"Veiled in Flesh the Godhead See" - Docetism??

Without question the incarnation of Jesus Christ is one of the most wonderful truths of the Christian faith which we ought to especially consider during the Christmas season.  The fact that God became a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is absolutely essential if He is to be the Saviour of sinful human beings, but how this could possibly be we will probably never fully understand until we meet the Lord one day. 

When we talk about the incarnation, there are two opposite errors that we must avoid.  On the one hand is the heresy known as "Ebionism".  The Ebionites were an early Christian sect that denied the full divinity of Jesus.  They basically viewed Jesus as a regular human who was simply empowered by God.  This heresy is still alive and well among many Liberal Christians who deny the deity of Jesus Christ.  The second error is known as "Docetism".  Docetism was embraced by some Gnostic sects which believed that Jesus only appeared to be human.  Docetism is essentially a denial of the full humanity of Jesus.  However we speak of the incarnation or understand it, we need to avoid these two errors as orthodox believers have done down through the centuries.  St. Athanasius (4th c.) said the following about the incarnation:  "He was made man, that we might be made [like Him]".  Gregory of Nazianzus (4th c.) said: "That which was not assumed is not healed."  In other words, if Jesus did not "assume" our humanity, our sins could never have been atoned for on the cross.  A correct view of the incarnation is foundational to a correct view of the atonement - that is why this issue is so critical to get right!

Which brings me to my question:   What exactly did Charles Wesley mean when he wrote the line "veiled in flesh the godhead see" in the Christmas carol "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"?   Overall, I love the theology of this hymn as Wesley tries to capture the glory of the incarnation, but I struggle with this one line... is this not teaching a Docetic view of the incarnation?   Was Jesus' human flesh simply a "veil" for his deity?   ....Or am I simply misunderstanding Wesley on this point?? 

One of my Favorite Hymns

This has always been one of my favorite hymns...Christ-exalting and theologically rich!  Written by an incredible woman of the faith - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Crosby

To God Be the Glory - Fanny J. Crosby (1820-1915)

Verse 1:

To God be the glory, great things He hath done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened  the life-gate that all may go in.

Chorus:

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the earth hear His voice
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the people rejoice
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He hath done!

Verse 2:

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

Verse  3:

Great things He hath taught us, great things He hath done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our vict'ry when Jesus we see!

Chorus:


Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the earth hear His voice
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the people rejoice
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He hath done!

Some Thoughts on Open and Closed Communion

Over the past month or so I've been giving some thought to the issue of open and closed communion.  When I was young I attended an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church which practiced closed communion, but since that time, I've met very few Evangelicals, aside from the Plymouth Brethren, who would subscribe to that view.  Since most of us who have grown up in baptistic denominations have probably always taken open communion for granted without thinking about it too deeply, I want to present several arguments in favour of closed communion. 

Before I present the case, let me define the terms.  Advocates of open communion believe that the Lord's Supper is open to everyone who has professed personal faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.  In a Baptist context, advocates of closed communion seek to restrict the Lord's Supper to believers who have been baptized by immersion.  Some advocates of closed communion will go even further and restrict communion to members of a particular local congregation.   Although I've never been overly dogmatic on this issue, I personally think that the Lord's Supper should be restricted to believers who have been baptized by immersion.  The arguments which support this view are as follow:

1) Water Baptism precedes the Lord's Supper in the apostolic pattern

The strongest argument in favour of closed communion is found in Acts 2, although I would be quick to concede that we ought to use great caution in deriving normative patterns or doctrine from narrative portions of Scripture.  Nevertheless, the order of events in Acts 2 does seem to lend considerable support to the practice of closed communion, viz.  Repentance (v. 38) --> Water Baptism (v. 38) --> Church Membership (v. 41) -->Lord's Supper (v. 42). 

