Ant Greenham presents an intriguing analysis of the world’s monotheistic religions and their view of God, through the lens of how God is perceived to relate to the questions of human beings. Using broad strokes, he paints a generalized picture of this situation. In essence, he argues that Islam suppresses the questioning of God through its focus on submission to the will of Allah. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Greenham presents the Jewish faith as being so open to questioning God that this questioning has undermined an ultimate certainty in God. This leaves the Christian faith, which Greenham examines in both its Roman Catholic and Evangelical forms. While Vatican II opened the Roman Catholic Church to a more positive view of questioning, it has left certain theological positions too sacrosanct to be questioned. Evangelicals, in the meantime, have become too closed to the questioning of authority (both political and religious) and Greenham outlines some of the potential dangers inherent in this lack of questioning.

The author presents some very solid scriptural arguments for his position and he outlines a strong biblical view of questioning from the example of Christ’s words to his followers in the gospels. He recognizes several times that he does not have the space to do a thorough analysis of each religion’s position and Greenham also validates that individuals vary within each religion presented. Beyond these obvious concerns, I found myself left with several additional questions.

First, the author presents this spectrum of current positions regarding questioning as the norm for these religious traditions. He would be better served to bring out the temporal and cyclical nature of questioning. Judaism was forced into a greater openness to questioning as a result of the Holocaust and its horrors, which replaced a much closed rabbinic tradition. Christianity as well was forced into a more open position with regard to questioning by the Enlightenment. Even then the Church fought Copernicus and other scientists through the Inquisition and the Counter Reformation for their questioning of the theology of their day. The Islamic world was the seat of scientific knowledge and openness during the Dark Ages, when the Christian Church demanded blind obedience to the faith. Greenham mentions a number of these factors, but does not really tie them into a theory which would be more cyclical. While Islam may be going through a current phase that is closed to questioning, this does not mean this period is permanent or unable to be changed given historical events. Evangelical Christianity may be going through a similar cycle of closing itself to questioning stemming back to the Scopes trials and a distancing of Evangelical Christianity from scientific inquiry. All religions may go through such cyclical transformations.

Second, Greenham does not really tie in the role of mystery and faith in religious traditions. While questioning is indeed one important aspect of how people interact with God in religion, all of these traditions also call for some ideas to be accepted as matters of faith. The mystery of the Trinity, faith in the divinity of Jesus, acceptance of the faithful transmission of the Qur’an to Muhammad, or the acceptance of the Jewish nation as a specially chosen people of God, are all matters which a believer must chose to accept by faith. No amount of questioning can prove or disprove these fundamental concepts. Religion, in its basic difference from science, is found in its concepts accepted without question by faith.

Third, in terms of mission and evangelism from an evangelical perspective, the author does not really deal with the role of the Holy Spirit. In terms of previenient grace (from a Wesleyan point of view), the Holy Spirit is active in all parts of the world, all cultures, and all religions, before Christianity even appears. It is the Holy Spirit who compels people to begin to question what they believe and why. It is the Holy Spirit that is the reason for individual variations in how people move to conversion and personal transformation. In the same way, it is the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that moves us to self-critique our own ideas and values as Christians. The dynamic power of questioning would be nothing without this theological groundwork from a Christian perspective.

From my reading of Greenham’s book, The Questioning God, I feel he understands these issues and concepts, but lacked time and opportunity to elaborate on them. Nevertheless, I feel they are important, even vital additions to this conversation. Greenham has provided a fascinating foundation for a beginning discussion on how people should deal with questions about God, both from inside and outside the Church. His biblical principles for Christians are sound and need to be heard in the Evangelical Church today. While his perspective of questioning in the Muslim and Jewish communities provides a good starting place for a discussion on evangelism, it is not the end of the discussion. Much more remains to be said and analyzed in terms of history and the theology of world religions, but it is a refreshing place to begin to develop new and more fundamental questions to ask about what we believe.

One of the areas on which various Energion authors have differing perspectives is the relationship of the gospels to history.

Energion author Herold Weiss, author of Finding My Way in Christianity and Creation in Scripture (forthcoming), writes about the gospels and the ‘messianic secret’ in his column in Spectrum:

All future generations of believers are contemporaries of Jesus who can remember his mighty deeds because the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, teaches them and “re-minds” them of what they have neither seen nor heard. Once the disciples received the Holy Spirit who taught them all things and reminded them of all things in the light of the Scriptures, then and only then did they understand what Jesus had been about. This is the Johannine definition of the memory that is guided by the Holy Spirit. It understands what it did not know and remembers what it had neither seen nor heard in order to actualize in labors of love the life of Jesus on earth. To all his disciples Jesus says: “Remember the word that I said to you” (15: 20).

Read the entire column.

As is often the case, differences in the way we read the gospels lead back to differences in the way we understand inspiration. On this topic Energion Publications currently lists History and Christian Faith and From Inspiration to Understanding, (Edward W. H. Vick) as well as my own When People Speak for God.

