The Awfully Big Adventure of being a Traditional Christian

Society is changing. That is a truism because that is what society does. Hairstyles and fashions come and go – one generation’s cutting edge is another generation’s ridiculous. Ideas and philosophies wax and wane in the same way: perhaps in longer cycles, but with just as finite a life span as a mullet or crepe shoes. 

 

I think it was William Inge who said, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Despite this wisdom from the good Dean, the church has always had at least a wing that has been determined to cosy up to the latest wave of

fashionable thought. 

In fact, society, even at its most Christian-influenced, is always going to be in tension with the church. In its thought-life it will be in conflict with God’s revelation. The swirling and apparently chaotic currents of politics and human thought can be summed up as “the heathen raging and the peoples imagining a vain thing” – a superficially confused and meaningless roar of white noise that in reality has one thread running through it – opposition to God and his Messiah. The church’s role is to provide a prophetic voice that challenges society in that rebellion. 

Charles Finney

When the church – or parts of it – capitulate to the zeitgeist philosophically and ethically, the church loses any possibility of maintaining that prophetic role. This has happened time after time, in one way or another. The grafting in of imperial power structures and pagan practices into the church through and after Constantine emasculated us for centuries. The Protestant Reformation both benefitted from and was compromised by Renaissance humanism and the political and personal desire of kings and princes to loosen the authority of the Roman see. Finney’s methodologically driven individualistic Arminianism fitted just too neatly into the new American Dream where the salesman was king.  And many churches failed to see that 

Churchmen with Nazi leaders 

the hopes of German renewal offered by the National Socialists in the 30s were utterly incompatible with the gospel; their compromise has damaged the impact of some denominations to this day. 

In all of these cases, I think the church would have claimed to be culturally relevant, to be moving with the times, to be at the cutting edge, to be maintaining its prophetic voice. And in every case we can now discern, with hindsight, the damage that was done and the weaknesses that were left. 

Over the last decade the pace of change in the West feels as if it has picked up. Ideology which was creeping in through the humanities departments of the universities when I was an undergraduate is now quite suddenly dominant. As a Biology undergraduate at the turn of the 80s I lived in a staunchly Modern world. The heroes were Dawkins and Maynard-Smith – and if as a Christian with qualms about evolution you found them to be villains, you knew exactly what weapons you needed to fight them. But right back then, very strange things were being said by my friends studying sociology and social anthropology which I simply couldn’t get a handle on. Truth is all relative?? What is true in one culture is not true in another? The meaning of  a book is defined by the reader, not the author?? Frankly, it seemed crazy, utterly stupid, nonsense. I was a thoroughly Modern man. (And still, to be honest, feel most comfortable when the discussion is controlled by those presuppositions.)

John Maynard Smith

But it is that Postmodern, relativist stream which now dominates our society, our culture, our media. Dawkins is a dinosaur, a representative of a bygone age. I’d still watch his teeth, but he is by no means a great force. No, the big issue is the dominance of the Relative. We are no longer modern, we are post-modern.  

And the church, of course, is tempted to buy into that. Given that society is ever less patient with absolutism and certainty, it is not hard to sense the potential “benefit” of running with that. In a world which rejects any idea of an overarching metanarrative, the church now says it’s wrong to see such an overarching narrative even in the Bible itself. In a world where sexuality has been utterly privatised, with behaviour and identity infinitely malleable, the church says that sexual/gender inclusion has always been central to the gospel when properly understood. In a world where everything must be affirmed, where all must have prizes, where negativity is the only negative, the church says that the gospel is one of self-realisation, that ultimately God's Love utterly dissolves every barrier, and that there is no hell to flee, because all will ultimately be gathered home. 

And, of course, such belief is always put forward as being brave and bold. Those who espouse the new approach are always ‘cutting edge’. They are always ‘reaching those the traditional church has failed’, they are ‘making a safe space for questioning people’, they are touching the lives of those who have been mistreated or marginalised by more restrictive forms. Traditional Christianity, on the other hand, is seen as staid, closed-minded, boring, harsh, irrelevant – a cause of the problems we face, not their solution. 

I want to challenge this. I want to challenge it because the post-modern wave will pass in its turn, and the church that has embraced it so passionately will be left a widower once again. But I also want to challenge it because it is nonsense. It is not the traditional stream of orthodox Christianity that is spineless, boring and unadventurous. The exact opposite is the case. 

