A Theology of Love, Part VIII: Conclusions

I won't be able to defend my interpretation of what it means to be "born again" in a fully satisfactory way in the short space of this blog. But I hope that this last week I can at least address some obvious challenges.

First, my interpretation may be thought of as inherently anti-evangelical, since I am advocating for a richer understanding of Christianity than a simple adherence to a creed. But if a creed is not involved, someone might say, doesn't that discourage missions? I don’t see why that follows at all. The correct motive missions is an excitement to introduce people to the Judeo-Christian story, so that they may worship the author of their salvation. Since Christ is the only way to God, there may be many people like Abraham: they are born-again because of Christ’s redemptive work, but they just do not know the Gospel, or have heard of it, but do not understand it. It seems to me quite easy to make missions compatible with an affirmation of our ignorance about who can be born-again.

Second, I am not saying that a pure character is the cause of being born again. As if we could be 'good' enough to merit God's infinite mercy! No, my interpretation of the New Testament passages is that having a character of agape love is an indicator that someone already does know God in some deep way. I'll try to put this thought into a compound proposition: "If you love, then there is unmistakeable evidence that you are born again." Like the Scripture, I make no judgment as to why some hearts are hardened and others are not.

Third, I may be viewed as some kind of universalist, or as saying that every nice person or good parent is really a Christian. This is not my meaning at all, since people may treat each other well as a result of simply being socialized. I take being socialized and being an agape-lover as having nothing to do with each other. If anything, I would guess that a born-again person is rather rare. Jesus may help explain my point: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?...” (Matt. 5: 46-48). Nor do I believe that people who have a genuine attachment to their children or family are necessarily “born of God.” There is an evolutionary analysis that may be made here.

And finally, there is the issue that there are many passages, especially in Romans, that seem to contradict my interpretation. I will not be able to offer a lot here and now about this topic, but I will remind my skeptics of the story of Martin Luther. As the simplified story goes, Protestantism began when Luther had his perspective changed on Christianity by the Epistle to the Romans. Specifically, it was Paul’s provocative statements about faith that Luther was excited about. Although this event was historically important, for the Catholic church was corrupt in a lot of ways at the time, I regard Luther’s re-interpretation of the Christian religion as incomplete. What we have today, at least in conservative Protestant circles, is more like “Romans-ianity” than Christianity. Take a classic example: we find Luther saying things like “The Book of James should be thrown into the river,” since James says very plainly that faith is not enough. But this conflicted with Luther’s personal theology, and so he saw fit to remove James’ letter from the canon. While conservative Christians today are happy to include James in the canon, they do the same thing in effect, because they give Romans an unhealthy interpretative priority. For example, when a contemporary conservative Christian opens the book of James, she says something like, “Whatever James is talking about, it must not conflict with Romans, because we know for sure that Romans is true.” But this is to brandish Romans like a sword, slicing and dicing the rest of the Bible into pieces until it ‘fits.’ A Christian should try to synthesize all of the teachings of Scripture into one world-view.

What I have done the last eight blogs is more mature, I hope. I am trying to derive an interpretation of the phrase “born-again” that all of the New Testament writers are on board with. At least, no one can blame me for trying.

A Theology of Love, Part VII

I have argued the last two weeks that there is significant Scriptural support for my claim that faith is not a sufficient condition for being born again, nor is it a necessary condition for being born again. So I’ve described what I don’t believe, although it is perhaps more interesting to talk about what I do believe. As always, my views about Christianity are formed by the New Testament writings themselves, and there is a really interesting unity shared by many New Testament writers: the analogy of people to trees, and our characters to fruit. This analogy is hammered home, first by Jesus, then James, John and finally Paul. With the exceptions of Peter and maybe Luke, that is a list of the most influential figures in Christianity.

Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:15-20. The context is that he is giving his listeners a way to distinguish between real followers of Jesus and ‘false prophets.’ In vv. 21-23, Jesus says specifically that you will NOT be able to recognize them because of what they believe. Instead, vv. 15-20, he insists that you will only be able to recognize them by their fruits – that is, by what kind of people they are. His reasoning is in the form of a rhetorical question: “Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?”

James clearly seconds this point, when he is insisting that faith is not sufficient for being born again: “Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? (Jms 3:12). This point is explored in more depth by Paul, with his listing of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23). Which brings us back to where we started, in I John 4:7-8, where the unmistakable mark of one who has been born of the Spirit is the presence of agape love. How do you spot someone who has been born again - born of the Spirit of God? As I have tried to show from Scripture, you can’t always tell by what a person believes, but by someone’s true character – as Paul, John, James, and Jesus believe. This criterion cuts across time/space, national boundaries, ethnic divisions, and yes, even religious creeds (check out what Jesus has to say in John 10:16 and Matt 7:15-23).