Taking a completely different view of the origins and historicity of the gospels, we have Why Four Gospels? by David Alan Black. Of course I have read all these books as an editor, but I have also found it very helpful to read these very different approaches in other people’s works as well, or books with even more extreme differences, such as Stein’s Jesus the Messiah or Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture on the one hand and Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

If the man of Old Testament days were asked how he had come by his understanding of the world, how it was that he had come to have a standpoint on the meaning of reality, there would be little question as to how he would answer the query, after it had been put in concrete enough terms so that he could understand it. He would refer to what God had done, to the ‘mighty acts,’ and to the traditions by means of which such past acts had been preserved in remembrance. He would speak of the expectation which the recalling of these remembered acts had awakened in him. For his God was not simply the God of his fathers. The teaching which had been handed down was not simply a memory of what was past and done. Yahweh was not the God of the past only. He could stride across the length of the future leaving newly fulfilled promises and newly awakened anticipation in His train. Yahweh was a living God, He had made his will known in His doings. These doings had passed into history and yet were not past. They had passed into history, but they were present in being remembered. But not only that, the God who had performed them then was the God who acted now. The Hebrew lived between memory which was no mere memorial, and anticipation which was no mere wistfulness. He was the man he was because of the God in whom he believed. He had been shaped to be the man he was by his trust in the God in whom he believed. He hoped because he knew God’s promise, and because he knew that it was not exhausted even when it was being fulfilled. He knew that the fulfilment itself pointed beyond itself to what was yet to come in the activity of God’s future.

It was this forward looking that came to distinguish the Hebrew people, and the Hebrew book, the Old Testament, from other peoples and from other books. It appears in different ways, but it is always there, ‘All presentation of history in the Old Testament is in one form or another inherently open to a future . . . in this connection ‘future’ is always a future to be released by God . . . . This forward looking is certainly not always the same. Sometimes it is more obvious, sometimes less: but it is present everywhere . . . . the prophets looked for the decisive factor in Israel’s whole existence — her life or her death — in some future event . . . . Thus Hosea foretells a new entry into the land, Isaiah a new David and a new Zion, Jeremiah a new covenant, and Deutero-Isaiah a new Exodus.’¹

We are constantly borne forward to what is to come. Faith in the God of the covenant, who is the God of promise and of fulfilment, has its natural accompaniment in the hope that can face the future, not only without fear, but with confident expectation. The greatest acts of God are not those from the past. They are yet to be. God has begun what He has not yet finished. The believer lives between the times, and thus in expectation. His faith is a hopeful faith. ‘Not only words of promise, but also the events themselves, in so far as they are experienced as ‘historic’ events within the horizon of promise and hope, bear the mark of something that is still outstanding, not yet finalized, not yet realized.’² Here everything is in motion, the accounts never balance, and fulfilment unexpectedly gives rise in turn to another promise of something greater still. Here nothing has its ultimate meaning in itself, but is always an earnest of something still greater.

The very fact that the Old Testament is a Christian book means that this distinguishing characteristic must be retained in any adequate Christian thought about God. The concreteness of the Old Testament attitude to ‘religion’ (they, of course had no such word), and the concreteness of the Old Testament understanding of God stands guard against different kinds of attempt to forget or to minimise this intrinsic tie to what is past, and the anticipation of what is yet to be which was the distinguishing feature of biblical faith. To put it in other words, faith rests upon that which has been done. It thus has a stake in speaking about history. It anticipates what will be. Genuine faith is never unaccompanied by hope. It knows what hope is because in its history it has seen hope fulfilled.

We are thus led to the need for clarifying an important term. It is the word eschatology. The Greek word eschatos is an adjective and means ‘last.’ The English term ‘end’ might serve also as a translation. But the English term ‘end’ has an interesting ambiguity which this Greek term does not have. For as well as ‘last’, the English term ‘end’ also means ‘purpose’ or ‘fulfilment.’ To ‘achieve one’s end’ is to ‘get one’s purpose fulfilled.’ Now if we take the Greek term, transliterate it into English (adding a transliterated Greek suffix) the term ‘eschatology’ emerges. It means the doctrine of the end. The term comes to have an interesting ambiguity however. The end can be temporal or it can be purposive (When we learned Greek and Latin, final clauses were purpose clauses). Traditional eschatology has held the two meanings of the term together, when it asserted that the purpose of God was fulfilled at the end of the world. The problem of eschatology was then to relate the final (that is, the last) fulfilment of God’s purpose to that which is here and now being fulfilled in the life of faith. For, it was rightly realised that in an essential sense of the term God’s purpose is fulfilled in the life of faith here and now. The believer has eternal life. This was balanced in the traditional view by the assertion that that was not all that needed to be said, but that it must be insisted that there was life, fulfilled life after this one.

It is clear that a divorce can take place in two quite different directions. Eschatology can become exclusively futuristic or exclusively ‘presentative’! The former takes place when schemes of eschatological geography, of end-time mapping, replace the proper concern, which should (if the emphasis is going to be put on the future) be the fulfilment of life in the future which follows the events of such neatly mapped-out schemes. The latter takes place when emphasis is placed on the reality of present faith to such an extent that the content of hope is pushed out of range. All that matters is that one believe, that one decide. These are the dangers of fundamentalism and of existentialism respectively.

