17 Responses to “Faith And Doctrine”

1. Charlie, on November 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm Said:

   …he is a liberal Protestant with an accordingly poor grounding in theological orthodoxy.

   Remedial question: how would you recommend that an educated layman with little/no background in Christian theology begin to familiarize himself with “theological orthodoxy”? I’m interested in this but literally would not know where to start.

2. RedPhillips, on November 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm Said:

   Is there some particular statement of his faith that Obama has made that you are referring to? If so, I would like to see it.

   Great topic. I will add more when I had time.

3. Daniel Larison, on November 17th, 2008 at 4:08 pm Said:

   Charlie: A fair-minded, detailed account of the evolution of Christian doctrine can be found in Pelikan’s magisterial five-volume series, A History of the Development of Doctrine. The first two volumes are best for an introduction to the most essential teachings. If you feel inclined to delve into medieval and Reformation Eucharistic controversies and the wonders of Schleiermacher, the later volumes await.

   Pelikan’s discussion can be technical at times, but he has explained everything very methodically and clearly, and he did an outstanding job of treating all of the confessions involved in the disputes on their own terms. He sought to understand and then to explain divergent confessional traditions to one another, and I know of no one who has done it better in the last century while also taking theological differences very seriously. His books are also readily available in most major bookstores, or they can be ordered without too much trouble.

   Red–Sorry, I should have linked to it. It can be found in Joe Carter’s first post, which I have linked above. I will update the post with a link to the statement.

4. RedPhillips, on November 17th, 2008 at 4:09 pm Said:

   OK. A little snooping around the links, and I found it.

   Quickly, here is the problem. Theological conservatives have blindly accepted Enlightenment liberalism. Joe Carter says:

   “I’m sure that David will agree with me that from a political point of view, whether the President is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever, should make no difference.”

   Oh really? No difference? No difference at all? Not even a tiny little difference? That is just an utterly foolish idea. What Bible verse does he think backs up that claim? It is liberalism trotted out preemptively to make all the rest of what he says OK. Hopefully he is not so foolish as to actually believe that.

   That Christians should prefer to be governed by other Christians should be intuitive. That it is not is the result of years of cumulative liberal browbeating.

5. zic, on November 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm Said:

   And you wonder why, in a nation where church and state are supposed to be separate, Paline offends? I’m so, Obama’s Christianity is not your business; has nothing to do with his politics or conservative discussions. You’ve really lost your way, if this is conservative philosophy.

   My mom’s family sat at the table with Lincoln when he founded the Republican Party. They’re conservative; they’re responsible. They’re inquisitive. They respect privacy (where as this is an offensive intrusion into a man’s privacy).

   This isn’t conservative. You’ve lost your way.

6. Daniel Larison, on November 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm Said:

   Zic–I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who is attacking or intruding upon anyone’s privacy? We’re discussing the published remarks of the man who will be President in just over two months. If he wanted to keep these things to himself, I suppose he could have done that. Instead, he answered the questions put to him, and that makes his answers fair game for comment. If Obama’s religion is no one’s business but his, please tell him that so that we can be spared his Social Gospel-inspired support for government social programs.

7. Daniel Larison, on November 17th, 2008 at 10:57 pm Said:

   My apologies to commenters–I believe I mistakenly included some approved comments along with new spam messages. I regret the blunder, and I will make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

8. conradg, on November 18th, 2008 at 1:20 am Said:

   Daniel,

   I guess now I understand why my comments in the other thead on Theocracy vanished. I’ll try to repeat them over there.

   Regarding who is a Christian, and who isn’t, I think it’s interesting to look at Obama’s religious views, but I don’t think he’s trying to duplicate them in policy. It’s probably the other way around - because he’s a liberal, he tends towards a liberal’s view of the gospels. So I don’t think it’s terribly determinative of what kind of policy he will follow in office, in that we already know what his politics are, and that’s what we can expect from him. And really, it’s a bit offensive to even think that it’s our business to decide who among self-described Christians is “really” a Christian.

   I don’t want to put down doctrine, but let’s face it, Jesus was not a doctrinaire Christian, and he didn’t seem to encourage that sort of thing among his followers. His definition of being a Christian is not doctrinaire at all, nor is it about “works” for that matter. When asked how to recognize his followers, he said, “You will know them by their love”. Likewise, he emphasized that Christianity was about loving God with all one’s heart, mind, body, and breath (spirit), and one’s neighbor as one’s very self. None of that directly involves doctrine and belief. Clearly a Christian must accept Jesus as his personal savior, but beyond that, I don’t think there is any real requirement for doctrinal beliefs of any kind. That’s my version of ecumenicalism. I can accept virtually any kind of person as a Christian who simply loves Christ and makes that love visible in their relations with others. That doesn’t mean that discussion of doctrine is meaningless. Far from it, I think it’s a wonderful way to talk about Christ and all kinds of ways of understanding Him. But it’s far from necessary or determinative of who is a Christian. It may be a way of determining what particular sect of Christianity one belongs to, but it’s not a meaningful answer to the basic question of who is a Christian and who is not. Jesus loved all his followers without regard to their doctrinal notions, as long as they loved him in that same spirit - unconditionally. What makes ecumenicism meaningful is if it emphasizes this point about all - that we are to love one another as Christ loves us, unconditionally. It should not, however, try to pretend that doctrinal differnces don’t exist, only that they are not determinative of our salvation. Love received and shared is how we are saved, and it is the sign of our salvation. There are certainly ways of saying that which display a greater sophistication, and that is where doctrine gets interesting, but it cannot depart from that basic truth without leaving beyond the basic essentials of Christian faith and practice.

