Doctrine vs. Relationship?

Dear Pastor,

“Where does the Holy Spirit come into the picture? Where does a relationship with Jesus that is personal and growing and vibrant come in? I’m actually sort of heartbroken to see such harshness here, where someone says they absolutely know everything about God and how he should be worshiped and thought about and that if you don’t have a degree in theology you can’t possibly know God rightly. These sort of harsh, hard, almost cruel arguments really shut down discussion and participation by normal Christians who just live in this hard, hard world and struggle to even keep the faith in the face of so much pain because we can’t take the browbeating. God leads us, and he leads us to Christ. But, we live in a world that is knock-down, drag-out brutal. When I’m grieving over the loss of my child, doctrine does nothing for me except break my heart more when it’s used as some sort of argument-trumping hammer. My time at Marion College was some of the best in my life. But, I also love that God uses all sorts of people and maybe not all of them fit into a little mold like good tin soldiers. Some come scuffed and scarred and desperate to that cross where Christ has died, and they cling to it for dear life.

Dear XXXXXX,

Thank you for your questions. They are quite good questions and get us to some very important considerations.

Doctrine is an inescapable category. Even the advancement of a position that denigrates “doctrine,” is itself a doctrinal argument. (i.e. — We should have the doctrine of “no doctrine,” or less doctrine or the doctrine of relationship over doctrine. And yet what can I know of growing and vibrant relationship apart from doctrine? How will I know if it is growing and vibrant if I don’t have a doctrinal standard by which to measure what “growth,” and “vibrancy” is? Is my subjective measuring rod of quality of relationship to be the doctrinal yard stick my which I know I am advancing in cruciform conformity to Christ? )

So, in light of this I would say that the Holy Spirit was given to proclaim Christ and His faithfulness and to that end for believers He is to constantly taking them back to the Scriptures where we find the doctrine of Christ being taught on every page. The Holy Spirit comes in to take us back to the place where we learn Christ and His doctrine. (For example, Christ taught the doctrine, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, for my burden is easy and my yoke is light.”) You say “God leads us to Christ,” and yet without the beauty of doctrine I wouldn’t know that and without the sweetness of doctrine I would know nothing about this God and Christ I am being “led” back to.

It is interesting that you speak of “harshness,” and yet when I see someone champion the doctrine that doctrine isn’t that important all that I can see, despite knowing someone’s good intentions, is harshness, since I don’t know how to keep a faith that is uninformed and unshaped by doctrine. (After all what is “the faith,” I am keeping apart from “doctrine” to tell me what that faith is?)

It is precisely because this world is so brutal that I keep turning to doctrine. As a Pastor I am constantly exposed to all the ragged and torn edges of the world’s brutality as I minister to others. If I did not have the life giving sustenance of doctrine that is drawn from the Scriptures I would be of no aid to those who are dented and damaged from being themselves lacerated by the ragged and torn edges of this brutal brutal world. Without the words of eternal life (doctrine) drawn from Scripture all I could do for those I love, who look to me for answers and comfort in the midst of their being bruised and torn by life would be to join them in their despair. (And even being buoyed by doctrine drawn from the Well of Scripture I sometimes wonder if I will be able to maintain my sanity when I look upon the pain and hurt I often see while ministering to the broken.)

I see harshness and brokenness in the future for these beautiful young ladies who are not being given guidance as to the proper deportment and modesty that they are to display as Christian women. I see brokenness and harshness for the 10-13 year old girls who are watching them “perform,” and saying to themselves, “I want to move my body around like that when I grow up.” And believe me XXXXX I see lots and lots of girls who end up used and broken because they learned their lessons regarding deportment and behavior from MTV as opposed to being given a Christian doctrine of modesty.

No, there is no room for playing doctrine off against relationship. My relationship is only as good as my doctrine and my doctrine always announced in my relationship. If I want my relationship to grow more vibrant and healthy then I must steep myself in God’s Word and so learn doctrine.

Praying that the God who gives us the doctrine of “comfort” will be your sustenance in your loss.

Heartbroken with you over the browbeating we are all inflicted with,

Good Friday

The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
when God did have his final say,
His justice and mercy each had their way,

The wrath of man did but reflect
The wrath of God in this respect
Forsaken, abandoned — Divine neglect

What horror did then invade the mind
Of He who came His sheep to find
And who paid the debt, for His kind?

But no unwilling victim, this sacrifice
He staged the players as His device
To orchestrate His redemption price

Judas’ sordid kiss of treachery
The disregard of Pilate’s plea
The vision of Mary at His knee

Yearly we call this Friday “good,”
And mark His hanging on the wood
And are nourished with Him as our food

Divine jurisprudence satisfied
His death, the death that His people died
We are the blood flowing from His side

His work still doth intercede
For our access He still doth plead
And for our comfort He remains our need

Impervious to alien guilt and guile
Thrown at us by the Serpent’s wile
Animated only by forgiveness’s smile

Now, at the word of His command
We call for all to meet His demand
Be reconciled, that ye may in judgment stand

The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
when God did have his final say,
His justice and mercy each had their way,

The Brilliance Of Kagan?