There is yet another danger. It is that of holding the importance of hope (however the events of the end-time are mapped, or whether they are at all) in one compartment and the importance of faith in another. One knows that faith in Jesus Christ is essential but this faith is not brought into intrinsic theological relationship to an understanding of the last things. The doctrine of the eschaton, and those of the life of faith and of the Spirit and of the church remain as disjecta membra, never brought into essential connection (that is, integration) with that of the eschaton. As with the doctrine, so with the preaching of the church. It is then that the preaching of the Christian hope, or as it is sometimes called of the ‘Second Advent,’ becomes something less than Christian. Christian hope is secularised even with the retention of the symbolism that points beyond such secularisation. Sometimes it may take on crass form not entirely different from the eschaton promised to the Islamic warrior, as in the case of the Tennessee preacher heard by the writer for whom fulfilment consisted in having a large boat, a magnificent house, every imaginable comfort. He simply transferred these (in the name of Christian fulfilment) to the eschaton. It requires little insight to see that this has nothing to do with Christian hope. The moral of the piece is that in preaching fulfilment, the Christian preaches Jesus Christ, no less. He is to preach Jesus Christ even when he preaches eschatology, rather one should say, especially then. Jesus Christ points to the fulfilment of our needs and provides for what is involved in being a real person. The future is thus first and foremost God’s future, and this means the future of faith and of holiness.

Thus the subject of eschatology is God. The decisive question which talk of fulfilment raises is simply, What sort of God is it that the Christian believes in, trusts and hopes for? The kind of future and of fulfilment on expects will be determined by the kind of God who (or which) is the object of one’s ultimate concern. All questions in theology finally come back to this one — namely, the question of God. If we cannot speak of God, we cannot speak of God’s future. If God is known by reference to Jesus Christ, the future of the Christian will be the future of Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ has not revealed the future of God, must we not say that that future is completely unknown? ‘Only when the present of Christ is an anticipation of the future of God, can it be understood as germ and beginning of that which is to come.’³

At this point we return to the Biblical understanding of God with which we began. We saw that for the Hebrew, the future was God’s future. The future did not simply come, it was not simply inevitable. It was shaped by the initiating activity of God, and thus quite the opposite of that which would simply happen. In the future, God was expected to come, with power, deliverance, revelation, fulfilment. What God would do, — that was one side of it. What man might expect, — that was the other. The future of the believer was a different future from that of the non-believer. For the believer it did not simply come, it was initiated by God. One spoke of God rather than of fate. This is signified by the Latin adventus, from which we get our English word ‘advent’. The Greek equivalent is parousia, which quite appropriately has come to stand for the ‘end.’ The parousia in the New Testament is the future that Jesus Christ will initiate. The advent, the parousia, is that which will come. It is the actualisation of purpose not simply the passage of time. Without the actualisation of purpose, there is no future. The Christian affirms that Jesus Christ anticipates the future of God in the present in that in Him the purpose of God has come to fulfilment. So as faith is directed toward Him, the possibility of His future is shared by the believer.

¹Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Volume II, pp. 361, 117.

²Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p.107.

³Jurgen Moltmann, Diskussion uber die Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 212-213.

We had gone away for a vacation, were far from home, had left it all behind and in spite of the weather were enjoying ourselves. Now it was Thursday evening. Before turning in for the night, we decided to listen to the news on the radio. So we turned it on. To my very great surprise the announcer said it was the Friday news. Friday? But it was Thursday. Since announcers make mistakes, and since events are not reported before they happen, we waited. But he went on acting as though he knew what he was talking about. I was certain that it was Thursday. But it turned out that I was wrong. It was Friday.

Someone whom I knew very well celebrated his birthday on the fourteenth of September, and had done it for years. on one occasion he had reason to examine his birth certificate, which informed him that he was born not on the fourteenth but on the fifteenth of September. He was for a very long time certain that it was the fourteenth. But he was wrong.

A family of expert naturalists went into the woods as they had done many, many times before_. They were especially good at mushrooms. They went home with a bagful and ended up in hospital, fighting for their lives. They were certain the fungi were edible. They were wrong.

One thousand five hundred and thirteen people boarded the great boat that was making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It was the year 1912, and she was the most advanced liner ever built. She was called the Titanic. They were certain of comfort, luxury and of safety. One thousand five hundred and thirteen people never reached their destination. They were certain but they were wrong.

A young couple were quite certain that their proposed marriage would be a happy one. Other people were not so sure. The psychologist who counseled them advised them that the marriage would be disastrous. But they were certain it would be all right. They were married. The marriage ended in disaster. They were certain, but they were wrong.

So we could go on.

It is a fairly common human experience to be quite sure about something and yet to be wrong. Now that raises a very real and very interesting problem. What’s the point of being certain if you may be wrong? What is the status of your certainty? When I say, I’m certain or ‘I’m quite sure’ that says something about me, as much about me as about the way things are. In fact, as our examples show, it often says more about me than about the way things are. To be certain about something does not mean that what I’m certain about is true.

You can put it in a sentence. Certainty is not the same as truth. Now that is something well worth thinking about.