9. John Beeler, on November 18th, 2008 at 5:01 am Said:

   RedPhillips would see me as part of the problem then because as a classical liberal I believe in a secular (neutral, not secularist, which is anti-religious) state giving theological conservatives and others freedom to flourish.

   Zic has a point that in such a system the president’s religion shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t affect how I vote (or this year not vote). As I like to say I’ve vote for a partnered gay atheist if he or she held strictly to the Constitution like Ron Paul. (So I’m not on board with the Constitution Party, which seems more to do with Christian reconstructionism - let’s have the righteous Protestants take over the government - than the Constitution.)

   Obama still strikes me as an agnostic who has used religion for political (it’s still advantageous for a pol, and particularly a black pol, to belong to a church) and personal (emotional, his quest for blackness) reasons, whose views happen to best fit liberal Protestantism’s.

   Where does one draw the line between Christian and non-Christian, IOW why aren’t Mormons Christians? The liberal Protestant denominations on paper are still Chalcedonian orthodox and so are still Christian even though locally in practice they often aren’t any more (unitarianism dressed up in liturgical garb, as you often see among Episcopalians). Anything that teaches Jesus is less than God and isn’t clear on the three persons of the Trinity is not Christian so that rules out Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and I think oneness Pentecostals as well (unless you want to include Islam as ‘pre-Nicene Christianity’, the same thing the Mormons claim to be).

10. RedPhillips, on November 18th, 2008 at 6:42 am Said:

    I think my comment was one that got erased. Oh well.

    The Bible is full of warnings to beware of those who teach a false Gospel. To remove from the church those who do. Etc. Of course it is “the business” of Christians to be vigilant in defense of the authentic Gospel. I can think of nothing that it would be more important to be vigilant of.

    Doctrine (pre-mil vs. post-mil for example) is not the issue here. Orthodoxy (Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the Resurrection, etc.) is.

    Whether Obama’s liberalism flows from his liberal Christianity or his embrace of liberal Christianity is a result of his liberalism (more likely IMO) or some combination of both, it clearly has public implications. To pretend it doesn’t is silly.

    Yes Mr. Beeler I am a conservative, therefore I am not a liberal classical or otherwise.

11. Pococurante, on November 18th, 2008 at 6:45 am Said:

    Ehyeh asher ehyeh
    And John 14:28

    Orthodox are always pre-occupied with contamination, with dividing all G-d’s creation into ever darker flavors of The Other. Orthodox are often the torch held aloft down the road of good intention that ends in tears. Orthodox are humans claiming “I am”, assuming godhood and with it the right to decree.

    Categorization and division makes for great hard science. And atrocious human relationships.

12. wheelhouse, on November 18th, 2008 at 9:36 am Said:

    Alright so here’s my small idea: religion is important in judging and esteeming politicians. I’m not sure that that is somehow necessarily true, but it seems nearly inevitable that it is true.

    First, people often talk about America being founded amidst Christianity, or under the auspices of Christian ideals, or actually with the intervention of Providence. Whether or not that is true, how it would be true–I am not sure. But, people still believe it.

    Second point. In ancient Rome there were all these stories (well, one story at least) about Romans who would return to the enemy to be tortured (Carthage, it was, I think) just because they had given their pledge to return. And a certain Roman emerged from his farm to save the state within six months as an emergency dictator; then he went back to the farm. Again, these seem to be pretty much legend; if the Romans believed in them it was not based on fact.

    In both cases, but perhaps not in other countries, the country is supposedly steeped in some sort of, somewhat specific, moral tradition. The Founding Fathers embraced Christianity in their own, often peculiar, ways. They did not abandon it. For some reason they felt compelled to introduce it in some way.

    The point is, if politicians abrogate the moral tradition of the country, even if that moral tradition is fabricated and even forcibly adapted to present purposes, he becomes a kind of outsider. He may not seem fit for office; indeed, how can one countenance a leader who explicitly ignores the putative moral traditions? When a politician breaches the common faith he places himself outside the moral precepts that may help to keep politicians from abusing their powers.

