Category: Theology

The Protestant reformers had a saying that I believe is correct, “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.” It translates into, “The Church Reformed, Always Reforming.”

Progressive Christianity

When I talk about Progressive Christianity I am using the word progressive to mean “characterized by continuous improvement or advancement.” I agree with the idea that the church should always be reforming.

And what should the church, the Christian community, be reforming to? The truth. And the foundational sources for discovering the truth are Scripture, Tradition, reason, and spiritual experience.

Solo Scriptura

One of the biggest mistakes of the reformation was solo scriptura, Scripture alone. It divorced itself from a millennial and a half of the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. As if God was mute for over 1,500 years

Tradition

Tradition is the shared wisdom, the collective guidance, and lived experience of the body of Christ. Reading the monks, mystics, and saints of these ancient churches reveals a profound stream of wisdom. To ignore this is foolish at best.

Reason

But to also ignore the place of reason, which God has given us, has also caused untold harm to the Christian witness. Faith may be above reason, but it is never contrary to reason. The laws of logic are God given, and science is the best means of knowing the natural world.

Personal Experience

And finally, proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the map tells you that there should be a lake ten feet in front of you, and there is no lake, the map is wrong. Christianity should accurately describe spiritual realities or your version of Christianity is wrong.

Unfortunately, most Christians have a relationship with the Book of God but have never met the God of the Book. Personal experience is the heart of a relationship with God.

And if the truth is not making you a better person, you are not truly believing it. Belief means to accept a claim as true, which then becomes a rule of action. You may be saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. It always results in actions. What Jesus calls fruits.

Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3 NKJV).

The basic meaning of convert is the idea of turning. There is a “turning from” and a “turning to.”

Turning From

The first part of conversion is the turning from sin. E. Stanley Jones rightly defines conversion as “conversion from a self-centered person to a God-centered person.”

This turning from sin is called repentance, which is a change of heart. The word heart in the Bible is used for the will, the control center of your moral life. Repentance is a change from a will aiming to please self, to a will aiming to please God.

Turning To

The second part of conversion is turning to God and trusting Him to forgive and save you. Faith is not believing certain claims about God, rather it is about trusting a Person. Faith is “an inherent trust and enduring confidence in the power, wisdom and goodness of God” (Heb 11:3 AMP).

Turning to God involves a separation from the world, the flesh, and the devil, and a dedication to the Church, the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus Christ. The sim of our life is now to love God first and foremost, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

John Chrysostom (around 387 CE) appears to be the first writer to use the word Bible to refer to the Old and New Testaments together. It later became a favorite destination for the collection of writings.

Since then, a lot of false expectations have arisen about the Bible. Many have become stumbling blocks to people.

One of those false expectations is in treating the Bible as a history book, or a science book. The Bible is not a history book, it’s not a science book, it’s a book about the relationship between God and humankind.

Science and History

Now, it is true, that the Bible does contain history and science. But that’s beside the point. The Bible is not a history book, and it is not a science book,. Therefore, the accuracy of its science and history is not that important.

A lot of ink has been spilled trying to defend the non-essential parts of the Bible. The Bible is filled with myth, metaphor and parables. This is how you use language to hint at what can’t be defined in literal language.

Essentials and Non-essentials

It takes a little bit of wisdom to understand the difference between what’s essential and what is non-essential when it deals with God. And unfortunately, in the modern age, people have mistakenly thought the non-essential was the important part.

In essentials, the Bible is true. In non-essentials, the Bible is fallible. The Bible is both human and divine. It is divine and true regarding God and our relationship to him. It is human and fallible regarding the world and our understanding of it.

A Relationship Book

The Bible is not written to tell us about the world, the Bible was written to tell us about people’s relationship with God. It documents how God dealt with humankind throughout the ages.

A lot of doubt has been created in the world, because of false expectations of the Bible. The Bible is a book that God inspired men to write down, not about science and history, but about their relationship with Him. That’s what the Bible is. It’s a relationship book.

“Though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said” (Acts 17:27-28).

A. W. Tozer once wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” I believe that this is true. I think that most Christian’s God is too small.

God is not the Supreme Being

What do we mean when we use the word “God”? Many people envision God as a being like other beings, he just happens to be the Supreme Being. This makes God just one more thing among others, he just happens to be the biggest, strongest, and smartest.

But I don’t think God is the same order of reality as us. God is Wholly Other, completely different from anything we know.

In fact, God is so completely different that we speak most accurately about Him when we say what He is not. God is not a being, but the Ground of Being. For the Bible says, “In him we live and move and have our being.”

The Best Definition

David Bentley Hart gives the best definition of God.

God “is the infinite fullness of being, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, from whom all things come and upon whom all things depend for every moment of their existence, without whom nothing at all could exist.”

Your God is Too Small

For most of my Christian life, my God was too small. David Bentley Hart was the one who opened my eyes to the reality of God, an Absolute Reality upon which our contingent reality rests.

God is Being Itself, the cosmos is becoming. There are two realities, the reality of Being and the reality of becoming. One is nothing but change, the other is changeless. One is Absolute, the other contingent.

Confused and Ignorant

Until we view God rightly, all else will be confused and dark. Language conceals as much as it reveals. Language merely points to a reality beyond words.

It is only when God becomes Wholly Other does Jesus become ever present. God reached out from the reality of Being and reached into the reality of becoming in order to reveal Him (John 1:18).

“And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matt. 6:13 NKJV).

In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil.” Does God lead us into temptation? It sure sounds like it.

Are we not saying, “God, please don’t lead me into temptation, lest I sin against You.” But James tells us, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). So there is no way God is going to be leading you into temptation.

So what does it mean when Jesus tells us to pray to God, “do not lead us into temptation?” There are two solutions to the difficulty. Either we don’t understand “lead” or we don’t understand “temptation.”

Time of Trial

The first solution is to translate the word for temptation as “trail.” And so the New Revised Standard Version translates it, “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” Clearly, God does lead people to be tested. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil” (Matt. 4:1).

But I don’t think this is correct. Why would we pray against the leading of the Holy Spirit. A faith that can’t be tested, can’t be trusted. And the sooner we find that out, the better.

So no, I don’t think that answer is correct. For James tells us not to pray against the “various trials,” but to “consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3).

Don’t Let Us Be Led

The second answer is that the word “lead” is passive, not active. That is, God is not doing the leading but is allowing us to be led, by not interfering in the process. This is the solution that the New Living Translation takes, “And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.”

In other words, don’t let us be led into temptation. “Keep us from falling into sin when we are tempted” (Matt. 6:13 NIRV). “Do not let us agree to do wrong things” (Matt. 6:13 EASY). The world, the flesh, and the devil are trying to lead us into temptation in order to get us to sin against God. But Jesus tells us to pray that God would help us not be led into temptation, but resist it. This, I believe, is the correct interpretation.

So the next time you are praying the Lord’s Prayer, remember that “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil” means “let us not be lead into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”