So Who's the Heretic?

Michigan church pastor Rob Bell has once again wandered off the reservation. His latest book, Love Wins, is making evangelical leaders’ heads spin off their necks. He has been branded a “heretic” for his theological conclusions. I don’t mind calling things as they are; what troubles me is that the playbook upon which I based much of my ministry is not looking so ironclad these days. I am having trouble these days deciding just who the heretics really are.

Who’s the heretic? We all are. American evangelicalism embraces a concept of God, what motivates Him, and how we are to interact with Him, that might just be completely foreign to the minds and intentions of a large portion of Christ-followers in the first four centuries of the Church’s existence. To be more specific, my gut tells me that the guys who wrote the New Testament might not have the slightest clue how we come to some of our conclusions about God and His dealings with creation.

On this end of history it is easy, and quite natural, to assume that what we know and how we perceive truth is the way things really are. One problem with that involves the genesis of the very human culture upon which our knowledge base sits. In other words, the worldview of Western culture pushes all of us—theological thinkers, too—to see and understand our world, and even God, through a couple of dirty lenses. One of those lenses comes from a guy in North Africa. Another comes from Europe of the seventeenth century.

Augustine, our erudite African bishop in the fifth century, was a brilliant man. He happened to be steeped in the categories of Greek philosophy. So he applied this perspective on truth to God and the human condition. He cast God’s relationship with humanity in a legal framework, and these writings became one of the foundational philosophical cornerstones of Western culture. This legal paradigm permeates the Western worldview. Consider how strongly we are attached to this perspective: we sit in our well-defined traffic lanes waiting for the light to tell us to proceed; we react strongly to people “taking cuts” in lines; we must have clear winners and losers in law, sports and relationships. “Right” and “wrong” dominate our choices. Having traveled the world where other dynamics hold priority, and having lived on a continent where a different worldview dominates people’s interactions with their world (honor and shame versus right and wrong), I have experienced the stark contrast.

This cultural cornerstone has had its impact on religion, too. How often have we seen Christian groups fighting with each other over their perspective on “truth” with more intensity than they fight the devil and the grip of this world for human souls? Isn’t that why church signs have advertized “Baptist” or “Pentecostal” or “Methodist”? It’s to let those on the “inside” know if this particular fellowship agrees with my theology—they are “right” while the others are “wrong.” As a sidebar, I was part of the pastoral generation in the 1980s and 1990s that removed denominational labels from church names. At least in my mind, it was because we live in a world where religious “brand loyalty” no longer applies; denominational monikers didn’t attract new people, and in fact, confused church-seekers. This was part and parcel of the church growth movement, pandering to market forces and consumer interests. That, in itself, is worthy of another blog post but is off-track here.

Another dirty lens is Modernism. As a philosophical movement, it fueled a cultural shift to embrace the Enlightenment’s insistence on science as the preeminent arbiter of truth versus error and explains everything in mechanical terms. This was the dominant cultural perspective of the 19th century. Consider that the majority of systematic theologies still used today were written during that period, and only updated/expanded upon in the last century.

Most of our theological formation in the US has been along these lines. Consider the definition of the word “forensic”: relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems. This is precisely the ground in which the roots of evangelicalism lie: it is how we have grown up understanding God, His agenda, and the Atonement. Popularized by the seminal American theologian, Jonathan Edwards (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—think for a moment how that one sermon has shaped and captured American theological thinking!), systematized by modernist “scientific” theologians in the 19th century like Hodge and Strong, forensic theology blossoms in early 20th century fundamentalism and eventually present-day evangelicalism.

What all this leads to is an emphasis in Christian ministry on the salvation event, because this is the crux of the legal problem. If it is true that sinners are in the hands of an angry God, and the Atonement was acted out in heaven’s courtroom before the Judge, then our greatest duty is to get sinners out of their present “guilty” condition. Once the status of the “sinner” has been changed to “saint,” we have unconsciously satisfied the one legal item in our modernist Christian worldview that really matters. It was, according to our forensic theology and “The Four Spiritual Laws,” the reason why Jesus left heaven to visit Earth.

Could this be one of the reasons why evangelicalism has had such a good track record in making converts, but such poor success in turning converts into true disciples? Maybe this helps explain why a Billy Graham can gain celebrity status for conversion event crusades (with admittedly abysmal recidivism rates) and why a pamphlet like “The Four Spiritual Laws” gains such uncritical acceptance and widespread use. Since the emphasis in Western church culture is on the initial conversion act, evangelicalism is curiously deficient in terms of Great Commission impact. You know, the whole “make disciples” thing.

This paradigm, to some degree, explains why evangelicals so easily gravitate toward abandoning their harvest fields in favor of huddling together to protect themselves from being tainted by the world (why else is there a “Christian Business Directory”?). What do most denominational names indicate? Could it be that the primary element of our corporate self-identification has traditionally been more about what separates us from others (exclusion) than what we have to offer to our world (inclusion)?

Maybe this also helps explain why Western culture, once a captive audience to the message of Christianity, would rather turn anywhere else than embrace the picture of God we have meticulously painted. We present a picture of cultural cognitive dissonance: “God loves you; God is love; but He is so angry over sin that He actually severed relationship with Jesus himself as he hung on the cross. If He would do that to the only sinless man who ever lived, then how far away has God turned from you?” Who would want to get closer to a God who hates their very essence? If we look at evangelical theology, we have to conclude that Jesus found himself in that camp, too.