I learned, when they taught me about public speaking, that I must speak with confidence, even if I may not feel confident. After all, you can’t convince people about what you have to say if you don’t act as if you were certain. The fact is, I’m sure you’ve noticed it, that when people speak as if they were certain, other people will take what they have to say as true. But that is a confusion. When the speaker says, ‘Let me tell you something I’m quite certain about’ we can’t then simply assume that he is right. To be certain is not the same as being right.

If one hears something long enough one is apt to believe it. If you go on telling people something long enough, there is a good chance that they will end up believing what you tell them. The fact is that most of what we believe we have taken on authority. We do not, we did not question everything in all of the books that we were given to read. In fact we were in no position to be able to do so. So we had to rely upon being taught what was reliable.

But, instead of saying, ‘I’m certain’ people sometimes say ‘I know’. Then there is real trouble. You can, as we have seen, be certain of what is not true. But you cannot know what is not true. So when someone says, ‘I know’ when they only mean, ‘I’m certain,’ it is easy to be taken in if one is not careful.

Some things you should only be certain about if you have sufficient evidence. There is evidence which settles whether it is Thursday or Friday, whether one’s birthday is one day rather than another. If we are not aware of or have not given due weight to such evidence, our certainties are neither here nor there.

You have heard people arguing. Sometimes they argue about their certainties. ‘I’m sure it is’, says one. ‘I’m sure it is not’, says the other. But what are they arguing about? Nothing is more fruitless than a futile and unnecessary argument. Being certain is a state of mind, and you can get yourself into a state of mind. You can get with people who are more sure than you areor read only the arguments which support your own point of view, or refuse to listen when evidence is discussed. But the state of mind we call being certain may be neither here not there. It may not be worth a fig.

This means that some people who appear very serious are not half serious enough. I mean, you can make confident noises and gestures about your certainties and never really get down to brass tacks and ask not only, ‘What am I certain about?’ but also, ^‘Why am I certain about it?’ and the more important question, ‘Do I have grounds for being certain?’ For the fact of the matter is that we ought to reserve our states of certainty for what is in fact true We should be able to give reasons, cite evidence for our certainties. I believe that it is a moral obligation to examine our certainties with these and other questions in mind. Only so can we call ourselves honest. But we cannot, if we are honest, be superficial about it. It may go deeper than we thought. So ask yourself three questions and stay with them for awhile, for a life time. That should be long enough. What are you certain about? What do you claim for your certainties? Why are you certain? That means, What grounds do you have for being certain.

What all this implies is that some certainties are unreasonable however much they may please us and however much the prospect of giving them up may distress us. Perhaps in the most important areas of our human life, our illusions are just too expensive. A bigot or a fanatic is certain beyond what is reasonable, beyond what the evidence warrants. And a facade of certainty may be a cover for a real insecurity. But that is another matter – an important one, mind you. Very important! Since some certainties are unreasonable, and we ought to be as reasonable as we can, there is a moral aspect to our question. We ought to examine our certainties.

Have a look at the following argument and see what you make of it. It sums up what we have so far been saying.

We are sometimes mistaken when we are certain. To be certain cannot mean that we know the truth. To know the truth some other conditions besides being certain must be fulfilled. If such conditions are fulfilled then a feeling of certainty is irrelevant. Such a condition is the presence of evidence, or of sound reasons. So we ought to seek for evidence and for sound reasons when we wish to attain to the truth.

The pilot will trust his instruments in spite of his own feelings. His instruments are the windows to reality, his indicators of truth. However, intuitively, he may be certain, he must not trust his intuition in defiance of the readings of his instruments. They provide him with appropriate evidence. So when it is a matter of checking my certainties there is often appropriate evidence to which I can appeal.

However certain I may be that it is Thursday, if I have not examined the evidence for that certainty then my feeling of certainty is irrelevant. I could get the morning paper, or look at the calendar, I could recount the days from the one I was last certain (!) about, no not that – you see how easily we say the wrong thing – from the one I knew. I could have kept a diary.

Some people who have considered the matters we have been talking about have ended up by abandoning all claim to be certain. But we must not do that. In fact you can’t

do it. Just think for a moment about the claim, ‘You cannot be certain of anything’ and you will find it very unusual. It’s queer, this skeptical claim, since it seems to say no and yes at the same time, to deny and to affirm simultaneously. To say, ‘You can’t be certain of anything!’ means that you must be certain of that. So it is self-contradictory, or rather self-refuting, as the following conversation shows.

‘Anyone who says he’s certain is a fool.’

‘Are you certain of that?’

‘Of course I am certain.’

Even if you try to question every certainty you’ll find that you can’t doubt them all. So watch out.

Now, there are predispositions to believe certain kinds of people, provided they speak confidently. If a scientist says you can be certain of it, especially it he has a white coat on, people are apt to believe that what he says is true and in turn to speak with certainty about the matter. But the history of science shows that one man’s certainties were another man’s questions. One person’s answer is another person’s quest. One person’s orthodoxy is another person’s scandal. But it is only when the appropriate methods and evidence are forthcoming that one can speak about truth, or even a quest for truth.

