The Center of Christianity? A Response to Kevin DeYoung

Kevin DeYoung, pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan recently posted a review of the new book by Rob Bell, Love Wins, on The Gospel Coalition's website.

The review is, as might be expected, a stinging critique of Bell and his theology.  Before I launch into my response, I want to draw an important distinction.  I think critique and discourse are extremely important to the development of the Christian faith.  Through conversation we grow in our understanding of God, one another, and the world we are called to live in and minister to.  In that sense, I have always appreciated free thinkers like Bell who challenge previously held presuppositions and force us to reconsider beliefs we might have taken for granted.  That process of questioning and reconsidering, of reformulating and rediscovering our faith, is vital to the continued relevance of the Church and its mission.  Reformed, and Always Reforming should be a maxim for Christians today, and to that extent those like Bell who force the continued reformation, or perhaps reformulation, of the Christian faith are of great service to the contemporary church.  With that said, I am also quite happy to see such thinkers critiqued and the inconsistencies of some of their experimentation pointed out.  Our faith is made stronger by those who ask difficult questions.  It is also made stronger by those who point out that not all the answers to those difficult questions work.

So all of that is to say that what I am not doing in this response is defending Rob Bell.  Nor am I going to argue for anything like his position.  I leave that to others to argue over.  What I do wish to address, however, is a grave error that I think has cropped up in the Evangelical, Neo-Reformed response to Bell.  This is the claim that "traditional Evangelicalism" represents "traditional Christianity."  Such a claim is patently false.  Many of the responses given by DeYoung and others to Bell's proposal have rested on the idea that they represent "the center of Christianity," and therefore they can make the judgment that Bell is heterodox or perhaps heretical.  This kind of arrogant isolationism by Evangelical leaders is extremely detrimental to the development of sound theology and to the spiritual nourishment of their followers.  Evangelicals need to remember that they represent a tiny minority of the global Christian community, and a minority that has only really existed for the last hundred and fifty years or so.  This means that while you can disagree with much of Bell's theology, the case for your disagreement needs to be more than "this isn't Evangelical."

To illustrate using the most glaring example (to me) in DeYoung's review, lets look at the issue of the atonement.  DeYoung sarcastically comments on Bell's views about the atonement:

So what does Bell believe about the atonement? He starts with the familiar refrain that there are many images for what the death of Jesus accomplished and none of them should be prized more than another (though he claims Christus Victor was the dominant understanding for the first thousand years of church history). The point is not to argue about the images. “The point then, as it is now, is Jesus. The divine in flesh and blood. He’s where the life is” (129).

DeYoung goes on from here to question how it would be possible for Bell not to take a penal substitutionary view of the atonement and in effect dismisses Bell's views.  What is disturbing about this is that Bell is exactly right here.  DeYoung needs to go back and read his historical theology:  The Christus Victor motif was the almost completely unquestioned understanding of the atonement in Christian theology for the first 1200 years of Church history.  Later scholastics in the Middle Ages would begin to tinker with more legal ideas- such as penal substitution- but those would not become popular in Christian theology until after the Reformation, and then only in Reformed circles.  In most Orthodox traditions, by which I mean Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, much of the Anglican Tradition, and even some Lutheran and Methodist theology, Christus Victor is still the dominant motif for understanding the atonement.  Bell is, in all likelihood, expressing the view of the atonement held by two-thirds of contemporary Christians!  DeYoung is welcome to disagree with this view, and I am sure very good arguments could be made for his own position.  However, to substantiate such disagreement he is going to need more than dismissive sarcasm and some vague allusions to Leviticus (which, for what its worth, I think he has utterly misunderstood in his comments) and some proof-texts from Paul.  As a student of Biblical studies, I would go so far as to say that every passage DeYoung alludes to can be interpreted to fit with Bell's theory without much difficulty.  DeYoung's blind assertions do nothing but demonstrate that he is unaware of a world beyond his Evangelical bubble.

Another glaring example of DeYoung twisting the meaning of "traditional Christianity" has to do with his own exegetical stance.  DeYoung critiques Bell's use of prophetic imagery about the future restoration of the earth, imagery that very frequently features the entire world worshipping God at Zion, by using a dispensationalist rubric and dismissing them as only applying to national Israel in the Old Testament.  While I vehemently disagree with dispensationalism, I am very willing to accept that this is a legitimate rubric of interpretation.  What I object to here is not that DeYoung is a dispensationalist.  What I object to is that DeYoung implies that his rubric is the traditional, Orthodox rubric for understanding these texts and therefore Bell is doing something radically new and suspicious.  Again, DeYoung needs to read up on his historical theology.  Dispensationalism as a system of interpretation has barely existed for two centuries.  Ironically, then, DeYoung is critiquing Bell for doing something new with these texts by himself reading them in a very new way!  Again let me stress, DeYoung is perfectly free to read the text this way.  However, he needs to be honest about his own assumptions and not present them as representing the "center of Christian Orthodoxy."  Such a claim is false, and such deception in the process of critiquing another Christian thinker is detrimental the spiritual well-being of the Church.

