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Benedict XVI’s Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today

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Benedict XVI is a pope worth reading.  To be sure, any Baptist who is a Baptist by conviction will have fundamental disagreements with Benedict on more than a few points, but there is wisdom here that any believer in Jesus Christ can not only appreciate but also grow from.  In truth, I found Benedict’s Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today to be one of the more thought-provoking works on ecclesiology I’ve ever read, even as I disagreed with many of its basic points.

A good bit of this material was delivered by Benedict when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger in July of 1990 to a theological seminar in Rio de Janeiro.  As such the work is essentially a primer on Catholic ecclesiology.  For the Protestant reader, this book will offer some of the more seasoned reflections on Catholic ecclesiology that you are likely to find on the market today.  So this book will certainly help Baptists and others understand Roman Catholics better.  And yet it would be a shame to read this work only to understand what “they” think, for surely even Baptist believers share (in ways poignant and undeniable) in what Benedict calls here “the crisis of ecclesial consciousness through which we are now living” (p.11).

Benedict bemoans the liberal ideology within the Church “which regards Jesus according to the liberal world picture as the great individualist who liberates religion from cultic institutions and reduces it to ethics, which for its part is founded entirely upon the individual responsibility of conscience.  Such a Jesus, who repudiates cultic worship, transforms religion into morality and then defines it as the business of the individual, obviously cannot found a church.  He is the foe of all institutions and, therefore, cannot turn around and establish one himself” (p.15).

Here is one of the many places where we can benefit from Benedict’s wisdom.  His definition and diagnosis of liberalism is helpful and wise.  As Protestants have been bound in the same struggle against this same liberal impulse, we may rightly say that Benedict is speaking no less to us than he is to the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedicts understanding of the Church is profoundly Christological.  The Kingdom proclaimed by Christ is found in Christ Himself and the Church is likewise defined by and embodied in Christ who is present in the Church’s central act of worship:  the eucharist.  “It follows, then,” Benedict tells us, “that it is entirely impossible to conceive of the New Testament’s notion of the people of God apart from Christology, which in turn is no abstract theory but a concrete event taking place in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist” (p.33).

As a Baptist, I do not want to distance myself from the idea of Christ’s presence in the sacraments (even as, obviously, how I would understand Christ’s “presence” would differ markedly from Benedict’s), but I badly want to add this:  “and in the proclaimed, heard, and lived Word.”

Benedict next moves to a discussion and explanation of apostolic succession.  To be perfectly honest, I remain unconvinced.  I do appreciate Benedict’s attempt to ground the idea in exegesis of the text, but as I wrote “non-sequitur” in the margin a couple of times as I read, I was impressed once again by the seriousness and severity of the divide between the Protestant and Catholic ideas of “the Church.”

I do not deny what Benedict explains very persuasively:  the presence of apostolic authority in the New Testament Church and even some evidence of Petrine primacy in the New Testament.  I do not see, however, the implicit evidence for (especially) Petrine succession that Ratzinger finds in the text (he readily admits that “there is no explicit statement regarding the Petrine succession in the New Testament”).  Furthermore, I regret that Benedict did not give serious consideration (in this work) to the fact that the Apostles are present in the Church as it proclaims and heeds “the apostles’ teaching.”

Obviously Benedict has misgivings about the idea of ecclesial autonomy:  “The Church must constantly become what she is through unitive love and resist the temptation to fall from her vocation into the infidelity of self-willed autonomy” (39-40).  Speaking of local churches and the Church catholic, Benedict writes:  “In this respect it can be said that we find here a preliminary sketch of a Church that lives in manifold and multiform particular Churches but that precisely in this way is the one Church.  At the same time, Luke expresses with this image the fact that at the moment of her birth, the Church was already catholic, already a world Church.  Luke thus rules out a conception in which a local Church first arose in Jerusalem and then became the base for the gradual establishment of other local Churches that eventually grew into a federation.  Luke tells us that the reverse is true:  what first exists is the one Church, the Church that speaks in all tongues – the ecclesia universalis; she then generates Church in the most diverse locales, which nonetheless are all always embodiments of the one and only Church.  The temporal and ontological priority lies with the universal Church; a Church that was not catholic would not even have ecclesial reality…” (44).

Earlier Baptists, and many modern ones, will want to stress the priority of the local church and the future coming of the church catholic.  That being said, there is a growing trend of Baptist catholicity that feels that the radical “autonomy” which is often championed in some quarters is derived more from American individualism than from New Testament exegesis, even while it affirms the basic principle of “local church autonomy.”  There is, to be sure, fascinating and occasionally tendentious cross-currents in Baptist life today over the issue of the church local and the church catholic and how these realities are to be understood.  Regardless, all Baptists would reject that which the Pope is clearly moving towards in this selection:  the unity of the catholic Church under the supposed modern successor of Peter (“Nevertheless, there is also a positive tendency today.  Many non-Catholics affirm the necessity of a common center of Christianity.”).

