Reading Scripture

The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the church.

                                        United Methodist Church, Article V of the Articles of Religion

Yesterday, I made the case that the Christian Scriptures contained in the Old and New Testaments were a unique yet not qualitatively distinct source for theological reflection.  In discussions, I was a bit harsh, I believe, leaving out any nuance as I felt a bit defensive.  Relativizing what was considered the central, authoritative source for our faith surely is not something even the most vocal advocates of new ways of thinking about the faith do with any comfort.  Here, I would like to revise and extend some of those thoughts.

Articles V and VI deal with the canon of Scripture, with VI making clear that the continuity between the Old and New Testaments rests, as it states, on the confession that "everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and Man"  While I would certainly not dispute this claim, I search in vain through the actual text of the Hebrew Scriptures for any actual mention of Christ, his uniqueness, how the salvation he brings, while certainly resting upon the firm foundation of the Jewish people's self-understanding, wasn't more clear to his contemporaries.  In fact, that is a confession in which we Christians read back in to the text of the Hebrew Scriptures particular interpretations.


Reading Jesus back in to the Old Testament narratives, poetry, and what not is a confessional move, resting as it does on a prior agreement among the faithful that, as Jesus witnessed in his ministry, death, and resurrection, such a continuity existed.  As Jesus was himself Jewish, the early believers all Jewish of whatever nationality, his life and ministry was the hinge upon which swung the doorway from the old covenant to the new.


Furthermore, while it is indeed true that various Scriptures did indeed exist even in Jesus' day, carrying with them an authority the historical record testifies with the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, there were numerous texts that were as authoritative then as they are now - for example, the apocalyptic books of Enoch, to take an oft-quoted example.  While it is also the case, as one person pointed out, that the letters of St. Paul were passed around among believers, the matter of their original authority is one, I believe, that can never be answered with any precision.  Canon formation took a century or two, with another century or so before it was finalized.


The Article printed above summarizes what is a common affirmation: The Bible is authoritative because it contains everything we need to know about being a Christian, to live faithfully as followers of Jesus Christ.  How do we know that?  Because the Church assembled the Scriptures in such a way that larger, overarching narrative, including the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, would be clear.  Along the way, all sorts of books, some of which may well have been considered authoritative, fell by the wayside.  In other words, the Bible is uniquely authoritative, according to the above definition, because it is authoritative.


Some, at least, of the discussions around the Christian Scriptures comes close to affirming what is for me a highly sensible point: there needs to be a starting point, a source from which the Church can tell its story.  The Bible provides that starting point, including the story of the people of Israel's ever-changing relationship with the God whom they knew as LORD.  There is nothing internal to these narratives that insists upon their authority.  That rests upon the collective affirmation of the Church through the ages that, in fact, these texts do, indeed, speak with the singular voice about who God is, what God has done, and what God continues to do in and for creation.  Yet, that affirmation rests not on the texts, and certainly not within them; rather, it rests upon the historic experience of the Church on the efficacy of the use of the particular texts in achieving the aims the Church has set for itself, viz., the preaching of the Gospel, service to the world, the sound ministry and administration and order for the people who follow Jesus Christ.


I find it odd indeed that after two centuries of historical and other criticism we would turn around and make a fetish of the Christian Scriptures in our public confession without all the caveats and care we take in practice.  Furthermore, the text of the Article is ambiguous enough - as most general statements always are - to be open to interpretation that leaves many questions begged.  What are "all things necessary"?  What is "salvation"?  If, as the article states, we are under no obligation to require "for salvation" those things that aren't in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, what about those parts that are in there, yet few would consider necessary for salvation?  Do we believe the stories of Creation?  Which ones?  Do we celebrate infanticide, genocide, plural marriage, rape, slavery, the subjugation and dehumanization of women?  Do we give up our form of government for monarchy?


There is no internal guide to answer the question about how, precisely, this unique set of documents and texts, is singularly authoritative.  That only comes through critical reading and reflection, as well as the honest confession they contain much that is morally repugnant.  That we can affirm the overarching narrative while being a bit more selective which texts we actually search for the light guiding us along that narrative path is an obvious reality.  We should just be honest that is what we are doing.  That and making clear that our reliance upon Scripture rests more upon the pragmatic understanding that, well, we have to start somewhere, right?


