Time for a bit more depravity

Some time ago I wrote a blog on the doctrine of total depravity. Various subsequent conversations have kept bringing me back to the subject. In The Salvation Army it is a key issue, possibly ranking only just behind the doctrine of scripture as an indicator of where we are and where we are going. In particular, the common misconception that there can only be responsibility where there is innate ability is a constant point of attrition, and reflects a misunderstanding of the doctrine of sin. 

What I have noticed is a tendency to set the doctrine of sin over against the doctrine of the image of God, in such a way that the two modify, or leak into, each other. The confusion gets worse still when the Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace is added to the mix. 

So, by way of just one example, in a Facebook conversation about whether we are "naturally attracted to holiness", a friend who is a Salvationist can say, "Although I agree that we need to know we are sick to know we need medicine, I think, although we naturally side with sin since the fall, God also does give us the power and the choice to live a life of Holiness. Because although we are fallen we also are made in the image of God, even if the fallenness does come out more often than not."

In that paragraph, the doctrines of Image, Sin and Grace are swirling around and intermixed. If "God gives us power" were related to grace, it would not be so problematic, but it seems to be based in the image of God. The result is, effectively, a watering down of total depravity which, as I hope my last piece made clear, takes the real urgency out of the gospel of Jesus and leaves us in the same boat as all the other religions.

The problem starts with a lack of appreciation of salvation history. If the doctrines concerned are only viewed in the abstract, uprooted from their place in the Story, then there will be a greater risk of 'leakage' between them. Salvation history should ground us. The image of God is a concept from creation; whatever happens to that concept as a result of sin, it must be understood as starting in that pre-fall condition. Total depravity describes the condition of those who are in the image of God. It is post fall; it describes the spiritual inability of fallen people. It cannot be "modified" by the Imago Dei; rather, it assumes it, as the Image is the very backdrop against which sin, and the doctrine of sin, comes in. Finally, God's grace is revealed, starting in the sequence of curses that come with the fall. There will be a victory over the enemy: a victory on behalf of people made in the image of God who have fallen into total depravity. 

As we move from the methodology of Biblical Theology towards a systematic approach, taking these doctrines out of their salvation history context and expressing them as abstract ideas, we need to take special care to still keep them separate. 

The Image of God (often called the Imago Dei; a bit of Latin sounds impressive!) is about the purpose and honour of humankind as created. In an era when kings set up statues in their likeness in the city squares of their empire, where heralds would stand in front of those images and proclaim their laws and demands for tribute, the language of "Image and likeness" was instantly recognisable when describing man as the one who would "have dominion" as God's regent and representative on earth. Within the framework of the narrative of the handiwork of God in Gen 1, the Image of God sets the human race apart as the pinnacle of his creativity, with particular dignity and honour within the created order, but the phrase above all highlights our purpose within the world. We are not merely in the image of God; we are the image of God. 

The fall ushers in the era of failure to live up to purpose, and it does so precisely because the fall IS radical failure at the very heart of that purpose. Human dominion is to be under God; the world is there to be explored and enjoyed in submission to his supreme rule.  The exploration and enjoyment is to be shaped at its heart - at the centre of the map - by a seemingly arbitrary commandment whose purpose is to demonstrate commitment to his higher authority. At the moment that the couple eat the fruit, they come to the "knowledge of good and evil" in the sense of taking it upon themselves to define their own moral boundaries, instead of submitting to the creator. They are no longer heralds of his will, the spokespeople of his voice into the world. They now declare their own wills, and all hell (some hell, actually) is let loose. 

Imagine a magnificent car, from the classic era of big touring cars. Something like a 4.5 litre Bentley. Imagine it in perfect road condition, built for speed, able to race, turning heads, an awesomely beautiful machine. Then someone comes along and takes a crowbar to the valve rockers. They use the same tool to twist and distort the brake mechanism out of all functionality. They remove the steering wheel. They syphon out the fuel, and for good measure they blow up the oil wells and refineries; the fuel is made completely unavailable. 

The car is still magnificent. It is still intrinsically beautiful and valuable. But its fitness for purpose is utterly wrecked. It cannot move. If it rolls down a hill it is at the mercy of every bump and twist in the ground. It can't stop at the bottom. It cannot be moved uphill except by an outside force. It is impressive and full of grandeur. Further vandalism would still be crime, but it is totally unable to fulfil its purpose. 

We are not machines, but that is a description of total depravity. The dignity and worth of the image remains, but functionality is hopelessly compromised. Every aspect of purpose is affected and rendered useless. If you saw the wrecked car in motion, you would know that it was more of a danger than a joy. If you saw a number of them rolling down a hillside, you would know that, despite apparently chaotic paths taken, they had one thing in common - the downhill pull of gravity. 

