Scot McKnight: July 2005 Archives

Kris and I returned our son's dog, Slater, today. On our return, Kris and I couldn't resist a trip through Middlebury Indiana, a place surrounded with Amish.

When our kids were grade schoolers, we spent an afternoon with Milton and Lizzie Yoder in Middlebury in their home. When I met Milt, he asked me pretty quickly this question: "What do you do for a living?" Now that has some gravity for the Amish, who take their vocations far more seriously than a thing done to make money. I told Milt, "I am a teacher." To which he replied, "That is a worthy calling." I wish more of us thought about our vocations in such serious terms. What is, I am often led to ask, a "worthy calling"?

Well, today, we wandered through the countryside, waving at farmers and nodding to buggy drivers and saying hellos to women tending to their gardens, and simply enjoyed their attachment to family, community, and land. At one home there were four buggies parked and a bundle of people on a front porch having lunch and swapping stories.

If you happen to get to Middlebury, I recommend a visit to The Country Lane Bakery, owned and operated (=vocationed) by Howard and Ida Yoder (they are perhaps related to Milton and Lizzie, but I didn't ask). It sits on 59162 CR 43 (which seems a very non-Amish way of locating a fine plot of land and a fine bakery). My recommendation is to buy a pie and some bread and some "Whoopie pies" if you've a yen for them. Howard's a good man, with a story to tell and kindness in his eyes. When we left he gave us a pecan roll because, as he put it, "They're everyone's favorite."

If you go, tell Howard we'll be back.

I am reflecting here in a series of posts on how "I changed my mind" about Calvinism and adopted a more Ariminian view of whether or not the Christian can throw away redemption.

This journey took through the book of Hebrews, where I suggested we can find four elements to each Warning Passage. Today I want to look briefly at the fourth element, the consequences. Very few will disagree with this (I hope).

The first comment is in Heb 2:2: "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" The implied answer is "There is no way of escape."

Here are some more to consider:

3:11: They will not enter my rest.
6:4-6: It is impossible to renew them unto repentance (cf. 12:16-17).
10:26: no sacrifice for sins remains.
10:27: but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
10:28: died without mercy.
10:30-31: And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
10:39: destruction.

If we accept the proposal that the Warning Passages are dealing with the same subjects, etc., then we can synthesize this evidence into this conclusion: the author of Hebrews warns a specific group of people about some sin and tells them that if they commit that sin they will find themselves outside the company of God. They will be diminished.

Not let us say what the text says: here is an extreme warning about dire consequences in eternity.

Plenty of room here for theological debate: what Hebrews says is consistent with both the traditional/orthodox view of eternal separation from God as well as the more recent views of some British Evangelicals on annihilationism. For that matter, I'm sure my Roman Catholic theological friends would tell me this is also consistent with purgatory. We'll drop that for now (someday, though). The warning of Hebrews is extreme. This isn't about a breakdown of fellowship but about the great divorce.

Tomorrow, a blog on the exhortation the author gives to his audience.

One of the courses I taught at Trinity, NT 612, included a survey of the book of Hebrews. And, once or twice I taught Advanced Exegesis and we marched through the entirety of the Greek text of Hebrews. The courses energized me deeply, and I must say that by and large the students were alert to the significance of the topics we were discussing. (Not that they stayed alert when we talked about Melchizedek.)

One of the focal points of my lectures was the Warning Passages. There are five of these. I'd like to copy them all into this post but it would take up too much space. Here are the passages:

1. Hebrews 2:1-4
2. Hebrews 3:7--4:13
3. Hebrews 5:11--6:12
4. Hebrews 10:19-39
5. Hebrews 12:1-29

Of these, #3 gets all the attention, and especially 6:4-6, which follows:

4 For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.

These verses deserve all the attention they get, but the others deserve more than they are getting. It is standard for most Bible readers to find in Hebrews 6:6 ("and then have fallen away") a bewildering sense that this text seems to suggest they can lose their faith, fall away, and never be restored to repentance, and that means bad things. Most respond by dissecting this text carefully, isolating each expression, wondering if maybe it is not as bothersome as it really sounds, and end up (in many cases) walking away convinced this text doesn't actually teach that a believer can "lose his or her salvation."

I make in a journal article I wrote in 1992 two proposals, and I want to work these out with you to see what you think of my suggestions.