    Obviously that fails spectacularly. President Bush seems like a Christian; but who can really say that that is a positive reason for agreeing with him? What has he done to countenance any kind of moral tradition? Interventionism? Maybe. Maybe not. But, in spite of the inherent ambiguity in such moral traditions and the inevitable cynicism, things may be worse if there is not a common moral background to which politicians may pay lip-service.

13. John_NoRepente, on November 18th, 2008 at 10:03 am Said:

    I’m hoping someone can straighten me out, as I’m earnestly looking to resolve my confusion.

    Larison writes by any formal, credal standard of traditional Christianity in any confession, Obama is heterodox. It is important to distinguish this from the more loaded question of whether or not he is a Christian. In the comments, conradg writes, “When asked how to recognize his followers, [Christ] said, ‘You will know them by their love’ “ but then [conradg] goes on to say, “[H]e emphasized that Christianity was about loving God with all one’s heart, mind, body, and breath (spirit), and one’s neighbor as one’s very self. None of that directly involves doctrine and belief.”

    It seems to me that loving God with all one’s heart is precisely a matter of doctrine and belief, whereas loving one’s neighbors a public matter — of orthopraxis, of acts. Maybe this is just a rehash of “words versus acts”, but if Obama says he believes in Christ, isn’t his word enough to make him a Christian? Because that’s what Larison seems to be pointing to — that it isn’t sufficient for Obama to simply declare his faith, but rather there are additional criteria (imposed by God’s children here on Earth) that he must satisfy, including the “validity” or “authenticity” of his faith. I’ve spent time in Mormon religious meetings, and from my vantage point it sure seems like they were focusing their lessons around the teachings of Christ; are you saying that Mormons disqualify themselves from being “true” Christians because they depart from traditional orthodoxy (e.g. current-day prophets, Jesus came to central America after the resurrection, etc.)?

    Apologies in advance if these are dumb noob questions. I’ve arrived at this site through John Cole’s frequent links, so I’ve come for the politics but am staying for the religion.

14. paxr55, on November 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm Said:

    Cradle Episcopalian here, married to one, and am fairly well versed in scripture and Reformation history and spent a season or two among Calvin College and L’Abri-type evangelicals and Presbyterians.

    Obama may be a heterodox Christian, as Daniel says. But my sense after reading Carter is that his interview, standing alone, was not nearly enough to form a decent opinion on the matter. And it strikes me as rather mingy of Carter to weigh in on so insubstantial a foundation of fact.

    Which is to say, the interview did not strike me as a frank discussion between two believers. It struck me, rather, as a politically conservative believer interviewing a presidential candidate who happens to be a Christian and who tends, in addition, to be careful and generic sounding in almost everything he discusses, including and especially something a private as what he believes about Jesus Christ, heaven, and so on.

    Even in his autobiography (Dreams from My Father) he omits all detail of his altar call. Nevertheless, I came away from his sort of primly truncated account of his struggle with unbelief–which he lets you conclude that he resolved with an actual conversion. A child turns to him in the pew, IIRC, and asks him, “So are you going?” He went. That’s all, he decided, his readers need to know. The rest is private.

    Best to get a sense of what Obama believes from what he writes and what his Christian mentors and friends testify about his faith.

15. Charlie, on November 18th, 2008 at 9:27 pm Said:

    Looks like my last post got taken out with the spam so, just to reiterate, thanks for recommending Pelikan. I’ll pick up the first volume and take it from there.

16. conradg, on November 18th, 2008 at 10:40 pm Said:

    “It seems to me that loving God with all one’s heart is precisely a matter of doctrine and belief, whereas loving one’s neighbors a public matter — of orthopraxis, of acts.”

    I would say that doctrine is useful as a guide to this practice, but without actually practiticing it, the doctrine is meaningless, even the grounds for hypocrisy if one preaches and makes claims to being a “true Christian” because one believes in the doctrine, but does not actually practice what is at the core of Christianity.

    In general, “doctrine” can be thought of as applying to that aspect of this practice by which one uses the mind to love God, and “works” can be thought of as addressing that aspect by which one uses the body to love God, but in both cases they are just one important example among many others of loving God with mind and body. Like I say, both are important, in that doctrine helps keep the mind turned to God, and works help keep the body turned to God, but turning to God is the key matter, not rote adherence to doctrine or dedication to being a do-gooder.

    In general, however, I find this whole conversation that tries to figure out if Obama is a “true” Christian not only obnoxious, but strangly un-Christian. I think the operative scriptural reference would be to stop pointing to the mote in our neighbor’s eye, and be mindful instead of the plank in our own.

17. Indya, on November 19th, 2008 at 1:06 pm Said:

    In general, however, I find this whole conversation that tries to figure out if Obama is a “true” Christian not only obnoxious, but strangly [sic] un-Christian. I think the operative scriptural reference would be to stop pointing to the mote in our neighbor’s eye, and be mindful instead of the plank in our own.

    I so agree. And this is why conservatism keeps going off the rails - when you start making divisions like this to label people, you end up with the focus on the wrong things and setting up for hypocrisy.

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