There is nothing so boring and predictable and ultimately self-indulgent as “Christianity” when it ends up simply absorbing the zeitgeist, and not least because the church never does it as well as the world. But also because in the name of boldness, the church becomes just another yes-man, the culture’s parrot, squawking along to the current trend. It’s all so predictable! And tragically, the world finds it laughable – do you remember Not the Nine O’clock news and the CofE Satanists sketch? 

 

By contrast, standing for classic doctrinal orthodoxy, for belief in the inspiration and authority of scripture, for the uniqueness of Jesus in his person and work, for the reality of the future justice that he will bring when he returns, for a view of sexuality and marriage that has come to be hated and even outlawed, for the absolute need each of us has of personal regeneration, transformation through the direct working in us of the Spirit of God – believing and proclaiming such things is actually very scary. It requires real courage.  

We are entering a time in which it is very easy to imagine Christian pastors being reported to the police by members of their own congregations for things said in the pulpit. There is a great deal of hate and malevolence in our supposedly tolerant culture and, be assured, it will drive massive wedges into the church too. At such a time, thinking and speaking classic doctrine and classic morality takes a lot of nerve. And faith. 

The challenge is on. I have blown it in the past, destroying my ministry through spiritual coolness and moral failure. I don’t want to blow it again, through simply chickening out. I don’t have a public preaching ministry any more, but I know I must do what I can, which is write and agitate. Will you join the movement? :-) 

Terry Heyward on A Chralaig

The Salvation Army and the church in the West as a whole need adventurers. It needs bold compassionate people who will speak the truth in love.  People for whom the gracious welcome of a gospel-driven church is authentic and Christ-like. They do not deny the reality of sin, nor put grace and the challenge to repent into a false opposition. They know that Jesus tackled the would-be stoners of the adulterous woman ruthlessly, and spoke to her in firm kindness, “Go, and sin no more.”  That is Christ-shaped, bold grace. It is scary, because it offends both pharisaic-church and worldly-church, but it is good. So good.

The church needs people who will resist the incursion of the spirit of the age. People who will say No to making the gospel easier to believe, because they know that the gospel is always impossible to believe anyway. People who will not confuse resistance to the spirit of the age with simple conservatism, mind you, still less a hankering after the spirit of the previous age. (Vague, amorphous, viciously tolerant postmodernity is not necessarily any worse overall than spiky, proud, pushy modernity – it just has different points of weakness and rebellion.) 

The church needs prophets. It needs to learn again to raise its voice in gospel proclamation. I do not see Elijah on Carmel making a safe space for spiritual exploration, I do not hear Paul in Athens affirming the whole variety of spiritual experience. And I don’t imagine that the married monk of Wittenberg, or Wesley at Bristol, or Booth in Whitechapel were a particularly cosy listen. If the church is to proclaim the Living God and his Son, sent to save us, it will not be or feel particularly safe. I’m sorry folks, but we need to be a bit less Michael Mcintyre, and a bit more Stewart Lee.

John Wesley preaching

The church – in my own context the Salvation Army – needs leaders who will be brave and bold regarding the doctrines and moral positions of the church. Clearly, leading an international movement of this size is an appalling responsibility and an impossible challenge. The fact of our interaction with government and social services makes this no easier – arguably it makes fatal compromise almost inevitable. I do not envy the leaders’ role! But it is right to place the challenge – doctrinal incoherence and moral equivocation will not take the movement forward, and nor are they loving. Allowing the teaching of positions that directly contradict (for instance) doctrine 11 may seem gracious and kind, but actually it betrays every supporter who gives towards the army’s ministry in the expectation that the doctrines will be upheld. The dream of an “inclusive church” which refuses to call out sexual sin is very cruel and unloving towards the person who struggles with particular temptations and has the right to expect the church to give support in that struggle. Failing to call to repentance is not loving – it is a dereliction of duty that hurts people, now and eternally. 

We are in an adventure, folks, and it is going to be a wild ride. The bold path, the daring, courageous way ahead, clings to the line of God’s truth while every wind of changing culture tries to blow us off course. We will stick to the eternally relevant word even as fellow Christians scorn our “irrelevance". We will not be traditional for the sake of it – we long to see more light shining from the Word – but we do not see any light at all where the Word itself is despised. 