But, back to my class: what I thought I would do is present as clearly as possible an alternative understanding of the Warning Passages in Hebrews. To do this, I spent hours and hours working on these passages in their contexts and then finding my way through them.

So, in that class I suggested that we look together at two proposals: first, that we consider looking at the Warning Passages as a whole. That is, read each one in context but also compare them together as doing largely the same things. This would allow us to synthesize these passages into a meaningful whole. Second, I discovered when we do this that we find four features in each Warning Passage.

Here's what I found and what I told that class (and each one after that). Each passage has:

1. The audience or the subjects: who is being addressed? What does the author call them?

2. The sin the author warns this audience about: what is it that he think they may be doing?

3. The exhortation the author gives each time: what are they to do instead of the sin?

4. The consequences the author spells out if they don't respond to his exhortation: what will happen if they don't respond properly?

Here's what happened in those classes: by and large students agreed with the conclusions we drew for each part of the Warning Passages. Now, as you know, my conclusions were that the author warned the audience of apostasy and warned them that they would forfeit their salvation. What surprised me is the number of students who agreed with me. After all, these were true-blue conservative evangelical types who by and large believed in eternal security and assurance of salvation and these sorts of ideas.

I'll do what I can to get to the specifics tomorrow, but we will be gone much of the day. I will begin with #4 and work my way up that list.

For now, may I challenge you to read those texts and think about those four categories for each Warning Passage.

When I got to Trinity in the Fall of 1976, the first thing I noticed was how tightly the theological discussion was ratcheted. These folks knew what they were talking about, and they knew biblical texts and theological discussions, and the history of the Church. It took some work just to be conversant. It was a challenge for which I am grateful to this day.

Calvinism was not a front-burner issue, but was on the stove top waiting for someone to say something uninformed. I had some wonderful lecturers: H. Dermott McDonald was an eccentric theologian from London who told us that our syllabus was the library and we should get over there and read up on "God, Man, and Christ" and then come take his exam at the end. David Wells taught Sin and Salvation, and began by telling us that his wife said that he could teach the first half of the class by giving an autobiography. McDonald was not a Calvinist; Wells was. My NT teachers didn't raise such topics: Norm Ericsen and Murray Harris. But, then Grant Osborne came to TEDS. (So, I can blame this journey on Grant, which he'd be happy to take credit for.)

Here's what happened. Grant is famous for his handouts, and he had one on Eternal Security. It was a lengthy handout and he asked me to work through it, add some bibliography, and generally re-write it. It was a big task for me, but it was the first real chance I had to do something at that level. To prepare for it, Grant suggested I read I. Howard Marshall, Kept by the Power of God. Which I did. From cover to cover; underlined it; took notes; checked commentaries. It took a good long while. When I came up for air in Hebrews I had been persuaded that I was wrong about Calvinism. Like C.S. Lewis getting on a bus and then getting off converted, but not knowing when or how, so with me: from the beginning of working through Grant's notes to reading through Marshall and arguing with him until he wrestled me to the ground and pinned me, I had become convinced that I was no longer a Calvinist. Which didn't mean I gave up the architecture of Calvinism, but I did its theology.

It was and still is my conviction that the five points belong together. You might be able to give up #5 somehow (I don't think so, but some think so) and you might need to add a #6 (Responsiblity), but if the Arminian understanding of "losing salvation" is right, then Calvinism is not right. (I'll eventually show why I don't like the expression "losing salvation.") Let me say this more clearly: if God's grace can be resisted somehow, if believers can somehow choose to forfeit their salvation, then unconditional election and irresistible grace (and probably limited atonement) and surely perseverance/preservation of the saints are not right.

I found two major weaknesses in Calvinism's theology (and also a disorientation in its architecture): first, the emphasis of its architecture is not the emphasis of the Bible. Its focus on God's Sovereignty, which very quickly becomes much less a doctrine of grace than a doctrine of control and theodicy etc, and its overemphasis on human depravity are not the emphases I found in the Bible. I do not dispute the presence of these themes; I dispute this is where the gravity of emphasis is found in the Bible. Yes, I know we all have metanarratives that put things together, and Calvinism is one such metanarrative. It works for some; it simply didn't work for me.

