R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 273

The Briefing 08-01-16

The evangelical predicament: What will a faithful vote look like in November?The Economist — The new political divide

Violence, terrorism, and global unrest in July shook the foundations of civilizationNew York Times (Manny Fernandez, Richard Perez-Pena and Jonah Engel Bromwich) — Five Dallas Officers Were Killed as Payback, Police Chief SaysNew York Times (Alissa J. Rubin, Adam Nossitter, and Christopher Mele) — Scores Die in Nice, France, as Truck Plows Into Bastille Day CrowdCNN (Catherine E. Shoichet, Ralph Ellis, and Jason Hana) — Munich shooting: 9 victims, gunman dead, police sayWall Street Journal (Noemie Bisserbe, Inti Landauro, and Matthew Dalton) — French Say One of Priest’s Killers Had Tried to Go to SyriaFinancial Times (Jonathan Fenby) — Why France is the jihadis’ prime western targetNew York Times (Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu) — Turkish President Returns to Istanbul in Sign Military Coup Is Faltering

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Religious Liberty and the Right to be Christian

Moral revolutions require legal revolutions. This is certainly the case with the sexual revolution and its various causes of sexual liberation. A revolution is only complete when the legal structure aligns itself with a new moral understanding. This alignment is exactly what is taking place in American public life on the issue of gay liberation.

Every society has a structure of systems that either influence or coerce behavior. Eventually, societies move to legislate and regulate behavior in order to align the society with what is commonly, or at least largely, considered morally right and wrong. Civilization could not survive without a system of moral controls and influences.

Throughout almost all of Western history, for the most part, this process has played out in a non-threatening way for the Christian church and Christians in the larger society. So long as the moral judgment of the culture matched the convictions and teachings of the church, the church and culture were not at odds in the courts. Furthermore, under these conditions, to be found on the wrong side of a moral assessment was rarely a likelihood for Christians.

All that began to change in the modern age as the culture became more secularized and as Western societies moved more progressively distant from the Christian morality they had embraced in the past. Christians in this generation recognize that we do not represent the same moral framework now pervasively presented in modern academia, the context of creative culture, and the arena of law. The secularization of public life and the separation of society from its Christian roots has left many Americans seemingly unaware of the fact that the very beliefs and teachings for which Christians are now criticized were once considered not only mainstream beliefs, but essential to the entire project of society. As the sexual revolution completely pervades the society, and as the issues raised by the efforts of gay liberation and the legalization of same-sex marriage come to the fore, Christians now face an array of religious liberty challenges that were inconceivable in previous generations.

In one of the most important of these recent cases, a judge found that a wedding photographer broke the law by refusing to serve as a photographer for a same-sex wedding. In an incredibly revealing decision, the court stated, quite straightforwardly, that the religious liberties of the photographer would indeed be violated by coerced participation in a same-sex wedding. Nevertheless, the court found that the new morality trumped concern for religious liberty.

Similarly, we have seen religious institutions, especially colleges and schools, confronted by the demands that amount to a surrender to the sexual revolution with regards to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation pertaining to admissions, the hiring of faculty, and student housing. In some jurisdictions, lawmakers are contemplating hate crime legislation that would marginalize and criminalize speech that is in conflict with the new moral consensus.

We now face an inevitable conflict of liberties. In this context of acute and radical moral change, the conflict of liberties is excruciating, immense, and eminent. In this case, the conflict of liberties means that the new moral regime, with the backing of the courts and the regulatory state, will prioritize erotic liberty over religious liberty. Over the course of the last several decades, we have seen this revolution coming. Erotic liberty has been elevated as a right more fundamental than religious liberty. Erotic liberty now marginalizes, subverts, and neutralizes religious liberty—a liberty highly prized by the builders of this nation and its constitutional order. We must remember that the framers of the Constitution did not believe they were creating rights within the Constitution, but rather acknowledging rights given to all humanity by “nature and nature’s God.”

The challenges we will face with regards to religious liberty are immense and increasing by the season. The government has at its disposal mechanisms for moral coercion that reach far beyond prisons, jails, and fines. For example, at least some business people who refused to participate in same-sex weddings, such as photographers, bakers, or florists, were required to undergo “sensitivity training.” In order to understand how the new moral regime uses sensitivity training, it is helpful to think back to iconic works of the twentieth century such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. These sensitivity training programs represent efforts to bring intellectual cleansing. And now, in some jurisdictions they can be inflicted upon religious believers who dare oppose the morality of the new regime.

