:22
Speaker 1: didn't know before. It creates all of these huge problems.
34:27
Speaker 1: It's a real tension. Like the biblical text creates a
34:30
Speaker 1: real tension. Now there's various ways to resolve that tension
34:33
Speaker 1: or to lessen that tension. But the reality is that
34:37
Speaker 1: if we're, when the text does something like that to us, right,
34:42
Speaker 1: we shouldn't just ignore it. We can't just domesticate it
34:46
Speaker 1: and say, well, obviously it just means this. Like there's
34:49
Speaker 1: a wrestling that should be taking place. And my concern
34:53
Speaker 1: is that when we start to do the inversions and
34:55
Speaker 1: when we start to say, well, here's our doctrinal statement,
34:58
Speaker 1: here's our theological system, here's our broad-based hermeneutic, that now
35:03
Speaker 1: we're making the biblical text to fit our hermeneutic, which
35:10
Speaker 1: inverts the authority structure. All of a sudden, our hermeneutic,
35:14
Speaker 1: our doctrine, our system is governing the biblical text and
35:18
Speaker 1: the way that it's to be read. There's some appropriateness
35:21
Speaker 1: to that, but I think we have to be very
35:24
Speaker 1: cautious to negotiate the boundaries between appropriate use of frameworks
35:30
Speaker 1: and grids and understandings coming in and informing the biblical
35:34
Speaker 1: text versus inappropriate ways of not allowing the biblical text
35:39
Speaker 1: to correct, revise, and force us to rethink some of
35:46
Speaker 1: our belief systems or hermeneutics or understandings. Because it is
35:50
Speaker 1: really the authority. And so I realize that is part
35:55
Speaker 1: of what Lindbeck is trying to solve. But I think
35:57
Speaker 1: it's worth sort of throwing out there, just naming this problem,
36:01
Speaker 1: because oftentimes what I see when I see or when
36:06
Speaker 1: I've experienced groups that are that tend to be a
36:09
Speaker 1: little bit more insular and isolated, fragmented off from the
36:13
Speaker 1: body of Christ. where it's like, yeah, you can hang
36:15
Speaker 1: around with us, but if you really wanted to be
36:18
Speaker 1: part of us, you'd believe in young earth creationism, and
36:22
Speaker 1: you'd believe in a strictly dispensational hermeneutic, or you'd believe
36:28
Speaker 1: that Babylon is Babylon, not some sort of symbol for
36:32
Speaker 1: Rome in Revelation. All these different components start to come in,
36:37
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, I don't understand why those things
36:39
Speaker 1: are even important to believe as a test of faith.
36:44
Speaker 1: But for them, it isn't necessarily, they would say it's
36:47
Speaker 1: not a test of faith, but they would say is no,
36:49
Speaker 1: it's just, it's just, you know, sort of buy-in, right.
36:52
Speaker 1: To participate in our community. But the problem is that
36:56
Speaker 1: when that community becomes so insular, it really does feel
36:59
Speaker 1: like you're just leaving people out in the cold. Like
37:03
Speaker 1: this is the real Christian community and everybody else is
37:05
Speaker 1: sort of like second-class citizens.
37:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
37:08
Speaker 2: That's, I'm, I like your use of Genesis as a
37:12
Speaker 2: concrete way to think about this because it, there's a
37:15
Speaker 2: few things that come to my mind, both with your
37:18
Speaker 2: conclusion and with your use of that passage. When we
37:23
Speaker 2: look at that Genesis 22, I believe you said, right?
37:26
Speaker 2: Now I know. It creates a tension, but I wonder,
37:33
Speaker 2: I guess, does it create a, is that tension within
37:36
Speaker 2: the text? Does the text feel that tension? And I, yeah, right.
