Stephen Colbert is always good for a chuckle.

Here’s a line from his book, I Am America (And So Can You!) :

Though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim.  I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

Now, this is obviously a ridiculous statement - nonsensical. And Colbert knows this. That’s why he says it. To be funny.

So what am I to make of any  number of my peers, influenced by an emerging group of Christian authors, who say almost the exact same thing, yet at the same time genuinely expect to be taken seriously? This is no longer funny. It is maddening.

I am currently reading The Bondage of the Will , a book by the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther.  It is entertaining to me because it is the second part of a debate; Luther wrote it in response to Desiderius Erasmus’ book The Freedom of the Will , and Luther is not a gentle sparring partner.  Despite this, what fascinates me most about this book is the similarity between this Erasmus character and many Christians today.  The introduction to Bondage , written by J.I. Packer, gives a brief profile of Erasmus and his book:

Erasmus’ Diatribe is elegant and gracefully written, but for all that, it is by no means a significant production… It exhibits much learning but little insight.  It makes plain what its author would not have been concerned to deny - that Erasmus of Rotterdam, the learned Biblical scholar, was no theologian.  It is brief and superficial.  Erasmus is deliberately noncommittal on the question which he discusses.  He writes on the ‘free-will’ debate, so he tells us, as a commentator and critic rather than as a contributor to it.  His chief point is that it is not a very significant issue, one way or the other; and his main complaint against Luther is simply that the latter shows a defective sense of proportion in laying so much stress on an opinion which is extreme and improbable in itself and relates to a subject which is both obscure and unimportant.

Packer compares Luther and Erasmus:

Why did Erasmus and Luther approach the discussion of ‘free-will’ in such contrasting attitudes of mind?  The answer is not far to seek.  Their divergent attitudes sprang from two divergent conceptions of Christianity.  Erasmus held that matters of doctrine were all comparatively unimportant, and that the issue as to whether a man’s will was or was not free was more unimportant than most.  Luther, on the other hand, held that doctrines were essential to, and constitutive of, the Christian religion, and that the doctrine of the bondage of the will in particular was the corner-stone of the Gospel and the very foundation of faith.  Here we are confronted with the deepest difference that there was, or could have been, between the two men; and we must say a little more about it.

Christianity, to Erasmus, was essentially morality, with a minimum of doctrinal statement loosely apended.  What Erasmus professed that he desired to see in Christendom was a return to an apostolic ’simplicity’ of life and doctrine, and this he thought could be brought about simply by eliminating the superstitions and abuses which had crept into the Church’s life over the centuries.  The Reformation that Erasmus advocated was like a course of slimming; its aim was confined to the removing of unhealthy surplus fat.  But what Erasmus actually advocated under the name of ‘the philosophy of Christ’ as the true, slimmed, ’simple’ version of Christianity, turns out on inspection to be no more than a barren moralism.  Erasmus recognizes no organic dependence of practice upon faith. That the life which pleases God springs only from living trust in Christ as the Word of God sets Him forth - that is something that the great humanist never saw.  That is why he could profess to find so little pleasure in theological dogmatizing that he would gladly side with the Sceptics whenever Scripture and the Church allowed him to do so - although, as he hastened to explain, he uniformly submitted his judgment to these authorities, whether he understood the reasons for what they ordained or not.

Luther takes him severely to task for this remark, and not without justice.  Erasmus cannot be acquitted of the charge of doctrinal indifferentism.  His attitude was that what one believes about the mysteries of the faith does not much matter; what the Church lays down may safely be accepted, whether right or wrong; for the details of a churchman’s doctrine will not affect his living as a Christian in this world, nor his eventual destiny in the world to come.

Either Erasmus was a pioneer ahead of his time, or guys like Brian McClaren and Peter Rollins are way behind the times.  Whichever, the three of them might have endorsed each others’ books, and McClaren & Rollins probably would not have been big fans of Luther.

This is a question which came to me a few weeks ago, amidst the stress of exam season and pre-Christmas sales.  It should not shock anybody who knows me that I immediately wanted to find the nearest Postmodern Christian and pose the question to them; but alas, I could only curse the less than impeccable timing of the thing, put my nose down to my books, and keep studying.  Well, all good things come to those who wait, I suppose.  Now is the time.  But first, without trying to patronize anybody, let’s recap (loosely) the origin of the “modern era” and its effects on the Church, okeedokee?

Desartes, who died in 1650, is generally regarded as the Father of Modernism.  He lived and died on the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment, which featured many prominent intellectuals: Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, and scores of others.  Obviously, Enlightenment thought had far-reaching consequences.  It gave us the scientific revolution (i.e. Newtonian physics), and it set up reason & empiricism as the only reliable sources of knowledge.