Of course, ultimately DeYoung will likely dismiss my comments for two reasons: first, he will claim that I, or anyone representing any of the other Christian viewpoints I have mentioned in this post, do not adequately deal with the Biblical evidence.  Second, he will claim, as he does in arguing against Bell, that such viewpoints have ultimately fabricated a "different God."  Both claims, I think, are circular and amount to DeYoung making the following statement:  "I know my beliefs to be true because I know my beliefs are true and anyone who disagrees with my beliefs must be wrong because they disagree with my beliefs."  I am very sympathetic to the idea that we believe what we believe because we are convinced our beliefs are true.   I am not at all sympathetic to the kind of circular reasoning DeYoung is exhibiting here.

So for instance, I can anticipate that DeYoung will dismiss the Christus Victor understanding of the atonement as found in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy by saying these are not true Christians because they do not share his view of the authority of scripture.  Such a statement again betrays a lack of understanding of his own position within Christianity.  The authority of scripture which Evangelicalism cherishes is a product of Reformation era theology.  In other places I have discussed why I find a strong sense of sola scriptura to be problematic, but the short version is that we only know scripture because of traditions that tell us what scripture is (i.e., the canon is a tradition and not itself Biblical), and further we only read scripture through the lens of a particular set of presuppositions.  Even if we accept the Evangelical notion of scripture, to take the further step of claiming that all who disagree with this notion are outside of Christian Orthodoxy is not only a misreading of Christian history, it is also begging the question.  The Eastern Orthodox respondent can simply ask "why should scripture be our sole theological authority?"  To which the Evangelical answer will have to be that it is because our Evangelical tradition tells us it is.

DeYoung's final chess-move is to claim that those who disagree with him, such as Bell, have fabricated a "different God" and therefore are unorthodox.  I believe just a little pushing and tugging at the meaning of this statement will reveal the unbelievable arrogance it represents.  Throughout Christian history, as DeYoung himself notes, there have been adamant disagreements about many, many theological issues.  DeYoung is especially fond of pointing out disagreements where one side was labeled heretical- such as the Arian controversy.  However, within the boundaries of Orthodoxy there have been many disputes as well.  As I have pointed out, there are many Orthodox understandings of the atonement.  To pick a very minor issue, there are many different interpretations of various Biblical passages- such as Jacob wrestling before crossing the river- which are considered Orthodox.  The debate about dispensationalism is another example of disagreement within Orthodoxy.  Even within dispensational theology there are disputes about details.  My point here is ask at what point DeYoung determines that a different God is on the table?  Do the pre-tribulation and post-tribulation dispensationalists both worship the same God?  Do Calvinists and Arminians worship the same God (gasp!)?  Do Lutherans and Presbyterians worship the same God?  What about Evangelicals and Roman Catholics?  In claiming that Bell has created a different God, DeYoung is attempting to cast Bell out of Christianity.  Yet, such noted, and clearly Orthodox, teachers as CS Lewis, Karl Barth, and Karl Rahner have all expressed views extremely similar to that of Bell.  Did they all follow a different God than DeYoung?  And who gets to decide that?  Is it DeYoung who decides what God is like and what we can disagree on and not disagree on?  How did he get such sweeping authority to determine Christian Orthodoxy?  In the end, this claim by DeYoung amounts to a claim to absolute theological knowledge.  Such arrogance from a prominent Christian teacher, especially when employed to critique another prominent Christian teacher, cannot be beneficial to the Church.

Where I Am Now, Part 2

So here is basically the conclusion I tried to reach before:

The authority of our faith and theology is not found in any revelation but in God himself.  We know God through revelation, but the shape of that revelation is not nearly as cut and dry as the Evangelical mindset wants it to be and cannot be equated merely with Scripture.  Scripture comes to us through the Church and is interpreted within the body of the Church alongside the tradition of beliefs not found in scripture.  To make sense of this sometimes confusing muddle we have to, I believe, start from the most basic, central part of our belief structures.  This, I think, is found in the Orthodoxy expressed in the Creeds.  This Orthodoxy then sets the parameters within which the rest of our theology can grow and develop, but it does not dictate theology.  In fact, I think it intentionally, allows for diversity.

Just as clarification, this is not to say that scripture is not important to our theology.  It is certainly very, very important.  But it cannot be the ultimate foundation because before we can use scripture we have to know what scripture is, and the essential point I'm trying to make is that this is not self-evident and therefore there must be some core, some foundation, that is prior to scripture and through which we interpret scripture.  And that prior foundation is the orthodoxy of the creeds. 

