History Lesson (2)
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27 ESV
Religion– In recent conversation a young man expressed his determination for spiritual truth in this way: “When I rely on the Holy Spirit to lead me to the truth, I know that it’s right if the fruit is good. So I can look at the fruit of another person who claims that he is guided by the Spirit and see what he does. Then, if it’s good, I know the Spirit is behind it.”
We were discussing the problem with this kind of psychological certainty. I pointed out that many, many people have claimed the guidance of the Spirit but come to entirely different conclusions about the meaning of a verse or even how the verse is applied. We all know of notorious examples of people who claimed to be led by the Spirit but acted in horrible, sometimes even tragic, ways. My young friend’s rejoinder was, “Look at the fruit. Then you will know.” This is in my opinion a very unfortunate way of evaluating God’s interaction. Essentially it leaves exegesis and application up to a psychological feeling. Yes, there is some safeguard by examining the “fruit” of the person’s life, but even this method has enormous problems. Examining the “fruit” is subject to current cultural values. It is still a function of the paradigm. Let me illustrate.
Ask yourself if you would endorse or follow anyone who acted in the following manner:
Winning an argument through backstabbing, name-calling, threat, humiliation, or clandestine plots.
Using mob violence to eliminate any trace of alternative views.
Demanding absolute conformity to a particular belief on pain of torture or death.
Attempting to kill any person who seemed to exhibit a different way of living.
Employing curses in the name of God against those who disagreed.
Beheading, dismembering, burning, or mutilating those who refused to conform.
My guess is that you would consider people who did such things outside of God’s will. You would look at the fruit of their beliefs and dismiss those beliefs as incompatible with God’s Word. Who could ever claim that God endorsed such behavior?
Well, in fact, all of these tactics were employed by the Christian Church in the name of God in order to secure the doctrine of the dual nature of Jesus (God and Man)! Would that lead you to conclude that there is something wrong with a doctrine that had to use these methods to justify it? Would you conclude that the men who used these methods weren’t really following God? All of their methods sound more like ISIS than Christianity, don’t they? But the history isn’t always what we want, and, in fact, all of these actions were routine methods employed by the Church in the fifth and sixth centuries. [1]
Does this make you wonder just how far the history of the Church is from James’ idea of pure religion? Maybe the Church is really an empire, not a kingdom.
Topical Index: history, Church, doctrine, Spirit, epistemology, James 1:27
[1]Cf. Philip Jenkins, The Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years(HarperOne, New York, 2010).
Well, those were also the methods outlined in Acts of some of the Jews against some of the followers of Yeshua, too. Could we draw the same conclusions about them? Sure! They crucified the Messiah even after they were given as many possible ways to recognize Him as God could think of to give them, even as the church persecuted and torched millions of His Body (including devout Jews living up to their convictions), too. And, if He were to appear to us today, I am quite sure we would do exactly the same to Him again, just like those (fellow human) ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ for all the same ‘reasons’ (wrong spirit). In other words, we are all human, I think, and what we were or were not handed to believe or not does not have any power (actuating spirit) AT ALL to ‘make’ us do right. What people claim to believe (law and doctrines) or not does not in any way have the ability to keep them from being humans in the flesh. So what? All us humans know this about ourselves (and others) already.
I contend that NEITHER “psychological certainty” OR proper exegesis is able (has motivating power) to produce fruit. I do think good exegesis is able to provide checklists (Exodus 20:1-17; Gal. 5:22,23, etc.) to inspect that fruit with, but if exegesis is done or applied in the wrong spirit it STILL won’t do any good. There is just no way around the Spirit! However, that Spirit will always agree with that Word; in fact, if we don’t have the Spirit, the Word is closed to us; so-called brilliant exegesis or no. Further, that Spirit can recreate the Word and give it again at any time in any way. For example, vast portions of the Body today have no or only small access to the Word of God, yet these are the folks who, today, are going to stake and slaughter for what the Spirit has convicted them on. Without the Spirit motivating them in their belief, they would not be standing on those front lines, taking the heat.
I want to point out that you can’t split this baby (dialectic) for the purposes of argument, either. Sure, we need exegesis; but sure, we need the Spirit, too! And, yes, I agree with both your young man (that we have to have the Spirit to examine the fruit with), but also with you that that Spirit has already given us that Word (yes, properly exegeted with the aid of the Spirit, of course) as our checklist.
I want not only be thankful for the Word of God, but also to pray with David and Yeshua “take not Your Holy Spirit from me” when I read (and apply!) it. Amen.
I remember, sharing with my Jewish friends and acquaintances oh, and they would remark about their history, the Christians coming with big swords, and crosses on their Shields, attacking are people, the Jews. Causes me to always think twice and comment to those who love putting on the armor of God. I would rather refer to Isaiah, speaking of the. Spirit of God coming upon him. Isaiah 11 2 and 3. As it is written , this Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the Spirit of wisdom Spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge in the fear of the Lord he will Delight in the fear of the Lord.
At this point, I would always sincerely comment. And have them noticed that. Spirit is always capitalized. This would bring up deep conversation for most of the Jewish people I would be sharing with, would know their scriptures. They would always comment on the Crusaders, thus the controversy of Going Underground. if anyone remembers, the Animated Series, The Story Keepers produced by zondervan, became very influential at that time. They can still be found on Amazon or Google.. .. B B.
Excellent Skip…..plus, his INDIVIDUAL prescriptive rendering leaves out Chazal Wisdom. Deuteronomy 32:3-4
Though I won’t deny the atrocious behavior surrounding much of the proceedings, I think it important to point out that Jenkins’ book here focuses on the fifth century, well after the Deity of Christ had been established and accepted (even Arianism accepted the Deity of the Messiah). At issue was the nature of this God-man. Was He dyophysite (of two natures—divine and human—existing in the one Person in the Incarnation and beyond), the position affirmed at Chalcedon, or was He monophysite (of one nature after the union of the two natures at the Incarnation)? A third position was miaphysitism, which is viewed as amenable to Chalcedon by Chalcedonian adherents, though those affirming this stance, mainly the Oriental Church, reject Chalcedon, but I think this had more to do with a misunderstanding of terminology. I also think the monophysites misunderstood the Chalcedonian terminology.
I think Rubenstein makes it pretty clear that the same atrocities accompanied the prior 2 centuries of Christianity.
I could be wrong, but as I recall it wasn’t quite as bad (I’ve not not Rubenstein, but I’ve read other works in this regard). Nonetheless, even then the Deity of Christ was not really the issue. It was the understanding of it. And, while the Athanasian view (which was pre-Chalcedonian) was ‘winning’ for a time, Arius and his adherents used political might to silence Athanasius subsequent to this, forcing the former into exile. Then the pendulum swung back.
Eve examined the fruit and determined that it was good…
Justifying bad behavior on the basis of “they did it, too” is hardly a rational perspective. If we have to torture and silence those who don’t agree with us, every such “conversion” will be under a false basis–Indeed, that is the repeated historical record on ALL sides. Those who live willingly according to Scripture will do so long term only when their personal conviction becomes aligned with Scripture. If God could have effectively forced everyone to live according to His Word, wouldn’t HE have done so? Who is man who places himself above God? The one who believes he can’t be wrong about what he believes and who is going to force you to believe the same, no matter what.
“…Maybe the Church is really an empire, not a kingdom.”
Maybe ‘the Church’ submits to a foreign king.