Reflections on Faith

Over the past year, as I have been posting, lurking, and chiming in here at Conn-versation, and reading and occasionally commenting on Art Boulet’s personal blog, I have continually found myself brought back to the question of what Christian faith really is.

 

The Bible has a good bit to say on the subject, but it’s really a New Testament concept. The OT explicitly addresses faithfulness, but it’s usually in the context of a quality of Yahweh and the desired quality of his people. The aspect of belief and trust that we typically mean when we talk about faith makes its first appearance in the gospels. Jesus observes faith in the people he encounters, and tends to evaluate it on a quantitative scale: little or great. He seems to be addressing their specific willingness to trust in him personally to accomplish in-real-time salvific acts, manifest most often in healing and life-restoration miracles, which then serve as object lessons pointing to his greater purpose. For the most part, it’s not until the epistles that we get a fuller-blown explication of faith as belief and trust in the person and work of Christ for salvation and eternal life.

 

In light of this, what does it then mean when we talk about hanging on to faith or losing faith as we ask questions of the Bible? It has occurred to me that conservative reformed Christians have worked hard to ensure that faith is so underpinned by certainties that – well – it doesn’t require all that much faith. To be one of the people of Yahweh requires faith in Jesus, which requires faith in the Bible, which believers can trust completely because the church has doctrinally declared to be inerrant, wholly trustworthy, and perfect down to its very words. Start asking too many untidy questions of the Conn-versation sort, and the whole system, it would seem, is at risk of collapsing, bringing the faith of the faithful along with it.

 

This is where I’ve had difficulty. Does my faith in the Jesus of the gospels really hinge on Genesis 5 being literally true, as opposed to an Israelite retooling and repurposing of the Sumerian kings list?  On insisting as true that Samson was a historic figure and his deeds were accomplished as recorded or that David wrote the Psalms bearing his name?  On intentionally burying my understanding of the very different looks of Jeremiah in the MT and the LXX in favor of one Jeremiah only?  If these things are equivocal, must it follow that Jesus is equivocal?

 

Faith requires an element of trust in the absence of concrete proof. It is, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “the conviction of things not seen.” Given that, to what extent does the church’s admittedly well-intended insistence on the perfection of Scripture as a bedrock of faith begin to work at cross-purposes with trusting in things not seen? It strikes me as requiring a greater measure of faith to go with the kind of Bible we’ve actually got than the kind of Bible we may have at one time thought we had, or the kind that arch-conservatives continue to insist we must have. Is there room for the Holy Spirit to infuse the believer’s soul with the truth of the gospel resulting in faith even when Genesis 1-11 is understood to be literature rather than history?

 

I think it’s time for some reflections on exactly what we as Christian believers mean when we say we have faith. Is the Bible we have, the one that God in some mysterious way caused to be written, assembled, translated, and passed down by generation after generation of Christians, robust enough to withstand detailed secular and academic scrutiny and still contribute to the creation and growth of faithful believers in the person and work of Jesus to salvation? If it’s not, what are we really saying? Is it, as the conservatives would argue, that God is less than fully God? Or, is it, as I have begun to think, that our faith is less than the faith that Jesus himself commended?  Or, is it something else?  What do you think?

 

What if we find a lost letter of Paul?

This is one of the first questions that came to mind when I first heard a doctrine of canon, and I have revisited it from time to time ever since.

What would we do if we unearthed another letter that (somehow) could be authenticated and verified as being penned by the apostle Paul?

How would we treat/use it?

Would it find its place with the Apocryphal writings?

Would another letter from Paul’s hand be permitted to enhance or adjust our understanding of the letters we already attribute to Paul?

Would its usefulness depend on whether or not the recently discovered epistle coincided with the interpretation of Paul given by the theologians of our tradition?

Some of you, doubtless, have no interest in hypothetical scenarios. Even so, I think this hypothetical is helpful to expose and sharpen our beliefs about the Scriptures.

What do you think?

 

McCormack Responds to His Critics: Whatever Happened After McCormack’s Open Letter to Lane Tipton?

