Was St. Paul a Quack?

Did you ever hear of a doctor warning his patients to make sure that their hearts don’t stop beating? Get a family member to sit by your bed all night taking your pulse, he tells you – they can get help at the first sign of trouble! Better yet, buy a heart monitor – you can’t be too careful! You must keep your heart beating at all costs!!!

Goofy, huh? What a quack! The heart, after all, is an involuntary muscle! You expect that it’s going to keep beating whether you want it to or not! Can you imagine your doctor telling you that it is your responsibility to be on your guard and keep your heart beating?

Evangelicals have a couple of doctrines that are really dear to their hearts, two that they got from Luther – sola fide and sola Scriptura (faith alone and the Bible alone), and one from Calvin – the doctrine of “eternal security,” colloquially known as “once-saved/always saved.” Televangelists refer to it as “You can know that you know that you know that you know that you know….”

One brand of Evangelical teaching on eternal security is somewhat different from the doctrine of “perseverance of the saints” first set forth by Calvin (and I do mean FIRST set forth – NO ONE before Calvin preached this doctrine). These Evangelicals tend to emphasize the faith ALONE aspect of eternal security, looking to John 3:18 as a proof-text:

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Now, when you read that verse, you read “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” But when these folks read that verse, they read “Whoever BELIEVES in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not BELIEVE stands condemned already because they have not BELIEVED in the name of God’s one and only Son.” In other words, it’s all a matter of whether or not you BELIEVE. When you “get saved,” many Evangelicals tell you, you will start living a Christ-like life out of sheer gratitude to God – BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO. Sanctification is totally optional. You may, and unfortunately some do, continue to live like the devil, but you need never fear that eternal damnation might be in the cards. This perspective sees salvation as God’s work entirely, and therefore a Christian, no matter how wildly and deliberately he sins, cannot lose his salvation. Nothing he does can earn his salvation, and therefore nothing he does can cause him to forfeit it. “Free Grace” is another name for this particular understanding of eternal security. “Easy, greasy grace” and “easy believe-ism” are other, less flattering ways of referring to it.

Not all Evangelicals adhere to the “Free Grace” perspective on salvation. Many believe that when a person gets saved, he WILL begin to live a Christ-honoring life. If he doesn’t – he didn’t really get saved. This assumption leads, understandably, to a lot less “security” than the “eternal security” proponents would like you to believe. An Evangelical who “gets saved” and then finds himself engaging in sin will naturally tend to doubt his salvation. This gives rise to altar calls encouraging folks to “rededicate” their lives to the Lord. If that fails to assuage the doubt, one can always “get saved” all over again. As my toddler daughter put it (back in our Baptist days), “I got saved three times already! My Sunday School teacher saved me once, and I saved myself once in my bedroom, and today I got saved again!” Cute – but not so cute when adults get baptized, and re-baptized, and three-baptized… all because they’re afraid that their “salvation” wasn’t for real.

The utter subjectivity of this view of eternal security poses some unusual difficulties. My son’s eighth-grade Bible teacher told the class that she never talks to Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses who knock on her door, because she is afraid that they will deceive her with their false doctrine and lead her away from the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, causing her to be damned. Understandably shocked, the children asked her if she was saying that she could lose her salvation? “Of course not!” was her answer – if that happened, then she had never really been saved to begin with. My son, now a freshman in college, still gets headaches trying to follow that convoluted logic, but it is inherent in the system. As an Evangelical, you get used to playing Extreme Mental Twister when you think about these things.

St. Paul’s warnings to the Philippians, the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians and the Colossians don’t help any. Up against the Evangelical Protestant understanding of “eternal security,” St. Paul is like a cardiologist warning his patients to keep their hearts beating! “The heart is an involuntary muscle!” you say? That’s what I learned in school – so the idea that a doctor would warn me to make sure my heart keeps beating strikes me as bizarre! But the Evangelical idea of eternal security claims that salvation is akin to an involuntary muscle – it’s not up to you to keep the “heart” of your salvation beating – either (a) IT CAN’T STOP or (b) if it “stops,” it’s because it was never really actually beating…. (my head hurts). Yet the apostle Paul warns the Colossians:

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach– if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

He warns the Galatians:

Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

He warns the Corinthians:

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

And he warns the Romans:

You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.