Finally, none of this is to deny the unique witness of Scripture, the testimony within its parts and whole to our very human struggle to understand what God is doing in and with those whom God has chosen. Its authority, however, rests outside the texts themselves, an affirmation the Church has also made throughout its history.  The question of Scriptural authority rests upon what we read and how we read it.  Confusing uniqueness and authority in this case leaves us in the odd position of merely stating the obvious - the Bible tells us a story that helps shape Christian self-identity - without telling us anything useful.

The Authority Of Freedom

I embrace my desire to...
I embrace my desire to...
feel the rhythm, 
to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow,
to feel inspired,
to fathom the power, 
to witness the beauty, 
to bathe in the fountain, 
to swing on the spiral,
to swing on the spiral

                           Tool, "Lateralus"

                                     Lyrics by James Maynard Keenan

My undergraduate academic advisor, Robert Heineman, was only slightly to the left of Attila the Hun in his politics.  A removed disciple of the American Burkean Russel Kirk, Heineman spent much of his academic career looking in the ways American resistance to external authority, combined with their social and historical amnesia, created all sorts of worries.  His one major work, a short survey in political philosophy, was called Authority and the Liberal Tradition.  His central thesis, which could be demonstrated by many episodes in our history, was that the roots of American political and social life in the liberalism of Locke and Rosseau has left a residue of distrust of authority that makes our social life more difficult, perhaps, than it has to be.  Unlike Burke, and Heineman's distant mentor Kirk, these thinkers were empiricists, preferring experience as a guide to understanding and making one's way in the world.  Burke famously believed, on the contrary, that while it may well be true that there was nothing divine about any particular state, there was nonetheless a duty we owe to the state precisely because, rather than a rational compact among human beings toward specific, limited goals and defined social goods, the state was in fact an organic, historic process in which the living, the dead, and the yet-unborn are joined together, beholden to the state for our mutual security, demonstrated most clearly in the historical process.

As in the rest of our social life, so, too in our religious life.  There is a long history in both Protestant denominations and American Catholicism of resistance to any assertion of authority understood as arbitrary.  Thus, the many congregational divisions, the on-going debates and battles between various fundamentalists, pentecostals, dispensationalists, evangelicals, liberals, and religious radicals.

We people called United Methodist have our own heritage with which to contend.  Rooted in the Anglican via media and its reliance upon Scripture, tradition, and reason, John Wesley added experience to the authoritative mix.  In recent decades, our church has sought to reaffirm the primacy of Scripture even while affirming our historic commitment to the other sources of our theological reflection.  Yet, at least some contemporary theories of how we human beings actually go about understanding the world around us would, I think, make us a bit more hesitant about such assertions. It is one thing to assert the uniqueness of the Scriptural testimony, without insisting that it is primer inter pares.  Our traditions, both denominationally and ecumenically, are deep and wide, oceans from which we can draw both deep inspiration as well as the occasional horror and monster.  Human reason, of course, is as much a part being a creature before God as Creator as our feet and our stomachs; it is hardly to be dismissed as authoritative.  With the introduction of experience, we need always remember that it is not just any experience.  Rather, it is an experience understood as lived out under the Providential guidance and grace-filled loving presence of God.

Scripture enters the mix as much a part of our traditions as it does on its own.  As one theologian once noted, there was a Church and Christians before there was a Bible.  Put another way, as Phyllis Bird's title puts it, the Bible is the Church's book; the Church is not the Bible's institution.  This is neither to denigrate the Christian Scriptures nor to insist they have no authoritative place in our understanding of ourselves.  Rather, it is to concede the point that Scriptural authority does not arise from anything within the text of the Bible.  The authority of Scripture is a doctrine of the church for historical and, I would argue, good interpretive as well as practical reason.

St. Paul is the great theologian of Christian freedom.  In Galatians 5:1, he writes: "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."  The word translated "freedom" is eleutheria, which means liberty.  That can mean either a general license, or as St. Paul uses it in context, freedom from the burden placed upon the believer from the demands that Christians adhere to the Mosaic laws, especially circumcision.  His vision of freedom, however, is not license, much less licentiousness.  As he writes throughout Romans and, even more, 1 Corinthians, his vision of Christian freedom is one in which we are now offered the possibility of living not for ourselves, but for Christ who has saved us.


