The Issue of Authority in Discerning the Will of God

It’s something Christians – as individuals and as groups – have done since the church first began at Pentecost. We make declarations about what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is not, what to believe as right and what to reject as wrong. We make these declarations with certainty, generally grounding them in what the Bible says. These declarations, by nature, call for agreement and conformity. Sadly, they almost always create the opposite: disagreement and division.

The earliest example of this practice was the attitude and position of the early church regarding Gentiles. Following the teachings of their Jewish heritage, the early Christians viewed Gentiles as unclean. As a result, Gentiles were excluded from the church, rejected as unacceptable. Acts 10 and 11 records how the Spirit led Peter and, through him, those early believers to a different understanding. That different understanding resulted in the embrace of Gentiles as fellow-believers and their inclusion in the church. This shift in position was not embraced by everyone. Many insisted the Gentiles had to become Jews and follow the law in order to become Christians. The conflict led to a council held in Jerusalem to resolve the issue, Acts 15. The council made a decision that opened the door to the Gentiles.

The most recent example of this practice was the declaration by Southern Baptists that women are not permitted to preach or be pastors. In Methodist life, the splintering of The UMC and the creation of the Global Methodist Church are the result of a fifty-year conflict over a statement in The Book of Discipline declaring homosexuality to be incompatible with biblical teachings. Consequently, homosexuals who lived in an open homosexual relationship are not eligible for ordination, UM clergy are not permitted to perform homosexual weddings, and UM properties are not available for homosexual weddings.

The early church’s shift in position regarding Gentiles serves as a reminder. Some positions, even though based on religious teaching and tradition, can be wrong. New understanding moves us to set them aside as wrong and invalid. The church’s attitude toward slavery is one example. Some United Methodists would say the condemnation of homosexuality is another.

These declarations stating a position regarding belief and practice almost always appeal to scripture. Scripture is viewed as authoritative and the final word regarding the matter. Thus, the position is presented as “the biblical position.”

The appeal to scripture is based on several generally unexamined assumptions. It assumes the Bible is a source book for determining what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is not, what to believe as right and what to reject as wrong – in other words, a rule book to be followed. It assumes the teachings found in scripture reflects the will of God. It assumes the teachings are correct and unchanging (i.e., the Bible is infallible and inerrant). As such, the Bible’s teaching reflects the only acceptable position. The appeal to scripture assumes there is one, unchanging position expressed throughout scripture. It assumes the issue in question is a simple black-and-white, either-or position. The appeal to scripture attributes equal authority to every verse regardless of the time period out of which the text came or its location in scripture. It assumes a literal reading of scripture is the only way to read scripture, i.e., the right way. It assumes any approach to scripture based on biblical scholarship is intended to undermine the teaching of scripture and is thus to be rejected.

These assumptions overlook the human dimension of scripture – the historical, cultural context out of which the text arose. As a result, a cultural belief is treated as an eternal truth applicable to every culture and time, i.e., women speaking in church, 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36. These assumptions ignore what the New Testament writers said about the partial, incomplete nature of their scriptures – our Old Testament. See Hebrews 1:1. These assumptions do not acknowledge the progression of understanding reflected in scripture. For example, the law of Moses attempted to temper the unlimited retaliation of Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24) with limited retaliation (Leviticus 24:17-22). Jesus went beyond the law of Moses to nonretaliation (Luke 6:27-36) and unlimited forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35). These assumptions do not deal with how different texts challenge and refute positions expressed in other texts. For example, the books of Jonah and Ruth were written to challenge the ethnic cleansing under Ezra. The book of Job challenged the theology known as divine retribution (God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked) found in the book of Proverbs and some of the Psalms. These assumptions do not acknowledge the New Testament position that the fullest revelation of God and the ways of God is in Jesus - John 1:14, 18; John 14:8-9; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15, 19.

Perhaps the greatest drawback to these assumptions is they allow the reader to pick and choose which texts to focus upon, ignoring other texts that might present a different understanding. They allow the reader to use the Bible to support what they already believe. In other words, these assumptions make what the reader already thinks to be the ultimate authority, not the Bible.

