Embracing Purposefully Vague Theology & Doctrine

Dan,

 We are all broken,sinful and narcissistic. Some Christians know this and are humbled. That group can get along with most anybody. The other group of Christians don't understand this and that is  what leads to intolerance of most idea"s or persons that do not think the same way.  That is the difference. and the reason we don;t get along.

Ken

Ken, beautifully put...and you might add- those who are humbled are the "servant leaders" of our denomination, seek them out...

I am reponding to your remarks about Baptists. There is only one thing that is required to join our church and that is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Only Christ's blood is sufficient to make someone a member of the church. I hope I am being theologically clear.

I appreciate this article

Thanks

My thoughts on this are as follows,

You are talking about the difference between Doctrine and Dogma in a certain sense. Academicians will fault me on this doggerel distinction, but Doctrine is generally accepted as what the Bible teaches and by its very nature cannot be vague and Dogma is what the Church believes and/or requires. This is an oversimplification, but for the purposes of argumentation I hope you'll allow it. Historically, where to draw the line in the sand between the two has always been fuzzy. Each denomination was born of some historical necessity for separation (no judgment here on if it was a good or bad reason) which became a deeply ingrained raison d'etre and it's hard to change that for one main reason. People NEED to believe that what they believe right now is the truth. This is the only way people can be comfortable in their thoughts. The corrollary to this, however, is that we need to be aware of the fact that what we believe right now is not the whole truth and some of it will likely be changed as we live, learn more or experience different things. The truth is, though, that it's hard to go back and say (as an organization expecially) at worst, "we were wrong," and at best, "we aren't the only ones with truth."

This should be mitigated in Protestantism in the fact that we (read, Luther) tried reforming inside the church and was not so nicely asked to leave, so we were forced to create identity outside of the, then, Church. We have a big, biblical, raison d'etre, but those churches who have split and formed new churches over the color of the carpet or some other sort of trivial issues are confusing dogma and doctrine, but this just goes to prove, albeit in an extreme manner, the difficulty of identifying just where that line between the two is. The church exists as an authority for a reason, so how do we decide what exactly is an essential and what exactly is important but non-essential, and what is not important at all?

You may or may not be familiar with the guidance attributed to Augustine on these matters, but he apparently said, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." When we're talking about truth like we do in the church, it's difficult to know where to draw the line between essentials and non-essentials, but like you implied, if we can at least love each other enough to see past these differences we'd be better off.

One caveat, though; when it comes to the issue of leadership. I have definite reservations about allowing people in leadership who don't "tote the party line" (to be real crass), because they are not there to push their own ideas, but to support the denomination that put them there. Why would we elect someone who doesn't agree with what we say we believe as a denomination? Certainly it is true that not everyone, even in leadership, monolithically agrees with everything, that's why we have the debates we have at Synod and elsewhere. The lesson learned, I think, is that there is a proper time and place for disagreement in leadership, that is distinct from disagreement in the pews.

In a very real, practical sense, I think what you asked in your post is actually going on. The pews are filling up with people now (at least the trend in the US, I don't know about Canada) who are seeking more stability and legacy than just the Mom & Pop church in the old Grocery store building that just started last week "for Jesus." There is a lot of liberty in the Church for disagreement, but if we are going to have purposefully vague theology, we muct be purposeful about it.

I very much appreciate the tone and intent of this conversation. It seems like we are looking for ways to be inclusive, while at the same time wanting to draw a line between who's in and who's out. We want to know what it means to belong, and we want to be somewhat clear about some sort of communal identity.

Dan, you mentioned pharisaism. What came to my mind is the line: "Thank you, God, that you did not make me like so-and-so". There's that line again. In Jesus' story such line-thinking was juxtaposed with a posture held by all who realize their position vis-a-vis Creator-God: "Have mercy on me, a sinner. I am not worthy to be in your presence".

What if it is not so much about what we know, but about that we are known?

What if it is not so much about "we hold these truths", as it is about that we are held in the palm of the hand of a loving God.

What if it is more important to love than to be right?

What if God were very pleased that we worship Him for graciously providing for our every need, and invite others to worship Him with us, and not quite so pleased when we worship Him for making us "distinctly Reformed"?

When it comes to who's in versus who's out thinking I agree with Richard Rohr, who says that the church's preoccupation with membership may well have been its greatest failure.

What if all of us concentrated on informing the world that all are in: God loves all. God's grace is extended to all. Jesus died for all. God's providence holds all. Come, believe, participate, connect, grow, love, serve.

What if the only really significant line is the line between those whose eyes have been opened by the Spirit of God to the reality of God's love, and those who are still in the dark? And what if our only responsibility as a church is to live with our eyes wide open, loving, praising and worshiping God in everything we do, and let the Holy Spirit worry about opening more eyes?

What if we could appreciate any and all differences among denominations, worship styles, emphases, as simply different ways in which different communities respond to God with their newly opened eyes?

What if................what if?

I would disagree with Vandonk and Rohr (as quoted above) about membership due to the historical importance in the rise of "membership." Even at the time of Paul and the Apostles, there was arising a need to distinguish the holy from the profane; the believer from the non-believer or heretic. It truly became necessary to determine who was in and who was out, not for the purpose of excluding people, but including them. We had to know what the Gospel was and what constituted correct belief and life in order to properly minister and evangelize. Paul spends most of his epistles doing just that. Perhaps the nuance has been lost, in that the Church has, at times, gotten too interested in cloning Christians, rather than growing disciples. True discipleship will help avoid some of this unwarranted focus on membership, but it can't and shouldn't be thrown out entirely.

I don't know how much theology you have read, but I am drawn to much of existentialism's dealing with these types of issues, mostly as represented by Paul Tillich. I will caveat this by saying that the Existentialists begin everything with man, and are very human-centric throughout, almost to the exclusion of God in some respects, so they are not to be read without caution, but, in dealing with man-centered problems I find their thought helpful and enlightening. They developed a sense of being able to hold two seemingly contradictory positions at the same time in counterbalance of each other. For example, Rudolf Otto (another dead existentialist) wrote an excellent book on holiness in which he described the wonder and terror of being in God's presence. On the one hand, we are accepted and can stand before God's throne, but on the other hand, and at the same time, we are terrified at the very prospect of standing before Ultimate purity and truth because of our fallenness (see Isaiah 6 for that prophet's reaction to this exact situation). We need to be able to hold the standards of membership, without excluding people who are not yet members.

We are in an interesting time demographically. If you read the studies of the Millennial generation (born 1980-200) they are taking longer to marry and longer to join because they are looking for authenticity and genuineness. In this sense, we need to be more about what is real, than what is true, but they should be the same. It's all in how it's presented. It's like the Church a couple generations ago had a problem stating what they believed, instead, they focused on what they didn't believe in (smoking, drinking, dancing, etc). The Church is now so focused on right doctrine that it is missing a generation that cares about that, but isn't interested in it until they have tried out the church first to see if the people are genuine. They can cope with brokenness, because they recognize their own brokenness. They want their's healed through relationships with other broken people who can point them to the Healer. In this sense, I think the Millennials are seeking an excellent part of what the church is supposed to be about, community, and isn't that a hallmark of reformed theology? Perhaps that is also why there is a new influx of people into Reformed churches and some of the more popular church thinkers being published today are Reformed (Challies, DeYoung, etc).

Zylstra, I know I avoided answering your question about the sin of nailing down the non-essentials, but I'm not sure I understand the direction you were heading with it. (PS: sorry it took me so long to respond. I have a very tight and busy schedule. God bless you for thinking through things like this).

Godspeed!