Benedict has some interesting discussion of apostolic primacy in the N.T.  He does not deny the evidence for the primacy of James, but argues that James had primacy over Jewish believers and it disappeared with the collapse of Jewish Christianity.  He then argues for Petrine primacy and succession, even while acknowledging that “we must first of all note that there is no explicit statement regarding the Petrine succession in the New Testament” (65).

But Benedict’s argument for Petrine primacy and succession seems unconvincing to me.  His argument that “it was with this Church that every community had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition as a whole” (69) seems to me a serious oversimplification that does not account for evidence that Rome ascended to its primacy over time and that its primacy was not always assumed by other communions.  Furthermore, his contention that “the Roman primacy, or, rather, the acknowledgement of Rome as the criterion of the right apostolic faith, is older than the canon of the New Testament, than ‘Scripture’” (70) strikes me as pandering to the choir.  The statement is quite different from an acknowledgement that Rome had ascended to ecclesial power before the formal recognition of the canon by the church.  Finally, Benedict argues that “the essential point, in my opinion, has already become plain: the martyrdom of Peter in Rome fixes the place where his function continues” (72).  This strikes me as an amazing non-sequitur that is utterly unconvincing.

All of this being said, I am quite happy with Benedict’s definition of the Church itself, even as  I would undoubtedly understand certain phrases of this definition in a different light than he intends:  “The Church is accordingly the gathering of men from the four corners of the earth and their purification for God.  Together, the two answers describe the essence of the Church and thus introduce us into her practical dimension; both answers can be summed up in the one statement that the Church is the dynamic process of horizontal and vertical unification” (76).

On we could go, but suffice to say that this is a thought-provoking work that will, at the very least, give the Protestant reader an interesting insight into Catholic ecclesiology and theology as it is articulated by one of the Catholic church’s brightest minds.

Nancy Klein Maguire’s An Infinity of Little Hours

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“But monks are dumb!”  The comment was made in the midst of a Wednesday night prayer meeting discussion in which, somehow, the issue of monasticism had come up.  The lady who said it meant it with all the genuine sincerity of a cradle-Baptist who, for the life of her, could not see any merit whatsoever in the very idea of monasticism.  The comment was undoubtedly buttressed by a strong dose of anti-Catholic sentiment and perhaps even by the Luther movie I had showed some months earlier to celebrate Reformation Day.  After all, Luther’s vow to St. Anne had proven to be an act of fear-driven works righteousness, so the whole enterprise must be absurd, right?

I gently pointed out that calling every aspect of monasticism “dumb” was perhaps unwise, especially given the crucial role that monasticism has played in preserving and transmitting the Bible.  But in my mind I had a much more visceral reaction to such a statement.  Dumb?  Really?  And the average Southern Baptist minister is what exactly?  A paragon of virtue, wisdom, and Christ-likeness?  And what of the laity?  What of the whole comfortable, American, Evangelical enterprise?  What would we call it?

Monasticism is not without its problems.  I agree with Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis in Discipleship that when the church set apart men and women who were to give all for the gospel, it inadvertently excused the cultural accomodationism that the majority of those within the church had fallen into (i.e., “Well, after all, we’re not monks!”)  But perhaps that objection also states the great virtue of monasticism:  it reminds us, in sometimes shocking and uncomfortable ways, that (to borrow from Kuyper) “there’s no square inch of reality over which Christ doesn’t say ‘Mine!’”  As such, monasticism has a prophetic role to play in the Church.

An Infinity of Little Hours is a spellbinding chronicle of 5 young men’s attempts to join the rigid Carthusian order.  The Carthusians have recently been given a great deal of attention, most compellingly through Philip Groening’s “Into Great Silence,” a project that was ironically finished just a few months before Maguire’s book.  While this book lacks the overall spiritual, emotional, and psychological punch that Groening’s haunting documentary provides, it is right up there with it.

Maguire’s book is a profoundly beautiful and a powerful work of art.  It is immensely educational.  It draws the reader into the inner workings of an order that most people throughout Christian history have known very little about.

The Carthusians are fond of their motto:  “Never reformed because never deformed.”  While the reality undermines this sentiment somewhat, it is by-and-large true that this order of monks have remained amazingly unchanged throughout their long and rich history.