All of these verses indicate the reality that a Christian can be severed from Christ, can fall from grace, can be cut off, can believe in vain. St. Paul’s admonition to the Philippians therefore takes on an air of extreme urgency: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling!

St. Peter (2 Pet 2:20-22) and the author of the book of Hebrews (Heb 3:12, Heb 6:4-6) echo the same refrain. Hebrews 10:23-29 puts it very strongly, warning of the “fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire” for those who go on deliberately sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth. The Great Physician, Himself meek and lowly of heart, teaches the same doctrine (Lk 12:42-46) – remember the steward given charge over the Master’s household, the guy who eats, drinks and makes merry instead of faithfully carrying out his charge? What did the Master do to that steward when He returned? Turn a blind eye to his misdeeds and promote him?

St. Paul was no quack. His warnings about falling from grace are very necessary reminders to us – do not be arrogant, but be afraid. Whether your theology admits it or not, your heart can most certainly betray you. Or as the author of the book of Hebrews puts it: Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God….

On the memorial of St. Teresa de Jesús

Deo omnis gloria!

Pastor Bob and the New Testament Church

As I explained in my last post, I was christened in a United Methodist church in upstate New York. When we moved to Scottsdale in the 1960s, we found a wonderful Wesleyan Methodist church by the name of Our Heritage. It was pastored by a man of some renown, the Reverend Robert C. Girard. Reverend Girard, unbeknownst to me as a child, was a Big Deal. He authored two very popular books, Brethren, Hang Loose, and Brethren, Hang Together. Brethren, Hang Loose became required reading in seminary courses, and was republished by Christianity Today in the same volume with works by Billy Graham and Francis Schaeffer. Reverend Girard was a nationally known figure. As I said, I understood none of this. I knew the man as “Pastor Bob,” and what I remember most about him was that his wife found out that she was going to have another baby (their daughter, Charity) when she went to the doctor thinking she was having a gallbladder attack, leading me to develop some rather peculiar notions on the subject of where babies come from… but, I digress.

I was on fire for the Lord as a pre-teen, and asked Pastor Bob to “re-baptize” me, fearing that my infant baptism had not been valid because it was not a “believer’s baptism.” He obliged, and to this day I can close my eyes and relive the feel of the water swooshing closed over my head as I was fully immersed in the baptismal tank, waiting for what seemed like an eternity until Pastor Bob saw fit to pull me back to the surface, and carefully climbing the steps out of the tank with my robes clinging to me like suckerfish. I remember riding the church bus with my youth group to a Billy Graham crusade. I remember Pastor Bob teaching the children’s choir to sing Silent Night for the Christmas pageant.

We moved to another part of town in the early 1970s and began attending the then modestly sized Scottsdale Bible Church. Gradually I forgot about Our Heritage as I forgot the other details of my childhood, probably not uttering Pastor Bob’s name again for another 15 years until a Methodist missionary in Taiwan discovered that I had attended a Wesleyan Methodist church in Scottsdale in the early 1970s. He inquired who the pastor was. “Robert Girard,” I told him. His mouth dropped open. “You sat under the teaching of Robert Girard?!” he exclaimed excitedly and rather loudly. That was when the adult “me” first realized that Pastor Bob had indeed been a Big Deal.

Imagine my surprise when, about 15 years after that, I tried to google my old church, Our Heritage. No hits. I was stumped – I had expected it to still be right there on Granite Reef Road, or perhaps in some new location, having expanded to mega-church proportions over the years as Scottsdale Bible had. Instead, it seemed to be… gone.

