An Opinion Piece & A Discussion Starter
I find it very strange that those who claim to be biblical and desirous of expressing biblical theology & morality make much positive use of such words as "ideal" & "values" and "relationships."
I think that this usage is a sure sign of how pervasive was the social and cultural revolution of the 1960s and how powerful have been its after-effects in terms of the influence of social science and psychotherapy, to mention only two areas.
In popular evangelical books, sermons and radio/tv talks we hear of "the ideal of marriage as a life-long union and commitment," of "biblical values" for church, world and individuals and of the need for "a relationship with God" and for good "human relationships."
1. For Christians to speak of life-long marriage as an ideal rather than as an ordinance of God "until death us do part" is to diminish the Christian doctrine of marriage. An ideal is only to be worked towards and aimed at: it is not a command or a duty to be performed by the express commandment & will of God and with his grace to help. To portray or to preach on marriage as an ideal is thus not to preach biblical doctrine but a way of escape from duty, if the way is hard.
2. For Christians to refer to biblical values is to diminish the biblical presentation of the absolute commands of God and the perfect principles of the kingdom of heaven. The plural word "values" was coined by sociologists in order to have a neutral word to speak of the general rules & mores by which people and societies live, as observed by social scientists. The word was used in order to avoid the use any of the traditional words of the Christian moral and ethical vocabulary. Thus a sociologist could study the behaviour of Christians of a particular area or church and then tell us by what values they lived. Yet at the same time those Christians, if genuine, would be looking to commandments, statutes, ordinances, laws, duties and responsibilities set forth in Scripture and Christian tradition, and looking to them not as values but as revealed Law for they refer to the relation of people to God.
3. Finally, for Christians to claim that they have a relationship with God and that also they have a warm relationship with other Christians is to claim something less than the biblical norm. The whole doctrine of the covenant of grace and the doctrine of justification by grace are premised on the fact that God the Father God establishes a relation through & in Christ with those who repent and believe in Christ. This is not a temporary kind of easy going association or coming together while we feel like it (as are relationships in modern experience & talk) but a permanent order of grace. Likewise the key word for speaking of what unites the Persons of the Trinity is relation [relatio in Latin] not relationship. And moving on we may note that in the order of creation we have "relatives" by blood and by marriage and we have them whether we like them or not. These are permanent human relations. To speak of relationships is to speak of voluntary associations or unions that can be broken at anytime by one or other of the participants or partners. Thus relationship is a bad word to describe union with God through Christ and union in holy matrimony until death us do part.
In good translations of the Bible and sound Christian books you will not find the words "ideal, values or relationships" used in translation where the reference is to God's positive commandments for his children! And the reason is because there is nothing in the positive self-revelation of God than can be accurately conveyed by these words. However, you will probably find them in modern paraphrases and popular commentaries, where there is a dumbing-down of the perfect standards of God's holy word.
There are other over-used and/or carelessly-used words such as "I feel" & "community of faith" & "Celebration" and "Presider" but I will not deal with such here!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America
No comments:
Post a Comment