The book follows the journey of five young men from 1960 to 1965.  Each came to the order seeking nothing less than God Himself.  Not surprisingly, most of these five were strongly influenced by Merton’s Seven Story Mountain.  Only one of the five would ultimately remain with the Carthusians, but all five had their lives indelibly marked by their fascinating, demanding, and daunting journey in the order.

What strikes the reader more than anything else is the challenge of solitude that each of these men faced.  The Carthusians spend the majority of their time in their cells, essentially small houses.  Their lives are dominated by the monastic hours that call them every day, time and time again, to corporate prayer and to choir.  Hearing of the various men’s struggles with learning how to sleep only a few hours at a time was fascinating and made me seriously question whether or not I would ever be able to do such a thing.

Maguire’s book is sympathetic.  Perhaps it is because she is married to an ex-Carthusian.  She has no desire to ridicule this life that must appear ridiculous to many observers.  She depicts the Carthusians as men who are passionate about knowing God and see in the monastic impulse a powerful tool for doing just that.

To be sure, her depiction is not overly-romanticized.  She shows the political wrangling within the order, the ambition that occasionally grips the monks, and the inner conflicts and tensions that plague all human relationships at times.  Her chapter on the conflicts in the choir was humorous and fascinating.

The book will undoubtedly leave the Protestant reader with some problems.  The most fundamental problem with this attempt at living the Christian life is its stifling legalism.  I’m almost hesitant to mention this, because American Evangelicals tend to call almost any attempts at mortifying the flesh “legalistic.”  To be sure, we have a perverse understanding of “freedom” that borders on antinomianism.  But the fact remains that monastic expressions like the Carthusian order have a stifling measure of legalism under which even the majority of their own applicants eventually wither.

I was moved by the pitiful fact that more than a few Carthusians collapse under the psychological strain of the order.  Than neither proves nor disproves anything, of course, for many SBC pastors collapse under the stress of the ministry as well!  The book does reveal that some of the more excessive aspects of the aestheticism of the Carthusians are being softened a bit.  Showers have been installed in some of the monasteries (with no hot water, of course), and a few other things along those lines.

I was also struck by the fact that two of the five young men that Maguire chronicles eventually left the order and embraced the homosexual lifestyle.  There is no evidence that homosexual practices occur in the order itself, but the anecdotal evidence provided by Maguire would suggest that perhaps monasticism (and the priesthood itself?) attracts men who are trying to overcome their own demons.

In all, however, I am very glad to have read this book.  I would recommend it (cautiously) as a fascinating look at a unique movement.  There are aspects of this movement that must be rejected.  But I daresay there are aspects that would strengthen the devotional life of the average Evangelical in powerful ways.

Read this book.

Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert

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My knowledge of the Desert Fathers has heretofore been restricted to some shocking examples of asceticism-run-amuck cited in Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines and a single issue of Christian History magazine.  I’ve had some hazy concepts of St. Anthony battling demons and of Simon Stylite sitting on top of a column for way too long in some heroic but misguided attempt at mortifying the flesh.  My understanding of these fascinating people was in desperate need of some balance and perspective.  And so, on a recent and rare day off, I found myself driving to the picturesque Callaway Gardens for a day of walking the woods in solitude and in the hope of enjoying some rest.  I soon found myself seated in the unbelievably beautiful “thin place” of the Callaway Gardens chapel (which is – I kid you not – about as close to Rivendell as we have on this earth) with a copy of Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert in my hand.  When I stood up to leave, I had finished this amazing little work and I knew I would be forever changed.

The Wisdom of the Desert is a collection of (mainly brief) sayings from the desert fathers.  The introductory essay by Merton is illuminating and strangely moving.  Merton argues that the desert fathers have been wrongly maligned as anti-social and fanatics.  He persuasively argues that instead of being anti-social, they were looking instead for authentic society (thus the presence of sayings that the abbots passed on to one another and to the brethren), and that instead of being fanatics, they were simply intensely focused on living the crucified life.

Merton has hit the mark, and I daresay that I will be more cautious the next time I am tempted to laugh off these men who retreated from the world.  What, after all, is true society and authentic relationship?  What if, after all, our uncritical immersion in the crumbling pagan polis not only isn’t true society but renders such essentially impossible?

Merton presents these sayings, then, not in an effort to call for a literal repetition of the particulars of the Desert Fathers’ circumstances, but rather so that we might be moved to know and, in so many ways, live the life they so admirably modelled.

The sayings themselves are pithy, concise, and brimming over with wisdom.  Merton attributes this brevity to the humility of the Fathers and the fact that the closer we come to God, the less gregarious we inevitably become.

Some of the consistent themes of this selection of sayings are anger, gluttony, humility, and control of the tongue.  The sayings are frequently winsome, occasionally humorous, and inevitably inspiring.