37:40
Speaker 2: So my, My inclination is to say I don't feel
37:43
Speaker 2: that tension in the text. That's something in front of
37:45
Speaker 2: the text. Understanding the Hebraic mind will help us understand
38:14
Speaker 2: why that tension or why that passage speaks the way
38:18
Speaker 2: that it does. And maybe learning within that of what
38:23
Speaker 2: that tension is. But there's this other part of me,
38:27
Speaker 2: I'm also the contrarian, right? Like you, where I want
38:29
Speaker 2: to say, how in the world? I have enough trouble
38:32
Speaker 2: understanding the people that live around me. You know, when
38:36
Speaker 2: my son has a certain kind of emotional reaction that
38:39
Speaker 2: he does, I have a hard time understanding him, and
38:44
Speaker 2: I'd venture to say that I'm probably among the people
38:47
Speaker 2: that know my son the best in the whole world, right?
38:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:53
Speaker 2: How in the world am I going to understand, several
38:56
Speaker 2: thousand years ago, Hebraic mindset? Yeah, yeah. So there's problem
39:03
Speaker 2: number one within that. But then two within that of
39:06
Speaker 2: having to understand that in front of the text dynamic
39:09
Speaker 2: doesn't change. Regardless of my understanding of the Hebraic mindset,
39:13
Speaker 2: this is a reality in front of the text. It's
39:17
Speaker 2: me reading the text. It's you reading the text. And
39:21
Speaker 2: especially when we have this tradition and this understanding of
39:23
Speaker 2: the living text that God continues to speak into, you
39:29
Speaker 2: can't just bracket. out in front of the text, right?
39:32
Speaker 2: We are really trying to say, the Danish philosopher Soren
39:35
Speaker 2: Kierkegaard spoke of the problem of trying to seek objectivity
39:44
Speaker 2: is that we're trying to seek something outside of my place.
39:49
Speaker 2: And it's a problem because I ultimately want to know
39:51
Speaker 2: something from my place because it's from my place that
39:54
Speaker 2: I live and move and breathe and have to live
39:56
Speaker 2: my life. So if I understand a text from outside
40:00
Speaker 2: of my place, what good is that to me who's
40:03
Speaker 2: trying to live that text in my place, right? That's
40:06
Speaker 2: the short of what Kierkegaard's looking at. And I think
40:08
Speaker 2: he's right about that problem that he's publicizing by saying
40:13
Speaker 2: our aim is wrong. But it is worth analyzing to
40:17
Speaker 2: say Why is that a tension here and now? And
40:21
Speaker 2: a lot of work has been done to show that
40:23
Speaker 2: maybe that says more about us. Maybe it says more
40:25
Speaker 2: about our traditions. Maybe it says more about this thing
40:27
Speaker 2: that we call classical theism and where it came from.
40:31
Speaker 2: Where do these assumptions about God come from? Do they
40:33
Speaker 2: come from the text or do they come from Greek philosophy?
40:36
Speaker 2: And increasingly, I think it's fair to say a lot
40:38
Speaker 2: of these assumptions come from Greek philosophy. Okay, well, what
40:41
Speaker 2: do we do with that? You have people working within
40:43
Speaker 2: that tradition, like the open theists, who'd say, well, then
40:45
Speaker 2: God just doesn't know. end of problem. Or you have
40:48
Speaker 2: people like the open or the process theologians, you might say, well,
40:51
Speaker 2: we're God is God. God self is already also on
40:56
Speaker 2: this journey of self-discovery and creation and history become mechanisms
41:01
Speaker 2: of self-discovery, right? That's a step significantly beyond what open
41:05
Speaker 2: theos say. But I wonder, And I don't have an
41:10
Speaker 2: answer to this, but I wonder how that Hebraic person
41:13
Speaker 2: hearing Genesis 22 wandering in the desert or on their
41:16
Speaker 2: way into wandering into the desert after having coming out
41:20
Speaker 2: of Egypt, hears that. Do they hear that and they think, oh,
41:23
Speaker 2: wait a minute. So you didn't know before? And my
41:29
Speaker 2: guess is they didn't stop and ask that question. Doesn't
41:32
Speaker 2: mean we shouldn't, but it just says more about them, right?
41:35
Speaker 2: So what Lindbeck's trying to get at is, Part of
41:39
Speaker 2: this conversation is recognizing– I'll use the language of Dan Block.