No, we are not cars. A car can't wreck itself, which is what we did. But insofar as any illustration is useful, the car helps. We are beautiful, but unfit for purpose. Valuable but unable to fulfil our role. Pushed about by circumstances and trends of thought instead of ruling with maturity and stability under God. In the chaos of human existence, the one thread running through human behaviour is sin, as we career downhill and away from our Creator. 

What we must not do is play the doctrines of Image and Depravity off against each other. We are not permitted to look at that classic, wrecked, car and say, "It's so beautiful - I can't believe it's useless!" or, conversely, "It's so wrecked, it can't have any value!" Rather, the brilliant glory of the Creator is seen precisely in the fact that something of his magnificence is still so clear even in his vandalised handiwork. And the gravity of sin is highlighted by the grandeur and obvious dignity of what was wrecked. 

It is against that backdrop that we see grace. We are utterly unable and utterly undeserving to be what we ought to be, even though what we ought to be is written all over us. And yet, instead of coming in judgement, God comes to our wrecked creaturehood to bring light, to repair, to enable. His grace operates at precisely the level where the fall occurred - he draws us to a humble submission to his word and away from proud, independent self-sufficiency and self-determination. But the Word to which we are drawn is not simply a word of command, the proving point of who has authority in the world, but a Word of promise, the commitment of the Creator to forgive, to re-create, to transform, to re-form humanity. By grace we are remade in the full glory and perfection of his unspoiled image, gathered round a new man, our head, our captain, our champion, our authentic Adam, Jesus Christ.
  

In a depraved world such grace is "wholly other".  It isn't an outcropping of the image of God - it isn't a "bit of goodness left in us". It is all from God and it is all new. Once again, we mix the concepts at our peril. Leakage of Image into Grace will destroy the doctrine of Depravity - and then grace will no longer be grace. 

Last Saturday saw the commissioning in London of new lieutenants of the Messengers of Light session. The Territorial Commander spoke of exactly the distinctions seen in these doctrines, but in terms of light and darkness. Into a world of original chaos and darkness, God spoke Light at creation. But then human beings, the shining crown jewel of God's brilliant creation, chose darkness instead of light. We chose it, it overthrew us, we wallowed in it. And into that new, man-chosen darkness, God spoke light again. Personified light. Light incarnate. The Light of the world. And for those new lieutenants, as for every Christian, our calling is to carry that light into the world.  The way to be faithful Messengers of Light is to live in the light consistently, and to communicate the light in truthful words. Nowhere is that more critical than in clarity on sin and grace. 

In the beginning...

In the beginning, at the dawn of time,
we walked the earth in dignity sublime;

as his own image God had made mankind,

for him to live, and in him meaning find.

2 But Adam fell, and with him all our race;
now we’re made perfect only by God’s grace;
but, though we marred his image in the fall,
still marks of glory dignify us all.

3 Lord, may we value all with highest worth,
whatever race or class they are by birth;
honour the old, protect the unborn life,
though all around is cruelty and strife. 

4 Lord, may we love and serve our neighbour well,
Christ’s kindness show, his glorious gospel tell;

till he returns, our Saviour come again,

to end injustice, and in truth to reign.

 

5 Then we shall see him as he really is,

and shall be like him, in his sinlessness;

then, as his image, we will praise, adore

and, in his likeness, serve him evermore.

Andrew King (1961-)

© Christchurch Haywards Heath, administered by Praise! Trust

Recommended tune: Ellers

 

On this day... the Birmingham Church Bombing, 1963

On this day in 1963 the children were arriving into their classrooms for Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The lesson set was, "The Love that Forgives," based on the Sermon on the Mount in Mat 5:43, 44. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy' but I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

At around twenty past ten a bomb made up from a dozen or so sticks of dynamite planted near the back porch of the church building exploded. Glass windows blew out, roofing timbers fell into the sanctuary, pews were splintered and the rooms nearest the blast were devastated.

Back in those days of segregation it was an all-white police force that arrived on the scene to restore order, but black church members who sifted through the rubble and immediately tended the

wounded. Four young girls had been killed - Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley. The broken body of one was found and lifted from the rubble by her own grandfather. Seventeen other people were more or less severely injured. Given that there were 400 people in the building at the time, this was actually a remarkable low toll, but utterly dreadful, nonetheless.



Birmingham had suffered many bomb attacks over the preceding decade or more. In fact, local residents had given the place the nickname “Bombingham”. But this was the first against a church, and targeted just when the children would be occupying the worst-hit part of the building. It took 14 years to bring the Ku Klux Klan member responsible to justice, and not till 2001 was anyone else convicted of taking part in the atrocity.