Furthermore, there is not a single example in Scripture of a believer who is admitted to the Lord's Supper before being properly baptized.  Once again, I will admit that this is an argument from silence, but it is still quite striking that nobody appears to partake of the Lord's Supper until they exercise faith and are baptized.  (ie. Ethiopian Eunuch - Acts 8:36-38; Saul/Paul - Acts 9:18;  Cornelius - Acts 10:44-47; Lydia - Acts 16:14-15; Philippian Jailor - 16:30-33)

2) Water Baptism precedes the Lord's Supper in the order of their institution

This is far less compelling, but interesting to think about nevertheless.  Jesus instituted Water Baptism at the beginning of His earthly ministry and the Lord's Supper on the same night that He was betrayed.

3) Water Baptism precedes the Lord's Supper in their doctrinal order


Among other things, Baptists believe that Water Baptism is symbolic of a believer's death, burial and resurrection with Christ.  Baptism is the outward sign of the inward work of regeneration effected by the Holy Spirit.  Whereas circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant and sealed upon the hearts of the Jewish people the tremendous promises that God had made to Abraham (cf. Gen 12:1-3), Water Baptism is the sign of the New Covenant in Christ, which seals upon the heart of the Christian the promises that God has made to us who have placed our faith in Jesus alone for salvation.  Baptism has no saving power, but it is a non-negotiable part of the process of becoming a disciple of Christ (cf. Matt 28:18-20).  The modern notion that a person can be saved and not worry about water baptism is utterly foreign to Biblical Christianity. 

The Lord's Supper, unlike Baptism is an ongoing ordinance.  Baptism is the initiatory ordinance which symbolizes new birth, whereas the Lord's Supper serves as an ongoing reminder of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord, so that our faith can be continually strengthened and nourished "as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup".

The main point is this - just as a baby must be born before she can eat and be nourished, so the ordinance symbolizing new spiritual life doctrinally precedes the ordinance symbolizing ongoing nourishment and sustainance.  To reverse this order is to confuse the doctrinal significance of these two ordinances.

4) No other orthodox Christian denomination permits non-baptized believers to partake of the Lord's Supper


Although an appeal to tradition doesn't necessarily prove or disprove anything, Baptists who practice open communion ought to at least be aware of the novelty of their practice.  Every other Christian denomination that I am aware of recognizes that Baptism ought to precede the Lord's Supper.   


5) Historically, Baptists been strong advocates of Closed Communion.


The Puritan forerunners of the Baptists were strong advocates of closed communion by and large.  Before being admitted to the Lord's Table, a person was required to give an account of their conversion to the elders of the church.  This had two primary advantages:  1) It helped to protect the purity of the visible church - something which is still a great concern for Baptists;  2) It enabled the church to exercise discipline.  In the Reformed Tradition, believers under church discipline were typically barred from the Lord's Table - a practice which has almost completely disappeared today with the advent of open communion.  During the early 18th century, some Puritans such as Solomon Stoddard began to practice open communion.  This practice was strongly opposed by Stoddard's own grandson Jonathan Edwards - a doctrinal stand which ultimately cost him his pastorate!

Like Edwards and the Puritans, the earliest English Baptists practiced and defended closed communion because the majority of them believed, as I've argued above, that Baptism is a pre-requisite for the Lord's Supper.  Some editions of the First London Confession of Faith (1644) explicity endorse the practice of closed communion:  Article XXXIX - "That Baptism is an Ordinance of the New Testament, given by Christ, to be dispensed only upon persons professing faith, or that are Disciples, or taught, who upon a profession of faith, ought to be baptized and after to partake of the Lord's Supper."

Interestingly, the Second London Confession (1689) does not contain this stipulation and probably reflects a diversity of opinion among Baptists on the issue.  Shortly before the publication of this Second Confession, William Kiffin (the most important Baptist theologian of the 17th c.) and John Bunyan (author of the Pilgrim's Progress) had a lively debate about this subject in print with Kiffin defending closed communion, and Bunyan defending open communion.

Other notable Baptists who have defended closed communion include Benjamin Keach, John Gill,  A.H. Strong,  T.T. Shields and Mark Dever.   One of my Baptist heroes who defended open communion was Charles Haddon Spurgeon!