This experience of freedom, as lived out in the subsequent history of the Church, has become codified, debated, discussed, redefined, contextualized, anathematized, ignored, and misconstrued.  Yet, it remains.  It is the real basis for any understanding of authority as real, Christian authority.  It is rooted in our experience of salvation as freedom both from sin and from any attempted assertion of arbitrary authority.  It is not, however, license.  It is, instead, the lived experience of human beings who move among the sources of their understanding, allowing Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to read one another in a playful exchange, always with the affirmation of the primacy not of any of them, but God in Christ reconciling the world, including us, to God and to one another.

The Bible is authoritative not in and of and for itself.  The Bible, along with our traditions and and ability to reason and our lived experience open all creation as a source from which we can come to understand what it means to be a Christian.  As we come together, reflect together, argue together, pray together, laugh together, we do so as those freed from any imposition from outside.  We do so as those able now to live out lives for others, witnessing through our lives what it means to be truly free.  That understanding can only arise in a setting in which we all celebrate all the ways we come to see God speaking and teaching and leading us.

You Keep Using That Word . . .

It is therefore expected of all who continue therein that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

First: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced, . . .

Secondly: By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men . . .

 Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God . . .

                                      The Discipline of The United Methodist Church, 2004

Within the United Methodist Church is a group seeking to work for greater unity in a denomination that has seen more than its share of factional fighting over a variety of issues.  Rooted in the conviction that there is "power of the gospel to unify women and men of all ages, nations, and races who have found new life and restored dignity in the truth of Jesus Christ and in His body the Church", they move on to what they call "three deep convictions":

• There is no authentic unity in the Church apart from agreement on the truth of the gospel.
• Our constitutionally protected Doctrinal Standards are foundational to our agreement in the gospel.
• There are inadequate proposals for unity to be named and critiqued.

There is nothing in this statement from the Confessing Movement with which I could find disagreement.  Indeed, I believe that we need even more clearly and more loudly to affirm our unity as a people redeemed by God, living out our call to be the Body of Christ in and for the world.  This requires an acceptance of our sinfulness and repentance.  We need even more fully to work together, diligently to search our lives, and those around us, holding one another up in prayer, and being bold enough to call to account in love and humility those we see straying.

Saying that, I find the Confessing Movement to be misguided, suspect in their intentions, and outside the best of what can be called our traditions as Wesleyans.

In the Book of Discipline, there is a section that records what has become known as The General Rules of the Methodist Societies.  The background to these three rules, printed above, is also given in the Discipline.  Beginning in 1739, having been approached by groups of people seeking to work together to fulfill St. Paul's call that we "work out our salvation in fear in trembling", Wesley set up what he called societies, which were, in turn divided in to "classes" of a dozen who would commit to work together for mutual support, calling to account, prayer, and giving what they could to support the ministries of their churches.  As the story continues:

There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies: "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins." But wherever this is really fixed in the soul it will be shown by its fruits.

I made a case yesterday for the sources for our theological reflection to run as deep and wide as possible.  Trusting in the God who holds all creation as beloved, we should never restrict ourselves by some prior set of assumptions to the opening of the Spirit.  Today, I would like to make a case that the norm by which we do our reflection be nothing more or less than the single condition Wesley set 273 years ago.  As the statement concerning our General Rules continues, this desire will only be known as it is lived.

As James Cone succinctly tells readers, the norm of theological reflection is how the sources are interpreted (A Black Theology of Liberation, p. 35).  The point of departure, then, for theological reflection revolves around how we understand different words.  This is not to say these understandings are either arbitrary or capricious.  On the contrary, the specificity of the revelation of who God is in and through the incarnation in Jesus Christ crucified and risen as testified in our lives through the Holy Spirit demonstrates that these definitions are clear and specific.

To return to The Confessing Movement to demonstrate how it is possible I can accept their general statement of principles, yet find the movement itself to be so wrong-headed, let us consider some reflections they made on part of proposal before the recently concluded General Conference that would have made the seminaries affiliated with the denomination more accountable to it.

The question has often been asked, at least by those who seek renewal in the church, whether the church believes that its educational institutions, and particularly its theological schools, should reflect the values, the beliefs, and the mission of The United Methodist Church.  Or to put the matter another way, do the leaders of the church understand, and do they intend to do anything about, the conflict between bowing before academic altars on one hand and advancing the cause of Jesus Christ in The United Methodist Church on the other?

