A Conservative Bible?

This is just unreal. Perhaps you've already heard about this as its been recently highlighted by Steven Colbert and dozens of other media outlets, but the people of Conservapedia have committed to create a new, conservative translation of the Bible, that eradicates all the so-called liberal "translation bias" that exists in every existing English translation. Talk about "remaking Jesus in their own image." Rob Dreher at beliefnet.com depicts it best: "It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'."

The absurdity of this project is unimaginable, and the flaws in their logic, mindboggling. They seek a new translation that is without bias, as if they have no bias of their own. They seek to create a translation that avoids the "wordiness" and "ambiguities" of liberals (such as those updating the NIV) but is also not written at a dumbed down reading level (such as the NIV. How are they going to do that without using big words?). They seek to obtain an accurate translation of Scripture by resorting back to the KJV rather than original texts (and if you read any of what has already been translated, it basically reads like the NIV which they abhor), making it a translation of a(n) (outdated) translation. They state that one of the benefits of this project is that it will force the liberals who criticize them to read the Bible (but if they're the ones translating the NIV, wouldn't that mean they have not only read it, but quite closely?).

They claim terms such as "laborer" and "comrade" in the Bible are signs of socialism--but this political view didn't exist in the time the KJV was written--and propose substituting contemporary conservative terms instead, as if the authors of the Bible had 21st century America in mind when they were writing. They want to highlight the "numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning" (as if parables are meant to be literally interpreted...). And worst of all, they suggest excluding certain passages such as John 8:1-11 and Luke 23:34 because they are supposedly "later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic" (as if those who purportedly inserted these texts in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were left-wing radicals!). How is arbitrarily deleting passages considered conservative?

Really, I'm quite dumbfounded. When one is so right-wing leaning that even the Bible is now deemed "liberal" (whatever that means), something is definitely wrong. But this is a good reminder for all of us, no matter the lens we use to read Scripture (which we can never fully remove), that Ernesto Tinajero from Sojourners points out: "if you read the Bible and it does not challenge you, then you are reading yourself and not the Bible." If the Bible is not provocative, if it does not force us to rethink the way we live our lives and view the world, than we are not really reading it.

The Shack and Universalism (Part 2), [or why Brock could never get a job at a Baptist church]

In my previous post, I critiqued some of the arguments made to show that The Shack presents universalism. If it is not universalism, what position then, does it offer? [If this explanation is too long, sorry. I had material for more than double what I've placed here!]

Allow me to begin with an excerpt from The Shack:

“Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian… Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved” (182).

There are at least three ways this passage can be read, but for the sake of the attention of my readers, I will focus on one: There are religiously practicing Buddhists, Mormons, Muslims, and even non-religious folk who are just as much followers of Jesus as Christians. Or we might say, some practitioners of other religious groups look a whole lot more like Jesus and live a life of agape love far better than some life-long members of Christianity.

On this reading, let’s pose the question: “Can a Buddhist/Mormon/Muslim go to heaven?” Well, for starters, since Buddhism can be conceived as a way of informing one’s life to connect with ultimate reality, rather than the worship of a particular deity, it’s certainly possible that one could engage in some of the life practices of Buddhism while maintain faith in Jesus Christ. As for Mormonism and Islam, if one views these religions as heresies of Christianity rather than entirely different religions, it’s possible to conceive there are some within these ranks that have managed to connect with the real Jesus. Indeed, there is testimony of Muslims, based solely on reading the excerpts about Jesus in the Koran who have believed in Jesus, and “if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him” (1 Jn. 4:15).

But this answer only speaks to the possibility of people with other religious labels to also be connected with the real Jesus through some level of [untraditional] connection to the historical Jesus. But is it possible to be rightly related to God without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? This is the question posed by Christian Inclusivism (CI), a position held in some way or another by Justin Martyr, Origen, Karl Rahner, C.S. Lewis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Dallas Willard, and even Billy Graham in recent days. CI preaches the orthodox message of the Good News of Jesus, but leaves open God’s grace and mercy to extend beyond the walls of Christianity. To state it otherwise, CI teaches that Christ is “the way” (Jn. 14:6), but he may even be “the way” for people who have never heard of Jesus or been exposed to Christianity.

Let me backtrack to help make this clearer. Some Christians hold that knowledge of the historical person, known as Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again as a 1st century Jew is necessary for salvation. This view holds that there is some salvific power in the name spelled “J-E-S-U-S” and knowledge of the historical person who bore that name is necessary. But if knowledge of the historical Jesus is absolutely necessary, then Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and every Old Testament saint do not qualify. Sure, the OT figures placed faith by looking forward to a future hope of a promised Messiah (as described in Gen 3:15; 12:3; 2 Sam. 7), but what they envisioned hardly amounts to Paul’s summary of the gospel message (1 Cor 15:3-4).