The apostle Paul wrote about how to know the will of God – “what is good and acceptable and perfect,” Romans 12:2c. According to Paul, knowing God’s will grows out of the “renewing of your minds,” Romans 12:2b. As our thinking begins to be shaped by the character of God and the ways of God (as opposed to how the world trained us to think – “stop being conformed to this world,” Romans 12:2a), we will be able to discern the will of God. Thinking shaped by the Spirit – what Paul called “the mind of Christ,” 1 Corinthians 2:16 – positions us to know and live in harmony with the will of God. See again 1 Corinthians 2:7-16.

In short, the Bible is not the final authority to be used in determining the will of God. Jesus is. Our appeal is to Jesus – his teachings, what he did and didn’t do, his life and ministry – not the Bible. In seeking to determine God’s will, we should ask “Is it Christ-like?”, not “is it biblical?” Only a transformed mind can help us answer recognize the difference in the two questions. Only a transformed mind can help us answer the question “Is it Christ-like?” 

Misreading the Bible

I’m not really surprised. In fact, if I had thought about it, I would have seen it coming. It was predictable.

This past week, the Southern Baptist Convention – the national body of Southern Baptist churches – overwhelmingly adopted a position statement that excluded women from preaching or from serving as pastors. In their reading of the Bible, only men are qualified to serve in these leadership roles. In this same decision-making meeting, they voted to “withdraw fellowship” from (i.e., not live in a cooperative relationship with) churches that went against this policy and ordained women to serve as pastors.

As you might imagine, I am deeply saddened by this news. In my opinion, this decision goes against Southern Baptist polity, theology, and the teaching of scripture. (In case you don’t know or it slipped your mind, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, identified God’s call on my life in that church, and was educated – three theological degrees – in Southern Baptist schools. I served as a pastor of three different Southern Baptist congregations before moving into The UMC. In my mind, this history qualifies me to speak to the issue even though I no longer identify as a Southern Baptist.)

The decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against their own polity. In Southern Baptist life, each local church is autonomous. That is, no governing body or person (bishop) can dictate to them what to believe or how to function. They are self-governing, including selecting their own pastors. This decision by the national body violates the autonomy of every local Southern Baptist church.

The decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against their own theology. One of the beliefs that is foundational in Baptist history is known as “the priesthood of every believer.” The autonomy of each local church is built upon this theological understanding. The priesthood of every believer asserts that every believer can relate directly to God through the priesthood of Jesus (the book of Hebrews). A human priest is not needed as a go-between with God. A corollary is every believer is capable, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of understanding spiritual truth found in scripture. In other words, understanding the Bible is not dependent on a specially trained scholar. (I would hasten to add that a trained scholar can help us better understand the Bible. Without the benefit of education and training in how to read/study the Bible, we are prone to misread the Bible.)

Which brings me to my third observation: the decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against the teachings of scripture. The New Testament has numerous references to women who preached and served as pastors. The first to proclaim the good news of Jesus’s resurrection were women. Mary Magdalene was the apostle to the apostles. Philip the evangelist had four daughters “who prophesied,” i.e., preached, Acts 21:9. The apostle Paul commended Phoebe the deacon and urged the churches of Rome to aid her in her ministry, Romans 16:1. Part of her role was to read and interpret Paul’s letter to those churches. In other words, she was to teach and preach on Paul’s behalf. Paul also greeted Prisca or Priscilla, Romans 16:3. She is listed before her husband Aquila because she was the pastor of the church that met in their home, Romans 16:5. She also instructed Apollos as he began his ministry, Acts 18:24-28. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul taught about the gifts of the Spirit. The gift of prophecy or preaching was one of the spiritual gifts he identified. Nowhere in the chapter does he suggest that some gifts were for men and others were for women. Rather, he said the Spirit “allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses,” 1 Corinthians 12:11. In a patriarchal culture, women were a part of Jesus’s disciples along with the twelve, Luke 8:1-3.