A few of my favorites:

“It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.” (XV)

“Abbot Ammonas said that he had spent fourteen years in Scete praying to God day and night to be delivered from anger.” (XXIV)

And my hands-down favorite:

“Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:  Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts:  now what more should I do?  The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire.  He said:  Why not be totally changed into fire?” (LXXII)

I like that.  I like it a lot.  It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”  Or perhaps John Wesley’s, “If I had 300 men who feared nobody but God and hated nothing but sin and were determined to have nothing known among men but Christ and him crucified, I could set the world on fire.”  Or the anonymous, “When God sets a man on fire, people will show up to watch him burn.”

On and on it goes in all of its wonderful proverbial glory.  Some of the sayings are more purely didactic and others are anecdotal.  Regardless, it is a powerful collection, less because it reveals who these fascinating people were than because it gives the reader fresh arrows for the quiver.  Above all, it is Christ-honoring and God-glorifying.

Check out the Desert Fathers.  This would be a great place to start.

John Piper’s When the Darkness Will Not Lift

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John Piper’s little book, When the Darkness Will Not Lift, is tellingly subtitled “Doing What We Can While We Wait for God – and Joy.”  That’s well said, for oftentimes in seasons of darkness we simply must (1) do what we can and (2) wait.  But that’s not all, as Piper shows masterfully, if too briefly, in this book.

I was particular moved by Piper’s argument that the first step towards emerging from depression is a renewed understanding of justification.  We must remember, in other words, who we are in Christ and where our certainties and strengths lie.  Justification, then, becomes an anchor on which the despairing soul can latch itself.  Whatever else might happen, the fact of our having been declared righteous by God through the shed blood of His Son keeps us from drifting into utter despair and ruin.

There are, to be sure, other issues, and Piper lays them out well.  I found his discussion of medication and the physical dimensions of depression most helpful.  In an admirably balanced way, Piper showed that there are undeniable physical components to depression, and that this has been recognized by the saints for ages.  I found his anecdote about Martyn Lloyd-Jones interest in the then-developing field of antidepressants to be interesting.

Piper does not believe it is wrong, in some cases, to take medicine.  Even so, he warns against seeing medicine as the cure for depression and he rightly sounds an alarm against the grotesque over-medicating of our society.  He bemoans the quick and arrogant medicating of children when new research is showing that placebos have been shown to be just as effective, if not more so, as traditional medication.

But, again, Piper does not use this caution to write off all medication.  Sometimes it is necessary, and I am glad to see him say this, even as I agree with his criticisms of our pill-happy society.

There is practical advice here, to be sure.  Piper wisely talks about the need to serve and work and get out of ourselves.  He points out that joy, too, is a duty in Scripture.  He warns against the deceptive “certainties” of despair and asks us not to believe its siren call.  He writes of the need to help one another and minister to one another during times of darkness, and shows how this can happen.

In all, a tremendous little work.  It’s too brief, coming in at 79 pages, but the themes are developed further inWhen I Don’t Desire God.

I’m glad I read this book.

Shane Clairborne’s Irresistible Revolution

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Shane Clairborne’s Irresistible Revolution is a provocative read, to say the least.  Clairborne belongs to what has been called “the new monasticism.”  He’s one of the founders of The Simple Way in Philadelphia, a group of “ordinary radicals” seeking to live the life of Christ in a culture that desparately needs a counter-cultural alternative to the predominate ethos of both the world and (unfortunately) the church.

Bonhoeffer once suggested that the future of Christianity will find its vitality in a new monastic expression.  Flannery O’Connor onced wondered aloud whether a Protestant monasticism would be possible at all.  Clairborne obviously agrees with Bonhoeffer and would answer “yes” to O’Connor.

I suppose it would be easy to write off Shane Clairborne at first glance, but I’d argue that doing so would be a naive and sad example of judging a book by its cover.  He’s young and he has dreadlocks.  His two books are intentionally designed to look like they were pieced together by a 1st grade class.  So, as I say, it would be easy to look at these things and write Clairborne off.

If you’re tempted to do so, let me say this:  don’t.

Clairborne is not, of course, without his problems.  It’s one of the refreshing points of the book that he doesn’t mind saying so himself.  He comes across as genuine.  He’s a provocateur, to be sure, but there’s a meaning to the madness, and there’s a great deal of thought behind the shock value.

To be sure, Clairborne offers the occasional eye-rolling moment:  his statement that he used to be really opposed to abortion and homosexuality…and that he’s still opposed to abortion (the silence, I suppose, is supposed to be tantalizing).  He quotes Crossan’s work on empire, noting that Crossan is indeed provocative, but that he’s not personally interested in getting into those controversial points.  Fair enough, I guess, except that Crossan’s theological quirks include the belief that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead and that his body was likely eaten by dogs.  (Please note that I am NOT suggesting Clairborne believes the same.  In fact, I expect he does not believe the same.  It’s just the tendency of guys to quote left from heretics that gets a bit…whatever.)

