Failing to be original

Read these quotes from J. Gresham Machen ("What Is Faith", Banner of Truth) written in the 1920's:

"The trouble with university students of the present day, from the point of view of Evangelical Christianity, is not that they are too original, but that they are not half original enough. They go on in the same routine way, following their leaders like a flock of sheep, repeating the same stock phrases with little knowledge of what they mean, swallowing whole whatever their professors choose to give them--and all the time imagining that they are bold, bad, independent young men, merely because they abuse what everyone else is abusing, namely, the religion that is founded upon Christ...

...A true originality might bring some resistance to the current of the age, some willingness to be unpopular, and some independent scrutiny, at least, if not acceptance, of the claims of Christ. If there is one thing more than another which we believers in historic Christianity out to encourage in the youth of our day is independence of mind...

...It is a great mistake, then, to suppose that we who are called "conservatives" hold desperately to certain beliefs merely because they are old, and are opposed to the discovery of new facts. On the contrary, we welcome new discoveries with all our hearts, and we believe that our cause will come to its rights again only when youth throws off its present intellectual lethargy, refuses to go thoughtlessly with the anti-intellectual current of the age, and recovers some genuine independence of the mind...

...But what we do insist upon is that the right to originality has to be earned, and that it cannot be earned by ignorance or indolence. A man cannot be original in his treatment of a subject unless he knows what the subject is; true originality is preceded by patient understanding of the facts."

J. Gresham Machen was an outstanding scholar best remembered for his defense of historic Christianity in the midst of the "Modernist Controversy" of the 1920s and '30s. He was the founding President of Westminster Theological Seminary, after the fated re-organization of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Holiness - the "Forgotten Fundamental"

In the latest edition of Christianity today (CT, Jan 2007) the writers ran an editorial titled "Reviewing the Fundamentals: Ted Haggard's fall raises crucial questions about holiness".

It is a great article. While not being about the "Fundamentals" as associated with the Fundamental Movement, it rightly centers on the generically fundamental basics of the faith. What struck me about the article was the seriousness with which it took the matter of sin. Note the following quotes:

"Many Evangelicals, having fled from churches characterized more by judgment and hypocrisy than by grace and holiness, have no interest in condemning Haggard. At the same time, we must not unwittingly encourage misconduct."

"How do we treat sinners (that is, one another) with compassion, while still taking sin seriously?"

"The Bible never divorces grace from holiness."

"True grace not only treats sinners with compassion, but it also calls and enables them to live a life of holiness."

"Holiness is indeed God's indisputable call to us."

"Phoebe Palmer, the influential 19th century holiness leader, put it this way: 'If you are not a holy Christian, you are not a Bible Christian.'"

"'Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you', Puritan theologian John Owen warned..."

The funamentalist movement, in its best & historic expression (and not to be confused with the modern legalistic perversions of the movement), rightly concentrated on the importance of right belief. Of course, over time, various parties began to lift secondary doctrines to the status of essential orthodoxy (dispensationalism, pre-tribulation rapture, forms of church government, etc). That notwithstanding, the nascent movement underscored the importance of right belief.

However, I think the movement was understandably naive. The held, according to the best advice of old Princeton Common Sense Philosophy, that 'right belief leads to right living'. Of course, there is some truth in that statement, but there is also much error. Does a right heart produce right belief? Or does right belief produce a right heart? Every seminary & college professor I had firmly insist upon the latter. But I am no longer convinced.

It is at this point that fundamentalists and conservatives get a little nervous (or some just skip right to 'angry'). They cry, "Pastor, are you saying belief doesn't matter"? No, of course not. Belief is essential. But I think we have misordered the process. By lifting the understanding of 'data' so high, we have asked it to carry a weight it was never intended to hold. It becomes the sole bearer of the weight of right living.

Frankly, I have known too many Christians who hold right beliefs but who are not living rightly.

But I don't want to go to the other extreme and say that full holiness comes first, and then produces right belief. But think of it this way, Christ produces holiness in us. This holiness leads us to dig deeply into Scripture. This "digging" then produces in us a deeper holiness, which in turn prompts us to dig even dipper, which in turn produces greater holiness.

It must begin with holiness, and it can never begin with belief. I did not fall in love with my wife because I understood many right facts about her. I fell in love with her, which prompted me to discover right facts about her. In the discovery of these facts, I come to love her even more.

Perhaps the "First Fundamental" should be that holiness comes first. By changing the order, holiness becomes the "product" or "effect", when it reality it is the "cause". No wonder we constantly fail - we are asking the "effect" (belief, knowledge, doctrine) to produce the "cause" (holiness). Belief enhances holiness, but it can never create it. Holiness is a gift from God, which produces right belief. Right belief in turn nourishes and strengthens holiness.

"Holiness First" should become the rallying cry of the fundamentalist movement.

Sibbes on Legalism?

"Preachers need to take heed therefore how they deal with young believers. Let them be careful not to pitch matters too high, making things necessary evidences of grace which agree not to the experience of many a good believer, and laying salvation and damnation upon things that are not fit to bear so great a weight."

Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed. Puritan Paperback Edition (Banner of Truth, 1998), p 26

As I reflect on the situation facing many of our churches (particularly the Baptist churches in Northern Michigan), Richard Sibbes' words seem to speak to the heart of the issue. Having studied the arguments (or at least the rhetoric) of the advocates of KJV-onlyism, 2nd/3rd/4th plus degree separationists, Baptist successionists, and a host of other issues associated with the modern (and extreme) fundamentalist movement (anti-movies, anti-contemporary music, anti-pants on women, etc) I have come to forcefully and completely reject such arguments as valid or biblical. However, this is not to say that they are not making any good points, or that they do not have valid concerns. But the real issue is how much weight they place on these positions. While I disagree with their positions, I most strongly disagree with the importance they place on these issues.

For example, a dear friend in the area is a strong believer that the KJV is the most accurate bible, and that other bibles are "tainted" with "modernism". However, he is very careful not to let this become an issue and has chosen not to confront (or even instruct) young believers with his opinion. He will--only if asked why he uses the KJV--give an answer. I greatly admire such an approach. While I might disagree with the devaluing of other bible versions, we both agree that the KJV-only position is not a fit standard by which we can determine orthodoxy.

However important some of our pet issues may be (and I believe some of them ARE important - I for one am greatly concerned with modern media as expressed in movies and television), they are not designed by God to hold the weight of determining salvation or damnation. Only the central doctrines of the faith (salvation by faith alone, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the innerancy of the Word, and a few others) are designed to hold such a load.

By placing other loads upon believers, we risk destroying their faith. The faith of some is completely destroyed, as they find themselves unable to live under so many severe burdens. The faith of others is made ineffective, as they become believers in the exaggerated seriousness of these issues and their focus shifts from the Great Commandments/Great Commission to a host of subsiderary points.

Let us point others towards the great central doctrines of the faith. One's response to these either save or damn. Other issues, while perhaps important, barely come in a distant second.