In other words, even the most fundamentalist, exclusivist Christians hold to some level of inclusivism. They must hold to some view of God’s mercy that extends beyond knowledge of the death and resurrection of Christ if OT figures are to be saved—as well as infants who die or the mentally incapable, a position held by many Christians.

In his latest book, Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard points out that belief in the “historical” Jesus was not even what his closest disciples needed to believe in. In John 14, “his closest disciples still did not know him (14:7-9), though they knew Jesus of Nazareth. It was not the historical Jesus that Philip did not know (v. 9). Who he was clearly amounted to much more than a carpenter of Nazareth… He was and is the eternal Word” (185). Thus, Willard distinguishes between the historical Christ and the “Cosmic Christ,” the eternal God and Savior.

Let’s put this conclusion into a question: Is it possible to be connected to Jesus, the Logos who was at the beginning with God (Jn. 1:1) without having knowledge of the historical Jesus? To this question, scholars throughout church history have answered, “Yes.” Justin Martyr, one of the first Christian theologians, suggested Plato, Socrates, and the Greek philosophers were Christians without realizing it by their commitment to the Logos (Reason) and their love for Wisdom/Truth.

Romans 2:14-16 suggests there will be Gentiles who stand before God on the day of judgment whose consciences will defend them even though they “do not have the law.” These individuals will be saved on account of God’s promise that “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (2:7). Those who seek the Good (God) through faith will find him (cf. Heb. 11:6), even if this search amounts to an extremely limited blind groping for an “unknown God” (Acts 17: 27, cf. v. 23). God has “overlooked” ignorant and imperfect worship of him in times past (Acts 17:30) and pursues and finds even those who were not looking for him (Rom. 10:20; Isa. 65:1)! Indeed, he accepts imperfect worship from all of us!

What would be the content of such a person’s faith if they had never heard of the man known as Jesus of Nazareth? Paul’s message in Acts 17 provides clues where he neither mentions Jesus’ name nor even alludes to any atonement theory (instead, he quotes from two sources of pagan literature!). We get the most cryptic allusion to Jesus, namely that God is going to judge the world via a “man” he has raised from the dead. This was the content of those who believed Paul’s message. Sure, Paul would have encouraged the believers to increase their level of knowledge about God; but if such scant information is all that is necessary to “reach out for [God] and find him” (v. 27), clearly we can posit the possibility of people who have never heard of Jesus, contemplating a belief in a Supreme Judge, being convicted of a need to be put in right relationship with him, and concluding that God somehow has taken care of it.

Keeping the Acts 17 account in our minds, we might look at this issue from a literary perspective. Jesus, as a redemptive image, is an archetype and parallels of his story and message can be seen both in the Old Testament and in the surrounding religious and mythical stories of his time. In the Old Testament, the redemptive acts in the stories of Joseph, Moses, Joshua (which is the Hebrew name for the Greek, Iesou, or Jesus), and David all foreshadow Jesus as Messianic figures). And Rob Bell notes, (in his Nooma video entitled “You”) that at the time of the 1st century, one of the most popular gods of the Roman Empire was Mithra, a god believed to be born of a virgin, was a mediator between God and man, and had ascended to heaven. And Caesar Augustus believed himself to be the son of God, sent down from heaven to inaugurate an unprecedented reign of peace (in fact the disciples, in Acts 4:12, borrow from Augustus’ most famous catch phrase, “there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved but Caesar”). Many similar parallels have been made between Jesus and gods from other religious traditions, such as the ancient Egyptian sun-god, Horus.

So if Jesus is the ultimate redemptive archetype that all of these messianic stories point to, if all of these other redemptive stories ultimately culminate and are fulfilled in Jesus, what is to prevent one from becoming rightly related to God through other “redemptive analogies” (to quote Don Richardson from the “Peace Child”)? Consider this: what if there exists a person who has read The Chronicles of Narnia but has never read the Bible (which is quite possible), who believes in Aslan, hoping his message is true, and whose life is changed by the truths of Narnia? Are they in right relation to God? Lewis himself suggests something similar at the end of The Last Battle when Emeth, a Calormene and follower of Tash winds up in “heaven” standing before Aslan, the real God he took for a myth. When Emeth sees Aslan, he recognizes him as the “Glorious One” and despairs that he had worshiped in ignorance all of his life. But Aslan explains to Emeth, who was a sincere seeker of the truth, that all the good deeds he did in the name of Tash (who does not really exist) must have been for Aslan, the author of all things good.

This scene raises the question, going back to Romans 2:7, what would it look like for someone without knowledge of Christ to persist in doing good and seek glory, etc? Certainly it would involve more than what it means to “be a good person” in our common understanding today, and it would have to involve faith over some belief that I can attain God’s pleasure through my own deeds alone. In this vein, Dallas Willard (180) recalls 1 John 4:7 - “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” In other words, it is impossible to practice agape love without real connection with God. James reminds us, “Every good and perfect good is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17). We might translate, all the goodness we see in the world, even the good actions of people, is evidence of God’s goodness in the world.