Re-thinking Mission - Part 4

I want to conclude this series of posts on the missional movement with what I see as one of its major theological weaknesses, namely the tendency toward Universalism or Inclusivism.  However much I appreciate Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin and the "Gospel and Our Culture Network" which they have influenced, I cannot follow them when it comes to their Christological re-working of election.

For Calvin, Luther and the magisterial Reformers, the decree of predestination stands separate from the decree to elect Christ for the task of redemption.  Although the second person of the Trinity was intimately involved with the Father and the Spirit in the decree of election and predestination, the revelation of this decree lies hidden and shrouded in mystery in the decretum absolutum.   This line of thinking was openly rejected by Karl Barth and many of the neo-orthodox theologians who followed in his footsteps.  Barth felt that any notion of election apart from Christ could only lead to fear, uncertainty and loss of assurance.  Both Calvin and the Puritans were well aware of this, which is why the latter group spent so much effort their sermons giving various biblical proofs by which men and women could "make their calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1).  In contrast to the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth asserted that Jesus Christ  is the electing God as well as the elect man.  Because in Jesus Christ we see the divine Son, fully God and fully human, suffering on the cross for sinful humanity, all doubts as to God's "Yes" to his human creation necessarily disappear.  In the election of Christ, and through His self-identification with His human creation, Barth concludes on the basis of Ephesians 1:4 that all of humanity is elect in Christ.   Not only is Jesus the "elect" man, He is for Barth the only "reprobate" man - (this is Barth's Christological version of "double predestination").  No longer must humanity fear Calvin's decretum horribile (the terrible decree), says Barth, for there is only one reprobate man – Jesus of Nazareth who faced the rejection on the cross and suffered vicariously for sinners.   There's only one little problem with this line of reasoning... if all of humanity is elect in Christ before the foundation of the world, it logically follows that all of humanity will ultimately be saved whether or not they trust in Christ - a view which cannot possibly be squared with the clear testimony of Scripture.

So was Karl Barth a universalist??  The answer to this question is both "yes" and "no".  If you follow Barth's doctrine of election to its logical conclusion you will end up with universalism.  But the surprising fact is that Barth himself explicitly denied that he was a universalist!  This is one of the frustrating things about Barth's theology- as a dialectical theologian he is willing to live with unresolved tensions and to affirm what certainly appear to be contradictions.  The same is true of Lesslie Newbigin.  For example, in The Open Secret Newbigin writes the following:  "The choosing is "in Christ" and not otherwise. There is no election apart from Christ, as some theologies have seemed to suggest."  In true Barthian style, Newbigin leaves his audience with unresolved tension: "The exposition given so far of the doctrine of election may seem to lead straight to universalism, that is, to the doctrine that there can be no possibility of final exclusion from God's salvation… I believe it is essential to hold firmly together both the universalist perspective of the Bible and the clear teaching about judgment and the possibility of rejection." 

 

I am personally of the opinion that Barth's doctrine of election has negative consequences for evangelism and mission.  If you accept the teaching that humanity (and therefore every human being) is elect in Christ, evangelism simply becomes the announcement of a fait accompli.  According to Emil Brunner, Barth has presented a picture of election which can be compared to a group of sailors who find themselves shipwrecked at sea.  Although they greatly fear that they will drown in the sea, they don't realize that the water is too shallow for that to ever happen!  Of course Barth wanted people to repent of sin and follow Jesus as Lord, but if you follow the logic of his theology, it doesn't really matter whether people respond or not because the grace of God has ultimately triumphed over unbelief.  

 

Re-thinking Mission - Part 3

Today I'm going to tackle another major (and highly controversial) idea that is very central for many missional writers - the issue of bounded set thinking vs. centred set-thinking.  This particular idea has gained quite a bit of traction within the emergent church, but it actually originated on the mission field.  The late Dr. Paul Hiebert who taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for many years was a missionary to India during the early 1960s.  As a cross-cultural missionary, Hiebert noticed that much of the missionary practice coming from the West represented what he called "bounded-set" thinking, whereas he felt that a "centred-set" approach was more biblical and culturally appropriate.