The religious liberty challenge we now face consigns every believer, every religious institution, and every congregation in the arena of conflict where erotic liberty and religious liberty now clash. This poses no danger to theological liberals and their churches and denominations because those churches have accommodated themselves to the new morality and find themselves quite comfortable within the context of the new moral regime. Furthermore, some of these liberal denominations and churches style themselves as defenders of the new morality and actually advocate legal modifications that restrict the religious liberty rights of more conservative churches and denominations.

Interestingly, Jonathan Rauch, one of the early advocates of gay marriage warned his fellow moral revolutionaries that they must be careful lest they trample upon the conscience rights and religious liberty of their adversaries. In his book, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Rauch voiced his concern:

Today, I fear that many people on my side of the gay-equality question are forgetting our debt to the system that freed us. Some gay people—not all, not even most, but quite a few—want to expunge discriminatory views. “Discrimination is discrimination and bigotry is bigotry,” they say, “and they are intolerable whether or not they happen to be someone’s religion or moral creed.”

Rauch also stated, “I hope that when gay people—and non-gay people—encounter hateful or discriminatory opinions, we respond not by trying to silence or punish them but by trying to correct them.” Very few signs, however, are signaling that Rauch’s admonition is being heard. A review of the religious liberty challenges already confronting the conscience, conduct, and belief rights of convictional Christians shows us how daunting all this really is. We can be sure this is not the end of our struggle. It is only the beginning.

 

This blog post was edited from chapter 8 of We Cannot Be Silent.

           [1] The Supreme Court of the State of New Mexico, Elane Photography, LLC v. Vanessa Willock, August 22, 2013, Docket No. 33, 687, http://online.wsj.com/public/resource....

           [2] Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 179.

           [3] Ibid., 181.

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Our Fractured Society: A Conversation with Yuval Levin

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The Briefing 07-01-16

Pope Francis continues to sow confusion with remarks on marriage, homosexuality, and—yes—justificationCatholic News Agency — Most marriages today are invalid, Pope Francis suggestsCatholic News Agency (Elise Harris) — Pope Francis says Church must accompany gays, not discriminateNew York Times (Jim Yardley) — Gay Catholic Groups Want Pope Francis to Do More Than ApologizeCatholic News Agency — Full text: Pope Francis' in-flight press conference from Armenia

Under cultural pressure, military lifts transgender ban and removes "man" from job titlesNational Review (David French) — The Pentagon’s New Policy on Transgender Soldiers Is Pure Social EngineeringMarine Corps Times (Gina Harkins) — The Marines will remove the word 'man' from these 19 job titles

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The Briefing 06-30-16

America's new state religion: California bill threatens existence of Christian higher edOrange County Register (Joel Kotkin) — California's state religionWashington Post (Holly Scheer) — California Bill Would Ultimately Erase Religious Schools

California to consider legalizing recreational marijuana in November with "Adult Use of Marijuana Act"Reuters (Curtis Skinner) — California gets go-ahead to vote on legalization of marijuana

The economics of morality: Microsoft first major company to try capitalizing on marijuana New York Times (Nathaniel Popper) — The First Big Company to Say It’s Serving the Legal Marijuana Trade? Microsoft.

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The Briefing 06-29-16

Why are the most important moral questions of our time being decided by the Supreme Court?Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board) — The Supreme Court’s Cultural Winners

Independent report shows SCOTUS decisions are trending left. Are we really surprised?New York Times (Alicia Parlapiano) — When the Eight-Member Supreme Court Avoids Deadlocks, It Leans Left

Can Christians still be pharmacists? Yesterday's SCOTUS decision a major blow to religious liberty. Washington Post (Robert Barnes) — Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to rule that pharmacies dispense emergency contraceptionAmerican Conservative (Rod Dreher) — Christians Can No Longer Be Pharmacists

From covenant to contract: No-fault divorce is wreaking havoc on another generationWorld (Mary Jackson) — Sins of their fathers & mothers

Islamic terrorist attack in Istanbul another attempt at upending civilization as we know itNew York Times (Associated Press) — Suspected IS Suicide Bombers Kill Dozens at Istanbul Airport

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Heresy and Humility — Lessons from a Current Controversy

I have spent my entire adult lifetime concerned with the danger of heresy. As a young theologian, I worked through the early centuries of church history and understood that knowing the difference between orthodox Christianity and heresy is really a matter of life and death for the church. A failure to recognize and refute heresy means disaster for the church and its witness to Christ.