In this piece,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/us-usa-court-kagan-idUSBRE83410E20120405

Justice Elena Kagan is trumpeted as the second coming of Oliver Wendell Holmes on SCOTUS.

However, it strikes me that Reuters has not looked closely enough. Reuters zeroes in on this exchange as proof of the brilliance and tenacity of Justice Kagan. In this exchange with Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing 26 states who have filed suit against Obamacare we see Kagan at her supposed best. In this exchange Clement vs. Kagan are debating whether the authority the federal government is assuming in Obama death care is coercive. Kagan thinks that it is not, because the federal government is giving states, in Kagan’s paralance, “a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s healthcare.” Clement counters that this boatload of federal money comes laden with coercive conditions, invoking the old, “he who takes the king’s coin is the king’s man” argument. Kagan then presents a hypothetical to Clement which leads to the exchange that Reuters finds brilliant,

JUSTICE KAGAN: Now, suppose I’m an employer, and I see somebody I really like, and I want to hire that person. And I say, I’m going to give you $10 million a year to come work for me. And the person says, well, I–you know, I’ve never been offered anywhere approaching $10 million a year. Of course, I’m going to say yes to that. Now we would both be agreed that that’s not coercive, right?

MR. CLEMENT: Well, I guess I would want to know where the money came from. And if the money came from–

JUSTICE KAGAN: Wow. Wow. I’m offering you $10 million a year to come work for me, and you are saying that this is anything but a great choice?

MR. CLEMENT: Sure, if I told you, actually, it came from my own bank account. And that’s what’s really going on here, in part.

1.) I’m not sure how this is brilliant since Kagan has sailed (keeping with her boat language) right past the fact that the Federal government has no money that it does not first confiscate from the citizenry. Kagan is creating a analogical scenario where someone is offered $10 million dollars a year of stolen money to be commissioned to do something that the prospective employer is not legally allowed to commission. The US Constitution does not allow the Federal Government to hire the States to taken confiscated tax dollars to run a death care program.

2.) Clements response was good but it could have been even better. He could have said,

“Thank you for your question Your Honor, however your analogy does not hold and is really an equivocation on what is being proposed here by the Obama Administration. What the Obama administration is proposing is to force, as contradictory as such a notion is, on the American citizenry a involuntary contract where they are forced to pay for something that they may not want. This is hardly parallel to the employee / employer potential relationship that you describe where the contract entered into has the voluntary character of all genuine contracts. You can not successfully analogize a voluntary contract of employee / employer with a involuntary coercive contract where the force of the State is binding the citizens.”

3.) Kagan’s analogy looks only at the side of the people being advantaged and so with her faulty analogy insists that there is nothing coercive in the arrangement. To look at the coercive side we might draw this similar analogy,

“Now, suppose I’m a Mafia thug, and I see somebody I really dislike, and I want to hurt that person. And I say, I’m going to take from you $10 million a year so somebody who has chosen to not work can come work for me. And the person says, well, I–you know, I’ve never had anyone offer to take that kind of money from me before. Of course, I’m going to say “no” to that. Now we would both be agreed that that’s coercive, right?”

If someone as dense as me, can see through the thickness of Kagan, I’m not sure why Reuters is arguing her brilliance.

The Relationship Between Theology And Language

‎”How do you get your systematic theology if it is not at first driven by understanding the language? In order to get your systematic theology, you first have to get to the meaning of the words. It cannot be the other way round for the obvious reason: it would imply that systematic theology is developed before you understand the meaning of the words in Scripture.”

Dr. Ian Hodge
Australian Theonomist and all round great guy

Dr. Hodge’s formulation is lacking my estimation. Language doesn’t come to us disassociated from a meaning that is driven by theology. Language is not a free floating independent category that can be worked out in terms of meaning without that meaning of the language being informed a-priori by some theology. What I am insisting here is that the search for meaningful language requires a theology of language, and if we must have a theology of language before we can rightly understand language then clearly there is some sense in which theology is prior to language.

In terms of the “meaning of the words in Scripture,” it seems fairly obvious that the different conclusions (and so different translations) that people come up with in terms of word meanings reveals that language is theology (worldview) dependent. People will have disagreement regarding the meaning of language and at that point we begin to see that theology is the reason for that disagreement on the language.

I would argue that the particulars (language) and the wholes (theology) condition one another at every step of the way. I do agree with you however that paying attention to the language is key.

We might say that language without theology is blind while theology without language is empty. They need each other and are equally ultimate.

Dipping into some of my learning today — 04 April, 2012

I.) Library

http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-western-music-is-superior-to-eastern (Article Mentioned In The Wed. Classes)

Pseudo-Sciences: Sociology and Psychology….

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/issue08/blumenfeld.htm

Marxist Revolution of the West

http://www.opc.org/os.html?article_id=302&cur_iss=Y (Maddening)

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/03/31/in-gods-name/ (slippery)

http://historiasalutis.com/2012/03/30/welcome-back-culture/

Jim Wallis: Consistently Applying the Two Kingdoms Theology

Confederate History Month 2012: Stephen F. Hale’s Letter To Kentucky

http://www.etherzone.com/2012/cron040212.shtml

http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/28/the-obama-administrations-limiting-princ

http://kevincraig.info/salvian.htm

That Which is Lost

II.) Audio