This is the final part of the presentation I gave to a gathering of pastors at the LCMS Atlantic District pastor’s conference between May 12th and May 13th. The first three part may be found here, here, and here. The topic of the conference was “Mere Christianity in a Pluralistic World”. I was asked to give two presentations dealing with the topic pluralism especially as it relates to the Episcopal Church. Each took about an hour, in a series of four postings and I’ll be posting the audio as soon as I get it loaded and sized down. I’ve attached the final paragraph of part 3 to the beginning of part for continuity’s sake
If all of the minor errors and heresies of the modern church, viewed collectively, are manifestations of or direct results of the western church’s embrace of pluralism, if we accept that premise, then, I think, we will begin to see the long theological nightmare of the west in the proper perspective. We’ve been struggling against a manly heresy after all, one that attacks the epistemological foundations of the Christian faith undermining any claim that God’s own historical public self revelation in Jesus Christ is true in an absolute sense.
Dr. Bill Witt, professor of Historical Theology at Trinity Episcopal Seminary in Pittsburgh suggests that in the final analysis the contemporary struggle with Pluralism, at least as it impacts the Church, is a Christological one. He writes: “In the contemporary divide, the fundamental question about the content of Christian faith and its corresponding practices divides contemporary theologians on the question: Are the person and work of Jesus Christ constitutive of a salvation we can find nowhere else, or, are they rather illustrative of a salvation we can find elsewhere or even perhaps everywhere as well? How we answer this question will work itself out consistently to form our understanding of Christian faith and identity.”
That’s the struggle pluralism has brought to the church. Is the content of the faith externally and objectively revealed in Jesus Christ or is it experienced subjectively anew by “people of faith” everywhere in different ways and through different means?
The Anglican Communion at present has the potential to become the first world-wide body to fall to this new heresy and so it is a good thing to ask why? What is it about Anglicanism that makes it so susceptible to pluralist subversion?
There are all sorts of theories about when and how the Episcopal Church began to fall. Some look back to the early part of the twentieth century when the Anglican stance on divorce and contraception changed. Others locate the departure in the 1970’s when the Episcopal Church permitted the ordination of women. Others still think it had to do with the revision of the prayer-book in 1979 that excised some crucial doctrinal content from the liturgy of the church.
But, as I’ve maintained throughout, I tend to think all of these were themselves manifestations of the greater disease, the pluralist infection, that had already begun to work its way into the Anglican bloodstream long before the debate over contraceptives in the 1930’s or the debate over women in orders in the 70’s.
The debate over the ordination of women illustrates this point. The debate was not between those who said scripture does not forbid the ordination of women on one side and those who say it does on the other. Had the church not already been subverted that would have been the content of the argument. Instead, the debate was largely between those who argued that scripture and/or tradition forbid Women’s Ordination on one side, the minority, and those who argued that scripture and tradition are irrelevant or must be in some way reinterpreted because the question of women in orders is one of social justice, on the other. Already the idea that social/cultural experience somehow measures specially revealed truth had captured a ruling majority in the Episcopal Church. As a side note, those evangelicals and “moderates” who at the time believed that the bible permits women’s ordination ended up making what has come to be seen by many as something of a devils bargain with the social justice crowd as a practical matter. And because that side was the majority and politically stronger it won out.
In any case, debate was not primarily a theological or biblical one. The winning side’s argument went something like this: some women experience the call of God to the priesthood. Since they experience that call and we, as a church, experience them as gifted and fit for the office, why should they be prohibited by one group’s blind adherence to tradition or their uncertain interpretation of largely irrelevant biblical texts
Pluralism had done its damage to the church long before the debate over Women’s Ordination took place.
As you may know Anglicanism is in many ways a compromise between Catholicism on the one hand and the Reformation on the other. One reason that compromise worked and has continued to work is that Anglicans have for centuries agreed on two principles.
The first is the rejection of the regulative principle of scripture. The regulative principle says that in order for the church to do something, it must find precedence for it in scripture. Church governance and decision making and change cannot be done wily-nilly. You model everything on the scriptural model and you do nothing that cannot in some way be grounded in the text of scripture. The regulative principle is one reason the puritans wanted a far more thoroughgoing reform of the Church of England than they got.