Second, the exegesis of Calvinism on crucial passages I found wanting and sometimes dead wrong. I was once standing, years later when I was teaching at Trinity, outside my door talking with two professors about my view of Hebrews, when I simply asked one of them, "Who do you think best answers the Arminian interpretation of Hebrews?" That professor said, "Philip Hughes." I had just read Hughes and I thought it was weak. In fact, what I thought was this: "If that is the best, then there is no debate." The other professor said, "I agree, Scot. Hughes doesn't answer the questions." Then he said, "I'm not sure any commentary really answers it well." (Both of these professors were Calvinists, and still are, God bless 'em.) What I'm saying is that exegetical conclusions I was drawing (in all kinds of passages) were not answered adequately by the Calvinists I was reading. I think I gave them a fair shot.

So this is where I found myself when I left for Nottingham to study for a Ph.D. in New Testament. I was reared among the eternal security Baptists who took what they liked from Calvinism and discarded most of the five points. Then I became more consistently Calvinistic by reading the Puritans and Calvin.

Then I read the Bible from a different point of view and it all came tumbling down. If the Bible, so I concluded, teaches that a human can be a believer and somehow forfeit that status, then the theology of Calvinism cannot be right.

This left me with a strange mixture of theology: I was reared Baptist; I had done more than my fair share of reading the low church Anabaptists and considered myself one of those when it came to where theologizing ought to begin: with Jesus. And I was now studying the Bible with some Arminian conclusions on soteriology.

Following two years in England TEDS offered me a non-tenure track job to teach NT that lasted two years, and then (by the grace of God) it was ramped up to a full-time position when Wayne Grudem, in the providence of God, shifted over to Systematic Theology.

Within two years I was asked to teach Hebrews in a survey course, and I decided to spend my entire summer going through the exegesis of Hebrews and I was determined to concentrate on those dadgummed warning passages to see if I could settle the issues once and for all.

If I'm right about Hebrews, Calvinism is wrong. The number of students who wrote midterm essays agreeing with me made me nervous. It was no coincidence that a well-known Calvinistic prof, whom I often called "DA what's his name?" in class, began teaching Hebrews shortly thereafter.

Tomorrow I'll start on the warning passages in Hebrews, the most notorious of which is Hebrews 6:4-6. I think I can prove that the author believed "believers" could forfeit their salvation.

More than a few pastors are struggling with what they are called to be and do. I thought this short piece by John Frye, who has authored a book on Jesus as Pastor, is an articulate statement (except for the stuff about me).

All this from one who loves pastoring and pastors. One who wants to see the pastoring role restored.

Tomorrow I will begin a series of posts I will call Post-Calvinism, and I will begin with my journey into and out of Calvinistic theology. I know weekends are harder to stay up with reading blogs, but I'm hoping by...

It is customary for the theologians to define the Church as a gathering where the Word is preached and the Sacraments performed. These are the two marks of the Church.My own take on the discussion is that this isn't enough....

The Apostle Paul's view of Ecclesia is consistent with Jesus' view of Kingdom (Basileia).For Paul, Kingdom is primarily Eternity or the Final Future Kingdom (see 1 C or 15:24), though he does use it in a way that makes me...

I am sorting through some bibliography and can't find a definitive comprehensive study of promise in the NT. Walt Kaiser made a case for its centrality in the OT, but I'm not seeing anything significant in NT studies. Newer NT...

Today we explore the Ecclesia theme of 1 Peter, and do so as part of what Jesus envisioned in speaking about the Kingdom of God. What we are most interested in is how Peter saw the relationship of the Ecclesia...

Played golf this morning, so am just getting to the blog.The big difference one notices in entering into the early churches is this: kingdom language is largely dropped and ecclesia (church) language is picked up. There all kinds of issues...

Check this post out on whether or not Carson has been fair to Frei and Lindbeck. Should make for a good discussion on Harbinger....

Just finished a book many of you probably have already read, Michael Yaconelli's Messy Spirituality. Very much along the line of Yancey's What's So Amazing about Grace?, Yaconelli's book is disarmingly honest and filled with stories that ring true about...

Today's text is Matthew 11:2-6. John the Baptist, in prison, gets disciples of his to find Jesus and ask Jesus if he is "the one who is to come" or not.(Note: "the one who is to come" is from Malachi...

As if blogging on Kingdom of God as society is not enough, Books and Culture brings to us today a nice study on what we really know about how influential Evangelicalism is on the Bush Doctrine. Whether you agree or...

In thinking through what it means to be "missional," and in reading some stuff about it, I came across John Burke's No Perfect People Allowed and blogged about it already.But, a book that tells the story of what is often...