G K Chesterton

I do not follow Chesterton in every last detail of this famous piece from his book Orthodoxy, but the overall argument is stunning, and we need to recover it: 

 

…it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, anyone can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the north. Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards. Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

  

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

Boundless Salvation?

My experience of Boundless was strictly limited – very definitely not infinite! I was able to attend just two sessions of Boundless Theology, the one day event at William Booth College that closed the Congress’ activities on the Monday. From a range of options I chose a first session on teaching patterns in local churches - corps and SA ministries. It wasn’t strictly theological, being largely a discussion of how the pedagogical theory of “learning styles” can be applied in ministry.

 

The second and final session I was able to attend was on the doctrine of hell, with Phil Garnham. It was theological; it was well structured; it was strongly and persuasively argued. The title was “Endless Punishment – Is salvation really boundless?” What follows is a brief synopsis, with some verbatim quotes. 

 

Catherine Booth

The session started with some thoughts on Catherine Booth. Although there is a “massive weight of scripture against female ministry” she showed that this was not the only strand in the Bible. It was a shame, given her ability to show a counter argument in such a way, that she did not live long enough to engage with the doctrine of hell. (The fact that William outlived her by 22 years and never rethought the position was not mentioned.)

 

The main streams of Christian thought on the matter were then sketched out: annihilationists/conditionalists, for whom there is a final death as opposed to endless punishment;  universalists (though this term was not used, as I recall), for whom there will be an ultimate reconciliation of all people in Christ;  and those who believe in an eternal hell. William Booth was a passionate advocate of this last, traditional doctrine of hell.

 

There followed a brief discussion of the biblical language used to describe the destination of people after death. One conclusion was that, with regard to Gehenna, “there is no irrefutable evidence that can lead to any certain understanding of the meaning of the word.”

 

This opens the possibility of the burning rubbish dump being something akin to purgatory (although that word was not used). For restorationists there will be a “purifying fire that will prepare us for the coming life with the God of love.”

 

Jacobus Arminius

Reference was made to the SA's Arminian roots. “We are against Calvinism - the terrible doctrine. Calvinism can't speak of the God of love in any meaningful sense. A dark doctrine indeed.” But then we were told of the “dark side of Arminian theology” – that salvation is “utterly bounded by the choices of human beings. We stress the love of God but we lose the boundlessness due to our sinful choices.”

 

A way out of these theological black holes and into a truly boundless view of salvation began with the assertion that there is “no clear cut scripture to say you must decide for Christ before you die.” 1 Peter 3:19 was cited as hinting at post mortem evangelism. And where our sinful nature makes choosing the right path seemingly impossible, “what is impossible with man is possible with God.” God's sovereignty and human free will can be seen together in the illustration of the chess grandmaster, whose defeat of a novice is utterly certain, even as the novice plays his best using his own free decisions along the way. So God will universally outwit human choices that at present seem to thwart his grace.

 

The argument’s conclusion was that the strongest biblical case is for ultimate reconciliation of all in Christ, after the ‘purifying flame’ for those who do not accept Christ in this life. This really is boundless salvation. God has no dark side. The whole world really will be redeemed!

 

It was affirmed (as an approving answer to a suggestion from the floor) that the doctrine of hell was developed by the mediaeval church to control the masses. It is not Biblical at all.

 

Finally, William Booth’s understanding of hell as a place of conscious torment was criticised, humorously, on the grounds that “he didn’t even work out that dead bodies don't have nerve endings.” 

 

Now, much could be said about all of this. In the theological tradition from which I come, conditional immortality, or annihilationism, is a more common option than universalism, as we recoil from the appalling weight and horror of the traditional teaching, but debates have also frequently touched on the kind of universalism discussed at Boundless Theology. I found it fascinating. Universalism of the Barthian type, which marries the Calvinistic notion of the efficacy of the atonement (all for whom Christ died will certainly be saved) with the Arminian notion of the extent of the atonement (Christ died for all) seems to be what is in view, although what place does this “purifying flame” have in the light of grace? Unless the flame is instantaneous (perhaps 'in the twinkling of an eye’ as some have put it), or is simply a symbol of a purifying with no element of pain or suffering at all, it seems to reintroduce God as celestial Torturer at some level, even if not an eternal one. The Cosmic Chess player wins – by burning his foes till they inevitably submit? Too many questions were raised for me by that thought.