41:45
Speaker 2: Many years ago, I said this when I was in
41:46
Speaker 2: grad school. That often the things that we write down
41:52
Speaker 2: as the biggest questions that animate the intensity within which
41:56
Speaker 2: we create this fragmentation are themselves already things that were
42:00
Speaker 2: written down with pencil. And if we don't recognize they're
42:04
Speaker 2: written down with pencil, we fail to recognize the provisionality.
42:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. defines the discourse. And this question gets at what's
42:44
Speaker 2: really at stake. And this question is what I have
42:47
Speaker 2: to enculturate people into. And if I can't enculturate them
42:51
Speaker 2: into this, then they're on the outside.
42:54
Speaker 1: Right?
42:55
Speaker 2: When at the end of the day, we'd say, wait,
42:56
Speaker 2: so regardless of what I think of the open theist,
42:59
Speaker 2: I don't tend to buy open theism, but what is
43:05
Speaker 2: the open theist saying about Jesus? Still sounds like what,
43:10
Speaker 2: the early church set up as the big questions of,
43:13
Speaker 2: are you really following the Jesus? Are you saying of Jesus,
43:16
Speaker 2: what ultimately matters for the larger declaration of who Jesus is,
43:22
Speaker 2: you know?
43:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I, here's what I find interesting is, you know,
43:28
Speaker 1: just as you're talking there, you know, we, we talk
43:31
Speaker 1: about these, there's a fundamental sort of starting point that
43:35
Speaker 1: most of us come or that many people come to
43:38
Speaker 1: a text with. Now I, I, Like I said, I
43:42
Speaker 1: hadn't grown up really in a Christian context before I
43:45
Speaker 1: went to seminary. And so I went in and had
43:48
Speaker 1: no real clue what any of these things were. Like
43:50
Speaker 1: I didn't know what dispensational or covenant theology was. I
43:55
Speaker 1: didn't know what complementarian versus egalitarian theology was. I didn't
44:00
Speaker 1: like these bigger categories of doctrinal kind of things. I
44:04
Speaker 1: didn't fully grasp. I didn't understand what was going on.
44:07
Speaker 1: I had some catching up to do. And so while
44:10
Speaker 1: I have a working knowledge of some of that now,
44:12
Speaker 1: even like Calvinism and Arminianism, I also had the benefit
44:16
Speaker 1: of walking in cold. I had no idea what I
44:19
Speaker 1: was looking at. And so instead of sitting down and saying, well,
44:24
Speaker 1: let me get out of systematic theology and read all
44:26
Speaker 1: about this, I started my MDiv, which is a very
44:31
Speaker 1: moody kind of thing. You just start reading your Bible.
44:34
Speaker 1: And so I got used to just letting the text
44:37
Speaker 1: sort of do whatever it was going to do. Right.
44:41
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I read the Bible better than everybody else,
44:43
Speaker 1: but by not having those systematic categories, there's a part
44:48
Speaker 1: of me that when I hit Genesis 22, that it
44:50
Speaker 1: really didn't bother me. Right. Like I'm just reading this
44:54
Speaker 1: story of Abraham's test of faith and like sort of
44:58
Speaker 1: being immersed within it and just allowing that story to
45:02
Speaker 1: do whatever it's going to do to me. And I
45:05
Speaker 1: think that there is a part of this where if
45:09
Speaker 1: we start to recognize that the word of God was
45:14
Speaker 1: given to us in a non-systematized fashion. And so there's
45:20
Speaker 1: value to systemization. There's value to constructing theology and doctrine.
45:25
Speaker 1: But the reality is that the Bible doesn't do that.
45:29
Speaker 1: We do that. And so the Bible is doing something
45:32
Speaker 1: else to us. It's being presented to us in a
45:36
Speaker 1: different fashion. And so just allowing it to be read
45:40
Speaker 1: on its own, on its own terms, in the way
45:43
Speaker 1: that it's conveyed, I think is an important aspect of this.