 Perhaps the question is moot.  The last known heresy trial in the church took place in 1905.  Up until then (during the period of tremendous church growth) the bishops of the church, given the responsibility by the Discipline to “guard the faith,” monitored seminary teaching even to the extent of being involved in the selection of professors.  The General Conference of the M.E. Church of 1908, influenced by the rising tide of theological modernism, removed from theDiscipline the phrase, …theological schools, “whose professors are nominated or confirmed by the Bishops….”   Later it would remove the reference that the theological schools existed “for the benefit of the whole church.”   Since the theological schools did not exist for the benefit of the whole church, for what or for whom did they exist? . . .

United and Gammon seminaries are perhaps the closest in their endeavor to come along-side the church in its attempt to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  Gammon seeks “to recruit, support and educate pastors and leaders for The United Methodist Church.”  Its vision is to “educate and equip persons to be prophetic leaders in the making of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” (the exact words of the mission of the UM Church).

United Seminary also seeks to reflect UM values in its vision statement.  United seeks to educate leaders to make disciples of Jesus Christ, renew the church, and transform the world.  It is perhaps the only seminary which takes seriously the task of “renewing.”   One of its professors, Jason Vickers, has written a book, Minding the Good Ground A Theology for Church Renewal, which actually links renewal with theology and a new direction. 

When evangelical students have been asked if any of the seminaries affirmed their evangelical faith while they were students, two seminaries have been mentioned as being open and affirming to evangelicals, namely, United and Duke.  Some students speak positively of certain professors in other seminaries, but none of the other seminaries have received overall positive remarks. (emphasis in this paragraph added) 

What does the author of this piece mean by "evangelical"?  What does the author mean that such self-identifying students find their faith "affirmed"?  What would it mean for them not to experience such affirmation?  In what ways?  Clues are given in following paragraphs:

Claremont speaks of being a “multi-religious consortium” with the inclusion of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists.  “Multi-religious” affirmation does not appear to include the affirmation of evangelicals.  Claremont desires to instill students with ethical integrity, religious intelligence and intercultural understanding.  Being interpreted this means it does not seek to seek converts from other religions.  

Iliif affirms its United Methodist identity but within the “liberal” Christian heritage which is interpreted to mean openness to emerging truths especially those from science, experience, and other faith traditions.  Iliff is committed to modeling the values it embraces: diversity, mutual respect, accountability, honest communication, critical self-reflection, curiosity, creativity and a sense of adventure.  There is nothing there about winning disciples for Jesus Christ.

Quite apart from the notion that seminaries be held to the same set of criteria as churches (not to mention reinstituting heresy trials; that's a big winner right there), it seems clear the Confessing Movement has no real interest in "authentic unity" under the Gospel.  Were that so, why on earth would they spend any time worrying about whether or not one group or another attending one of our United Methodist seminaries felt affirmed there?  Far from affirming anyone, the Gospel is a constant source of negation, a destroyer of our comfortable assumptions and a constant reminder of our need for repentance and renewal.  It is this Gospel, the Good News that Jesus Christ died for us while we were still sinners, that leads to the one needful thing: a desire to flee the wrath to come, and be saved from our sins.  This is not done in affirming anyone about anything; rather, it is only known as the lives of believers unfold.

The single norm by which any reflection deserves the title "in the Wesleyan tradition" is simple enough: it will be known by its fruits.  I can already hear the clamoring: But . . . but . . . what are those fruits?!?  That just goes to show you didn't click the link at the top and read what follows each ellipsis after the rules are stated.  In other words, there are specific norms by which we can know that we are being upheld in the faith; or, to reverse the order a bit, there are specific norms by which we can hold one another accountable to the faith.  They do not lie in adherence to any set of words.  They do not lie in crafting mission statements.  They do not lie in affirming any particular group in their particular profession of faith.  Rather, the only norm that serves us people called Methodist is a life of personal and social holiness; a life attendant upon the corporate worship of the God of Jesus Christ, including participation in the sacraments that renew the Body of Christ in its mission and ministries.

I have no need to join a "confessing movement", despite affirming that we Christians who call ourselves United Methodist are in need of remembering who we are and whose we are.  We all have the need to have our lives together, including our God-talk, always ready to submit itself to the test of whether or not it is evidenced by the fruit.  That is the norm, not just for our reflection and dialogue; it is, as it should be, the norm for our life together.