 

With regard to the exegetical questions, I had that feeling, as so often in contemporary theological discussions, that what we were left with was the summing of a number of “the word COULD mean this” arguments. In each phase, the understanding of a text is picked from one end of a spectrum of possible semantic options, and then a number of such similar results is brought together to form a conclusion. A “possible reading” on top of a “possible reading” on top of a “possible reading”. But the “sum” often seems so out of kilter with all traditional understandings of scripture, so utterly modern, that we are left gasping. In this case, I was left wondering how on earth Paul could ever have described the Thessalonians’ experience of the gospel in this way:

 

1 Thessalonians 1:9b-10 They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

 

That sure sounds like more than a benign purifying flame to me!

 

But the glaring issue for me is even more basic than the truth value of what was taught. The debate can and should be had, of course. But the context of the debate is everything. My concern has to do with the nature of the Soldier’s and Officer’s covenant within the Salvation Army. The lecture was given at William Booth College. I believe that similar material and arguments are brought to the attention of cadets who are candidates for officership at the college. Clearly a range of "options” is taught, but there is no doubt that this kind of Universalism is in the air. The cadets who go on to officership (the vast majority) will stand in Central Hall, Westminster and affirm their belief in the following statement:

Statue of William Booth at the college
that bears his name

We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgement at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked.

 

What seems to me to be problematic is any implication that it might be possible to agree with the teaching of the lecture and still make such an affirmation. Whatever one makes of the session, and whatever one makes of the Eleventh Doctrine of the Salvation Army, to see them as compatible requires a degree of Orwellian doublethink (glorified now as postmodern deconstruction) that takes the breath away and leaves words, affirmations, vows and covenants with no real meaning or value at all. Someone who can believe the content of the Boundless Salvation? lecture and affirm Doctrine 11 seems to me to be in the position of a bridegroom who can vow “forsaking all others” while harbouring the express intention of sleeping around, starting with the bridesmaids. There is a catastrophic failure of integrity.

 

I know what it is to minister under the cloud of broken integrity. I left the ministry after a pressure built within me over a period of years that my words and thoughts and actions did not match up. I am not a Perfectionist (one reason why I am an adherent not a soldier), and I know that every preacher is a sinner, but I felt that I had reached the point where “the lie” was just too big and I could not in any way look to God to bless my ministry. I left the work I loved.

 

A significant proportion of SA cadets come from Corps where the Doctrines have never been stressed. Some have never read the whole Bible. Although a range of positions is taught at the college, I think it would be fair to say that the pervasive atmosphere is one of some hostility or at least mockery towards traditionalism and excited embrace of the new and radical. Cadets’ positions by the end of their time at college thus reflect a whole range of influences and “options”. A significant number are Universalists. (A thoughtful, and certainly not fundamentalist, friend from a recent Session put the proportion at perhaps a quarter “open” to this, with a handful fully convinced and keen to persuade others. The remaining 75% were a mix of Traditionalists and Annihilationists, with the proportions of those two groups hard to determine as in his Session it was Universalism which was more of a live issue.) As cadets prepare for commissioning, the issue of what to do with the Doctrines, and especially Doctrine 11, becomes pressing. How do the non-traditionalists, both Universalists and Annihilationists, deal with the moment of doctrinal affirmation in Central Hall?

I have heard discussion of a number of possible solutions. Some would sidestep by saying that the affirmation is not one of personal belief but of “this is what the Salvation Army as a body teaches.” But that is not what the preamble says. Some may only soundlessly mouth the words at commissioning, or shut their mouths for the final phrase. Perhaps still others say the words, but with reservations or downright disagreement. 

 

Sometimes people say that Universalism or Annihilationism were not live options at the time the Army was founded – that Booth’s very strong emphasis on Hell was not tested by contemporary alternatives. This is akin to the Catherine Booth argument in the seminar – ‘if she had lived long enough... if he had known of other views... they would not have insisted on this doctrine, and we can make our “affirmation” knowing that the trajectory of the Army was towards a more liberal view.’ But the premise is wrong – the other options were very much alive back then. The intended meaning of the Doctrine is not in any debate. In a paper on “How to use the Bible” the General wrote:

There are plenty of arguments designed to lessen the importance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, or to explain away its merit altogether, although the spirit of that sacrifice and the blessing it brings are the glory of the Bible. There is plenty of interpretation of the Bible which vainly attempts to explain away the punishment of the wicked, so clearly announced in its pages. Take away those things, and the Bible becomes not only ordinary, but an uninteresting book, to be neither feared nor cared for.