I am too young to remember this event. I am convinced that many people younger than me, in the UK at least, and especially whites, have very little consciousness of that period. When people moan about “political correctness gone mad” etc., they may be forgetting that “political correctness” is at root treating other people as human beings, and not blowing up little girls in Sunday School.

The damage at the church

As the refugee crisis causes feelings to rise, I have been disturbed by the element of racism that is around us. I have heard talk of an influx of “non-white” refugees. Someone with whom I work regularly talks freely of Poles being thieves, their women being sluts, of foreigners being unwelcome, of shuddering at the thought of black men because they all smell. Another friend posted thoughts on the refugee crisis from an overtly white-supremacist site. In the year that I visited Auschwitz, it sends shivers to see a sentence like, “Jewish Supremacists... are using the “holocaust fable” to promote and justify the current Third World invasion of Europe.”

We need to remember that a pause in inter-racial hate and violence is more exception than rule in human societies. That the relative peace and common humanity we have been enjoying is a lovely oasis in a tragic and sorrowful world. We need to remember our shock back in the Bosnian war – “these people who were ethnically cleansed had washing machines!” We need to keep it real.

A fundamental Christian doctrine is that of the unity of the human race as creatures made in God’s image. The Salvation Army doctrines don’t hammer that out as explicitly as they might; a statement of faith that I used to have to sign kicks off its third article with “All men and women, being created in the image of God, have inherent and equal dignity and worth.” I know of no one in the SA who would have troubles with that article. On the one hand it outlaws racism; on the other, it promotes a high view of the glory, honour and dignity of every human being, at every stage of life, whatever their colour, culture or creed, poverty or riches, success or failure, moral excellence or disaster; whether intelligent or with difficulties understanding things; whether beautiful or ugly, tall or short, male or female, young or old. It makes us stand against the rising tide of new hate. It calls us to care, to be concerned, to welcome and help and serve our neighbour – first because God made us to honour him and honour his image in each other, and second because our Lord Jesus came to serve and calls us to serve too.



Members of the public watch the funeral for one of the girls.

I am a grandfather. I have three little granddaughters. My feelings of protectiveness and care for them are, if anything, even greater than my feelings were towards my children at the same age. (Perhaps the relative distance and powerlessness of grandparents makes us more nervous!) I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to find your grandchild’s body, limp and lifeless. Bad enough after an illness or accident – but for someone to take her life like that?!

On this anniversary, let’s remember how ugly racism really can get. And then let’s do all we can, as salt and light, to stop our society going there.

Why care? The theological foundation of social action

A friend of mine who has worked in development work in TSA for a number of years said to me a few months ago that he felt he didn't really have a theological basis for what he was doing. My impression is that he has dipped a little into various theologies, principally of the more Progress or Liberation type, but he has never felt that he has a coherent and comprehensive understanding from which to work. Specifically, I think he has never been strongly exposed to the broader evangelical history of social action nor its theological base. I believe that the SA, with its glorious history of social action, needs to rediscover its own theological roots in just this area, and so to place evangelism and social action in close coordination within the Army's holistic mission. 

You don't need a Liberation Theology to have a holistic vision for social action. The Christian social reformers of the 19th Century would not have agreed with an LT reading of, say, Exodus, and yet their call to social action WAS grounded in their classic, evangelical theology. What are the distinct elements of such a theology as it touches on social, compassionate and developmental issues? In one sense a "holistic" vision is one where all thought-streams are interconnected, so that every aspect of theology has a social outworking, but I think it is possible to identify three key theological taproots of evangelical social concern.

1) The Image of God: Common humanity flowing from common humanness. 

We recognise and honour the image of God in every human being. This image is present and underwrites the value of human life after the Fall - it is present in all, regardless of gender, age, colour, class, age or ability. Admittedly, among the various lines of discussion regarding the nature of the image of God, it has been an evangelical stream - the Lutheran - that has tended to say that the image was lost completely in the Fall, but Reformed theology, with a few exceptions, has argued for a damaged and yet still present image, which is still the basic measure of human value. This position has dominated British evangelical theology.

The logic of this, once seen, or allowed, is inescapable. If the measure of human worth resides outside of ourselves, in God himself, then a respect and honour is due to one another which precludes all racism, sexism, classism and ageism.  And how can I allow my fellow image-bearer to starve, be mistreated, abused, trafficked or killed? 

In honouring all human beings as being made in the image of God, I honour the One who is THE image of the invisible God - the Man for whom and by whom all things were first made. This leads to the second point...