I found the explanation for the disappearance of Our Heritage when I found a used copy of a third book authored by Pastor Bob called When the Vision Has Vanished. In it he chronicles the events of 1978, when he and the deacons of the church felt led by the Holy Spirit to give the church building back to the denomination and split the thriving congregation into informal house-church groups, in imitation of the first Christians. Within months, Our Heritage had ceased to exist, as the former members drifted off into other churches, reduced, as Pastor Bob put it, to “a scattered flock.”

What had possessed him to try such an experiment?

From an Evangelical perspective, it’s not impossible to understand. Most Evangelical churches give at least lip service to their goal of becoming an “Acts Chapter 2” or “New Testament” church. The Church of Christ denomination actually claims to be the restoration of the New Testament church. This concept is the natural extension of the Reformers’ goal of returning the church to its former pristine state, an imaginary era which supposedly existed before Catholicism gilded the lily. Modern-day Evangelicals, however, not only want to divest the church of Catholic tendencies; they want to divest the church of the Reformers’ tendencies, in other words, no liturgy, no vestments, no formal prayers, no perceived “stuffiness.” After all, they reason, if the Holy Spirit is inspiring worship, it must be fresh, and spontaneous, and new. As every Evangelical KNOWS, there was no such thing as liturgy in the 1st-century church!

From an Evangelical viewpoint, what Pastor Bob tried to do when he established home churches was pretty radical, but not unthinkable. In his explanation of what went wrong with the home church experiment, he informs us that the pastoral team was relying on “the practical authority of Scripture to lead the church.” Based on this, he searched the Scriptures for “principles we could pull out,” and lists 11 of them, including the principle that the church is Christ’s people who are alive in Him, gathering around the Person of Jesus Christ their Head, dependent on the Holy Spirit. The reality of the royal priesthood of believers was central to his views on leadership. Believers are led by leaders chosen from among them, and meet for the purpose of maturing in Christ, which includes learning to love fellow believers in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Evangelism will occur as a natural outgrowth of all this.

Sounds inspiring on paper, but as Pastor Bob tells it, in practice it was a mess. His flourishing congregation disintegrated, his ministerial credentials were pulled, and Our Heritage Wesleyan Methodist Church ceased to exist. Pastor Bob cited a “lack of commitment to unity” as a big factor in the collapse of the congregation. But what could have caused such a lack of commitment in an obviously on-fire-for-Jesus environment?

The problem here, I believe, is the same one that plagues Evangelicalism at large, the belief that Jesus established a Bible, and died to have a personal relationship with me. Artificially grafted onto this foundational belief is the recognition that Jesus also has a personal relationship with millions of others, and that these believers are truly our brothers and sisters, but with the underlying understanding that none of those siblings of ours should be allowed to get in between me and Jesus. In other words, for all the lip service, the Church is subtracted from the equation. In everyday Evangelical terms, it means dwindling participation in Sunday services as thousands of people ask themselves, “Why do I need to go to church if Jesus established a Bible, and died to have a personal relationship with me? I can read the Bible for myself on Sunday morning, and the Bible never prescribes a binding amount of involvement with those brothers and sisters of mine….” While Evangelicals do know that Christians are “the body of Christ,” this understanding is in a practical sense underdeveloped. The term “the body of Christ” is often abused, as when popular author Henry Blackaby teaches that the local church is “a body with Christ as the Head” (and Christ has how many bodies???). The Evangelical concept of the Body of Christ, as in “This is My Body,” is even shakier. This Body of Christ, the Holy Eucharist, is proclaimed by Catholics to be “the source and summit of the Christian life,” – “O sacrament of devotion! O sign of unity! O bond of charity!” in St. Augustine’s words. If one is seeking for the mysterious cause of a “lack of commitment to unity,” they need seek no further. The Real Presence is the cement holding the Church together. If one cannot understanding the literal meaning of the Eucharist as “the Body of Christ,” one will not be able to adequately grasp the ramifications of the Church as “the body of Christ.” For all the “fundamentals” that Pastor Bob pulled from Scripture, a fundamental misunderstanding of the body of Christ led to disaster.