From this orthodoxy stems, I believe, two poles around which our theology is built- the pole of scripture and the pole of tradition.  The point of their being two poles is not to say that one overrides the other or that on some issues we follow one and on some the other.  The point, I think, is that through the processes of reason and experience we attempt to find the best harmony of scripture and the oldest, most widely attested (notice the importance of both of these tests, Apostolicity and Catholicity we might say) traditions to formulate an understanding of who we are as God's people in this world.  This process happens through  a cycle that involves both poles.  It will always be true that we read scripture in light of our traditions.  It should likewise be true that our traditions are informed and shaped by scripture.  It’s the combination of the flowing of influence back and forth, shaped by our reasoning and experience, that gives rise to our theological beliefs.

So from all of that, going to sketch out a very basic framework of where I am in terms of theology at this point in the journey:

The narrative of scripture is a narrative of redemption.  I think that word is much better than "salvation" because of the way the latter term is understood in popular discussions.  The narrative of scripture does not lay out a one-time solution to sin, a "say this prayer and get into heaven" kind of message.  Its not so much about conversion, I don't think, as about participation in what God is doing.  And what God is doing is working in and through the history of fallen, broken, sinful humanity to restore God's creation to the state of completed, perfect rest in which it was meant to exist.  The call to make disciples is not a call to fill our churches with converts but to call others to join in the work that God has given the Church- the work of living as though in the Kingdom in the midst of a world that is still opposed to the kingdom, a task we will continue until Christ returns, the enemy is completely vanquished, and the Kingdom is fully established.

This is the vision the church is meant to live out, I believe.  When we ask what that exactly looks like logistically we get little help from the New Testament, though.  We know that the practice of the church was to gather together, that some in those gatherings spoke as teachers, that they sang and prayed together and that they shared in a meal and cared for one another's needs.  We get a few hints about organization- there were some sort of elders who had a major leadership role, some sort of pastoral shepherding role, deacons who served the needs of the congregation, and beyond that we don't know much.

It happens, however, that early church traditions cohere very nicely with the picture of the New Testament and fill in that picture quite a bit.  Very, very early and almost universally the Episcopal form of church government develops.  Along side it is the practice of infant baptism as a rite of initiation for children of Christians.  The regular celebration of Eucharist as a "feast of thanksgiving" for Christ's death and resurrection and the saying of liturgical prayers based on the Lord's prayer are likewise an early and widely attested part of the church's practice.

So far everything I have said would, I think, fit very nicely within a Roman Catholic framework.  My Catholic roommate thinks that is wonderful, my Baptist roommate thinks me a traitor (not really, but I am officially the unfaithful Protestant)…  Unfortunately for the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), there are a couple of fairly significant issues for me that prevent me from going all the way to Catholicism.  Some of these include how we understand the sacraments (I'm not sure I buy into the idea that baptism actually forgives sins or that I can agree with transubstantiation).  But chief among these is the issue of Roman supremacy.  One of the reasons for the split between Eastern and Western Christianity is that in the West, Rome gains authority as the supreme Bishopric, while in the East, there is a concept of Equality of Bishops.  Honestly, I find a much more compelling case for the equality of bishops than for the supremacy of Rome and also am of the belief that equality of bishops can serve as a great safe-guard against the kind of corruption that emerged in the medieval Catholic Church and prompted the Reformation.

One of the things I have been challenged on both in thinking through theology on my own and in conversations since I have arrived here in New Haven is how to justify my existence as a Protestant, as someone who claims to be Orthodox while remaining part of a separatist group from the standpoint of the two Christian traditions that can claim a history stretching back to the Apostles themselves.  I certainly believe that reformation needed to happen in the Western Church.  However, I sincerely wish that it could have happened without schism in the Church.  The unfortunate fact of history is that the split did happen and that it can't be undone at this point.  I am deeply encouraged by the ecumenical movement, but I am not convinced that it will ever result in actual union.  What I do think can be accomplished by the ecumenical movement, however, is a new understanding of the Equality of Bishops in which Orthodoxy becomes the focus of our union and not shared episcopacy.  So for the moment I situate myself somewhere in the Anglican tradition and continue to pursue a better understanding of the Orthodoxy I think defines the entire Christian tradition.

Where I Am Now, Part 1

So I'm beginning to get moved in and settled in New Haven. The city is quite lovely. Semester at Yale is starting to take shape. Meeting new people, learning a few of their names…

On the more heavy side, doing a decent amount of reflecting on where I am and what I'm doing here. This is partly prompted by the other ever looming question- what tradition are you from. To which, it turns out, I do not have a good answer (and have taken on the label one of my profs gave himself- a walking ecumenical train wreck), instead I have a bit of a story. Which I have been obliged to tell far too many times the last few weeks and the retelling has forced me to think through the story and try to make a little sense of it.