Kingdom of God is the central vision of Jesus, and today we want to look at the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20-26. It is tempting to expand such a consideration, and look at all of the Sermon on the Mount/Plain. I'll...

What did Jesus mean by "kingdom of God," and what did he have in mind -- in real world living -- when he packed his vision into this expression?A good place to start is with Luke 4:16-30. I'll cite here...

My son and his wife have a little Cairn terrier, named Slater (after the surfer), and that makes us, so they say, "grandparents of a grand-dog." His favorite activity is to look out windows and give people and animals grief...

In my 22 years of teaching I've had some students with great names, but #1 on that list is a student now: Lightning. Last night Lightning and Sarah invited Kris and me over for dinner and fellowship. They are planning...

Kingdom of God is Jesus' favorite expression for his mission and his aim. But what does it mean?Scholars have gotten trapped into two boxes. First, many are preoccupied with the issue of time: did Jesus think the Kingdom was imminent,...

I have this week accepted two speaking engagements. One for the Civitas lectures at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, at a Conference called After Evangelicalism, where I will join a set of speakers. My topic, on late Friday afternoon, will...

Stephen Shields pours gentle words all over the recent discussion with Australia. There's a lot to learn here. Thanks Stephen....

In this post on conversion, I want to look at the sixth dimension of conversion: consequences.The first five dimensions, which are not "steps" but dimensions that often are intertwined and dialectical -- like any good relationship, are (1) context, (2)...

In their 2004 book, If Grace is True, Philip Gulley and James Mulholland make a case for universalism and this is their essential creedal contention:I believe -- on the basis of their experiences;God -- who is the gracious, loving Father...

In the fifth dimension of conversion (commitment), a person makes it clear that she or he is now committed to a relationship with Jesus. Conversion theorists say they are three "manifestations" of commitment: decision, surrender, and witness.We need to keep...

I was impressed with much of what I read on Sivin Kit's website about Chris Erdman's "preaching on the run."Makes me a bit nervous, but I'm also quite sure that Jesus didn't sit down and take notes, or that Paul...

A final thought on Peter.Let us accept that there are sudden or at least cataclysmic conversions like Paul's. We know little about Paul's experience prior to his conversion, but it is entirely possible that he had heard the gospel before...

The blog has been pretty busy today, so it is about time for me to jump and in and give my two cents worth.First, I believe that question, which is innocent in itself, assumes what I will call at this...

Let me make a distinction again, because I'm hearing it enough and it is helping some people to see more of what is going on, it puts much of the critique into a smaller niche, and it frees us up...

The most stimulating discussions I have had over the years in classes and at churches when I am leading a discussion about conversion or about the Jesus Creed "emerge" from this question:What about you, when do you think Peter was...

This is perhaps not what you are looking for.By "clean" I mean that Christians often want to tell conversion stories that are clean: I was a sinner and then I found Jesus and now I'm squeaky clean. This kind of...

One of the more interesting features of the Emerging movement (I'm not keen on calling this a "church" until we see some world-wide church structures that encompass the whole) is how it intersects with a fascinating aspect of conversion theory.Conversion...

People convert to the Christian faith as a result of some crisis, though a word needs to be said about the meaning of "crisis." Before that, this: the standard form of "crisis" we often see is what is called the...

Another "emerging" type book crossed my desk and I want to be an advocate for much of what he says.But first, a clarification: Emergent describes the offical organization of Emergent Village and now coordinated by Tony Jones. Emerging describes the...

In this series of reflections based on Turning to Jesus, I want to look today at the various kinds of conversion and then at the context out of which the convert comes.The process of conversion -- whether suddenly or gradually...

Trying to define conversion in a meaningful way is not easy, so I will go to two major scholars of conversion theory. In doing this, let me emphasize that the scholarly discussion of conversion avoids specific theological terms, so sometimes...

Each local church, whether radically independent or associated with a larger denomination, institutionalizes a conversion orientation. A church does this by the way it presents the gospel, by the way it teaches Sunday School, by the way it preaches from...

I will begin a series today on conversion theory and if you'd like to know where I'll be going, check this out. I'll work on the process of conversion and point out the ways it can help our evangelism and...

Everyone will want to buy and read Rob Bell's new book, which I think is to appear in a week or two. It is called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Rob Bell is the kind of pastor I'm thankful...

In yesterday's post I asked the question how we can "prove" that Jesus died for our sins. Many of your responses were challenging and were, so I think, getting to the issue itself. I'd like to wend my way through...