“The demise of the church seems certain evidence that we missed some fundamental truths” confesses Pastor Bob poignantly. This could be the sad last confession of Evangelicalism. Pastor Bob was doing the best that an Evangelical knows how – he was relying on “the practical authority of Scripture to lead the church.” In doing so, he missed the authority of the Church. Missing the truth that Jesus established His Church (Mt. 16:17), that He built it on the foundation of the apostles (Mt. 16:19, Mt. 18:18, Lk. 10:16, 1 Jn 4:6), that the apostles passed on their God-given authority to the men they ordained (Acts 1:15-26, Acts 6:6, 2 Cor 10:6, 2 Thess 3:14, 2 Tim 1:6, 2 Tim 2:2, 2 Tim 4:1-2, Titus 2:15) and that this Church can count on Jesus’ irrevocable promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against His beloved (Mt 16:18) means missing the “authority” part of the equation. As St. Paul explained:

So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Eph 4: 12-13

That is the Church, but that Church is not on the radar of Christians such as I once was. We KNEW the Catholic Church was a man-made religion, and so we made up all kinds of churches to take her place. Thus the one thing that could make possible all the fervent longings of an Evangelical’s heart is rejected out-of-hand, while all else conceivable is ventured in hopes of recreating what Jesus started and then allowed to fail. This Church that we sought was no farther than a few blocks down the street, and yet tragically light-years distant from our comprehension.

When exposed to authentic Catholic teaching, Evangelicals can and do convert. I am living proof of that. Evangelicals have a God-shaped vacuum in their hearts in the exact dimensions of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Why then did it take 45 years before I was ever exposed to authentic Catholic teaching? Why do committed Evangelicals have nothing but hearsay and rumors on which to base their concept of Catholicism? Why do good, good men like Pastor Bob end up writing books entitled When the Vision Has Vanished?

You tell me.

On the memorial of St. Joseph of Arimathea

Deo omnis gloria!

Christians Who Really Believe

Anyone who knows my religious background knows that over a span of 45 years I attended churches of many different denominations. I was christened as an infant in the United Methodist church (I have cousins who are United Methodist clergy) in upstate New York. When we moved to Scottsdale in the early 1960s, my family started attending a Wesleyan Methodist church pastored by Robert Girard, author of Brethren, Hang Loose and Brethren, Hang Together.When my family moved to another part of town in the early 1970s, we began attending the nondenominational Scottsdale Bible Church (before it went mega). My mother then became a charismatic, and off she and I went to various small charismatic assemblies (including a Frances Hunter meeting where folks were healed of that dread malady of one-leg-longer-than-the-otherism). When I went to college in Flagstaff, I attended my friend’s Lutheran church, where I was exposed to Ash Wednesday (with actual ashes on the forehead!) and Lent. After college I moved to West Germany (this was the 1980s), and then on to Taiwan where I taught at a nondenominational Christian college founded by Quakers. The church I attended in Taiwan had four pastors who took turns preaching: a Lutheran missionary, a Baptist missionary, and two Presbyterian missionaries. I married a Baptist, and when we moved back to the States I became a member of Thomas Road. The interesting thing is that I never viewed this varied experience of Protestant theology as “denomination-hopping.” I wasn’t angry. I hadn’t had a disagreement with the pastor of my former denomination and found some new teaching that I thought was more “Biblical.” I hadn’t really thought at all.

My view of the Protestant denominations was that they were all different facets of the beautiful gem of Christianity. I never lay awake at night worrying about denominationalism, just as, I’m sure, most slaveholders had no problems sleeping at night – it simply never occurred to them to question the ethics of keeping human beings enslaved. Most folks never do question the status quo. Denominationalism was of course my status quo – I had never lived in a world without it, and I never thought of it as a good or a bad thing. It just was. Of course there are hundreds of different denominations. Different people have different opinions. So what?

Not that I would have attended any church at all. I self-described as a conservative, Bible-believing Christian. I wanted nothing to do with those durn liberals who tried to explain away the miracle of the loaves and fishes as an outburst of generosity and the Resurrection of Christ as a flight of fancy. No, I only attended churches where the people really believed.

