Defending the Indefensible: The Problem of "Progressive" Christianity: Introduction

What does it mean to be “orthodox”?

The definition provided by Merriam-Webster defines the adjective form of “orthodox” as, “conforming to established doctrine especially in religion”.[1] 

This means that when we apply it to say, Christianity, as in (small-“o”) “orthodox” Christianity, we are describing something that has a connection to what has been believed in the past. Meaning that someone who is “orthodox” in their beliefs would agree and affirm that which has been believed by the church (speaking collectively in the historical sense) and what we find representative in the various historical creeds, say the Apostle’s or Nicene creeds, as well as a few others that can be mentioned but won’t here.

“Orthodox” further means that we would find some agreement with the believers of old, such as the author of 1 Clement, who writes,

Let us fix our thoughts on the Blood of Christ; and reflect how precious that Blood is in God’s eyes, inasmuch as its outpouring for our salvation has opened the grace of repentance to all mankind.[2]

Or Ignatius,

To profess any other name [than Christ] is to be lost to God; so lay aside the old good-for-nothing leaven, now grown stale and sour, and change to the new, which is Jesus Christ.[3]

We can read these words as believers and find a common voice in them, a voice that can be described as “orthodox”. In fact, to be able to identify something as “Christian” seems to be dependent on whether that thing that is being described as such both embraces that established orthodoxy and applies it. 

Even a fully convinced Roman Catholic, like G.K. Chesterton, evidences that nothing can be called “Christian” apart from certain matters that can be described as “orthodox”,

I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should, … the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics.[4]

That is to say that within the bounds of what one could call “Christendom” there is a limit to what one must necessarily affirm to be called “Christian”, and that belief has a certain effect that must be lived out.

That is to say that when one speaks of Christianity, more importantly of Christ, that is our Lord Savior, we necessarily mean something by that statement. As the apostle wrote,

…no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit.[5]

The question is, whenever someone professes to be a Christian, are they truly saying that “Jesus is Lord” in the same sense and the same way that Paul would, or are they saying something else entirely. 

This would seem to imply there would need to be a standard that one could necessarily appeal to in order to make such a determination, an “established doctrine” as it were. One could dare to even say, a certain orthodoxy to which one must adhere.

This would obviously mean that there would be those that can inhabit the realm of orthodoxy and that those who reject it, either in word or deed, are outside of orthodoxy.

Drawing Lines

One of the persistent dangers of having lines is the question of who is drawing the lines as well as what standard is being used to draw the lines?

One of the first controversies in the early church involved the drawing of lines between the Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic speaking Jews. We aren’t given many details as to the cause,/only that it involved an apparent discrimination on the part of elements within the Jerusalem church that led to neglecting of widows.[6] The situation appears to have been settled by the assignment of the first deacons to coordinate such activities.

A second controversy arose within a few decades in which the question of whether or not one had to become Jewish in order to be a Christian, or if one could maintain certain ethnic markers that were opposed to Jewish standards (ie circumcission and adherence to the Mosaic code).[7] In fact, it’s in recording this episode that we see the first statement of what could be called “orthodox” Christian belief:

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.[8]

That which could be called an “orthodox” Christian faith, with regard to outward signs, was bounded by certain ritualistic and moral requirements to be taught as doctrines. Along with this we see, what has been identified as an early Christian creed, or statement of beliefs,

…Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,…[9]

This same writer, in conversing with an apprentice-pastor, defers to the “sacred writings, which are able to make [one] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”[10], says of them that they are,

…breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,…[11]

The word that is translated as “teaching” can also be translated as “instruction” or “doctrine”. This “doctrine” finds its source and grounding in God as its originator.[12] It is preserved in the text, which exists for the express purpose of making “the man of God…complete, equipped for every good work.”[13]

The apostolic witness therefore ties the necessity of lines carefully and thoughtfully drawn to right doctrine that is drawn from that which God has given to his people in the form of Scripture. This means that which can be meaningfully called “orthodox” is founded upon established doctrine that is found in the text of that which we call “the Bible”.

And this brings us to Randal Rauser.