Take Me To The River

Our doctrinal affirmations assist us in the discernment of Christian truth in ever-changing contexts. Our theological task includes the testing, renewal, elaboration, and application of our doctrinal perspective in carrying out our calling "to spread scriptural holiness over these lands." While the Church considers its doctrinal affirmations a central feature of its identity and restricts official changes to a constitutional process, the Church encourages serious reflection across the theological spectrum.

Our Doctrinal Standard And Theological Task, Section 4, United Methodist Discipline, 2004

I was reminded last night that we United Methodists have certain standards that are to guide theological reflection within our unique heritage. These standards include our 25 Articles of Religion, Wesley's Sermons, and his Notes On The New Testament.

Reading through the Articles, what stands out is they are little more than standard, banal doctrinal statements. They beg the questions that theological discussion and dialogue seek to expound. The very first article, affirming the the Church's belief in the Trinity, is all well and good. Do we make that affirmation in the metaphysical language of neo-Platonism, as the Church Fathers who first expounded it? Do we affirm it in the modalist vocabulary of mid-20th century dogmaticians? Do we, perhaps, affirm the Trinity as a speculative summation without granting it any necessity, as Christian thinkers have done throughout history, perhaps noting with Emil Brunner and others that, not being a doctrine testified in Scripture, it serves a heuristic function rather than dogmatic one?

I would take a step back, however, and wonder why it is some find it necessary to offer warnings such as this. When I wrote the other day that

we need to do is stop trying to be something other than the bearers of the Gospel in Wesley's particular idiom. We need to stop trying to be proper. We need to stop trying to be doctrinally upright, theologically correct, socially acceptable

I thought it should be clear that we needed to remember that ours is a tradition rooted in what one author has called Practical Divinity. I felt no need to state adherence to any particular set of dogma or doctrine precisely because I took them for granted. Some, however, of my interlocutors seemed to assume I was setting theological dialogue to one side. Rather, I was trying to make clear that theology is little more than church-talk about God, and does not have primacy over holy living.

That reaction, more than anything, demonstrated for me the tremendous lack of trust abroad in our denomination. Any suggestion that we might, perhaps, need to think in new ways was greeted with stern warnings that we cannot water down the Gospel, that we must stand firm on our confession, that I was arguing in some way that we need to be more culturally relevant in our practice of church. This last I find most interesting. It should go without saying that the Christian churches have always lived with the tension between relevance and difference. Why should it be necessary to state that obvious reality of our existence? Immediately upon making a suggestion that the United Methodist Church might be dying because a whole generation is not so much hostile as apathetic about our message, meaning we might need to find new ways of speaking and living out who we are, and I was told that I was hinting at certain accommodations some commentators make that include watering down the offense and foolishness of our confession of the Gospel. 

I'm still stunned anyone would think such a thing. Nothing I wrote, or have ever written, would suggest such a thing. The only conclusion I have come to is that we are so afraid, we cannot bear the thought that we might need to change. We have grown far too comfortable over previous decades of social acceptability and cultural relevance.

We are in a curious position now, however, where the traditional sources by which we Wesleyan Christians have done our theological reflection have become completely open. Rather than cringe in fear that the world, or our human experience, or the traditions of the churches through the ages might lead us astray, it is more necessary than ever to reaffirm our belief in the prevenient grace of God by seeing the Providential working out of the Kingdom in all sorts of places. Again, why should I have to state such a thing explicitly? It was my understanding we Wesleyan Christians held that as part of our theological legacy, a legacy that gave Wesley the courage to preach his gospel of personal and social holiness in places and to people the "official" Church ignored. We have lost that fearlessness as we have spent far too much time mourning losses that might well be rooted in an institutional amnesia more than anything else.

The river is wide and deep. I suggest, if we are going to be serious about being United Methodist Christians, we not think about the dangers but plunge headlong in to the current, trusting that God will buoy us up, guide us through the rapids ahead, seeing us safely to the other side. Nothing less will demonstrate our commitment to our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

A Sort Of Preamble

As I mentioned the other day, I'm reading Gary Dorrien's 3-volume history of American liberal theology. Combined with a renewed interest in some concerns regarding the United Methodist Church, I'm feeling more and more led to make some kind of positive statements regarding what it is, precisely, I believe as a United Methodist Christian in the second decade of the 21st century.