We are by nature creatures of survival, and thus thoroughly selfish. Whether you want to believe Darwin’s story, or whether you prefer Genesis 3 – the conclusion is the same – by nature we worship ourselves. Paul describes a natural person as endowed with “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealously, fits of anger, rivalries, dissentions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 5: 19-21). So it is completely unnatural to possess, for example, agape love. That is why Jesus is so confident that we can “recognize [true Christians] by their fruits” (Matt 7:16).

I have more to say about some potential misunderstandings of my position, and so next week I will finish this series by taking up those topics.

A Theology of Love, Part VI

Last week I pointed out some passages which indicated that it was possible to be born again with having some kind of cognitive grasp and confession of the Gospel – i.e., that faith is not a necessary condition of being born again. This week, I want to go one step further and point to some passages which indicate that faith is not sufficient for being born again either.

1) In Matthew 7:21, Jesus gives a provocative prophetic description: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Verses 22 and 23 then further imply that these people knew who Jesus was, and therefore were quite surprised when Jesus did not know who they were!

2) This is also a theme of the passage that I discussed last week from Matthew 25. The sheep cried out “Lord, Lord” but Jesus sent them away. The reason? Their refusal to give economic aid to the vulnerable. These goats seemed to believe that they were sheep until Jesus gave them the bad news.

3) Probably the clearest declaration that faith is not sufficient comes from James: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?...So faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by works, is dead” (James 2:14, 17). It’s hard to think of how a statement could be more clear that faith is simply not enough. I’ve heard many interpretations of this passage from the traditional born-again crowd who try to say that this passage does not say what it seems to say, and find all of them to be, well, embarrassing and silly.

4) A little known example from Acts 8 also illustrates this point well. Verse 12 describes a group of people who experienced a conversion after they came to believe in the Gospel. But they were not yet born-again: verse 16 continues “for [the Holy Spirit] had not yet fallen on any of them.” Here were some people who came to genuine faith in the Gospel, but they did not yet have the Holy Spirit and so were not yet born again (Rom 8:9).

Next week I will begin drawing my own positive conclusions. But for now it is enough to realize that there is significant textual evidence that faith is not necessary for being born again, nor is it sufficient. That is, faith is just not enough. And obviously, this idea is not my own. I was convinced by what Jesus, Luke (the author of Acts), and James had to say about the topic.

A Theology of Love, Part V

We are now arriving at the real heart of my cognitive meanderings on this subject. My question is this: ‘what is the role of faith in the process of being ‘born-again?’ The conservative formula is something like this: “If you have faith in the Gospel, then you will be born-again.” In the next three weeks, I want to identify some passages which destabilize this interpretation of the New Testament, and perhaps lay a path for my own interpretation. I believe that a more coherent way to read New Testament texts yields a formula that is more like this: “If you are born-again, then it is likely that the Gospel will appeal to you.” I am aware that Romans and Acts have some passages which are considered “slam-dunk” passages (read: no interpretation required). But let’s hold off judgment for a couple of weeks so that we can approach this issue with an open mind. Here are three examples that I have in mind:

1) We get some straightforward theology from the mouth of Jesus from a much-quoted passage in John 10: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (v.14). What is not so well-known is verse 16: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Here Jesus characterizes a group of people who are unaware of who he is, since they are not of the fold that is marked out by their knowledge of him. But despite the ignorance of the second flock, they join the original flock, so that the flock is one. Apparently then, they did not know God, but God knew them.

2) And speaking of sheep, who can forget the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46? Why were some sheep, destined for eternal glory, and why were some goats? Jesus says that the reason for the declaration that some were sheep was their willingness to provide for the physical needs of the have-nots (vs. 35, 42). So according to Matthew 25, it seems that some are born-again without even being aware of this fact! The sheep actually seem to be surprised that they are the objects of God’s mercy (v. 37).

3) We know that Jesus says “I am the way, truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” But we never stop hearing the conservative interpretation of the passage: only those who know and approve of the Gospel are “getting in.” (I heard this interpretation yesterday in church, in fact, with sarcasm that there could be any disagreement). However, what can be called “the Old Testament problem” poses a serious dilemma for this interpretation. We know that Abraham, for example, was justified by taking God at his word, but he certainly did not believe in Jesus, and thus not in the Gospel (the whole time-space continuum made sure of that). So Abraham was saved through Christ (we know this because he is part of “no man”), but he had no knowledge of this fact! All he knew was God’s voice. This same thinking applies to anyone that was saved before, say, A.D. 33. Conservatives seem to believe that God used to have this power to use Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of those who did not know, but now he has lost it.