Here We Go 

Let me begin by saying that I think that it is good to stick up for your friends or close acquaintances and to defend them from false or unjustified claims. You can even stick up for people that you disagree with and defend them, in fact its a good thing to do so. 

However, being a good friend also means that sometimes you are required to take them to task when they are rightly being accused or when you catch them doing something that is wrong or questionable. 

It begs something of a question when you refuse even bother to consider whether or not an accusation or complaint is justified, especially when it comes from multiple individuals over a long period of time. 

To even refuse to consider the charge, especially when it comes to matters of the faith and whether or not a person is teaching what is false or misleading can say a great deal about a person. It can bring one’s own commitment to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” into question.[14]

This is the issue that Randal Rauser appears to run into in his newest book Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too. 

Rauser makes no secret about what his book is about as his subtitle makes it very clear that he is responding specifically to a 2020 book by Alisa Childers as well as other conservative Christians that he somewhat mockingly refers to as “heresy hunters”.[15]

However, Randal begins his book by specifically referring to the foreword of Childers’ that was penned by Lee Strobel, of which he writes,

…I figured if I couldn’t have a foreword by Strobel, I’d write one about his foreword for Childers’ book instead. More specifically, I want to focus on one sentence in Strobel’s foreword. He writes: “In Christianity, the anchor is sound biblical doctrine.”[16]

Rauser continues,

I could not disagree more. And lest you hastily conclude that means I don’t care about doctrine, the matter is quite the opposite: I am a systematic theologian who has been teaching theology in seminaries and colleges for twenty years. The truth is that thinking about doctrine is my vocation and my passion. Indeed, that is precisely why I emphatically disagree with the claim that Christianity is anchored in doctrine: you don’t honor something by completely misunderstanding its function and role in the Christian life. And making doctrine the foundation does that. (emphasis added)[17]

I find it very interesting, not to mention concerning, that a theology professor, especially a Christian theology professor doesn’t think that doctrine is important. 

The Apostle Paul seemed to consider doctrine important as he instructed one of his protégés, as he was appointing men to teach in the churches to select those who, “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.”[18] 

Paul’s statement is important because of what Randal says next,

…[Let] us be clear: the anchor for Christianity is not doctrine. It is Jesus Christ. He is the chief cornerstone (Psalm 118:22; Matthew 21:42), the Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4), the head of the Church (Ephesians 1:22), the Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14), the Advocate (1 John 2:1), the Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6), and so much more.[19]

Notice the problem?

These are all doctrinal points. These are things that must be taught from Scripture.

 

Randal recognizes the apparent disconnect, arguing that such are merely descriptions of actions, and that to insist on the description is to confuse the description with the action that is being described.[20]

To demonstrate this, he appeals to a personal example from his own life with his father who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, posing a question to the reader,

…[What] is the foundation of a family? Is it the relationship with the family or the beliefs one holds about the family?[21]

When we consider Randal’s example, the example of immediate family, one might say that what founds that family is blood. However the fact of that relationship is determined ultimately about what one believes about that bond, after all how many children, when they find themselves in a similar situation, have simply dumped their parents into a nursing home without giving them a second thought because their beliefs about their relationship had disconnected them from any relationship.

My Dad, who passed away several years ago now, would have lived the last few months of his life alone if we had not worked to repair what had, years earlier, became a difficult and bitter relationship stemming from my parent’s divorce. The nature and purpose of our relationship shifted and changed over the nearly twenty years since that time. If something had happened to my father in the period when we were estranged, I might not have even cared, but in the final few years leading up to his passing, while we never regained the ground that we once had, I was beginning to call him “Dad” again, and not just simply referring to him as my “father”. 

The reason I say this is to demonstrate that it was what I believed that ultimately determined how I would relate to the man who was, by relationship my immediate family. But what does it mean to be “family” in Christian terms?

Blood and Creed

Throughout the world’s cultures there has always been degrees of division when it comes to societal arrangements. 