2) God's kindness and compassion in Jesus Christ

In a broken world under judgement, social concern is motivated by - we might say made possible at all by - the grace of God in Christ. The human race has fallen - we are corrupt. At one level we don't deserve any good. Hunger and pain, struggle and failure, chaos and unfairness, are all woven into our lives. But what God has done in Christ means that we cannot adopt a "grin and bear it" approach. He has shown kindness and mercy and condescension when we were dead in our sins. He has stooped to help us. We live in a helped world. 

This help has come to us holistically. Though the centre and goal of Jesus whole ministry was to PREACH the gospel of forgiveness of sins and then to BE that gospel through his dying and rising, nevertheless, along the way of the Word and the Cross, he did good at the most practical level. Maintaining the spiritual message of the Cross at centre is totally consistent with vigorous attempts to ease the physical burden of our fellow human beings because that is exactly how Jesus demonstrated his love as he travelled along the same road. If sin is the cancer and suffering and injustice are the symptoms, I will not take my eyes off the need for a cure from sin, but I will want to help with the symptoms. I will recognise that to preach the message of forgiveness to a man with an empty stomach is to deny the love at the very heart of the message I preach.

It is striking how the NT letters, as they come to practical application, repeatedly bring us back to the cross of Jesus as our motive.  Love your wife, give to the poor, be kind and tolerant towards each other in the church, submit to your boss - all these and more are to be driven, for the Christian, by a constant awareness of God's love in Jesus.  Amongst all the rediscoveries of which the church is in need, the rediscovery of the link between Cross and lifestyle is amongst the most important. 

3) The coming age of Christ 

The gospel of Christ is more than simply a spiritual message of forgiveness in itself, of course. In justification we hear the verdict of the future judgement day brought into the present; that great "Not Guilty" is the opening fanfare of our entrance into eternal life, and eternal life is enjoyed now and forever, in a new world which the scripture presents consistently as physical and solid. 

The future world will be a place of justice and peace, of integrity and prosperity. All that is corrupt and unjust in the present system will be swept away into the rubbish bin of eternity. Some Christians, including some evangelicals, have tended to say, "Well - that's for the age to come - no need for us to do anything now." I think the opposite - we are to live as citizens of the coming kingdom. This world may be passing, it may be destined for judgement, and yet it is groaning for its future redemption and we cannot live as if it had no value at all. The powers of the age to come have already laid hold of us, and we have to demonstrate the values of that age in the here and now by pursuing the same goals. We are to show the characteristics of the future reign of our dear King, Jesus, in this age. Indeed, it is precisely the certainty of his coming justice, of judgement in the light of the transcendent moral values of this King, that makes the pursuit of justice in the present evil age so utterly imperative. 

One of my favourite characters from British church history is James Montgomery the hymn writer, who gave us the carol "Angels from the realms of glory".  He was imprisoned on more than one occasion for his radical, socialist-leaning views. He cared passionately about the plight of the poor, and helped in the fight against the slave trade. All of that was rooted in his Moravian spirituality - the same source that John and Charles Wesley had drunk from so deeply. My favourite hymn of his is the well-known paraphrase of Psalm 72...

1. Hail to the Lord's Anointed,

great David's greater Son!

Hail in the time appointed,

his reign on earth begun!

He comes to break oppression,

to set the captive free;

to take away transgression,

and rule in equity.

2. He comes with succour speedy

to those who suffer wrong;

to help the poor and needy,

and bid the weak be strong;

to give them songs for sighing,

their darkness turn to light,

whose souls, condemned and dying,

are precious in his sight.

3. He shall come down like showers

upon the fruitful earth;

love, joy, and hope, like flowers,

spring in his path to birth.

Before him on the mountains,

shall peace, the herald, go,

and righteousness, in fountains,

from hill to valley flow.

4. To him shall prayer unceasing

and daily vows ascend;

his kingdom still increasing,

a kingdom without end.

The tide of time shall never

his covenant remove;

his name shall stand forever;

that name to us is love.

That is eschatological hope, clearly breaking out into present social concern. 

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I am not rejecting every insight that has come through Liberation Theology. I am saying that a broad-based commitment to social action was built into the Christian movement way before LT. In the Salvation Army there are many who have a genuinely deep love for Christ, and a deep love and concern for people, which have been come into being through a traditionally evangelical but theologically impoverished preaching. As those who are involved in social action look for a deeper foundation, they seem to be offered mainly non-Evangelical models. We need to go back to our roots, with greater confidence that we have what we need in classic Evangelical thought.



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For a helpful and thorough historical and theological survey of the relationship between Evangelism and Social action in the SA, please see here. I think it ends up a tad too positive about the impact of post-modernity, but I think the authors may not have been aware of (or imagined) the way that post-modern thought would invade evangelical theology over the last decade.