At the beginning of this blog, I said the decision by Southern Baptists to exclude women from the ministry of preaching was predictable. It is the natural outcome of decisions made in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. During that period of Southern Baptist history, a group of conservative leaders (I call them fundamentalists) orchestrated and implemented a plan to gain control over all Southern Baptist schools and institutions. Their efforts were motivated by the belief that seminary professors had become too liberal in their thinking. The intent of their efforts was to weed out those liberal professors and restore what they considered to be orthodox teaching. That orthodox teaching was grounded in the belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. It was intended to be read and understood literally.

Reading the Bible literally, viewing it as infallible and inerrant, almost always results in misreading of the Bible. That approach allows us to read our understanding into scripture, using the Bible to support what we already think. (When we use the Bible to support what we already think, we resist the Spirit-guided “renewing of the mind” that is foundational to spiritual growth, Romans 12:2. We create God in our own image.) This approach treats every verse with equal authority although the Bible itself clearly states that the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) only provides incomplete, partial glimpses of God and the ways of God, Hebrews 1:1-3. (The original that is translated as “in many and various ways,” Hebrews 1:1 carries the idea of “in bits and pieces.”) The New Testament states that Jesus is the fullest, clearest revelation of God, Hebrews 1:3, John 1:14, 16; 14:8-9. Consequently, we are to read and interpret the Bible through the lens of Jesus’s life, ministry, and teachings.

A literal, non-scholarly reading and interpretation of scripture produced the decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching and/or being a pastor. The decision is the result of reading scripture through the lens of a patriarchal culture rather than through the lens of biblical scholarship. In my opinion, the decision is the result of misreading the Bible.

While the decision by Southern Baptists may seem to be irrelevant to many who read this blog, I would hasten to remind you that the same dynamics have been at play in The UMC. A literal reading of scripture, viewing it as infallible and inerrant and thus rejecting the teachings of trained biblical scholars, has led to the judgment and exclusion of LGBTQ+ people in United Methodist life.

The Trinity Plus One: Joining the Dance

In last week’s blog – The Mystery of the Three-in-One – I spoke of the relationship shared among the Father, Son, and Spirit as a dance of self-giving, other-focused love. Their shared character of self-giving, servant love makes them one. The three live in unity rooted in their shared character.

Living out of their character of self-giving love, each is focused on the good of the other. They escape the trap we humans inherently experience, the trap of being self-focused and self-serving, i.e., being ego-centric. As I said last week, their dance of love is life-giving and joy-filled. It led to the creation of us humans in their divine likeness. We were created to live in relationship with the Trinity. We were created to participate in their life of self-giving love. We were created to possess their character of self-giving love as our own.

Each member of the Godhead has given their divine Self to bring us to the emotional-relational-spiritual maturity of possessing their divine character as our own. God the Father has chosen us to be holy and blameless, adopting us as beloved children, Ephesians 1:3-5. Through Jesus the Son, the Father’s plan for us becomes reality, Ephesians 1:7-12. We experience redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. Though dead in our trespasses and sins, God makes us alive again through Christ, Ephesians 2:1-5. We have been raised with Christ and are seated with him in the heavenly realms, Ephesians 2:6. We are Exhibit A of the greatness of God’s grace and mercy, Ephesians 2:7. As God’s beloved children, we receive an inheritance from God that consists of “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, Ephesians 1:11, 3. We become God’s partners in God’s eternal redemptive purpose of restoring unity to all of creation under the Lordship of Jesus – “so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory”, Ephesians 1:12. The Spirit has given the divine Self to bring into reality all that the Father purposed and Jesus made possible, Ephesians 1:13-14. The Spirit marks us as beloved children of God and is the guarantee (the Greek term means down payment, earnest money) from the Godhead that before they are through, we will have been conformed to the likeness of Christ – “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13.