At the same time, I saw that two dangers quickly emerged. The first, and most dangerous, is the unwillingness of many modern theologians to acknowledge the reality and danger of heresy. Liberal theology denied the possibility of heresy and then openly embraced it. The second danger is like the fable of the boy who cried wolf. Some genuine doctrinal disagreements have nothing at all to do with the line between orthodoxy and heresy. Furthermore, not every false doctrine or theological error is a heresy.

Heresy is a denial or deviation from a doctrine central and essential to Christianity. Thus, the Christian church has learned through sad experience that heresy is a necessary category and a constant concern. In the early centuries of Christianity, church leaders had to define the true faith against false gospels and to defend biblical teachings concerning the most essential doctrines of all — the triune nature of God and the full deity and humanity of Christ.

At the councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451) the most fundamental biblical doctrines concerning Christ and the Trinity were defined, defended, and declared. The true faith, theologically identified as orthodoxy, was contrasted with heresies, rightly condemned as misrepresentations of Christianity. The stakes could not be higher. Heresies are not merely false doctrines; they are false doctrines that, left uncorrected, Christianity cannot survive.

The first heresy to call for a universal condemnation by the church was known as Arianism. Arius, a presbyter and priest in the church at Alexandria in Egypt, taught that the Son was a created being — even declaring “there once was a time when the Son was not.” Arius argued for an absolute ontological subordination of the Son to the Father and his teachings caused such division in the church that the Roman Emperor, Constantine, called for a council to resolve the theological crisis.

The Arians made a crucial mistake as the council began in Nicaea (modern Turkey) in the year 325. They presented their own proposed creed. Their creed was so openly contrary to Scripture and so contradictory to the church’s faith in Christ that it was easily rejected. Eventually, the Council of Nicaea adopted a creed that established orthodoxy, rejected heresy, and confessed essential teachings about the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The creed confessed “the one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father.” Every word of the creed is important, but especially these specific words. The council repudiated the false teachings of the Arians and declared that the Son is equal with the Father in true deity.

But the council went further by condemning and anathematizing all “who say, there was when He was not, and before being born he was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or is subject to alteration or change.”

Nicaea was a necessary victory for orthodox Christianity, and the formula affirmed in the Nicene Creed is foundational for all genuine Christianity. Any deviation from Nicene orthodoxy is a matter of grave consequence. The Bible alone is our final authority in matters of doctrine, but creeds and confessions serve the necessary purpose of defining what the Bible teaches and condemning error on basic doctrines.

The great accomplishment of Nicaea was the refutation of the Arian heresy and the insistence that Christianity requires belief in the full and eternal deity of the Son as “begotten not made, of one substance with the Father.”

As J. N. D. Kelly explained so well, the church fathers at Nicaea were “content to affirm the Son’s full divinity and equality with the Father, out of whose being He was derived and Whose nature he consequently shared.” Speaking of the council, Kelly then stated: “It did not attempt to tackle the closely related problem of the divine unity, although the discussion of it was inevitably brought nearer.”

This points to the great theological challenge presented by the doctrine of the Trinity. Potential heresies lay at every side. Modalism and tritheism result, in turn, from over-stressing the unity of the Trinity, on the one hand, and over-stressing the diversity of the Trinity of three divine persons, on the other hand. Harold O. J. Brown described the challenge well: “How is it possible to express the distinction between the Persons clearly without destroying the fact that God is one divine substance or being, not three beings?”

All of our attempts to answer this question fall short of God’s glorious reality, but we dare not say less than the Scripture clearly reveals. We ought also to be very cautious in trying to say more.

Orthodoxy is, in part, an act of humility. Faithful Christianity in this generation means believing and teaching what faithful Christians have always affirmed as taught in Scripture. G. K. Chesterton captured this spirit when he quipped: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”

Recently a bit of controversy has emerged with charges that some complementarians (those who hold to a biblical pattern of different roles for men and women) are flirting with a denial of the Nicene Creed (or of violating the classic pro-Nicene Trinitarian formulations rooted in the fourth century controversies) by arguing that the Son is eternally obedient to the Father. The trinitarian debate is quite complicated, but the challenges defined by Harold O. J. Brown and J. N. D. Kelly are very much to the point. Nicaea is foundational, but the creed does not answer all of our questions.