The history of science also provides us with instances of certainties which were abandoned with the understanding of the evidence. It also provides us with examples of bigotry and of foolishness in clinging to long-held positions. At the outset of the modern era, most people who asked the question held that the universe was earth-centered They were certain. They were unanimous, but they were wrong. There are some things the truth of which is not settled by the counting of hands, by disputations, but by the appropriate interpretation of the evidence. The Aristotelians appealed to Aristotle and produced their arguments, but Galileo offered them his telescope. When they refused to look through it, and instead demanded a discussion on Aristotelian lines, they could no longer be said to be reasonable. Since they were no longer reasonable, their certainties were not longer reasonable certainties. Moreover they were in error.

In religious matters we hear a lot about certainty. So we have to be especially careful, and it must be said – deliberately honest in such things. To say, ‘We are certain’ is not the same as saying ‘We know the truth.’Of course religion is a disputed matter, inside and outside Christianity. You can usually be sure either of long silence or of a good discussion when the question comes round to religion. Since one person’s certainty is another person’s query, the question arises very seriously here. What is the status of my certainty? May I not be projecting my certainties on to reality and calling it by religious names, such as God, revelation, heaven, immortality? Of course I may. It does happen. Not all believers worship the same God, even in the same community. So we must beware.

The believer confesses the certainty of his faith. The preacher declares it. The theologian examines it. The theologian, if he is worth his salt, refuses to let you take your certainties for granted. He asks the why, the wherefore. He faces outward to the non-believer and asks the questions from without. What are the grounds for your faith, for your beliefs? What are your grounds for your claims about Jesus Christ, for the authority you accept, the Bible, the church? What are the grounds for your understanding of God, as for example, Trinity? What are the grounds for claiming that there is some relation between what you believe and how you live?

The honest Christian theist is not afraid to face the hard question, to try for an answer. Honesty is one of the Christian virtues most to be valued. If you seek it, you will need patience as well – the ability to face the crisis, to suffer the unknown and to keep trusting when perhaps much seems lost. The prize is theological, intellectual and personal integrity.

But let is now put the glove on the other hand. For our observations work both ways, for the theist, the believer in God, and for the non-theist, the one who does not believe in God. For it is true of the atheist that his certainty is not necessarily relevant, when he claims, ‘I’m quite certain that God is not as Christians claim him to be, a God of love’, or ‘I’m quite certain that there is no God’, or ‘I’m quite certain that God is not a God of strict justice.’ There is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable atheism, as there is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable theism. In neither case can one simply appeal to one’s certainty.

We feel, I think, that being certain, the mental state of certainty, is only really warranted when it has due support. In our off moments, we may well be fooled by someone’s certainty, especially when we want to believe what he commends. But when we reflect we are not so easily taken in. We’re not taken in when the lunatic says he’s Julius Caesar, or when the actor declaims that he is Richard III, King of England. We then have our critical wits about us. But in cases where the matter is not so clear-cut, we have ways of getting at the truth or falsity of the matter, if we are serious enough.

Yes, it’s when we value truth that we must examine our certainties. So what are you certain about? Take a long hard look at it. Remember, it ain’t necessarily so.

************

PS. And now I want to write a postscript. I’m quite aware that there are some certainties which my being certain about is enough to show that they are true. It is true that I am awake, that I am thinking (when I am thinking), that I am in pain when I am awake , thinking and in pain, and that is enough for me to know the truth in these instances. It’s quite different for me to say, ‘He’s awake, he’s thinking, he’s in pain,’ because I am not directly aware of some one else’s states of mind. But the religious certainties are about beliefs and relationships and these are mediated. Someone witnesses to me about God. I read things in books which someone has written about Jesus Christ. So they are unlike my immediate self-awareness, and I must therefore seek to show that the religious certainties I have are well grounded. I must talk about them being true and in doing so produce reasons and evidence which point to their truth. Then I can be reasonably certain.
(Edward W. H. Vick is author of History and Christian Faith, The Adventists’ Dilemma, and the forthcoming Energion title From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully, which will begin shipping next week.)

Earlier this week, a piece of writing was brought to my attention which has caused considerable reaction out there in the blogosphere. In his Parchment and Pen blog, C. Michael Patton published an entry under the rather intriguing title of ‘Embracing Doubt’ or Why ‘Roman Catholic scholarship‘ is an Oxymoron.’ Mr. Patton’s position, developed and corroborated in numerous other entries, is that one cannot be a real theological scholar and also be truly Roman Catholic because Catholics must always yield to the authoritative teaching of the church, a teaching which can be invoked as ‘infallible.’

To be honest, I consider this entry to be highly sincere but most unfortunate. In my view, it is important for Roman Catholics and Protestants to engage in respectful, ecumenical dialogue and to look for ways in which we can learn together, pray together and serve together, in Jesus’ name. It is also my conviction that we must search for an ‘ecumenical center’ while recognizing that individuals, in conscience, will make their own individual decisions regarding their own church affiliation. It is my preference that both Catholic and Protestant theologians, educators, and writers look for ways to focus on what we share in common, even to the point of making clear that what we have thought really must divide us, under the scrutiny of closer examination, in fact, actually need not!