So basically, the story runs like this: I grew up in a non-denominational but essentially Baptist church in Memphis, TN. When I went to college I started to question some of the assumptions of that background and began exploring the Anglican tradition. Then got hired to work as the Youth Director for a Methodist church for a year, then moved to Yale. Now back to exploring Anglicanism and doing an Anglican Studies program, but certainly not formally part of any Anglican/Episcopal Church.

But of course, that is a really, really boring, watered down, insufficient story. And given my record of writing very long blog posts, that ends this post far, far too quickly. So now to try and give some shape to "the rest of the story…"

The environment that I grew up in was very much evangelical. I would not say Fundamentalist. I think and hope that they would be just as appalled as I am by Terry Jones threatening to burn the Koran, for instance. But they were certainly conservative by anyone more moderate than Pat Robertson's standards. And by that I mean that the Bible was held as entirely authoritative for the Church. They acknowledged that there were different interpretations. In fact I remember many lively discussions in our youth group about differing views on Calvinist and Arminian theology or the ever-controversial issue of evolution and Genesis 1. The Church didn't try to dictate views, at least when I was there, something for which I am very glad. But the general rule that they lived by was that the starting point for every endeavor (not just theological ones, either) had to be scripture. That was the authority. Which put us more or less in line with the majority of the Southern Baptist Churches in our area.

Growing up there were always two things about that broader "Southern Baptist Culture" in which we might be included that intrigued and perhaps bothered me. One was the issue of women in ministry. I knew the consensus in the culture I was a part of was opposed to women pastors. I never understood why. The other issue was apologetics- defending my faith against all the "attacks" from "out there," especially the ones that claimed the Bible was not true or was not authoritative.

When I went to college my interest in those two issues led me to realize some very significant problems existed for this nice little world of thought I had grown up in. The first was that the "liberal" position of allowing women pastors was just as scripturally defensible as the Southern Baptist view. Enough said, I more or less switched camps over night. Which doesn't really seem significant, but it was in terms of opening me up to exploring ideas and traditions outside of my own. The second was that there are a whole host of problems for the idea of holding scripture as an absolute authority in the way my background did. The most pressing one in my mind was the issue of canon. The arguments I had heard growing up for the Protestant canon being the "original" canon were completely dismantled by my (Protestant) professors who openly and honestly admitted that the question of defining the canon was an open one until Luther at which time we didn't get a single unified definition but three. With that came the realization that appealing to scripture is essentially appealing to tradition, that evil, manipulative, Catholic force that I was raised to disregard. Another pressing problem for me was interpretation- it can't be done while maintaining that you are still holding scripture alone as your basis of authority. This is further evidenced by the vast differences in interpretations of scripture that exist among various Protestant (and broader Christian) traditions.

Ultimately these realizations forced me to dethrone scripture as it were and instead seek a new basic source of authority. At first glance it might seem as though tradition would be a great alternative. Except that many of the same difficulties emerge here. We have conflicting traditions on a good many issues. And we have conflicting interpretations of those issues. Witness the divide of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions- both claiming a heritage that goes right back to the Apostles and both vastly different on many issues. So tradition alone will not work either as a basis of authority.

Here is where Karl Barth gives me the first steps towards a solution. Ultimately, I think that the authority has to be in God himself. The problem that arises, however, is that I don't have a direct, on-demand line to God, and I don't think anyone does (with the possible exception of Moses, he seems to have God's ear whenever he wants it). That is not to say we have not experienced God, that God does not speak to us. I certainly believe God does. But I also think that God does so as God wishes, not necessarily as we wish (though certainly sometimes they coincide). Any attempt to say that God is always, guaranteed to speak a certain way is, I believe, automatically invalid.

So we are left with our direct experiences of God, a scripture that reflects the direct experience of God by others, and a tradition that attempts to understand all of this. And yet we still have no consistent, universally accepted theology. Except, I think, we do. In my studies of early Christianity it seems to me that despite all the diversity and all the arguing, a synthesis was reached and something was agreed upon. And that formed the basic statement of Orthodoxy that gets found in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed (but its important to note is not original to those creeds, all these ideas exist much earlier). For me right now, that I think is enough. We can have disagreements beyond the essentials that are laid out there, but so long as we hold to the trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, and the universal familial relationship of the Church existing among all others who hold to that basic Orthodoxy then I think the disagreements in interpreting scriptures and traditions are ok. And I'll talk more about how I think that synthesis plays out in the Church in another post.