Along with many of my fellow bloggers, I grew up being told that Jesus died for my sins -- in fact, that to die for my sins is the sole reason Jesus came to earth. Jesus' death for us is...

Check this blog by Brad Bergfalk....

In case you haven't figured this out, I'm working my way toward an article on the Emerging movement for a magazine and so I'm testing some ideas as I move forward each day with some reading (in the time I...

Enough of the posts on the significance of "post," though some more will probably come to my head.The emergent movement's strongest asset and its clear prophetic voice is around this idea: the purpose of the Church, the local church, is...

I am impressed by John Franke's essay in Myron Penner's edited volume, Christianity and the Postmodern Turn. The literature on postmodernity is immense, but my own work in postmodern historiography and what Franke has to say overlap so much I...

Andrew Jones, who told me it took him a couple of baths to read The Jesus Creed, has made some nice comments about the book and I'm thankful for them....

When I was first teaching in seminary, we brought in Robert Banks who spoke on a book he had just written, but he also spoke with me about a book called Going to Church in the First Century and if...

I step into a minefield here and I'll do my best to be clear and avoid silly comments.From what I can see, the emergent movement is "post" classical, Evangelical Bible pietism. Let me explain. If you grew up as I...

For a nice way of putting together a "doctrinal statement" that keeps life and mind together, see the Covenant Affirmations by the Evangelical Covenant Church, the sponsoring denomination of North Park University....

Here is a link to my interview for the PBS TV discussion of the emerging church. For what it worth. I wish I could edit it, but such is an interview....

I've done my best to avoid politics (not that I think that is a virtue), but tonight's post will approach a political blog.First, a context. I was largely apolitical in high school and college in an era that was preeminently...

Jesus said in Matthew 7 that we will recognize them by their fruit, but we've had a hard time letting fruit be what we are all about. The emerging movement has pressed this issue to the fore by being "post"...

In a book dreamed up and edited by Myron Penner, called Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, Kevin Vanhoozer, a friend from my TEDS days and a scholar whose writings I always cherish, has proposed ten theses about postmodernism. (Incidentally, Penner's...

Kim Lawton's fine work of getting some ideas about the emergent movement can now be read in text form before it shows on TV tomorrow. See here....

In this post on "post," I want to look briefly -- that's what I always say to myself -- at the claim by postmodernists that they have surrendered a meta-narrative.A meta-narrative is an all-encompassing explanation of all of life; it...

Kim Lawton, of PBS TV, informs me again that their interview about the Emergent movement is a 2-part series that will be aired in various locations and times beginning this weekend. I think the Chicago time is 6am Saturday morning....

Gordon Lynch, in his analytical and easy-to-read study, Losing My Religion? Moving on from Evangelical Faith, makes an observation that I wish to address briefly in this post.First, a brief introduction. Lynch is a former British Evangelical, now professor of...

In this series of blogs on "post," today's post concerns what it means for postmoderns to deny certainty. On this topic I am reasonably convinced that those who are criticizing those who are denying certainty are talking right by one...

On our recent trip to Westfield, NY, I saw two wild turkeys, a scarlet tanager, which I hadn't seen since mid-80s, and what I thought was a Bohemian Waxwing (seemed bigger than our Cedar Waxwings). Lots of hummingbirds, too....

Some in the Emerging conversation, and perhaps more than some, would call themselves "post-Evangelical." This raises a question: In what sense are they "post" Evangelical?I will give four possible meanings, suggest that not all are using the term the same...

We have been looking at the meaning of "post" in "post"-evangelical, "post"-liberal, "post"-fundamentalism, and the like. Today I want to explore with you the significance of looking at this term "post" in the context of the telos, or goal, of...

This morning does not permit a lengthy post, but I will combine today's idea with today's particular vocation, of "performing the gospel" with the "Lord's Day."I'm also struggling with my son's Safari browser as it does not appear to enable...

When the emerging generation of Christian thinkers and leaders claims that it is "post-evangelical" and "post-modern" and "post-liberal" and "post-fundamentalist," in fact "post" a lot of things, it means among other things the following:First, it does not necessarily mean that...

We're out in Westfield, NY, visiting with Lukas and Annika. So, I won't fire up a new series this weekend, but will soon do a series on what this Post-evangelical, post-liberal, post-fundamentalist is all about. I also want to begin...