The Elizabethan rejection of the regulative principle is why they did not get it. Instead of the regulative principle Anglicans, and I believe Lutherans did this as well, adopted the normative principle which says that the Church can worship and act and legislate in various ways even without scriptural precedent so long as what is done is not condemned or proscribed in scripture. So the more Catholic-minded clergy can wear liturgical vestments and light the number of candles they deem appropriate and evangelicals can eschew the same. In our own day, we see that compromise quite clearly. Anglo-Catholics wear chasubles and celebrate the mass at the altar and some evangelicals wear suits and ties and celebrate the Lord’s Supper monthly at the Table.
The normative principle means that the Church can change her form of worship and her method of governance and polity, she can move and change dynamically within the limits of scriptural proscription.
The rejection of the regulative principle allowed evangelicals and catholics a great deal of latitude, allowed for a comprehensive breadth to the church, and also brought some level of peace between traditional rivals.
But, and I say this as a strong proponent of the normative principle, I think the normative principle also, unfortunately, as it came to be applied in Anglican bodies without a definitive and enforced confessional standard (which I see you have in the LCMS), makes it more difficult to combat heresy because it shifts the burden of proof to those who object to a given change. If an Anglican bishop wants to make a liturgical or even theological change he does not so much need to make a case for it from scripture, as those opposed to it must show where it is forbidden.
Can you see how this principle might help, in a practical way, those bent on brining error into the church?
Those bent on revision can revise liberally, as they have, and say in essence, “We don’t have to show precedence or reason for what we are doing. You need to show us why this cannot be done.”
And so heterodox change is implemented rapidly and established firmly before those opposed to the change have had time to pull on their boots.
A second reason the compromise worked is because there has always been within Anglicanism an agreement not to press language. There have, for example, always been Anglican evangelicals who choke on the baptismal language of the prayer-book because it is hard to see it as anything but an embrace of baptismal regeneration. For years some, not all, but some Anglican evangelicals have used the words but poured their own special meaning into them and taught their congregations to do the same. I confess my own discomfort with the language not only of the present prayer-book but of our original catechism and prayerbook. I am far more comfortable with the 39 Articles take on the matter which is more consistent with the Reformed perspective.
In the same way Anglo-Catholics in those Anglican provinces that do adhere to the 39 Articles as a matter of sworn doctrine have a very difficult time dealing with the language of the Articles that is both polemic toward Rome and I think fairly clearly committed to the Reformation ideals of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. But with the help of the Tractarians and other catholic-minded Anglican theologians Anglo-Catholics have generally found ways to affirm the words of the thirty nine articles while not necessarily affirming their original meaning.
And in order to remain in communion with one another we do not press the language.
So here we were as Anglicans for many years worshiping and praying together using the same words but often meaning entirely different things. And this was recognized and seen as good. It was a necessary way to do things if the Church was going to stay together and continue to be the via media between Rome and the Reformation. There was a “gentleman’s agreement” not to press the language to the point that either catholics or evangelicals would balk.
But while the idea of not pressing the language of a confession or liturgy when dealing with non-essential matters is something with which I think most Christian bodies would agree, Anglicans were agreeing not to press the language on matters most other bodies would consider essential. Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura are essential to Reformed Christians. Baptismal regeneration is essential to Catholics.
And so what ground is there to object when the same logic, the logic of the gentleman’s agreement, is applied to the creeds or to the very foundational documents and confessions of the faith?
What do you do when senior churchmen hold beliefs that are hardly recognizable as Christian, denying the bodily Resurrection and Virgin birth for example, and yet are able to stand and confess what you confess and profess what you profess? Then the agreement not to press the language—not to find out exactly what the evangelical means when he breaks the communion host and says “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” or what the Anglo-Catholic means when he assents to the 39 Articles as he must do in England and elsewhere—then that agreement does not seem so wise because it is also precedent setting.
Katharine Jefferts Schori can say the Creed with a straight face. She can pray the entire prayer-book. She can say the catechism at the back of the prayer-book in good conscience but what she means when she does all of those things is clearly not consistent with what Christianity has always taught and believed. And yet she can point back centuries to Anglicans who did the very same thing on essential matters.
In these two ways, I think, the Anglican application of the normative principle and the agreement not to press language, the very compromises that made the via media between catholics and evangelicals in Anglicanism possible were also, perhaps, the seeds of its demise.
Of course this is not just an Anglican problem. The ravages of pluralism are being visited across the mainline spectrum. Methodists, Presbyterian, Lutherans are feeling it. I think it is beginning to make some inroads into evangelicalism through the emerging church movement, or at least through some of that movement’s advocates.