In other words, revelation- Divine Revelation- was on its way out.  It did not take long for the Scriptures to come under attack.  Higher criticism became all the rage in Germany.  All of a sudden, the Church had to answer really intelligent people who knew the original languages, and had handled the manuscripts, and who said, ”Maybe Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch,” and “Maybe Paul didn’t write all the letters we attribute to him.”  “Maybe there was no single, unified, Christianity before Constantine.”  “Maybe the Gnostics had as much a claim on the truth as the strand of tradition that eventually won out.”  ”And what’s with this synoptic problem?”  All of a sudden, there are people who are experts in the Bible who consider it a collection of purely human documents - not sent by God in any way, shape, or form.  During this time, Atheism gained credibility as it never had before.  Attacks on religion became popular.  In fact, Christopher Hitchens, a modern day skeptic and author of God is Not Great, repeatedly compliments his hero, the American pamphleteer Thomas Paine (a late Enlightenment figure), for his ruthless chides of revealed religion.  This was the predicament the Church found herself in at the beginning of the 20th Century.  And this is how the church fought back… drum roll, please…

She came up with some doctrines.  Most notably, “the three I’s”: the inspiration, inerrency, and infallibility of the Bible.

Anticlimactic, I know.  But not if you think about it.  Even before modernism came along, this is how the church solved her problems.  When the heretic Arius went around saying Jesus wasn’t Divine, we came up with the doctrine that said, well yes, He is Divine.  When Pelagius went around saying God’s grace was not necessary for salvation, Augustine shut him down and said yes, it is.  When indulgence preachers went around selling salvation, the 5 solas were put in place.  So, it should come as no surprise that in the face of various modernist heresies, the Church officialized some doctrines which had always been unwritten and assumed.  This was the old, familiar pattern.

Now the recap is over.  Now I’m going to frame my actual question.

Postmodernists often decry the fact that modernism has infiltrated the Church. And this has always frustrated me a bit, because I simply never saw it.  I didn’t even know how to look for it.  Because of this, I was usually silent whenever the accusation was made.  And, although it has never been said in so many words, the unspoken assumption is if you love doctrine, then this makes you overtly modern, and your Christianity is tainted.

Well, in light of the historical recap above, now I do  know how to look for modernism in the church, and if I didn’t see it before, I really  don’t see it now.  The enlightenment, i.e. Modernism, gave birth to liberal theology.  I’ll say it again: Liberalism in theology is a direct result of modernism in the church.  Yet somehow, amazingly, it is the conservative types who Postmodern Christians try to pin with the “Modernist” label.  This doesn’t make sense.

Furthermore, I have observed that Postmodern Christians have a strong aversion toward doctrine.  Hence, they tout slogans such as “It’s not what  you believe, its how  you believe.”

But, as we saw above, the formation of doctrine is reactionary.  It only takes place whenever ideas that attack the church’s teaching become in vogue.  After all, in fencing, who can perry a sword that has not yet been thrust?  Dogma serves as the Church’s immune system, of a sorts.  Doctrines are like little white blood cells, attacking the impurities from inside to keep the organism of the Church clean and healthy.

Now, praytell, if doctrine is the Church’s way of combating modernism rather than acquiescing to it, then who has allowed modernism to seep into their worldview?  The lovers of doctrine or the ones who have let their guard down?

Think about it.  Who’s a modernist, really ?

Welp, I have finally taken the plunge. That’s right. I am now part of the rank and file of bloggers who talk about religious stuff, and this is my first post. To be honest, I never really wanted to do this, and here are the reasons why:

Number one. Time constraints.  Full time student, blah blah blah…

Number two. I agree with D.A. Carson when he described blogging like this.

The feedback on blogs is immediate. You have a thought and then three minutes later it’s published for the world to digest. And then in another three minutes you have anonymous folks posting messages about how wonderful you are. It tends to inflate one’s sense of importance.

Now, the things I plan on writing probably won’t cause anybody to tell me how wonderful I am. I may very well come off as the bearded, reeking, homeless guy who dropped out of high school and now spends his days zealously guarding the front door to the gas station.  You know the one.  He stands there holding a cardboard sign that says, “Repent, the end is nigh!” and he asks you for a fiver as you pass by. What a whack-o. And where did he get a marker?

In order to be fair, however, I should have a blog. You see, I used to break the unwritten rules of blog etiquette pretty often.  I would play hit and run by leaving essay-length comments on my friends’ sites, rather than formally entering the ‘dialogue’.  Well, now I have a place of my own, and in the name of fairness I invite all who read this (all 4 of you) to leave comments as long as your heart desires.

Here is a fair warning. I’ve been called arrogant, dismissive, spiritually proud, etc. and these are charges I do not take lightly. Very often I will not even try to defend myself against them, because I know they are true. I will thank you for the rebuke, pray for humility, and try to be kinder in my criticism. Hopefully, writing on here will serve as a tool for God to purge me of those sins.

Still, I have no idea how to address inanity other than to ridicule it, so I will not file my teeth down to nothing.

My gameplan for the next several posts is to talk about the Gospel first and then the Doctrines of Grace after that.

Well, its time to go ask God’s forgiveness for all the sentences that began with the word “I”.

Tags: kyle, kyle berry