The issues Mr. Patton raises are personal ones for me. I am an ordained clergyperson and have served as a pastor for over ten years in the United Church of Christ. For the first forty five years of my life, I was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Over the course of my professional life, I worked in Catholic parishes and a diocese in such capacities as Theology instructor, Youth Minister and Director of Religious Education. For nine years, I served as a Permanent Deacon, a member of the Roman Catholic clergy, and in that capacity baptized nearly three hundred individuals and officiated at a rather large number of weddings and funerals as well.

My wife, with whom I will be celebrating our thirty first anniversary in just a few days, remains a member of the Roman Catholic Church, as do our three children, one of whom works at a college as a Catholic campus minister. I am the beneficiary of a wonderful education in Catholic schools which includes exposure to magnificent Catholic teaching and scholarship in two excellent Jesuit institutions, Holy Cross and Boston College.

My eventual decision to leave the Catholic Church and my service in a Protestant denomination has really deepened my passion for that ecumenical center I have mentioned. As a matter of fact, I explore this in detail in my forthcoming book Crossing The Street, which will be released this coming Spring by Energion Publications. In my book, I explain my own decision to leave Catholicism, one that did, for me, center on the issue of authority. After much struggling with the multiplicity of issues involved, I made the decision that I am really a Protestant and thus felt deeply that it was time for me to move.

Yet, having said this, I also realize that other people who struggle with some of the same issues I did have decided to remain within the Catholic Church. Where I differ with Mr. Patton is in my strong belief that one can harbor doubt and question authority within Catholicism and yet remain a Catholic. Some of the Catholics whom I most admire are those who either have or do!

In his sweeping assertion that one cannot be scholarly and a faithful Catholic, Mr. Patton, in my view, misses three very important realities:

1. Many changes in the Catholic Church were as the result of theologians questioning what was current and historic church teaching. The major changes in worship, ecumenism, Biblical understanding, the priesthood of those other than the ordained, the church’s understanding of the relationship between religion and science, among many others, teachings promulgated at Vatican II and in the workings of the church in subsequent years, came as the result of ‘cutting edge’ work by theologians within the church, individuals such as Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner and others whose theological positions truly ‘pushed the envelope’ of Roman Catholic convention.
2. Even in some traditional ‘authoritative’ documents, the influence of dissenting Catholic theologians is clear. The great church authority test in the late twentieth century was the reaction of Catholic theologians and ordinary Catholics to the church’s teaching on birth control as expressed in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. It should be noted that prior to writing the encyclical, the Pope appointed a commission to study the question. One could argue that, though Pope Paul VI reiterated the traditional position in this Papal decree, the document also included a theological perspective expressed by those ‘ on the other side’ of the Pope’s conclusion. This same dichotomy is notable in the 1976 Vatican Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics. Even more telling, this ‘dissent’ on these questions and others is operative in both the behavior and attitudes of Catholics today who remain members of the church while holding positions different from the ‘magisterium’ on such issues as well as on others, including, yet not limited to, women’s ordination.
3. Most importantly, in the personal sense, Catholic teaching has clearly held to the concept of the primacy of the INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE in decision making. Church documents, including those of Vatican II, speak eloquently of this reality. I think it is fair to say that there are Catholic theologians who would see their dissent on particular teachings and interpretations as an exercise of their consciences.

So, in summary, as one whose movement into Protestantism and practice of my faith has been deeply enriched and enhanced by bold and exciting Catholic scholarship, I find Mr. Patton’s argument unconvincing. I do admire, however, his strong advocacy of the importance of theology within the Christian community of faith. It is my firm belief that true ecumenical dialogue between Protestants and Catholics really suffers when theological ‘indifferentism’ is seen as the norm. The idea that ‘it makes no difference’ and that all belief systems are ‘really the same’ is both inaccurate and does no justice to the cause of deeper understanding and shared contribution to both Christ’s church and to God’s world.

While I applaud Mr. Patton for his passion for theology, so obviously born of a love of God and a passion for truth, I see this blog entry as both falling short and also doing unnecessary collateral harm to the necessary cause of Christian unity!

Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle holds a Doctor of Ministry from Chicago Theological Seminary. He is pastor of the Congregational Church of Union, Connecticut, UCC, and is the author of Part-Time Pastor, Full-Time Church (Pilgrim Press, 2010) and the forthcoming book Crossing The Street (Energion, 2012). He writes a blog at http://wwwpastorbob.blogspot.com

At the same time the church is holding a Summer in the Psalms series. The embedded video is Geoffrey’s first sermon in that series. It begins with the 9th grade male chorus singing.

That is a picture of a home in my neighborhood in Denver, CO. where an eviction notice was executed May 10, 2011. Ever really thought about what oppression is? Well, the Webster definition of oppression is listed as, “Unjust or cruel exercise of authority of power.” But have you ever really wondered what oppression looks like? Well the above picture is worth a thousand words. One key word comes to my mind, oppression.