In short, we have been invited to join the dance of the Trinity – the dance of self-giving, other-centered love. We have been invited to share their life. We have been invited to experience their life-giving, joy-filled life as our own. We have been invited to be their partners in their eternal redemptive purpose. We have been invited to be the fourth member of the Trinity plus One.

The place we practice and perfect the Trinity’s dance of love is in spiritual community, i.e., the church. Like the Trinity, the church was created to live out of “unity in diversity, resulting in community.” In the spiritual community known as the church, every person has a place – after all, belonging is based on God’s grace and forgiveness, not on qualifying by measuring up to some prescribed standard of belief, behavior (morals), or church involvement. Every person has value. Every person has a contribution to make – at least, that’s what Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 12.

The key to dancing together in unity is growing into Christ-like maturity in which we love as Jesus loved, 1 Corinthians 13. As long as we live out of our ego-centric, self-focused, self-serving default nature, we will divide ourselves into us-them groups and miss the dance. Only the Spirit can empower us to dance in step together, living together in unity and oneness like the Godhead.

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” Ephesians 4:1-3 (emphasis added).  

Come, let’s dance together in the unity of the Spirit. Let’s join the life-giving, joy-filled dance of the Trinity. Let’s do the dance of self-giving love – through the power of the Spirit! 

Trinity Sunday, 2023 - The Mystery of the Three-in-One

Trinity Sunday – the Sunday following Pentecost Sunday - is an often-overlooked Sunday in the liturgical calendar. Perhaps it is overlooked because we are baffled by the mystery of the Trinity.

How are we to understand the mystery of the Trinity – the three-in-one? God is three yet one!? How can that be? We can’t figure out how to wrap our minds around the idea.

Perhaps the problem is in our language.

Trinity refers three. We speak of God as Father, the creator, and of Jesus the Son who was God-in-the-flesh and of the Spirit who was poured out on the disciples at Pentecost. We find references to each in the teachings of Jesus (particularly John 14-17) and in the writings of Paul (e.g., Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 2, Galatians 5). Ephesians 1:3-14 identifies the role each plays in God’s eternal redemptive purpose (Ephesians 1:3-6, the role of God the Father; 1:7-12, the role of the Son, 1:13-14, the role of the Spirit). These references indicate the concept of God as three-in-one developed during the early New Testament era.

Our trouble begins with the word “one.” Because we think of trinity in numerical terms, i.e., three, we naturally think of one in numerical terms. The term “one” does not refer to a numerical value. Rather, it refers to a relationship. More specifically, it refers to a kind of and quality of relationship.

The three live together in a relationship marked by oneness. Another way of expressing the idea is that the three live together in unity. The theological term used to describe the Trinity is “unity in diversity, expressed in community.” Unity or oneness is what is meant by the term one. Diversity refers to the three – each unique and different, yet bound inseparably together in unity and oneness.

That which binds the three together as one is their shared character of self-giving love. As the author of 1 John wrote, “God is love,” 1 John 4:8. The character of God the Father is that of self-giving love as is the character of the Son as is the character of the Spirit.

Because of their mutual character, the three members of the Godhead live together in a dance of other-focused love. (The early church fathers used the Greek word for dance to speak of the relationship of the Godhead.) Their dance is life-giving and joy-filled. Their dance is what led to the creation of the world and of us humans made in their likeness. We were created as an act of love. We were created to live in relationship with them and thereby to participate in their dance of love. We were created with the capacity to share their character of self-giving love and, thereby, to participate in their quality of life. In keeping with their character, each has given themselves to grow us in the likeness of Christ, empowering us to love as they love.

In John 17, Jesus prayed that we, his followers, would be one “as we are one,” John 17:11. Our oneness as his followers is patterned after and reflects the oneness of the Godhead – a oneness of character, a oneness of love.

The Trinity – the three-in-one – is not a mystery to be understood and explained. Rather, it points us to a relationship from which we came and for which we were created – a relationship governed by the self-giving love of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

May we join the life-giving, joy-filled dance of the three-in-one as we grow in and live out of the likeness of Christ.