But Clairborne needs to be heard.  I would suspect that Clairborne’s proposals of simple living, breaking free from the consumer culture, peace, and radical, literal enactments of Scripture would free my own denomination (the SBC) from the decline that it finds itself in.  In fact, I think that the SBC is in prime need of a new monasticism of the type that Clairborne et al. are living out.

There are genuine moments of conviction here that need to be heard and pondered.  His trip to India and time spent in the leper colony was powerful (especially his observation that many lepers don’t know the words “Thank you” because they’ve never had occasion to use them).  The Jubilee on Wall Street was brilliant and genuinely prophetic, and what these guys are doing in Philadelphia and beyond is not only worthy of emulation, it’s profoundly biblical.

There’s a part of me that wants to dismiss Clairborne, but there’s a much bigger part of me that is frightened of what will happen if I do.  What happens, for instance, when a person or a people scoff off the literal imitation of Christ in favor of their own middle-class churchianity?  What happens, for instance, when we truly reach the point of flipping past the poor on our TV screens without seeing in them not an opportunity for philanthropy but the presence of Christ himself?  What happens when we uncritically applaude the war machine without weeping over the loss of life that war brings?

Shane Clairborne has his critics.  His politics have been called simplistic and his pacifism has been called naive.  His theology is occasionally messy and he is in desparate need of a haircut.

But Shane Clairborne would like to follow Jesus:  seriously and radically.

I’m not suggesting that the rough edges are not important.  I’m just suggesting that Shane Clairborne, and what he’s doing, is.

Mark Dever’s What Is A Healthy Church

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Mark Dever’s What Is A Healthy Church? is an intriguing summation of his Nine Marks of a Healthy Church that will encourage and convict the reader concerning his or her attitudes about the Church.  At least, I found that to be the case personally.

I’m familiar with Dever’s thoughts and, on the whole, I’m a fan.  He has done tremendous work towards calling churches back to a biblically-based and Christ-honoring way of approaching and “doing” church.  If you are not familiar with 9 Marks Ministries, you really should acquaint yourself with what Dever is doing there.

Dever wants us to take Church seriously.  I did cringe at his opening paragraph where he recounts his custom of telling groups he speaks to that if they are not faithfully engaged with a local church they may be going to hell.  This is clearly a rhetorical device that he qualifies and clarifies as he goes along, but, for some reason, I did not like it.

I suppose that some might try to accuse Dever of ecclesiolatry, but they would be a mistaken.  It is true that Dever has an intense interest in the Church, but that is because Jesus has an intense interest in His bride.  What interests Him should interest us.  Furthermore, as a Southern Baptist, Dever is more than aware of the ecclesiological crisis gripping our denomination.  The very idea of “church” needs to be rescued in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In this work, Dever wants to argue against the idea of churchless Christianity, a notion that the New Testament knows nothing at all about.  This will sound odd and possibly offensive to Americanized Lone Ranger Christians, but is thoroughly biblical and it is absolutely crucial.

Dever makes the crucial point that while the local church should not be confused with the Church universal, the local church seeks to emulate, as closely as possible, the realities of the universal Church in its own congregational life.  This emulation includes calling for a regenerate church membership, a covenanted church membership, and, above all, a membership founded on the gospel.

The summary of the nine marks that Dever closes the book with would be a great introduction to those unfamiliar with Dever’s work and a helpful reminder for those who are familiar with it.  Either way, you are bound to find this work thought-provoking and challenging.  You may not agree with all of Dever’s arguments, but I daresay you will have trouble denying the core of it:  that the body of Christ is important and that it ought to reflect faithfulness to the mandates of the Word of God and fidelity to the Church’s Groom.

Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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A book about the untimely death of a fairly shallow Russian gentleman seems an unlikely story to become engrossed in while on vacation in picturesque Dahlonega, GA, but this is exactly what happened to my wife and me while I finished reading this powerful little story to her up here in north Georgia.

Let me just go ahead and make the following declaration:  everybody…everybody should read The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Written during Tolstoy’s own spiritual crisis (the Introduction by Ronald Blythe that discusses the events surrounding the writing of this story is worth the price of the book itself), the story represents Tolstoy’s own struggle to come to terms with death, and all of the spiritual and psychological realities that one’s awareness of the inevitibility of death brings.