But, believed what? Looking at the list of denominations I was associated with, you can see that I attended churches that baptized babies and viewed Holy Communion as a sacrament as well as churches that baptized only adults and viewed the Lord’s supper as an ordinance. (In fact, my Wesleyan Methodist pastor actually considered my infant baptism in a Methodist church to be invalid and rebaptized me at around age 12. Go figure. And when I wanted to join Thomas Road, the deacon who interviewed me wanted to rebaptize me AGAIN, just in case my Wesleyan Methodist baptism had been for “regeneration.” Fortunately, we were able to dissuade him from that.) Some of the churches I attended taught me that I had to experience the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and speak in tongues, and other churches derided that notion as holy-rollerism. Over the years some of my pastors preached that I could lose my salvation, and others preached that I could not.

And I saw nothing wrong with this mass confusion, because like any member of a badly dysfunctional clan, I had an excuse for what was going on right on the tip of my tongue. Had you asked me, I would have told you that in this life Christians, being sinners saved by grace, will never agree completely with one another on issues of doctrine. All Protestant denominations do, however, agree on The Essentials.

Right…. The Essentials, like salvation. After all, “what must I do to be saved” is the most fundamental question of all. If I don’t learn the correct answer to that question, my eternal soul is in jeopardy. So, of course, all Protestant denominations hold identical beliefs when it comes to salvation, because salvation is ESSENTIAL.

Let’s imagine that I am an unbeliever whom the Holy Spirit has convicted of her sins. I rush into the nearest church and fortuitously find an ecumenical gathering of a Baptist pastor, a Lutheran pastor, a Methodist pastor, a Pentecostal pastor and an officer in the Salvation Army (which is a Protestant denomination). Startled when this wild-eyed woman bursts through the door, the assembled clergy nevertheless react graciously as I blurt out my concerns….

Me: What must I do to be saved????

Baptist pastor John: You’ve come to the right place, ma’am. Let me lead you through the Four Spiritual Laws. First, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Me: I believe that! I don’t want to die and be separated from Him!

Pastor John: Good! You’re on the right track. Second, you must recognize that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness.

Me: Oh, I know! I know!

Pastor John: We’re half-way there! Number three: Only through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross can you be saved!

Me: Amen! I believe that!

Pastor John: And finally, you have to receive Jesus as your personal Savior. If you’ll pray with me now, I’ll lead you in the Sinner’s Prayer and you’ll be saved!

Lutheran minister Bill (clears his throat): AND you’ll need to be baptized, my dear.

Pastor John (bristles slightly): What my colleague means, ma’am, is that of course you WILL be baptized in obedience to our Lord’s command. Matthew 28:19 – “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Just as long as you understand that baptism doesn’t save you….

Reverend Bill (sitting up very straight): Actually,my dear, the Bible tells us in I Peter 3:21: “And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you….” You will NEED to be baptized.

Pentecostal pastor Janice: I wouldn’t worry too much about that, honey, but you WILL need to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. After all, Scripture says quite plainly: “And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” – Romans 8:9. If you don’t speak in tongues, you don’t have the Spirit of Christ and you can’t be sure of your salvation!

(Reverend Bill and Pastor John stare dourly at Janice)

Me (squeaking) : I was christened as an infant….

Methodist minister Bev: Oh, well, you’re all set then.

(Reverend Bill and Pastor John, speaking simultaneously)

Reverend Bill: Yes, you’re fine.

Pastor John: No, you’re not!

(They glower at each other)

Salvation Army Captain Sam : Forget all that! We in the Salvation Army don’t baptize at all. Baptism is a holdover from the Roman Catholics.

Me (staring at this collection of clergy, and speaking very slowly): Perhaps I wasn’t being clear. Let me repeat my original question:
What must I do to be saved???

As I said, when I was a Protestant, I only attended churches where the people really believed. WHAT we believed, however, was all over the spiritual map, and for some reason that didn’t bother us….

On the Feast of St. Augustine

Deo omnis gloria