45:48
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that I would ever say, hey, never
45:50
Speaker 1: construct doctrine, never do systematics. This is all ridiculous. I
45:54
Speaker 1: think there have to be ways in which we put
45:56
Speaker 1: this thing together. So that we can give people handles
45:59
Speaker 1: so that when they go and read it, they can
46:01
Speaker 1: understand it intelligibly. But at the same time, I think
46:04
Speaker 1: you want to hold on fairly loosely to those handles.
46:08
Speaker 1: To your point, like it's written in pencil. And so
46:11
Speaker 1: when you hit these texts, you're not just so consumed with,
46:14
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, what does this do to my system?
46:17
Speaker 1: It's a question of what is God's word saying? And
46:22
Speaker 1: what are the implications of what it's saying at this point?
46:26
Speaker 1: And so we have to start thinking through that lens,
46:31
Speaker 1: I think. You know, it sounds like I'm sort of
46:36
Speaker 1: being wishy-washy, I think, on, oh, let's just all read
46:39
Speaker 1: our Bibles, right? I think there are guardrails that are necessary.
46:44
Speaker 1: I sort of lament the loss of some sort of
46:46
Speaker 1: teaching office or some way of sort of entering into
46:51
Speaker 1: the text. But I also think that any way we
46:55
Speaker 1: enter into the text is ultimately going to skew the
46:57
Speaker 1: way that we read the text itself. And this is
47:00
Speaker 1: why we have a plurality of voices reading the text
47:03
Speaker 1: in a variety of different ways that we can learn
47:06
Speaker 1: from one another, disagree with one another, argue with one another,
47:10
Speaker 1: but ultimately remain united with one another. And I think
47:14
Speaker 1: that's part of the art that we're losing. We're losing
47:17
Speaker 1: this art of negotiation. Where we sit back and say, no,
47:20
Speaker 1: that's clearly something that the Bible stands against. And there
47:24
Speaker 1: are those things versus there's a there's a space here
47:29
Speaker 1: where multiple views can be really plausible. And we have
47:33
Speaker 1: no idea which one is like actually the way it
47:37
Speaker 1: should be practiced or if any of them are the
47:41
Speaker 1: way they should be practiced. Right. Any one of them
47:44
Speaker 1: is the way it should be practiced. And I just
47:47
Speaker 1: think there's that art of negotiation, that willingness to have
47:51
Speaker 1: discourse around these matters is something that would begin to
47:57
Speaker 1: combat the sort of fragmentation that I'm concerned that we're
48:02
Speaker 1: developing more and more in the church.
48:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple thoughts. One, to clarify, and I know
48:09
Speaker 2: you know this, but just I think it bears worth
48:11
Speaker 2: mentioning that So you came to the text without sort
48:15
Speaker 2: of these systematic categories that are often given. It doesn't
48:18
Speaker 2: mean you were coming from some placeless existence, right? You
48:23
Speaker 2: still came with questions. You still came with who you are, right?
48:26
Speaker 2: So it's not as if it's some sort of non-located,
48:29
Speaker 2: non-specific reading. And I know you know that, but it's
48:33
Speaker 2: worth saying that the answer here isn't just simply to say, well,
48:35
Speaker 2: you know, spend a few years and divest yourselves of
48:39
Speaker 2: all doctrinal content and now go back and read it
48:42
Speaker 2: because now you read it yeah like that's not necessarily
48:44
Speaker 2: not at all there's a lot to be brought from
48:46
Speaker 2: traditions but the key point here that you're making is
48:51
Speaker 2: again i think this has become the lindbeck episode um
48:55
Speaker 2: is i think the point that lindbeck's trying to make
48:57
Speaker 2: too right so then when he sets up what doctrine
48:59
Speaker 2: is while trying to give you that sort of um.
49:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. traditions.
49:10
Speaker 2: His goal is to say, understand what this doctrine is.
49:13
Speaker 2: And so he calls it, his language is its second order.
49:16
Speaker 2: And we've talked about this before, but his basic idea
49:18
Speaker 2: of saying its second order is to say, it's not
49:21
Speaker 2: the thing itself. And this is where the trouble comes in,
49:24
Speaker 2: as you're saying, where we begin to forget that doctrine
49:31
Speaker 2: is something derived from the text by local readings, codified
49:37
Speaker 2: in traditions and communities.
49:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
49:39
Speaker 2: And it is the thing itself.
49:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.
49:44
Speaker 2: As an example, as a totally, well, I shouldn't say non-theological,
49:48
Speaker 2: but seemingly way off topic reading. I remember a few
49:52
Speaker 2: years ago, I don't know this woman. She lives apparently
49:58
Speaker 2: on my block, but around the corner. I couldn't, if
50:04
Speaker 2: you put her in a lineup, I wouldn't recognize her.
50:06
Speaker 2: I just like that. That side of the block I've
50:09
Speaker 2: never had really interactions with. One of my neighbors was
50:12
Speaker 2: talking about this woman who evidently was divorced some years before.
50:16
Speaker 2: And her ex-husband was a longtime friend of this neighbor
50:22
Speaker 2: of mine. And this neighbor kept referring to this lady
50:25
Speaker 2: as crazy, as mean, as horrible. And as this neighbor
50:34
Speaker 2: described it, it became very clear to me, like, Oh,
50:36
Speaker 2: so you got all this information from your friend, who
50:41
Speaker 2: is the one who's divorced from this woman. And now
50:46
Speaker 2: when you look at this woman, there's no texture, there's
50:50
Speaker 2: no gradients. She bad, he good. She crazy, he sane.
50:57
Speaker 2: Now we can all slip into this tendency, right? But
51:01
Speaker 2: for me, as someone who had just had no meat
51:04
Speaker 2: in this fight... what this neighbor of mine was saying
51:11
Speaker 2: started to sound suspicious. I was like, I see. So
51:15
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to treat this woman as a pariah, as
51:19
Speaker 2: this crazy person, because your friend, who is her ex-husband,
51:26
Speaker 2: said all this stuff to you that undoubtedly is heavily
51:32
Speaker 2: emotionally weighted, right?
51:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
51:35
Speaker 2: And you've just accepted it because you were his friend, right?
51:37
Speaker 2: So as a result, I become a member of the cloud. Okay,
51:42
Speaker 2: you have the emotional reason to be tied to this
51:44
Speaker 2: narrative as the friend of the person who's giving you
51:47
Speaker 2: the narrative. I now, who have no emotional connection to it,
51:50
Speaker 2: am supposed to begin to develop that emotional baggage because
51:54
Speaker 2: you told me this story based on no knowledge except
51:56
Speaker 2: for what this one person said to you, right? And
51:59
Speaker 2: for me, that was a quick bow out. Like, okay,
52:02
Speaker 2: take it with a grain of salt. And even to
52:04
Speaker 2: this day, I've had no interactions with any of these,
52:07
Speaker 2: either of these people in this former couples dispute, I guess.
52:12
Speaker 2: So it means nothing to me.
52:14
Speaker 1: Right.
52:14
Speaker 2: But now you can imagine the other side, right? You
52:17
Speaker 2: can imagine her doing the same thing and the cloud
52:19
Speaker 2: that exists because of what she said. And it just
52:22
Speaker 2: goes bigger and bigger. I think this, I mean, this
52:24
Speaker 2: is really how the algorithm works in social media, right?
52:26
Speaker 2: It creates a cloud of people who are increasingly distanced
52:30
Speaker 2: from the source material. And now you've got, if it works, right?
52:34
Speaker 2: Like if I were to buy into it, now I
52:36
Speaker 2: begin to have the emotional baggage tied into it so
52:41
Speaker 2: that I have this strong inclination to say, oh, that
52:45
Speaker 2: person's evil or that thought process is evil, right? In
52:48
Speaker 2: some ways, again, this is what Lindbeck is talking about
52:51
Speaker 2: that I hear you saying as well, right? Doctrine loses
52:56
Speaker 2: its place. The people formulating the doctrine are trying to say,
53:01
Speaker 2: we're trying to wrestle with this narrative of the text
53:04
Speaker 2: and all these things that go around the narrative. It's
53:06
Speaker 2: not strictly narrative, but the overarching thing is a narrative,
53:10
Speaker 2: and we're trying to wrestle with it, and the doctrine
53:12
Speaker 2: is a second-order thing that says something about it. But
53:15
Speaker 2: the deeper you get into that cloud, what you're left
53:19
Speaker 2: with is the second-order doctrine becomes the thing. And that's
53:25
Speaker 2: the thing that Limbeck's trying to knock down and say,
53:27
Speaker 2: I'm not saying do away with the doctrine. I want
53:29
Speaker 2: you to understand what the nature of doctrine is, as
53:32
Speaker 2: the title says. And if we begin to understand what
53:35
Speaker 2: the nature of the doctrine is, maybe now we can
53:37
Speaker 2: actually get back to the first order reality, the narrative itself.