The story is fairly straight forward.  It’s the story of a man working to get ahead and struggling through a fairly bad marriage (thanks largely to his own selfishness and egocentricity).  In the midst of a fairly nondescript and secular life, Ivan Ilyich bumps his side on a piece of furniture.  He doesn’t think much of it, until a few days later when it begins to hurt.  As time progresses, it hurts more and more, until Ilyich comes to realize that something is seriously wrong.

As it turns out, Ilyich is dying.  Throughout this process, he comes to hate almost everybody around him:  his wife (who he thinks wants him to die), the doctors (who’s glibness and formulaic diagnoses irritate him immensely), and, most significantly, God (Who he questions and accuses concerning the fairness of what’s happening to him).  The only person who’s presence he truly cares for is a servant boy who does not seek to dishonor Ilyich by denying what’s really going.  “We all have to die,” he essentially says, thereby becoming the first person to say aloud what everybody knows.

To be honest, I was growing discouraged with this book for a time.  Was this merely going to be a tale of untimely death and man’s vain attempt to make sense of it?  Fortunately for the reader, this is not the case.  In fact, the last couple of chapters are worth their weight in gold.

Ilyich begins to be haunted by the notion that perhaps he wasted his life and did not really live at all.  When the thought first occurs to him, he dismisses it as a possibility:  as in, “Whatever the cause of my anxiety might be, it just can’t be that I really missed the whole point of life altogether.”

He dismisses, in essence, the need for repentance in the exact same way that human beings do so today.  “What? I got it all wrong?  Well, that just cannot be the case!  My misery must be for some other reason.”

But then his wife recommends that Ilyich take the sacrament.  He seems offended at first, but then relents.  He partakes of Holy Communion.

Interestingly, after partaking of the broken body and spilled blood of Christ, Ilyich suffers for three days.  His physical pain is agonizing.  He has been pierced in the side, and he descends into hell, as it were.  But in his last moments, he seems to have an epiphany.  Suddenly he sees it.  Suddenly he understands.  He apologizes to his wife through halting, agonizing words: short bursts of sound, not unlike the seven last words of Christ.

Then he says, “Forget.”  But Tolstoy tells us that what he meant to say was “Forgive.”  The slip causes Ilyich no anxiety, because he is convinced that “He” will understand.

It is a powerful and moving scene.  It reminded me of old man Brideshead’s conversion near the end ofBrideshead Revisited, but in this case, we are Charles Ryder.  That is, we are the ones observing the scene and praying and hoping that the dying man will do it, will repent, will see it for what it is.

It also reminded me of Levin’s epiphany near the end of Anna Karenina, though throughout that story the reader feels that Levin is so very, very close that it’s almost inevitable.  In this story, we are pleasantly surprised to see Ilyich come to his moment of clarity, but there was no evidence earlier on in the story that he would finally do so.

As I say, everyone should read this story.  It draws us into a deathbed epiphany in a way that confronts us with the most profound question of all:  have we wasted our lives?  Are we wasting it now, today, right here where we are?

Tolstoy has done us the great service of showing us how to die in peace:  realize what is truly important, repent of our sin and selfishness, and know that, in Him, we will find a welcome that transcends our own foolishness.

Thom Rainer, Daniel Akin, Chuck Lawless, Jeff Iorg, Jerry Rankin’s Great Commission Resurgence

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Where do we go in the post-resurgence Southern Baptist Convention?  It is a question of no small import to America’s largest Protestant denomination.  After the cataclysmic (relatively speaking, of course) events of “The Controversy”, the Convention now finds itself looking for direction.  Various groups within the Convention seem to be pointing this way, that, or the other.  Yet the most intriguing call, and the call that would seem to have the greatest possibility of uniting the Convention, is the call for a “Great Commission Resurgence.”

To this end, LifeWay has published an interesting manifesto (of sorts) with an introduction by Thom Rainer (President, LifeWay Christian Resources), an essay entitled “Answering the Call to a Great Commission Resurgence” by Daniel Akin (President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), an essay entitled “The Great Commission and the Local Church” by Chuck Lawless (Dean, Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism & Church Growth, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), an essay entitled “Accelerating the Great Commission in North America” by Jeff Iorg (President, Golden Gate Seminary), and an essay entitled “The Great Commission and International Missions” by Jerry Rankin (President, International Mission Board).  Together, these pieces constitute a clarion call for Southern Baptists to return to the Great Commission heartbeat that drove the Convention in her greatest moments and needs to drive her again today.

