Monday, March 26, 2018
593 - What's in it for Me?
Spirituality Column #593
March 27, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
What’s in it for Me?
By Bob Walters
"I believed that Christ was God incarnate, that the tomb was empty, that the resurrected Christ sits at the right hand of the Father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. These are not psychological projections of my religious self-consciousness. They are beliefs about time and reality. ..." Carl Trueman, Paul Wooley Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary.
Perhaps the easiest way to motivate an evangelical Christian to run from the room (or off the property) is to assert the primacy of dogma in the true, orthodox Christian faith.
Oops, I said "dogma." Are you still with me? It's a word that should be read as "fundamental, time-honored, faithfully-vetted core truth" about the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, salvation, and the humanity of Christianity, such as Trueman states above.
Unfortuntately - and I go so far as to say "heretically" - dogma is intellectual anathema in the "Me"-centric world of too-many contemporary Bible-lite, nominally "Christian" churches that preach personal experience, self-fulfillment, activism, and "What the Bible means to Me." Better to seek, I think, what the Bible means to God.
'Dogma" is a word that clears out the sanctuary if "I" am the reason I'm there.
You see, "dogma" happens when we get serious about the person of Christ and what this Holy Week and Easter and the resurrection truly mean in the context of God's plan for all mankind. It's far more valuable, in other words, to lean on the wisdom and spirit of 2,000 years of Christian discernment and thought - the dogma - of the enormity of what the Bile means to God, rather than the tiny-ness and doom of what the Bible "means to me." "Shine your inner truth" is a great sales pitch for the church of Oprah, but God through Jesus Christ affords us a cosmic all-time truth if we can just get over ourselves and focus on the reality of Christ, not the passions and politics of our personal moment. Those moments pass; Jesus is a partner for all time.
Dr. Trueman, an esteemed church historian and evangelical, is quoted from his wonderful 2015 essay "Newman for Protestants" in First Things magazine that recently re-appeared online. Trueman describes what for him as a perspective-changing intellectual experience at age 27 of reading a book by controversial 19th century apologist and future cardinal John Henry Newman on Newman's conversion from Anglican to Roman Catholic.
Trueman desperately wanted to hate Newman because of Newman's writings against evangelical Protestantism, but could only admire Newman because of the fundamental questions and truths Newman gently posed requiring deep philosophical thought on whom, exactly, is the person of Christ, and what, really, is the Church?
Dogma provides truth claims upon which one's faith can stand both the test of time and the "suicidal excesses" of unfettered and, I might add, self-directed human thought. That's the sad position of today's secular society, even as huge churches fill with worshippers this weekend. "What's in it for me?" is the wrong issue to ponder.
Knowing Jesus is our most profound Christian duty and joy. Happy Easter.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) clarifies that it was John "Newton" who wrote "Amazing Grace," not "Newman." Here is a link to Truman's article: Newman for Protestants
"I believed that Christ was God incarnate, that the tomb was empty, that the resurrected Christ sits at the right hand of the Father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. These are not psychological projections of my religious self-consciousness. They are beliefs about time and reality. ..." Carl Trueman, Paul Wooley Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary.
Perhaps the easiest way to motivate an evangelical Christian to run from the room (or off the property) is to assert the primacy of dogma in the true, orthodox Christian faith.
Oops, I said "dogma." Are you still with me? It's a word that should be read as "fundamental, time-honored, faithfully-vetted core truth" about the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, salvation, and the humanity of Christianity, such as Trueman states above.
Unfortuntately - and I go so far as to say "heretically" - dogma is intellectual anathema in the "Me"-centric world of too-many contemporary Bible-lite, nominally "Christian" churches that preach personal experience, self-fulfillment, activism, and "What the Bible means to Me." Better to seek, I think, what the Bible means to God.
'Dogma" is a word that clears out the sanctuary if "I" am the reason I'm there.
You see, "dogma" happens when we get serious about the person of Christ and what this Holy Week and Easter and the resurrection truly mean in the context of God's plan for all mankind. It's far more valuable, in other words, to lean on the wisdom and spirit of 2,000 years of Christian discernment and thought - the dogma - of the enormity of what the Bile means to God, rather than the tiny-ness and doom of what the Bible "means to me." "Shine your inner truth" is a great sales pitch for the church of Oprah, but God through Jesus Christ affords us a cosmic all-time truth if we can just get over ourselves and focus on the reality of Christ, not the passions and politics of our personal moment. Those moments pass; Jesus is a partner for all time.
Dr. Trueman, an esteemed church historian and evangelical, is quoted from his wonderful 2015 essay "Newman for Protestants" in First Things magazine that recently re-appeared online. Trueman describes what for him as a perspective-changing intellectual experience at age 27 of reading a book by controversial 19th century apologist and future cardinal John Henry Newman on Newman's conversion from Anglican to Roman Catholic.
Trueman desperately wanted to hate Newman because of Newman's writings against evangelical Protestantism, but could only admire Newman because of the fundamental questions and truths Newman gently posed requiring deep philosophical thought on whom, exactly, is the person of Christ, and what, really, is the Church?
Dogma provides truth claims upon which one's faith can stand both the test of time and the "suicidal excesses" of unfettered and, I might add, self-directed human thought. That's the sad position of today's secular society, even as huge churches fill with worshippers this weekend. "What's in it for me?" is the wrong issue to ponder.
Knowing Jesus is our most profound Christian duty and joy. Happy Easter.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) clarifies that it was John "Newton" who wrote "Amazing Grace," not "Newman." Here is a link to Truman's article: Newman for Protestants
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