I offer my opinion on a relevant and sensitive topic regarding the state of our afflictions. These afflictions are part of our American culture and trends that require us to take a stand and take action. I am reminded of the quote we used to use in typing class in high school, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” Forget about the government aiding the people of our country. We need to rise up as the people of this country and aid the government. So what exactly am I rambling about? That picture is the picture of a person’s former home, now under eviction- executed. This picture is not staged. It is real. If that isn’t an unjust or cruel exercise of authority of power, I don’t know what is.

OK, so your counterpoint on the topic may be that they deserved it, they defaulted on their loan. Or, they had plenty of time to get their things out for they knew it was coming. All I’m asking is for a moment to put that aside, especially if you have never been close to anyone who has gone through this process. If you have never known anyone to go through this, let me paint a picture of their lives. As a culmination of people I have met along the way, a summary of their story and their state of economy might look something like this; a single mom with at least one child, no spousal support, no job, or a job, but with the cost of day care, not making enough to make ends meet. I have met people who have lost both parents and fallen into depression, lost jobs, and can’t function because of their illness, and can’t obtain adequate resources for even medicine. I have met a couple that work in construction and one broke her ankle, so they both are now homeless as they cannot maintain a residence with one income.

These are just everyday people struggling to make ends meet. Upon eviction, many often secure smaller housing, or secure shelter housing in which they have to place belongings in storage. They often live precariously with another family or extended family till they get back on their feet, again, placing belongings in storage. Or, they become homeless, living in a hotel, again, with no place to put any belongings. These families are challenged in securing food, heat, hot water and other basic necessities. Their choices center on paying for a truck rental, gas, and storage rental or buying basic needs like food. The choices center on taking time off of work to move their own belongings because they can’t pay movers. Many have only part time jobs that offer no benefits of paid days off from work. So, the end result is they either leave their belongings in the evicted house, or put some or all of their things in storage.

So, what exactly is my issue with this cruel use of power when executing eviction notices of emptying the house of all belongings? Let’s be clear here, it is shameful, strips all dignity, humiliates, degrades, pours salt on wounds, kicks them when they are down, embarrasses, and oppresses. It also is a safety issue for the neighborhood and children playing. It is also a property value issue for the neighborhoods vying for new buyers or renters.  NO ONE deserves this kind of treatment. No one should be so stripped of their dignity. No one should have to have this happen in their neighborhood. No parent should be at risk of a child getting hurt or injured from curiosity playing in a mound of belongings. It is unethical. It is not a liberal or conservative problem. It’s a social justice problem. It has to be stopped.

We have to rise up and take action now because this epidemic of evictions is not even close to being over. “Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows that about 3.7 million properties are in this seriously delinquent stage.” This stage refers to home loans that are in foreclosure, pending some action like loan modifications, short sales and possibly other disposition alternatives. That is only the current properties on a list that may well end up in eviction. That doesn’t include the mass numbers of evictions already executed since the mortgage crash, and future homes entering the foreclosure process. And, I might add these figures don’t capture the number of people who don’t own homes, but rent and have been evicted or will be evicted in the near future.

However, the up side of the story about this oppressive action is that we can do something about it! I was always taught that if you identify a problem, also offer a solution. So, what do we do? I believe there are many transitional solutions to alleviate the problem that can be done, such as one sheriff in Hamilton, OH is doing. It is reported that he ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live. Or find support money to locally fund vouchers for assisting with truck rentals, gas and storage units. But in the long-term, the solution perhaps is to push for a law to forbid such oppressive action. The law might even look like stating that all processing evictions must safely and responsibly remove belongings by securing items in a dumpster. That seems reasonable to me. Or, perhaps the belongings could stay in the facility until a new owner is secured, and the new owners are somehow compensated for the cost of removing the belonging (again safely and responsibly removing).

FIERCE topic- well that goes without saying. But how about some FIERCE action? I implore you, please don’t just read this and do nothing. But, you ask, “What can you do?” Well, right now like me, you can raise awareness of this issue and talk about it. Share this article. I will be contacting the Metro Organizations for People, the Denver Homeless Coalition and others to see how I can help change this. When I get some activity on a resolution, I will let you know, and hope the media will as well.

Be FIERCE ya’ll. Be FIERCE.  Help pass the blog on…email friends, “like on facebook.

Last year in the association in which the church I pastor is a member, there was reported 200 people baptized with total receipts of almost $8 million. Do you know what that tells me? That tells me we as an association spent almost $40,000 per person to get them baptized and brought to Jesus. This is well above the per capita family income of a typical family in our county! That’s an amazing statistic! If you think we spent $40,000 on evangelism and missions per person to reach them, you would be mistaken. We spend our money tithing to ourselves. We spend money on our “fun.” Most churches (and ours is no different and we’re working on it), spend as much money on literature, supplies and utilities as we do on missions. God help us for our misplaced priorities!

The Bible says in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

It’s up to us, the Church, to start reaching this nation again. I read recently in the NC Baptist “Connect” magazine that a church that has been around for 10-15 years or more gains nearly 80% of their new members by transfer growth (that’s swapping members), while a church that is a new church plant will gain nearly 60-80% of their new members from folks that have never attended church anywhere and are most likely lost. Why? Because the older churches get lazy!