In Thom Rainer’s Introduction, he bemoans the current direction of too many of our churches:

 

“Instead of sin being an affront to a holy God, it has become a term to describe falling short of reaching one’s potential; instead of the cross being a place where God graciously bridged the gap to save sinners, it is being belittled as evidence of divine child abuse; instead of receiving salvation through unmerited grace, grace has become a term to describe God’s rewarding of individuals for reaching personal growth milestones; instead of Christ being THE way to peace with God, we hear too often tha all roads lead to God” (p.8).

 

Rainer’s response to this sad condition?  Realize that “people are open to the gospel” (p.10), appreciate the gains achieved through the Conservative Resurgence, but understand that “total biblical fidelity requires more than a cognitive agreement on the parts and the sum of the Bible.  True fidelity requires obedience as well” (p.12).  When we are obedient to God’s Great Commission call “the resurgence will have taken its full course” (p.12).

Danny Akin next dilineates seven areas of agreement among the different Convention sub-groups: (1) agreement as to a common confession of faith (BF&M 2000), (2) agreement on the inerrancy, infallibility and sufficiency of the Bible, (3) agreement on the necessity of a regenerate church, (4) agreement on the exclusivity of the gospel, (5) agreement on the sinfulness and lostness of humanity apart from Christ, (6) agreement that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and (7) agreement that the Great Commission is a divinely mandated assignment given to the church by the Lord Jesus.

One does wonder what the three-year struggle for the adoption of a resolution on integrity in church membership means for number 3, but, yes, it too is now, at least on paper, a point of agreement once again for Southern Baptists.

Akin then goes on to articulate five “needs” for coming together in a Great Commission resurgence:  (1) a sound theology, (2) letting biblical theology drive and determine our systematic theology, (3) a revival of authentic expository preaching, (4) the balance of a Great Commission theology, and (5) love and respect for each other (pp.19-23).

After describing some common truths that arise from studying Great Comission churches, Chuck Lawless offers some proposed “steps in reigniting a Great Commission passion in the local church” (p.31).  These include:  (1) Leaders, take the lead, (2) Select a Great Commission prayer team, (3) Honestly evaluate the numbers, (4) Teach again the truths of the gospel, (5) Invest first in a few believers, (6) Get ready to disciple new believers, (7) Teach children and students about the Great Commission, (8) Commission your church members to be missionaries, (9) Learn to celebrate God’s work, and (10) Do not give up on the local church.

Jeff Iorg offers two “theological foundations” for future success:  (1) affirm the gospel, without equivocation and (2) celebrate the church, without hesitation (pp.38-39).  He then encourages us to humble ourselves and seek God’s power, deploy believers through infiltration strategies, learn to communicate with secular people, and affirm methodological pluralism.

Finally, Jerry Rankin wants us to have an accurate understanding of the immensity of the task before us.  There are countless unreached people in the world and our mission successes as a whole are not enough.  “Southern Baptists have taken pride in now having more than 5,000 international missionaries,” he tells us.  “But that number represents less than three-tenths of one percent of our church membership” (p.61).

Taken as a whole, this powerful little collection of essays is impressive for the amount of content, motivational force, biblical exegesis, and practical suggestions that are actually contained therein.  The writing is tinged with genuine passion (most evidently seen, I think, in the essays by Akin, Iorg, and Rankin) and common sense practicalities (Rainer and Lawless).  All of the contributors are genuinely concerned about our undeniable drift from Great Commission conviction and yearn to see a wholesale return to a biblical, balanced, and stalwart enactment of our Lord’s clear instructions.

And so we must finally ask the crucial question:  are they right?  Is the way forward for the Convention a “Great Commisssion Resurgence”?  As for myself, I would like to register a resounding “Yes!”

We are in danger of becoming inwardly fixated and self-absorbed.  And yet, Great Commission faithfulness must not merely be seen as a denominational corrective.  It rests in the very heart of God Himself, and so our faithfulness to His commands are truly faithful to God.

So let us have a “Great Commission Resurgence.”  Let us pray for it, labor it, and model it in our own lives.  Only then will we truly become all that God has called us to be.

Jon M. Sweeney’s Almost Catholic

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And all of God’s people said…”UGHHH!”  So help me, I tried.  I really, really tried.  But I only got through 39 pages of this book before I concluded that I had reached the point of diminishing returns.  The weird thing about it is, I have a really high tolerance for pain when it comes to reading books.  I can sludge through books that no human being should have to sludge through just because I hate starting a book and not finishing it.  But Mr. Sweeney is to be commended for breaking me of that habit once and for all.

I was fascinating by the description of this book and I picked it up because I do appreciate many elements of ancient, liturgical worship.  Thanks to Steve Harmon and D.H. Williams and a few others, I believe that catholicity is admirable and necessary and ought to be explored.  In other words, I was prepared to appreciate this book even when I knew I’d likely disagree with some of the things in it.