Bruce McCormack has posted a two-part response (1 & 2) to his critics on Art Boulet’s blog. He plans to engage questions and concerns put to him, responding to comments on that blog. This is part of the outcome of the challenge McCormack issued in his open letter to Lane Tipton, which McCormack posted on Art’s blog on June 4th. Though I give some of the background below, at the start of Part 1 McCormack provides some details of his interactions with Tipton and others after posting the open letter.

 

Back in May McCormack posted a short essay in which he argued the Christology of the HTFC paper was not actually Reformed. Following some internet (blogging and email) activity and criticism, McCormack posted a short reply to R. Scott Clark’s criticisms. Eventually a member of the HTFC was officially heard from when Lane Tipton dismissed McCormack, labeling him a “revisionist,” in footnote 4 of an essay in the OPC’s (usually) monthly journal for church officers, the Ordained Servant (an online version can be found here).

 

Tipton did not engage any of McCormack’s substantive points either in the footnote or in the rest of the article, one devoted to a proper Reformed understanding of the incarnational analogy. It is quite possible Tipton completed the bulk of the essay prior to McCormack’s original reflections having been made available. At the same time, as McCormack points out in part 1 of his response, “…those responding to my brief analysis of the Christology presupposed in the HTFC report have shown an uncanny ability thus far to shift the ground of the debate from the topics I placed on the table for discussion, changing subjects abruptly, passing by in silence the questions which I posed to them, etc. Dr. Tipton’s ‘response’ to my response to the HTFC report was no different in this regard…”

 

Along these lines, when McCormack posted his original reflections and also his response to R. Scott Clark, no one among his critics really engaged McCormack’s actual historical and theological points. R. Scott Clark’s post was, in some ways, one of the rare exceptions. Instead, for most, calling McCormack a Barthian and dismissing him as someone who has denied X and Y of the Reformed tradition carried the day. Interestingly, when I did a post on this, McCormack’s critics and the HTFC’s defenders still failed to engage McCormack’s points and/or to recognize the need to do so when responding to him.

 

Perhaps this time around members of the HTFC, those who agree with the HTFC, and McCormack’s critics, will engage McCormack in honest charitable dialogue, discussing the questions and issues he puts on the table without (1) aggressively misreading him, (2) shifting topics erratically, (3) saying they already know him better than he knows himself, etc.

 

Even if one disagrees with McCormack, it seems to me we should all thank him for his willingness to devote his well-respected scholarly time and energy to addressing the discussions of the Westminster Theological Seminary community. As best I can tell, McCormack has long sought to cultivate better working relationships between Princeton Seminary and Westminster. Hopefully this attempt of his will spawn an edifying Christian-scholarly interaction with fruitful results for all involved.

 

Hermeneutical Fallacies 101: Could Bruce McCormack (a Barthian!) Possibly Understand Historical Theology?

Recently Bruce McCormack posted some reflections on the Christology of the HTFC position paper on Art Boulet’s blog. For those of you who do not know, McCormack is a recognized, top-of-his-field, senior scholar and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary.

 

Not surprisingly I have encountered (most offline and/or through email) some who agree with the HTFC’s critique of Enns who also take issue with McCormack’s piece. Also, not surprisingly, most of these people I encounter do not offer ANY interaction and critique of McCormack’s arguments and historical points. Rather, they protest that “he is a Barthian” or “he rejects doctrine X and doctrine Y of the Reformed Tradition” and thus we need not listen to his historical-theological critique of the HTFC. R. Scott Clark’s post stands as a slight exception in that he attempts to engage McCormack on some historical-theological grounds (see McCormack’s response). Nevertheless, Clark frames his post in rhetoric of incredulity that a Princeton Seminary professor would dare to “lecture” Westminster Seminary/ies professors on points of Reformed Historical-Theology. So, again, the logic in most of these offline and un-blogged (frequently overly bold) critiques of McCormack seems to be that since McCormack is a Barthian, we do not need to listen to him on points of Reformed Historical-Theology.

 

It is at this point that some basics of hermeneutics and logic serve us.

 

mccormack on the htfc report

Dr. Bruce McCormack of Princeton Theological Seminary has just written a thought provoking essay on the Christology of the HTFC report and how it does not reflect a Reformed Christology.

You can read the essay here.