In this vein, I will single out one of my favorite passages of Scripture, which is the extremely brief account of Zaccheus’ meeting with Jesus in Luke 19. Zaccheus, for some unknown reason, was intrigued by Jesus, and so Jesus invited himself over. This was all it took for Zaccheus to realize that his life of injustice was no good, and that it had to change fast: “if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (v. 8). What was Jesus’ response to this? Surely he laid out a theology lesson, or at least pulled out a four laws booklet? No need: “Today salvation has come to this house.” That day, Zaccheus was turned from a tax collector who inevitably defrauded the have-nots, into a lover (I John 4:7,8). What a salvation experience! Zaccheus was clearly born for the second time. He didn’t know about the Gospel, or about propitiation, or about redemption (time-space, remember?). But he was saved. I’m sure that once he learned some real theology in say, A.D. 34, he was much better off in his understanding of his own salvation. But that came after his real transformation.

A Theology of Love, Part IV

Last week I suggested that faith is not the product of some kind of rational choice. The larger point I am trying to make is that the causal relationship between faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit has been thought of wrongly. People often believe that one’s faith decision is the cause of the presence of the Holy Spirit: “if you believe the right things, then you will receive the Holy Spirit.” But this is the height of arrogance. This is no better than those who believe that if they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do enough “good works,” then they have earned the right to God's favor.

Instead, in Galatians 5, Paul describes faith as one manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit. That is to say, having the Spirit is the cause of one having faith, rather than the other way around. This seems odd, but think about what else is on that list: self-control! Yes, that means that Paul believes that the ability to control yourself is not the product of your own efforts.

This shows us that faith and love are have the same origins: they are both part of the fruit of the Spirit. This, however, does not imply that they are equally as valuable. In I Corinthians 13, Paul makes an astonishing comparison. He directly compares love, hope and faith and says very simply that “the greatest of these is love.”

We are perhaps starting to see a pattern, and some Pauline support for John’s radical claim that only those who love are born of God. Perhaps John’s claim isn’t as unusual as it first appeared. I want to give more support to this claim over the next two weeks by pulling out passages which state that either 1) that faith is not necessary part of the “born-again” process, or 2) that faith is not sufficient to account for being “born-again.”

A Theology of Love, Part III

One initial worry that the conservative will have is that I John 4:7,8, which I have characterized as fundamental for understanding salvation, doesn’t mention “faith” or “belief” (although they are implied later on in the passage). We need to get clear on the relationship between faith and love. But before that, we should talk about one thing that faith is not.

The first important realization concerning faith is that we must admit that it is not the product of some kind of objective analysis that comes from our own thought process. This is a common misconception in the evangelical world, as evidenced by such apologetics book titles as The Case for Faith, or Evidence that Demands a Verdict. These books make it sound that all that is required to acquire Christian faith is an open, honest, and dispassionate examination of the evidence. But this is simply not how human reason works. Nietzsche, whom I consider backwards a lot of the time, does make an accurate analysis of reason. He says that objectivity is a myth. Instead, we acquire certain beliefs – be they religious, moral, or otherwise – and then use reason to make our beliefs seem appealing.

Those who believe that our beliefs are formed by our objective use of reason have the formula exactly backwards; it is rather that we brandish reason like a club in an effort to defend the beliefs that we already find ourselves with. If you have much contact with philosophy, you will see this point immediately. For example, if someone wants to prove the existence of God, or that people have a free will, etc., they will likely be able to do it! And if someone wants to disprove the existence of God, or that people are determined, etc., they can also always succeed! On issues such as these (we philosophers call them metaphysical issues) the person that wins the argument is the person who talks last.

This point is seconded all throughout the Scriptures, where we find constant examples of “God hardening” someone’s heart (Exodus 14:4), or Jesus speaking in parables with the intention of not being understood (because they wouldn’t understand anyway, he says; for another sort of example, see Luke 16:31). Why is the message of the cross foolishness to some, while it makes a lot of sense to others? Is it intelligence? No. There are geniuses on both sides of this debate, and we certainly know that both sides have their morons. The truth is that no one has any idea why some believe and some don’t. This is a difficult teaching – for my money, the most difficult for any Christian, but it doesn’t stop it from being right. The origins of religious faith are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable.