But I was not prepared, frankly, for the postmodern buzz words that were delivered in a such a way that you would think some angry fundamentalist had written them in an effort to caricature postmodernism.  I, for one, think that the conservative critique of postmodernity is often (but not always, mind you) wrongheaded and shallow.  But then I read the first 39 pages of this book and realized that maybe the caricatures do, indeed, exist.

Let me just share a few of Sweeney’s comments:

“I’ve never been a big fan of religious authority, especially not when it is made out to be the stuff of foundational or even propositional truth – as if following Christ is impossible without first believing or doing this or that or the other thing.” (p.5)

“The way we believe or don’t believe in the propositions of religion is entirely different from faith.” (p.7)

“I make the assumption that tradition and scripture are equally important.” (p.14)

“I don’t seek Truth with a capital T.” (p.18)

“Also, I think that Christians today are beginning to accept that notknowing is actually essential to faith.” (p.18)

“To look at faith through the lens of belief is to be stuck in some sort of rationalism that makes little sense today.” (p.19)

“Many of us today acknowledge that we live in a new era – some call itpostmodernity – in which propositional truth, certainty, and even papal infallibility play the same sort of smaller role in a spiritual life that they played in the pre-modern worldview.  We decide what is true in different ways.” (p.21)

and finally

“But my spiritual life is not ready for any conclusions, at least not yet.” (p.21)

And that’s just the first 21 pages!  It gets worse over the next 18.

A couple of ironies:  Sweeney likes Flannery O’Connor.  Flannery O’Connor!  She’s one of my favorite writers and she understood things better than most.  The irony here is that anybody who’s read Flannery O’Connor can imagine what she would think of the drivel being served up by Sweeney here.

Finally, it is odd for a man who doesn’t believe in propositional truth to write an entire book full of propositions, isn’t it?  It’s the irony of all these exercises in not-knowing.  You’ve got to know a lot to be able to convince folks we can’t know and you’ve got to say a lot to convince folks that we can’t really say anything.

Anyway, I don’t know.  Read this thing if you want.  Just email me and I’ll mail you my copy.

Millard Erickson’s Making Sense of the Trinity

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So Mrs. Richardson and Miss Richardson are out of town for the weekend and it’s just me and London (the dog) sitting at home staring at each other.  She’s staring at me with her fascinating underbite and bulging eyeballs, and I begin to think to myself, “Self, what shall we do?”  Then it hits me!  Of course!  Let’s knock out some Trinitarian theology!

So I grab Millard Erickson’s Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Questions and commence to read what turns out to be a tremendous and clear-sighted handling of the Trinity that frankly left me sad when it was all over.  This is one of those books that actually gets better as it goes along.

Many a seminary student knows the name Millard Erickson.  His Christian Theology (along with Wayne Grudem’s) pretty much dominates the evangelical seminary scene (or at least the Baptist expressions of it).  Through this work, and a whole host of smaller works such as Making Sense of the Trinity, Erickson has established himself as one of those solid, trustworthy, go-to guys that you might not always agree with on every detail but you know will never fail to teach you something.  Erickson taught for a while at Southwestern, then down at Truett, I think.  I believe he’s retired now.

This is a fantastic book that would serve as a great introduction to the Trinity for anybody looking for a good place to make a start.  Erickson explores the biblical basis for the Trinity and concludes that while it is not explicitly taught in Scripture it is implicitly and consistently taught.  His handling of possible Old Testament Trinitarian passages was solid and careful.  He avoids eisegesis, a problem for Christians seeking to find vestiges of the Trinity in the Old Testament, but nonetheless points out some fascinating instances of Old Testament texts that may well have been pointing to what the Church would come to understand as the Trinity.

His handling of the New Testament data was extremely helpful and thorough for such a small book.  He shows New Testament evidence, for instance, that the writers and the early believers viewed each person of the Trinity as divine and, in some sense, viewed them as three-in-one.

Other features of this text that I found helpful were Erickson’s very helpful discussion of perichoresis (which he seems to embrace and highly value) and his discussion of the practical implications of the Trinity.  His handling of the question of Christ’s subordination to the Father and whether or not that subordination applies only to Christ’s earthly incarnate state or applies to the Son from eternity past to eternity future was very helpful.  That’s a hot issue in the whole egalitarian/complementarian debate.  While Erickson doesn’t address that particular debate, he argues for incarnational subordination but, through the idea of perichoresis, stresses the eternal unity and equality of each person.  He argues that it’s very difficult to hold to eternal subordination (a term that advocates of this position would reject) without slipping into an idea of the Son as inferior.

As I say, Erickson is a trustworthy voice and one worth heeding.  This little book would be a great place to start.