53:42
Speaker 2: Maybe if it's an interpersonal thing, if I really had
53:44
Speaker 2: a stake in this, I go to that woman who
53:47
Speaker 2: is now apparently the crazy person, I say, hey, I
53:50
Speaker 2: want you to know that I've heard these things about you.
53:52
Speaker 2: I have no reason to think anything one way or
53:54
Speaker 2: the other, but I want you to know that I'm
53:55
Speaker 2: your neighbor. Maybe I should have done that, but honestly,
53:58
Speaker 2: our lives never crossed. I'm just not a part of
54:02
Speaker 2: that conversation. It's neither here nor there to me. And
54:05
Speaker 2: if I saw her in the grocery store or if
54:07
Speaker 2: I saw her on a walk, I wouldn't even know
54:09
Speaker 2: that that's who we're talking about here. So the doctrine
54:14
Speaker 2: bears nothing on her from my perspective in a way
54:17
Speaker 2: that it does for those within that cloud. But that's
54:20
Speaker 2: not to say the doctrine doesn't matter. Maybe she is crazy, right?
54:24
Speaker 2: But maybe there's more texture to that than just simply,
54:27
Speaker 2: I belong to this cloud that has made the thing
54:30
Speaker 2: itself obscured by the doctrine that's been constructed around it.
54:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really helpful. I saw a study
54:40
Speaker 1: here not too long ago about people who sign petitions online.
54:46
Speaker 1: And it's sort of fascinating the way it works. People
54:49
Speaker 1: who sign petitions online tend to have these shared characteristics,
54:52
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to remember all of them, but
54:54
Speaker 1: they Let's say they tend to watch the news every day.
54:58
Speaker 1: They tend to be on Twitter. And I think there
55:01
Speaker 1: are a couple of other characteristics. And so the general
55:03
Speaker 1: idea of the article was that these people who sign petitions,
55:07
Speaker 1: they're part of this sort of cycle, reinforcing cycle. So
55:13
Speaker 1: the news will start reporting on something that'll make this
55:16
Speaker 1: something seem more important. They see it again on Twitter.
55:21
Speaker 1: They get the petition out. They sign the petition. As
55:24
Speaker 1: the petition gains signatures, the news reports on the petition, right?
55:29
Speaker 1: And it just sort of cycles around like this. And
55:32
Speaker 1: I think in some ways that's what we end up
55:34
Speaker 1: doing with doctrine. That's sort of that insular loop, right,
55:38
Speaker 1: that we end up getting into within the church. And
55:42
Speaker 1: that is part of what we've got to sort of
55:45
Speaker 1: resist against. I'm with you. I don't want to get
55:47
Speaker 1: rid of doctrine. But I do take Lindbeck's point really seriously.
55:51
Speaker 1: We need to understand what it is. You know, there's
55:56
Speaker 1: a difference between, and I think, you know, I had
55:59
Speaker 1: to learn this really early on as a theological student,
56:02
Speaker 1: especially in the area I was in, like biblical scholarship. Yes,
56:08
Speaker 1: there's a way to be, I always wanted to be right. Like,
56:13
Speaker 1: let me get this right. Because it's important. So you
56:16
Speaker 1: kind of want to get it right. In my older age,
56:19
Speaker 1: I've moved to, let me get this plausible. Let me
56:24
Speaker 1: do an appropriate reading of the text. That's a shift
56:27
Speaker 1: in language that's a serious shift in attitude and posture.