Clearly, there can be no eternal subordination in terms of being. That would deny what the Nicene Creed affirms and affirm what it denies. But describing the social dimensions of the Trinity is far more difficult. I decline to speculate where I am not authorized by Scripture to go, but there is something important to the fact that the Father is eternally the Father and the Son is eternally the Son. Affirming separate wills within the Trinity would be heresy, but we lack adequate human categories for understanding how exactly to define these doctrines comprehensively. God has not revealed some answers to us, and our finite minds cannot fully comprehend the infinite divine reality.

Based on the Nicene Creed, theologians have affirmed the eternal generation of the Son, making clear that there never was a time when the Son was not. Similarly, we would speak of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. There never was a time when the Spirit was not.

Recent charges of violating the Nicene Creed made against respected evangelical theologians like Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware are not just nonsense — they are precisely the kind of nonsense that undermines orthodoxy and obscures real heresy. Their teachings do not in any way contradict the words of the Nicene Creed, and both theologians eagerly affirm it. I do not share their proposals concerning the eternal submission of the Son to the Father, but I am well aware that nothing they have taught even resembles the heresy of the Arians. To the contrary, both theologians affirm the full scope of orthodox Christianity and have proved themselves faithful teachers of the church. These charges are baseless, reckless, and unworthy of those who have made them.

Theologians almost never agree on every issue, nor is such agreement possible. What is required is absolute fidelity to Scripture and valid affirmation of the fundamental creeds of the Church, along with specific denominational and institutional confessions. Complementarianism need not be linked doctrinally to eternal submission, and it is in no way required by the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Clearly, for some of these current critics, complementarianism appears to be the real issue. For others, a rejection of modern evangelicalism seems to be the underlying concern. Whatever the case, they endanger the very orthodoxy they claim to champion by making reckless charges they cannot possibly sustain.

The real danger here is that this kind of controversy confuses the church about the real danger of heresy. That is what is at stake when claims are made that Nicene orthodoxy or pro-Nicene developments have been denied, even if the word heresy is not used.  The danger of heresy is ever present. As Harold O. J. Brown warned, the gates of hell often come very close to the church. Confusing the questions endangers the church, and no faithful theologian would willingly risk that danger. There are serious theological issues and historical questions at issue in this debate. Evangelicals have often lacked an appreciation (or even a serious consideration) of the Trinitarian and Christological developments that began with Nicaea, but continued well through Chalcedon. This is a time for cool heads, fraternal kindness, and clear thinking — and for all of us, a good dose of both historical theology and theological humility.

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Harper and Row, 1960).

Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Hendrickson, 1984, 1988).

The Danvers Statement (on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).

 

 

 

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The Briefing 06-28-16

In landmark case, SCOTUS doubles down on "constitutional" right to an abortion invented 40 yrs. agoWashington Post (Robert Barnes) — Supreme Court strikes down Texas abortion clinic restrictionsNew York Times (Editorial Board) — A Major Victory for Abortion Rights

Ex-Gov. of Virginia avoids conviction in unanimous SCOTUS decision upholding due process New York Times (Adam Liptak) — Supreme Court Vacates Ex-Virginia Governor’s Graft Conviction

Most British millennials were strongly against Brexit—but not enough to vote.Washington Post (Max Bearak) — Young Brits are angry about older people deciding their future, but most didn’t vote

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The Briefing 06-27-16

Brexit means change for both Britain and Europe. But just what will that change bring?Financial Times (George Parker, Michael Mackenzie and Ben Hall) — Britain turns its back on EuropeWall Street Journal (Fraser Nelson) — Brexit: A Very British RevolutionNew York Times (Steven Erlanger and Dan Bilefsky) — European Leaders Tell a Dazed Britain to Get Going on ‘Brexit’Commentary (John Podhoretz) — The Brexit Earthquake

Influential conservative George Will exits GOP over loss of party's conservative identityNBC News (Elisha Fieldstadt) — Conservative Columnist George Will Leaves Republican Party Over Trump

One year after Obergefell, historic decision still sending shock waves throughout societyUSA Today (Richard Wolf) — One year after historic ruling, gay marriage win propels liberal causesThe Guardian (Timothy Garton Ash) — As an English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life

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Exodus 8:16-10:29

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