So I suppose we need finally to turn to how the Church might engage with pluralism in the future. There are many levels to this engagement.
On the macro philosophical level, the argument needs to be made and there are many who are making it, that the crisis of certainty at the heart of pluralism is a false crisis. Our ability to know is not as circumscribed as the pluralist would have us believe. As apologist William Lane Craig argues, to draw a line between what we can know with certainty and what we cannot know with certainty is impossible because to do that you have make a knowledgeable assessment of the very thing that you say we cannot know. To say that we cannot have certain knowledge of God that compels belief in a universal or absolute way is, itself, to claim a sort of universal or absolute knowledge God that compels belief. Why can’t we know him? Why can’t he reveal himself to us in a way that is knowable universally? How do we know that we cannot know? What special knowledge do you have about God that leads you to that absolute conclusion? Christian apologetics on this philosophical level is what is necessary to cut the head off of the pluralist beast and it is being done as, I am sure, you are all aware.
On the ecclesial level, I agree with those who have said that the church needs to recognize that we are no longer among Jews in Jerusalem but among the Gentiles in Athens. Ours is, indeed, a post-Christian culture. So we cannot carry on the ministry of Peter and expect to be heard and understood. We must do Pauline ministry. Gone are the days when we can expect people to walk into our churches with a basic understanding of the Christian world-view. They don’t have it. As the title of this conference suggest the west must be evangelized. In many cases our churches need to be evangelized. Many have written about this before and I am certain you have heard it before, so there is nothing much for me to add that on this level has not already been said.
But I’d close with six suggestions that are gleaned from things from my short time ministering in a post-Christian denomination engaged with a post Christian culture. I am a pastor and I am speaking to pastors so I want to narrow the focus as I close to how we might wage this battle on the ground level. I offer these as the distillation of what I have learned pastoring a church that was at first in steep decline sparsely populated with many unconverted un-catechized worshipers and is now growing and filled primarily by new converts and the recently un-churched. We’re still small, about 90 on a Sunday, but the average age now has gone from 60 to 38 and instead of dealing with squabbles over music and altar placement we have baby Christians coming in dealing with drug addiction, broken families, sexual abuse, and criminal history. During the last six years at Good Shepherd, we’ve been broken ourselves, had to learn to do ministry in a broken church and to proclaim the gospel to broken people coming out of a broken world. So here we go with what I’ve learned and what I suggest.
First, starting up and leading bible studies in a congregation is vital. I’m not talking about share and care groups, I’m not talking about small groups, I’m not talking about prayer groups. I mean serious bible studies that help people to love and understand the bible and learn how to do exegesis for themselves. This is not, I think, something that you can pass off to your small group leaders unless they know their bibles and are gifted bible teachers. Even in orthodox congregations, congregations committed to orthodox principles, you’d be surprised at the level of biblical ignorance. I now teach five bible studies a week at Good Shepherd and out of the now 80 or 90 people we get on Sunday morning 65 of them are committed to at least one bible study a week. You have heard it before but it is true, the more familiar Christians are with the truth the easier it becomes to spot a lie. Bible study has completely transformed the worldview and paradigm of my congregation. Minds, hearts, lives families, have been changed radically. In 2003 few parishioners at Good Shepherd understood why the consecration of Gene Robinson was a big deal. Now, through the corporate study of scripture, we’ve come to the point that had the vestry not made the decision to leave the Episcopal Church last year, I would probably be without a job today.
Second: I’ve learned to preach repentance: In the Episcopal Church the average sermon is about 10 minutes and more often than not it is more of a reflection on some theme like “joy” or “love” than a real sermon and usually it is a really bad reflection. The proclamation of the church must always begin with a call to repentance. To preach repentance means, necessarily, to preach about sin, to dispel false gods of self esteem and complacency. Pluralism thrives in an environment where people think that all spirituality is simply a journey to self-fulfillment and wholeness; in an environment where people are looking for an experience and deeper meaning. But consistently preaching repentance undercuts that world-view because the hearer is reminded time and time again that we stand as sinners before a holy God and God has not offered his Son Jesus Christ merely for our fulfillment (although that is certainly promised) or pleasure but to save us from the fire of his just wrath.