 

A frequent mantra is that “doctrine changes” or that “doctrines change”. But they don’t. People change – what they once believed, they no longer believe. Ditto, churches. Doctrinal statements remain, and people and churches of integrity who find that they have shifted theologically don’t claim to believe the same forms of words they used to affirm. Where the doctrines remain, unedited, in black and white, they should challenge the consciences of those who say they believe them, but think and teach otherwise.

 

To repeat, I am not saying that there is no cogency in the Universalist case as presented. Nor am I disputing the value of debate. Nor am I even defending the Doctrines of the Salvation Army as such – after all, I am not a soldier precisely because I cannot affirm some of them. But I am pleading for integrity in ministry – in teaching and at commissioning and in the ongoing preparation of soldiers and candidates.

 

When I was ordained, it was, I think, with integrity. I was a sinner, but there was no intrinsic lie built into the intentions of that day in and of itself. Over the years, of professionalisation and temptation, I lost that, and left. But it makes me tremble to think of building in a lie right at the very beginnings of ministry. For that is what it is: for every effort to deconstruct and mollify it, a person who affirms belief in Doctrine 11 while believing in Universal Salvation, or Annihilation for that matter, is telling a lie.

The Salvation Army is justifiably conscious of its own history as a church. There is much mention of the Founder, and his hymns are sung and his words are quoted frequently. But there is a certain hypocrisy in such fondness if the doctrine which was so central to his motivation to do all that he did is fudged in this way. What would Booth, who wrote “We have not developed and improved into Universalism, Unitarianism, or Nothingarianism, or any other form of infidelity, and we don’t expect to”, make of the Boundless lecture? What would WB make of WBC?

 

And more. There are many thousands who believe the Doctrines and who by their giving maintain WBC and support its ministry and the ministry of those who are trained there. Such people would be surprised by the assertion that there is no biblical support telling people that they must put things right with God in this life. They would be more surprised still by the idea that a Salvationist might teach a kind of purgatory, followed by universal salvation.  To accept support from such people and teach something utterly different is really a kind of theft. So long as one humble supporter believes the Doctrines as written, let our consciences bind us, or take us elsewhere.

 

The Salvation Army is dying in the UK. To quote a friend, who culled these figures: “in the 1960’s there were around 100,000 senior Soldiers in the UK Territory. By 1998 it had reached 48,000. Today it’s at 27,000.” There is a caveat: “the curve is getting less steep, and we weren’t as efficient in measuring stats in the 1960s. And in the UK soldiership isn't the best way to measure the size of the Army, as in many places attendance is on the rise, but people don’t commit to soldiership (or adherency) in the same way any more.” Even so, the situation is dire.

 

I personally believe that the only way ahead is to proclaim the old truths, graciously but uncompromisingly, and in contemporarily relevant forms; it is to stick to the gospel as preached by the founders with new fervour and prayerfulness. Others may think that a Universalist message is what is needed. In my opinion this has not helped the other denominations that have shrunk even further than we have as they have gone down the liberal route, and in any case, no one has the right to teach Universalism under the banner of the Salvation Army. But what is really clear is that we can’t go down both these paths at once and maintain any credibility. The Army and the UK need a clear and coherent message, preached with integrity.

Integrity in preaching is not a matter of doctrine only. The subject of Doctrine 11, as with other Doctrines, but particularity so, demands an integrity of the whole person. To “believe” Doctrine 11 glibly or flippantly is not really to believe it at all. Part of the recovery of doctrinal integrity in the Army will be the recovery of seriousness and earnestness. People of humanity, humour and warmth we may be, we must be, but people of flippancy or silliness about this doctrine we dare not be. To believe it is to tremble.  To believe it is to look on the world with concern and pity and compassion and love. To believe it is to take action. The doctrine is a call to arms - to preach and reach out and argue and persuade with all love and urgency. 

No challenge to cadets could be more worthy of the college that bears William Booth’s name than that.  

May God help us all.