A Theology of Love, Part II

Last week I made the heretically orthodox claim that I John 4:7,8 was the key to understanding the whole New Testament. Before delving into a defense of my position, I’ll attempt to cut off a potential misunderstanding. Someone may think be tempted to think of this verse as meaningless, since everyone loves – even people who are often evil. So it is important to make some comments about the meaning of “love” itself. As one with a vague familiarity of Christianity might expect, John uses the Greek word “agape” in this passage. There are several common words that are used to grasp the meaning of agape-love, such as “unconditional” or “self-giving.” I don’t want to go so far as to say that these characterizations are misleading, but they are certainly not as helpful as they could be. What is more interesting is agape’s relationship to the other two main Greek words for love – “eros,” and “philia.”

Eros, of course, is where our word erotic comes from, which accurately indicates sexuality. Philia describes the kind of love in a friendship, or perhaps in some family relationships. These two loves are both based in desire. The lover desires the beloved in some way, because the lover lacks something that can be provided by the beloved. I get the feeling that we are expected to think of agape-love as essentially different from these first two forms of love, in that desire is not the central element in the agape-love relationship; the agape lover supposedly loves the beloved in a non-desiring way.

I don’t think that this is right. It seems to be that desire is the central feature in all kinds of love. The difference is merely in what is desired, and who benefits. The lover obviously benefits in some way in eros and philia love when the desire is fulfilled – be it sexually, or by acquiring a friend. And since the lover benefits (even if someone else does as well), these first two kinds of love are essentially selfish. Of course selfishness may be a bad thing, but it is certainly not bad all the time. We desire friends because we don’t want to be lonely, so in a sense we are using them for our own selfish purposes. We desire our mates erotically, as so we are using them to satisfy our selfish desires. But what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all!

But agape-love is rooted in a different sort of desiring. It is a desire, to be sure, but a desire to benefit someone else without concern about whether that kindness is ever reciprocated. This is quite different from friendship love. If I had a “friend” that never reciprocated my friendly actions, I would simply find a new friend.

John then is saying that “Everyone who agapes is born of God and knows God.” The truth is that eros-love and philia-love are natural, humanly ways to love. The presence of them in your life indicates nothing except perhaps that you are a normal, rational human being. But agape-love? That is divine, since it is unnatural.

And let’s not be confused – agape-love does exist, despite what the skeptics say. A skeptical argument runs like this: “But when you help someone, you feel better, and so you are benefited. Therefore even what the Christians call agape-love is selfish, in the end” (there actually was a pretty good Friends episode about this – Phoebe was unable to find any good works to do that did not make her feel good). To the skeptics, I point out that they are missing the point. What is interesting is not that someone feels good about being a Good Samaritan (for they do); what is interesting is that they desire to be a Good Samaritan in the first place! We are all satisfying our desires when we love. Its just that some have desires that are born of God. Those are the people that are born again.

A Theology of Love, Part I

I was going to do one more blog about health care, but I was getting bored. Also, my mind keeps wondering off to I John 4, and so that what I want to talk about that for a while. Here are verses 7 & 8 in the English Standard Version:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

The question I want to pursue for the next several weeks is simple: “Could this verse mean what it seems to mean?” Because it seems to say that whoever loves is a born-again Christian. This brings some very difficult questions to mind, such as “What about faith?” Since the rest of the New Testament places so much emphasis on faith, and since this passage seems to foist love in the place of faith, aren't we obligated to reinterpret this passage so that what it seems to mean on the surface is not what it actually means? Another obvious issue: “Doesn’t everyone love?” I mean, after all, we can all think of evil people who love their mothers. So doesn’t that make this verse irrelevant at best, and absurd at worst?

I’ll say two things by way of introduction. First, I do believe that it does indeed mean exactly what it seems to mean: those who love are born again, and those who don’t love are not born again. One way I will try to establish this conviction is by showing that this is not some renegade verse in the context of the New Testament. Rather, it helps us make sense of every other statement in the New Testament – perhaps for the first time! I love verse 8 because I can picture John sitting there after writing verse 7: “whoever loves has been born of God…” He twirls his quill pen for a minute, and then realizes that his future commentators might screw up his meaning, so he adds verse 8: “Anyone who does not love does not know God…” By expressing this same idea in the negative, he has covered all his logical bases.

Second, I will admit that it is not immediately obvious how this verse is reconcilable with the “football game verses.” For instance, John 3:16 seems to say that belief or faith is fundamental to the “born again” formula. I, however, believe that John 3:16, among many other passages, has not been interpreted correctly by those who refer to themselves as “born-again Christians.” So in the next few weeks, I want to show how I John 4 is the key to opening up the New Testament, and why the New Testament as a whole supports the message that only lovers are born again. So get ready for plenty of heresy the next few weeks!