Let’s consider that moment in time when forensic theology insists that the Father turned away from the Son as he bore the sins of humanity on the cross. If that truly happened, then we must conclude that the Trinity ceased to exist during that time. Modernist theology has no explanation for this paradox. Belief in the Trinity is foundational to orthodox theology, but the logical conclusion here using modernist/forensic theology is that God’s wrath actually caused Himself to cease existing. Even if the Trinity was fractured for the briefest of moments, this means we are all in a puddle of doo-doo.

Let’s use this as an exercise in worldview: Jesus, on the cross, shouts, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Our modern assumption is that this verbal outburst confirms that Jesus was feeling the weight of sin and the separation from God that it caused. For the first time, Jesus felt the devastation of abandonment as the Father turned from sin. Therefore, the modernist says, this is proof that things are the way I see them.

But perhaps the reality is a bit different. Jesus’ physical reality was one of ultimate torture: agony in pain from dislocated joints, flesh raw from beating and subsequent up-and-down movement to try to breathe; hyperventilation; loss of blood. He is gasping for breath and yells out what he can. What he did was commonly practiced by his fellow countrymen—especially with the Psalms. A vast percentage of adult males present would have instantly known exactly what psalm Jesus referenced (Psalm 22); most of them would be able to recite it by heart. If you start a song everyone else knows, everyone else finishes it (precisely what the psalms were) and nobody questions what deeper meaning you had in saying just the opening line. The song stands complete.

So what Jesus did was strategically start a song that has some very interesting verses which apply directly and dramatically to his immediate situation. Besides being a clear literary illustration of the ravages of crucifixion centuries before the practice was used by Rome (12-18), the psalm pointedly states that God will never abandon His holy one or turn His face away (24). It ends with “It is finished” in Hebrew—in the English versions it looks like “he has done it.” Now where do we hear that from Jesus’ mouth? By finishing the song in the last moments of his life, Jesus confirms from beginning to end this psalm’s statement of ultimate relationship in the midst of ultimate suffering. Jesus is never, for one second, abandoned by God to face his worst day ever completely on his own.

Should we believe that God turned His back on Jesus for even a moment, we are the heretics: we are saying, in spite of clear biblical evidence, that God separated Himself in some clearly definable way from Jesus on the cross. We can’t say that in Jesus’ case God loved the sinner and hated the sin. Paul states emphatically that Jesus actually became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21); sin wasn’t something Jesus carried, it was something he was. So if God turned from sin, He turned from the person Jesus. The implications of that are astounding. We are saying that the Trinity, one of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, is unimportant. We say that because it ceased to exist at the moment of Jesus’ abandonment; yet somehow the Godhead as we understand Him was seemingly unaffected. In reality, if relationship with Jesus was severed, it means one of several things.

First, if we believe that Jesus was fully human and fully God as the creeds of Christendom have taught us, then somehow Jesus was God in a separate essence from the Father and Holy Spirit. That leaves two fully functional and separate Gods in the universe at the same time. If that is the case, then perhaps the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are right.

Second, if relationship between Jesus and the Father were truly separated, then Jesus ceased to be fully God at that point. That leads us back to inventing ways to explain a fractured, but not mortally wounded, Trinity.

Third, maybe we just don’t understand the kind of relationship that God the Father enjoys with Jesus. There is some way, we suggest, that God could turn from Jesus (because sin separates us from God) while at the same time He didn’t.

The problems with this response are twofold. First, this argument, based on the legal modernist theology, has to leave that worldview and take a trip into a more metaphysical, mystical posture for this to make sense. One cannot stay true to the modernist foundation and honestly reach this conclusion. Second, this kind of talk can only make sense if words are released from their meanings. We can’t stay true to the modernist worldview and employ postmodern uses of language and stay consistent.

The bottom line is this: if relationship between Jesus and the Father were severed for even a second, then for that second God was not God and the Bible is full of lies as to His longevity, omnipotence and character. If we believe in the forensic hatred of sin like we say we do, then perhaps our heresy is deeper and more insidious than the emerging church.

What to do?

It has been ultimately freeing to begin seeing God as the relentless lover of His creation, who would stop at nothing—no cost or risk too high—to enjoy undiminished relationship with this world and all its inhabitants. It is freeing to look at that tired modernist theological civil war between predestination and free will and wonder if both sides have seriously missed the point. What if, in eternity past, the Trinity decided to go ahead with creation knowing full well what the introduction of free will would bring? And in the midst of that decision, the Trinity decided that to get what they ultimately wanted—humans freely engaging in relationship with God—it was worth the personal cost of redemption? In that regard, Jesus was “predestined” for the cross, “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” My passionate, loving Father set loose the hounds of heaven to pursue me even before I was lost!

It is freeing and inspiring to read Jesus’ take on the dancing, joyful Father in Luke 15. Whether it’s an illustration of money, livestock or kids, the same relentless Finder of Lost Things has heaven poised for the next party.

I’m not smart enough to figure out what happens to the billions of people who haven’t heard the story of Jesus. I still think that it isn’t just God’s problem; if I am in relationship with Him, it’s my problem, too. But this I know: the story of God I am seeing re-written in my life is about the magnetic draw of the One who dances for joy over finding His lost ones. You can have your systematic theologies and dark courtroom dramas. I’m going this other direction.