 

The traditional Western worldview which is rooted in "modernism" tends to prefer "bounded-set" thinking.  We like to be able to distinguish clearly between different groups of people based on who's in and who's out and therefore tend to make a very sharp distinction between Christians and non-Christians.  In this kind of cultural context, conversion is usually thought of as an event that we can pinpoint, often with the precision of date and time.  A lot of our evangelistic strategies in the West reflect a "bounded set" mentality - our goal is to get a person to assent to certain truths about the gospel, then pray to receive Christ.  For example, conservative Protestants believe very strongly that a person is saved by faith alone (sola fide), and would set this belief as a boundary.  A Roman Catholic who doesn't accept sola fide is generally considered to be outside of the boundary and thus is probably unsaved. Bounded-set thinking generally focuses on the question "what do you believe?"

The centred-set approach recommended by Hiebert defines a Christian as someone who has made Christ the centre of their life and is moving toward the centre.  The main question here is not "what do you believe?", but "who is your centre?"  This view requires that a person change direction by repenting of sin and turning toward Christ in faith, but does not demand that a person assent to a list of very clear doctrinal distinctives before being accepted into the Christian community.  According to this view, a conservative Protestant who believes strongly in sola fide might view a Roman Catholic as a brother or sister in Christ who simply has a significant doctrinal flaw.  The main issue would be whether they have repented and believed in Jesus, not whether they have pristine Evangelical theology.  (For that matter, I would argue that a large number of self-professing Evangelicals have a semi-Pelagian view of salvation and a modalist view of the Trinity).  This centred-set approach has obvious advantages for cross-cultural missions, where syncretism is always a huge challenge.  ('Syncretism' simply defined is the mixing of Christian beliefs with elements of pagan culture).  If cross-cultural missionaries waited for new converts to have perfect theology (at least as we define it in the West), it might take years to baptize a new convert or to entrust a person with any position of leadership within the local church.  For this reason, we've tended to hold two standards, a high standard of doctrinal purity for the average North American who converts to Christianity, and a much lower standard of doctrinal purity for everyone else in the  non-Western world.  Most missional thinkers also like to point out the fact that we've failed to recognize the extent to which Western Christianity has been affected by syncretism over the past 1600 years.  We tend to assume that the Western expression of Christianity is the standard against which we ought to measure everything else.  This was a particular problem in 19th and 20th century missions endeavours as the Western church exported certain cultural distinctives in addition to the gospel message.  Missions in many cases was an expression of Colonialism and Western superiority, even if the missionaries were well intentioned.

Missional thinkers contend that we now live in a "post-Christian" age in the West, when Christendom no longer holds a privileged position in society.  Fifty years ago, most non-believers in North America bought into the Judeo-Christian worldview, even if they rejected Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Most North Americans believed in the God of the Bible and accepted Biblical morality as the normative pattern for society.  With the advent of "post-modernism" and relativism, all of this is changing - if you don't believe me, come to Montreal and we'll talk with some students together!!  We can no longer assume that the people around us share our basic worldview.  This means that we North American Christians are now cross-cultural missionaries in our own society, and as such, will deal increasingly with the challenge of syncretism in our ministries. Most missional thinkers believe that the centred-set approach which is now generally accepted on the mission field, ought to be used here in North America too given the dramatic cultural shifts we are currently experiencing.  In other words, the dichotomy between "evangelism" here in the so-called "Christian West" and "missions" somewhere far away among the heathen is no longer valid.  We must all begin viewing ourselves as cross-cultural missionaries.

Before you come to the conclusion that I've gone "emergent" and joined ranks with Brian McClaren and Rob Bell, I want to alleviate your concerns.  I'm simply wrestling with some of these ideas and haven't come to any definite conclusions.  I'm also not trying to say that doctrine isn't important- anyone who knows me well knows where I stand on this issue!  I believe we are living in a time where sound doctrine is more important than ever!   I'm very curious to know what other people think about some of the ideas I've raised in these blogs, so please feel free to comment, push back or add your own thoughts.