You see, we have to pay off our buildings, in which we see less than a couple handfuls of people saved each year. We have to pay for our buses and our vans, as they cart us to and fro from activity to activity that reaches few if any with the gospel. We must pay for our burgeoning staffs (because the lay people don’t want to do much of anything anymore.) It seems we’d rather pay to have it done than get our hands dirty. It’s almost like people are saying: “Don’t try this at home—let the professionals do it, because it may be dangerous for our health.”

We continue to fund a myriad of programs (of which, many are so ineffective for reaching people with the gospel that we’re afraid to ask why we still have them), yet we hang on to these sacred cows because we’re afraid of a little blood just so we can keep the flock happy. And all the while, the new church plant is nimble enough and may I say hungry enough to “seek and save that which is lost,” because they “don’t know any better.” They aren’t burdened down yet with all the stuff that a “good” church is supposed to have.

We are involved in a war—a war for the hearts, souls, and minds of our children and our families. The Church in the last 50 years has failed to transmit its religious heritage to the next generation. Sermons, in many of our churches across America, are now more “therapeutic” than instructional; our worship services have become grounded more in what we “feel” than in what we think and know about Scripture.

Why is it that the Church, by and large, no longer represents the power of the “action” of God in the world?” I’ll tell you why. Because we have compromised the gospel. The Church has quit training and evangelizing. The church is literally dying a slow death in America; that is imperceptible to most, but nonetheless is happening simply because we are not reproducing ourselves. Church attendance continues to drop in America and we’re down now to around 30% of Americans attending services on a given Sunday. You see, the goal of Christianity must be to advance God’s kingdom on earth. Let me be very clear. The purpose of the Church is to be God’s “missionary people” in the world. We are to be adding to the flock…not just fattening those that are already in the flock, those who are already safe and sound.

Isn’t it time to seriously look at all of our programs and ministries and ask if they are effective and if they’re not…then, let’s pull out the butcher knife. I am firmly convinced there is no partnership in Christ without partnership in missions. Are we mission-minded? Is it really our TOP priority or just “one” of many priorities in our churches?

Oh have we forgotten our mission? If we are going to be relevant to this “lost and dying” world, we are going to have to remember what our purpose is and what our mission is to be. We’ve got to care about and love what Jesus loved. What did He love? Not a “what,” but a “who.” People, people, people! He said, “I have come to seek and to save that which is lost.” That’s our mission! As congregations, we must intentionally live as God’s missionary people. It’s only then that the church will emerge to become what Christ created it to be and it’s only then that we will truly be salt and light and see dramatic changes within the cultural fabric of our churches and thus, this nation. The purpose of the body of Christ is to make Jesus visible to the world Monday through Saturday…not just to ourselves on Sunday. Are we on mission at our jobs in our schools on the ball fields and dance studios? You don’t have to be a preacher or missionary to be in the “ministry.” We are all ambassadors of the Gospel…remember?

But, if we’re going to be on mission then we must overcome a significant hurdle. What is that? The great American Dream? Has the Church in this nation become like the church of Laodicea. Rev. 3:17 shows us this type of church: “We are rich, having acquired great wealth and are in need of nothing? But we don’t realize that we are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Jesus called that church lukewarm and it makes Him sick to His stomach to the point of vomiting. Is that what He sees when He looks at us? Oh, please forgive us Lord!

You know when you boil it down; it all comes down to priorities doesn’t it? We must remember who we are and what we are to be about as the Church. After all, aren’t we the body of Christ? We must remember we are to be His hands and feet. The Apostle Paul tells us so in Ephesians 3:11-12:

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…

So, it’s my job as a pastor to equip. Right? That’s what we just read…yet…churches expect the pastors to do everything in many cases. And do you know what else? People like me, (pastors and preachers), have made things this way. We’ve spoiled our people. Think about it. The average pastor puts in around 15-20 hours a week in message preparation. He gets paid on average a salary of around $45,000 a year, (I’m estimating here), and there are somewhere around 310,000 churches in the U.S. Add all that up, and you’ll see that every week American churches invest right at $140 million in preaching. That’s a major investment, and what’s the return on that investment? Church attendance is on the decline. The percentage of people claiming to know Christ is plummeting, and the moral fiber of our culture is ripping apart. Can’t we see that we’re missing the boat as Christians and as churches?

Preaching alone is good, but it won’t save the masses. We must personally be ambassadors for Christ as we daily “take up our crosses and follow Jesus and bear fruit for Him.” We must be paramedics with the Gospel (take it to them), not just ambulances (trying to get them to a building). Once we lead them to Jesus, we must disciple them. But, discipling is hard. It’s time-consuming and not easy because we have to roll up our sleeves and invest in other’s lives.

So, will we do it? Will we do the hard things and make our churches mission-minded? Will we brandish the knife and slaughter some sacred cows and stop tithing to ourselves? Will we become more concerned about what is happening outside the walls of our churches instead of paying for our own comforts inside those walls? I pray we will. And I pray that missions will once again become our top priority just as it was our Savior’s.