Who then determines if one passes such a test? I’m not running for that position and choose to leave it up to God. But CI leaves the door open for God’s mercy to extend as far as possible while providing an adequate interpretation of New Testament faith.

The Shack and Universalism (Part 1)

So it has been a while since my previous post, and I was right in the throes of discussion issues related to the book, The Shack by William P. Young when the full force of this semester's obligations took over! So this post will involve another afterwards, but hopefully less time will commence between the two.

In my previous post, I highlighted a number of criticisms that have been leveled against William P. Young’s book, The Shack. In this post, I hope to address one of them, namely the issue of universal salvation that some say the book teaches.

Now, among the criticisms leveled against The Shack on this front, there are really two questions going on here: (1) Is William Young a universalist? And, (2) Does The Shack teach universalism? The answer to (1), according to theologian James B. DeYoung, who is also a friend of William Young, the answer is yes, citing Young “has affirmed his hope that all will be reconciled to God.” Young’s position is that God's primary characteristic of love will ultimately win out in bringing all people to salvation (a similar view can be seen in Philip Gulley’s If Grace is True). DeYoung then suggests that Young’s views are also the position of the Unitarian-Universalist Church (UUC). [you can find a link to DeYoung's pdf article under “Journal Review” here.]

Personally, I don’t know William Young, so I cannot answer (1), but I am interested in (2). While others who point out Young’s so-called universalism merely criticize him for saying that Jesus is merely the “best” way to relate to God rather than the “only” way (109), DeYoung highlights ten ways The Shack endorses universalist views, even though the editors of the book worked hard to erase such claims. I summarize them here:

1) God is primarily a God of love (The universalist creed of 1899 states, “there is one God whose nature is love”).
2) There is no eternal punishment for sin (The 1899 creed states God “will finally restore the whole family of mankind”).
3) Young does not mention Satan, nor the “enormity of sin.”
4) God’s justice is subjugated to his love.
5) Young’s wrong view of the Trinity, that the Father also suffered, which leads to modalism; and making God into a goddess.
6) Reconciliation is effective for all without needing faith as Papa has reconciled himself to the whole world (p. 192), not just those who believe.
7) No future judgment.
8) All are equally children of God and loved by him (155-156).
9) The institutional church is rejected.
10) The Bible is minimized.

In response, I would contest that none of these things implicate The Shack as a book on universalism or necessarily represent the position of the UUC. First, Young cannot be a Unitarian-Universalist, as the UUC ascribes to no creed and represents an incredibly diverse number of congregations. UUC’s commitment to Christian teachings is basically limited to the Bible’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves. In other words, for the UUC, Jesus is simply a good example to follow to bring about social justice in the world. But in stark contrast, Jesus plays an incredibly central role throughout The Shack. Papa says, “Mackenzie, the Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust” (95). And then later on, “Like I said, everything is about him. Creation and history are all about Jesus. He is the very center of our purpose and in him we are now fully human, so our purpose and your destiny are forever linked… There is no plan B” (192). Indeed, this point rebuts the critique that Young falls short by calling Jesus merely the “best” way to relate to God as well. In fact, at one point, Mack calls Jesus “the way in” (177).

Second, to say that Young affirms a “hope that all will be reconciled” seems to be no different than saying God is patient, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). If God hopes for reconciliation is he a universalist too?

As for #1-10, I’m not sure what 5, 9, and 10 have to do with universalism, and I already addressed them in my previous post. #1 and 4 would implicate the Apostle John who wrote repeatedly that “God is love” (aren’t you glad God showed mercy and love to you instead of justice?). #8 would implicate the Apostle Paul who proclaimed to the pagans in Athens, “We are God’s offspring” (Acts 17:29). #6 takes Papa’s statement out of context, as the passage clearly states that “reconciliation is a two way street” (192). #3 can be attributed to The Shack’s neoplatonic view of evil, namely that evil is a privation (e.g., dark is the absence of light) and not really a thing/being (136). This may not bode well with current views of Evangelical thought, but it was widely held by Christians thinkers for a thousand years. This leaves us with #s 2 & 7, which address punishment/judgment. I stated in my previous post that Young has a minimalist position on God’s punishment; however, and yet the absence of explicit affirmative statements about punishment does not mean Young denies it (i.e., arguments from silence are not that powerful). Indeed, at least implicitly, two comments by God in The Shack suggest the possibility of eternal separation. To Mack’s question, “Will all roads lead to you?” Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere.” And Papa says later, “It is not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way” (192). In other words, God does not force a relationship where one does not desire it. To those who desire independence from God, life in heaven would be a greater torment than hell--those who are in hell desire to be there (a position C.S. Lewis posits in The Great Divorce and elsewhere).

Well then, if The Shack does not prevent universalism, what is it that it teaches? I will address this in my next post!