56:31
Speaker 1: Because getting it right assumes an awful lot. And I
56:37
Speaker 1: think part of what it assumes is that you've narrowed
56:40
Speaker 1: down the question so far that you can get it right.
56:43
Speaker 1: Because as we've talked about, I think we've used this
56:45
Speaker 1: analogy on the show before. The Bible is like glitter. Right?
56:53
Speaker 1: My daughters used to play with glitter when they were kids.
56:56
Speaker 1: And you'd never get that stuff up off the floor.
56:59
Speaker 1: You'd think you'd have it, and then you'd go back
57:01
Speaker 1: and you'd find glitter all over the place. It just
57:04
Speaker 1: keeps popping up. It spontaneously combusts as glitter or something.
57:09
Speaker 1: Here it is. But I think I think that way
57:12
Speaker 1: about the biblical text an awful lot. I can read
57:15
Speaker 1: a text that I've read a hundred times and understand
57:20
Speaker 1: it differently this time when I come back to it.
57:22
Speaker 1: That's the glitter. And so getting it right, I think
57:26
Speaker 1: sometimes we assume that we can close off this interpretation
57:30
Speaker 1: of the text. We can say, now we have this
57:33
Speaker 1: text mastered. We understand it perfectly. There's no remainder in
57:37
Speaker 1: that text for us to learn anything new from. And
57:40
Speaker 1: I think that that's a little bit dangerous. And so
57:43
Speaker 1: I've sort of tried to shift my language and my posture.
57:45
Speaker 1: And I think that the whole church would do well
57:48
Speaker 1: to sort of shift in that direction to understand that. Yeah.
57:52
Speaker 1: I think our understandings are very plausible. I think they provide, um,
57:57
Speaker 1: boundaries that will, um, you know, like something like the
58:01
Speaker 1: Nicene Creed, um, Nicene Creed might even be a great example, right? Um,
58:08
Speaker 1: this was my understanding of it. And you correct me
58:10
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. This is why the Eastern Orthodox church
58:14
Speaker 1: sort of, um, steps away from the other arms of
58:17
Speaker 1: Christendom is because you have the spirit proceeding, uh, proceeding
58:23
Speaker 1: from the sun, um, you know, the, the Philly. Okay.
58:28
Speaker 1: And that was a later addition, right? And that addition, Right.
58:39
Speaker 1: And that addition, right, the Eastern Orthodox Church very much
58:43
Speaker 1: disagreed with. But if you think about the Nicene Creed
58:46
Speaker 1: without that, right, prior to that addition, it provides the
58:51
Speaker 1: really broad boundaries for what it means to be Christian.
58:55
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that you could not believe some
58:58
Speaker 1: of what's in the Nicene Creed and still believe in
59:01
Speaker 1: the authority of Scripture. I think in its broadest sense,
59:04
Speaker 1: doctrine can help with that. Where it just gets strange
59:08
Speaker 1: is when we get it.
59:09
Speaker 3: Whittled down and whittled down and whittled down and whittled
59:11
Speaker 3: down and whittled down and it's like it has to
59:13
Speaker 3: be this um you know it um i keep going
59:17
Speaker 3: back to the young earth creation stuff because i just
59:20
Speaker 3: i've always found that to be frustrating when i as
59:23
Speaker 3: an old testament guy but it's like if you don't
59:25
Speaker 3: believe in young earth creationism in these specific ways, if
59:28
Speaker 3: you don't interpret these texts in exactly this way, you're
59:31
Speaker 3: denying inerrancy, you're outside the authority of scripture.
59:34
Speaker 1: Those have been real conversations. And I think those are
59:40
Speaker 1: the kind of conversations that create this sort of fragmentation
59:44
Speaker 1: within the body of Christ and that are truly problematic.