 

a response to dr. lillback’s essay

Recently Westminster Theological Seminary released documents that were written surrounding the debate over Pete Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation (hereafter I&I). The last document in that large packet was an essay written by Dr. Peter Lillback, president and professor of Church History at Westminster, entitled “”The Infallible Rule of Interpretation of Scripture”: The Hermeneutical Crisis and the Westminster Standards.” The main focus of Dr. Lillback’s essay was to show how Peter Enns’ work falls outside of the Westminster Standards (at the end of the essay he “shows” how Enns violates the Standards in 7 different ways).

I have thought of different ways to respond to this essay, from an overview to a point-by-point review, and have decided to simply follow the flow of Dr. Lillback’s essay and object where objections need to be made. I would encourage everyone to read Dr. Lillback’s essay first, and then read this response. If you have not read the essay by Dr. Lillback, please do not throw in your two cents regarding this response. In my opinion, if you aren’t going to take the time to actually read the documents, then you don’t have the right to comment. I also want to apologize for the length of this post,

 

More WTS Documents Available

Westminster has now made available further documents: the Historical Theology Field Committee précis and the Hermeneutics Field Committee précis.

Happy reading…

UPDATE: The document linked above as the “Hermeneutics Field Committee precis” is now the correct document. (The Westminster site had inadvertently posted a summary document at first.)

 

Discussing the Documents Released by Westminster Pertaining to the Current Situation

As many are aware, the faculty and administration of Westminster Theological Seminary recently released (see post below) several documents pertaining to the current situation at Westminster.

 

It is our intention on the Connversation blog to post several interactions with various of these documents and to discuss both the documents and our posts on this blog. Some of us are in the process of preparing these posts. One of our members is composing a review of the essay by Peter Lillback in which Lillback argues Peter Enns resides outside the Reformed tradition. I am in the process of writing a couple posts but am taking extra time as I wish to converse with some of the authors of the various documents (1) to make sure I have understood them correctly and (2) to bring my criticisms and comments to their attention prior to making them public. Others on this blog are also thinking up and typing posts.

 

All this is to say that we are interested in pursuing some (hopefully) edifying discussion of these documents. We hope you will join us in these discussions in the coming weeks. We would appreciate your prayers as we go about typing and interacting with these documents and those who wrote them.

 

Also, we strongly encourage everyone to read all the documents in their entirety. We especially encourage reading the Historical Theology Field Committee (HTFC) paper and the (lengthy) reply to the HTFC paper by the Hermeneutics Field Committee (HFC: Dan McCartney, Doug Green, Steve Taylor, Peter Enns, Mike Kelly, Elliott Greene, and Adrian Smith). We realize reading the documents represents a substantial time commitment. Part of the function of our posts will certainly be to provide some basic outlines of the documents for those who have not the time to read them. But, again, we primarily hope to interact with them and to facilitate discussion of them—and reading the documents will help immensely in orienting everyone for fruitful discussion.

 

For now, I would direct readers to Joel Garver’s outline of and reflections on the documents on his blog.

 

Thank you for your patience and prayers.

 

wts documents released

The documents that were prepared by the Historical and Theological Field Committee against Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation as well as the response to their report by the Hermeneutics Field Committee (in favor of Enns) were handed out to interested students yesterday. Today, they have been released on Westminster’s website.

Along with these reports are also the Edgar-Kelly Motion, the Faculty Minority Report, and an essay by Dr. Peter Lillback.

These documents are extremely enlightening. We’ll be sure to weigh in on them in the near future.

 

Positive and Negative uses of the Doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture?

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. –WCF 1.7 

The Doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture (DOTPOS) in many ways resides at the core of the origins of Protestant and Reformed identity. The above excerpt from the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) represents an articulation of DOTPOS directly relevant for many of us in the Reformed world.  

For several years I have pondered the implications of DOTPOS for the place of the historical study of the Bible in the church and as part of how the church engages its Bible. My thought has tracked down several related paths, a couple of them stemming from particular parts of the WCF articulation of DOTPOS. I plan to do several posts on DOTPOS, especially its articulation in the WCF, and the historical study of the Bible. In this post I would like to share one of my particular ponderings that remains in an insipient stage. What do you all think of this?

I think a POSITIVE use of DOTPOS is helpful and edifying for the church while a NEGATIVE use of DOTPOS is unhelpful and Spiritually stiffling.