In the ancient world, say in Israel for example, the family—one’s immediate blood relatives—was the primary point of contact and the group to whom one’s primary allegiance and intentions were owed and expected.[22] From there, supposing that one’s immediate family is gone or an instance presents itself, one’s allegiances could shift up to the clan or the tribe.[23]

However, as important as one’s blood ties might be, in certain instances they could be detrimental to the person under consideration, especially if the person’s father had acted in a way that dishonored either himself or the community.[24] In such a case, in order to disconnect from that identification, a person might separate from the family in order to restore a proper perceptions themselves within the community. So while blood relation was important, respect and reputation within the community was even more so.[25]

But what about in the family of faith? How are those bonds defined?

There is indeed a certain parallelism with regard to language, but the bonds are not defined by blood, especially not in the way that one might define a natural family relationship of father, mother, and children. As David de Silva notes,

[The] conception of [the] people of God as kin takes a particularly Christ-centered focus. It is now attachment to…Jesus that determines whether or not a person is in the family, rather than the person’s bloodline or natural lineage.[26]

Believers are referred to as being “adopted”into the family of God (eg Galatians 4:4-6). This act on God’s part, by Christ, through the Spirit, “provides … a legitimate connection to the promises of God recounted in the Jewish Scriptures; it speaks of the profound honor and privilege that has come …by virtue of attachment to the Christian community, and the coming manifestation of that honor, such that perseverance with the group remains an attractive option even when the pressure to defect is high.”[27]

What should be obvious is that the privilege and honor spoken of can attract certain kinds of people that can take what is supposed to be good and true and corrupt it into something that is vile and wicked. Indeed the prophet Malachi’s words here provide us with something of a thesis that should be considered,

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?[28]

What necessarily binds Christians together in the faith, what makes us a family, is orthodoxy—that we conform to a certain set of beliefs.

Indeed this is where Randal sees a problem, what he describes as a “prioritization of the cognitive assent to doctrine over relationship”.[29]

Looking into Malachi’s rebuke of the priests and the people of Judah betrays something that Childers strikes on that places a burr under Randal’s saddle: a professed relationship is meaningless if one cannot point to something that makes the relationship possible.

For the Israel, it was the covenant at Sinai that made them a nation, and that covenant and its doctrines were what was to united them, not only as a people but as representatives of God. Indeed it was blood that united them as kin, but there were many who came out with Jacob’s children who swore by the covenant, taking its signs, and becoming Israel not by blood, rather by creed.[30]

The issue though, is exactly how much movement in the joints is there within orthodoxy for various theological views to exist? Can one be a “progressive” Christian and still be orthodox, or are there lines that someone is not allowed to cross at all, ever?

Randal insists that, in Childers’ presentation, “there is little room for theological diversity in [her] fragile, rationalist notion of Christianity”.[31]

However, I would like to contend that its only by having certain narrow views that true diversity can persist. That its only by having a very limited and defined scope that one can truly define what is or is not “Christian”, else the term is rendered void of any meaning, whatsoever.

For Part 2

Notes

1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orthodox
2. 1 Clement 7. Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, translated by Maxwell Staniforth. Penguin Books. 1987.
3. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians (on the Meander). Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, translated by Maxwell Staniforth. Penguin Books. 1987.
4. Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Orthodoxy. Kindle. p.4
5. 1 Corinthians 12:3, ESV
6. See Acts 6:1-7
7. See Galatians 2:11-14;  also Acts 15
8. Acts 15:28-29, ESV
9. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, ESV
10. 2 Timothy 3:15, ESV
11. 2 Timothy 3:16, ESV
12. R. C. Sproul. Can I Trust the Bible?. Reformation Trust Publishing. 2017. p. 17-8
13. 2 Timothy 3:17, ESV
14. Jude 1:3, ESV
15. I read and reviewed Childers book in preparation for reading Rauser’s response. 
16. Randal Rauser. Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too: A Response to Alisa Childers (and the Heresy Hunters). 2 Cup Press. 2022. p. 6 (Kindle)
17. Ibid. 
18. Titus 1:9, ESV, emphasis added
19. Rauser, emphasis added
20. Ibid, p.6-7
21. Ibid, p. 7, emphasis original 
22. David de Silva. Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. InterVarsity Press. 2000. p. 253 (ePub)
23. Ibid, p. 252
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid, p.311
27. Ibid.
28. Malachi 2:10, ESV
29. Rauser, p. 8
30. Exodus 12:37-38; Numbers 11:4
31. Rauser, p. 9