59:48
Speaker 2: Well said. And I think what that, the thing that
59:52
Speaker 2: I feel like we have to keep reemphasizing is there
59:55
Speaker 2: is a purpose in the doctrines. The reality is to
59:58
Speaker 2: recognize it as an attempt from the outside to make
1:00:04
Speaker 2: sense of what's the actual primary, and that's the work
1:00:06
Speaker 2: of God and the narrative and the way in which
1:00:12
Speaker 2: God is drawing us into that narrative as we exist
1:00:15
Speaker 2: now in that particular space and time. And the goal
1:00:20
Speaker 2: of doctrine is to try to make sense of it
1:00:22
Speaker 2: in a time and a place for a people. The
1:00:25
Speaker 2: trouble with it is that that doctrine ends up being
1:00:27
Speaker 2: codified in our minds and hearts as something universal right
1:00:33
Speaker 2: and then it's bequeathed to the next generation or to
1:00:36
Speaker 2: the larger community to the cloud who has no understanding
1:00:39
Speaker 2: of that larger dynamic because they have other things to
1:00:41
Speaker 2: worry about right I think about when I was in
1:00:43
Speaker 2: college I was in a history class and our professor
1:00:46
Speaker 2: had us read a modern philosopher who I'll leave unnamed
1:00:51
Speaker 2: because if I name it then we now have an
1:00:53
Speaker 2: emotional response that's inevitably going to come up and I
1:00:56
Speaker 2: was you know I was I think third year of
1:00:58
Speaker 2: college something like that I have by no means an
1:01:01
Speaker 2: expert but I'd been I'd been enculturated into that dynamic
1:01:06
Speaker 2: yeah of this philosopher equals evil and the truth is
1:01:12
Speaker 2: is that there was nothing in this reading that I
1:01:16
Speaker 2: had any good reasons to think of as evil but
1:01:20
Speaker 2: I was already inclined because of the implicit doctrine at
1:01:25
Speaker 2: play culturally socially that to think that this was evil.
1:01:29
Speaker 2: And I remember a friend of mine and an acquaintance
1:01:30
Speaker 2: of mine, we didn't really hang out, but an acquaintance
1:01:32
Speaker 2: of mine who was in the class came up to
1:01:34
Speaker 2: me outside of class after reading it and was actually
1:01:39
Speaker 2: really compelled by that selection we read. And I got
1:01:42
Speaker 2: so mad at him. And that's where the emotional reaction
1:01:46
Speaker 2: clicked in. And it stuck with me to this day
1:01:51
Speaker 2: as an embarrassing episode in my life to learn from,
1:01:54
Speaker 2: realizing that I got mad at my acquaintance Yeah.
1:01:58
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
1:02:28
Speaker 2: That cause the deeper fragmentation within our faith where we're
1:02:32
Speaker 2: not even inclined to even pay attention to what someone
1:02:36
Speaker 2: in another aisle in ultimately the same larger cathedral of
1:02:39
Speaker 2: the faith is sitting, right? Because of the boundary lines
1:02:43
Speaker 2: of the aisles.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. No, very good. Well, I think that covers
1:02:54
Speaker 1: it sufficiently. I think nailing down that we actually don't
1:02:58
Speaker 1: disagree with doctrine and that we believe that there's a
1:03:01
Speaker 1: value and function to it. At the end of the day,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: I think what both of us are saying to some
1:03:07
Speaker 1: degree is that the Bible should be the final authority
1:03:11
Speaker 1: for life and faith. And we shouldn't fool ourselves into
1:03:15
Speaker 1: thinking that doctrine never gets in the way of that.
1:03:18
Speaker 1: And so we've got to be diligent about making sure
1:03:21
Speaker 1: that the doctrines don't start dividing us in ways that, uh,
1:03:27
Speaker 1: are inappropriate, that they don't create an animosity and, uh, uh, distrust, uh, across, um,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: Christian lines, um, that we are all part of one body.
1:03:39
Speaker 1: And so, um, I think that that gets to the
1:03:42
Speaker 1: root of what we're concerned with, with fragmentation. So we'll,
1:03:46
Speaker 1: we'll close it off there and, um, Yeah, appreciate the conversation, man.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: This is helpful. Hopefully everybody else enjoyed it, and we
1:03:53
Speaker 1: will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.
1:03:55
Speaker 1: Take care, everybody. Just want to take a second to
1:03:58
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1:04:00
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1:04:07
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