Before I do that, I have found myself in the most odd position of trying to justify, to and for myself, how it is I can affirm both a personal affinity for the kind of mediating theology represented by the best of the liberal theologians, German and American as well as past and present, yet also stand firm in my basic confession, rooted in my heritage as a Methodist in line with John Wesley, of the centrality of the saving Gospel of Christ for the world. Much of the intellectual energy of the liberals was outside this basic confessional center; while the godfather of theological liberalism exuded a Christ-centered, evangelical (in many senses of the word) concern with the meaning of the Christ-event on human life, subsequent generations moved through concerns over Scriptural interpretation and authority, the ethical personalism of Ritschl and his American student in the school known as Boston Personalism (begun by Methodist preacher and teacher Borden Parker Bowne), the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, and the process theology of John Cobb and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki. The heart of liberal theology is the primacy of human experience over doctrinal or theological rigidity; the first stirrings of American liberal theology was the Unitarian split in the Reformed Congregational churches on New England led by William Ellery Channing. He understood the doctrine of the Trinity as an offense not only against reason, but against experience as well. Later American liberals would couch their attempts to recast our God-talk in to wholly different sets of categories in a vocabulary that privileges experience. As such, they moved through much speculative as well as practical theology as well as writings on ethics and politics with one eye focused on the world in which they lived.

While the Unitarian movement disappears, by and large, from Dorrien's narrative after Emerson's Divinity School Address (except, if memory serves, a short discussion of James Luther Adams in a later volume), one would be hard pressed, I think, to find within the writings under consideration, after a certain period, a concern with such doctrines*. Indeed, Jesus himself seems to become a distant, dim memory as the narrative moves through an exciting, dizzying array of theological and philosophical concerns.

Yet, I find myself nodding in agreement through large portions of the work, as I did five years ago when I read it the first time. As I did when I read Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre my last year in seminary. Yet, I can also nod in agreement with large portions of the sermons of John Wesley; I can celebrate the polemical dogmatics of Karl Barth, for whom Schleiermacher was a bete noir in every sense of the term.

The only answer with which I can rest comfortably for this contradiction lies in my own wonder why these matters have to be "either/or". Is it not possible, as Schleiermacher insisted, to consider the human experience of absolute dependence as the proper methodological starting point for theological reflection as well as affirm with Barth that such a starting point leads us only so far without the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, precisely because these are two movements that are only intelligible when they meet one another? I daresay Schleiermacher would whole-heartedly agree with my own assessment, considering the centrality of the Christ-event in his own theology, and the hearty evangelical preaching evidenced in his On Religion.

I think we have lived far too long under the illusion that our traditions are like statues in museums. Beautiful works of human art, they are nearly impossible to move, and any attempt to change them destroys their near-perfect balance and proportion. Which is why considering them this way makes them absolutely useless.

We need to think of our traditions as living things, as Christ is alive. We need to consider our traditions as human things, both sinful yet justified. We need to consider our traditions as starting points for speaking our faith now precisely because they were, once upon a time, expressions of faith in their own place and time. Finally, we should never forget that our theological reflection is not the same thing as our confession. Our confession is part, but not the heart, of our identity as Christians. No one was ever saved by doctrine. No soul ever closed a book of theology, and found itself strangely warmed. No life has ever been changed except by the Holy Spirit testifying to the truth of God's self-emptying on the cross of Jesus Christ, a witness that made manifest the reality of God's power as the stone was rolled away revealing the empty tomb.

This simple confession, the heart of any Christian confession, belongs to no school. It is not the sole property of any denomination. It cannot be revoked by any magisterium or council. It cannot be augmented by any unanimous vote or careful consideration of alternatives.

How we go about making sense of this senselessness is our on-going conversation. We should consider the whole range of Christian traditions as fair game for clues as to the wisdom of this Divine foolishness. As such, I do not think any "label" works well for me. I'm happy being a liberal Christian. I'm happy being evangelical. I'm happy being C/catholic, O/orthodox, whatever.

Finally, if there are things here with which you disagree, that's OK. Theology is the church's ongoing conversation in which we try to understand what it is we mean when we confess God was in Christ reconciling the world to God. I don't believe there is such a thing as "wrong" theology. There are just all sorts of steps along the way.

*The exception that proves the rule is a thorough examination of Horace Bushnell's treatment of the Trinity.