When the apostles preached the gospel they did not sell Jesus. They did not go around begging people to please, please invite Jesus into their hearts because then they would feel a lot better about things and he’d really enhance their career goals or their bottom line. The apostles’ message was that the whole world is in bondage to sin but now God has sent his Son to save all those who repent, submit and commit their lives to him. As Paul said to the Athenians on Mars hill, God now commands all people to repent. Preaching repentance puts everything in the right perspective. Jesus is not our co-pilot. He’s not here to take the edge off of life. He is our Lord and King and Savior and we are to deny ourselves take up our crosses and follow him.
Third, preach expository sermons: Pluralism thrives where a congregation is used to having the minister preach to their felt needs. So there will be eight sermons on anxiety, ten sermons on building your career; five sermons on Christian car repair. Such a congregation comes quickly to the conclusion that Sunday morning is about me and about myself and about my experience; that the aim and purpose of a sermon is to make me feel good rather than to convey and proclaim and herald the Lord’s Word to the Lord’s people. To preach expository sermons communicates that the contemporary Church is under the authority of the eternal Word; that the locus of truth and the source for our knowledge of God and is not our experience or our feelings about God but God himself. Book by book, verse by verse, expository sermons are, I think, vital because God’s revelation, rather than man’s experience, becomes central to the life of the church. This does not mean preaching dry stale seminary lectures. A good preacher knows his people and applies the text to them in a compelling way.
Fourth, do apologetics: Mere Christianity as I am sure you know was the name of perhaps the most popular work of apologetics done this century. The genius of Mere Christianity is that CS Lewis had this incredible way of communicating complex ideas in popular language. This is probably also because he himself was a convert and knew what it was like to think things through from the other side. The task of apologetics is both an evangelical task and a discipleship task. It is evangelical in the sense that it removes doubts from those God might be drawing toward his Son. It is a discipleship task because it inoculates a congregation from future error and removes nagging and plaguing doubts that may one day lead to error. Your people need to know about pluralism. Your people need to know about Schleiermacher and Kant. Your people need to check their own understanding of the Christian faith against the errors the past and the philosophies and worldviews of the present. Apologetics helps them do that and, simultaneously, apologetics trains the mind for evangelism and gets people used to the idea of engaging the world. When you train people to provide an answer for the hope that lies within, you are also implicitly challenging them not to shrink back when God brings those opportunities to evangelize and ultimately to seek them.
Fifth, get political. One practical reason the Episcopal Church fell so fast is because believers in the Episcopal Church refused to get political because, as everyone knows, church politics is “unspiritual”. Meanwhile radical activists, parish by parish, diocese by diocese, ran for and captured the key positions. The average diocesan convention delegate is far, far more radical than the average Episcopal layman. Do not eschew politics. Know your polity and work within it to ensure that theologically and biblically sound people hold the key positions.
Finally, Loving tolerance and patience for those in the world and those lay people in the church who are confused and don’t understand or don’t agree must be balanced by loving intolerance for those leaders in the church who unrepentantly insist on spreading false teaching. Discipline is a vital thing to recover if we are to resist pluralism, reform those bodies that have fallen into error, and defend those, like your own, that have yet to fall. Those things plainly declared in scripture and those things that have always been taught by the Church that in accordance with the scriptures are not up for debate. There are many Episcopalians who cannot understand why we cannot simply have a conversation about the possibility of allowing same sex blessings, why we will not even consider the possibility that “God is doing a new thing.” And the answer is that this is not a “new thing”. This is an old thing. There is no more need to get together and talk about it and converse about it because the final decision on the matter of homosexual behavior was handed down by God in Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1, and 1st Corinthians 6:9 and it was affirmed by the first council of the church in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15. Therefore, ecclesiologically speaking, the only meeting that now needs to be called is the meeting that issues the formal anathema and excommunication. What is true for sexual immorality is also true for any teacher who comes into the church who does not accept the validity of special revelation as the norma normans or measure of truth. Scripture and tradition are clear about the nature of truth. Any ordained leader who denies that teaching or teaches otherwise must recant or be disciplined.
Pluralism is dangerous because it distorts the very nature of truth, which means that it distorts the image of Christ. When people do not trust the scriptures and do not trust the classic doctrines of the faith, they begin to turn inward and look for truth in themselves; they begin to mistake their own desires and longings for the voice of Christ. Ultimately they are led from the light into the darkness.
We are ordained ministers of the gospel of salvation. If the church has not been awakened to the threat of pluralism she must be and if we do not do it, starting in our own congregations, who will?
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This article says some things I’ve been hoping Stand Firm would address for a long time, and indeed it has to some extent, but this series is the best explanation I’ve seen put forth. Good job Matt.