Introduction
I’m still trying to catch up on email, rest up, and such like. I thought I’d try to post some additional material on the “The Man or the Plan” series of posts before I disappear into the Great Smokey Mountains.
First, I must say I was surprised at how many commenters failed to see that the point of the series is my disagreement with Phil Sanders’ assertion that we are saved by “faith in God’s plan,” while the scriptures repeatedly and clearly teach that we are saved by faith in Jesus. I guess I should have captioned it “faith in the man or the plan” to be clearer.
Yes, there is a plan. Of course. But if we think we’re saved by faith in a plan, we’ve not understood the plan. In future posts, I’ll address the true nature of this plan further.
Second, I thought that after Part 2, the readership would attempt to persuade others through story and relationship metaphors – but no such luck. Old habits die hard. And that’s not to say there’s no place for logic and all that. There is. It’s just that logic is often inadequate when the two sides are debating from within different paradigms.
When two opposing sides are working from within separate paradigms (perspectives, worldviews), it’s very hard to bridge the gap. Statements are easily misunderstood, and logic breaks down – not because logic isn’t up to the task, but because of numerous unspoken assumptions that don’t get exposed by the proof texting. And the real disagreements are very often in the unspoken assumptions that don’t even get addressed.
As I read the comments, I’m often astonished at how much difficulty some have understanding the comments made by the other side – and yet both sides come from within a common subculture (Restoration Movement, primarily Churches of Christ) and share a common language. And yet we presume to understand the Bible perfectly – when we can’t even understand each other! And the Bible was written 2,000 years ago from within a very different culture in a different language. It can certainly be understood — but we often misunderstand it. That’s because of our weakness. The man who claims he has the ability to perfectly understand others isn’t married.
I have the advantage of having had a long history as a legalist and Pharisee, and have moved ever so slowly to my present thinking. It helps to have been on the other side for many years. Nonetheless, I also have trouble making myself understood. But herein lies one of the great advantages of blogging — the comments very quickly inform the writer whether he’s gotten his points across — and I haven’t. I have to some, but not to enough.
On (salvation by believing in) the man or the plan — why it matters
I’ll get into this in much more detail, but we’re still missing the big picture. The inspired scriptures cannot be rewritten to suit our rhetorical needs. As convenient as it may be to claim that salvation comes from faith in a plan, the Bible just plain doesn’t say that. And the fact that it doesn’t should warn us that we just might be on the wrong path when we think it’s helpful to say otherwise.
When we find it helpful to argue by rewriting the text, by making claims that the Bible doesn’t make, we are on dangerous ground indeed. Alexander Campbell warned us —
Men would … learn to appreciate and love one another, and to estimate human character on the real standard of piety and moral rectitude. Unfeigned obedience to the Lord, guileless benevolence to all men, and pure christian affection to the household of faith, would be the principle of appreciation of human character. Not our wild reveries, our orthodox jargon, or our heterodox paradoxes would be of paramount importance. Never can this state be induced until a pure speech be restored — until the language of Canaan be spoken by all the seed of Abraham.
Our confessions of faith, our additions to, our subtractions from, our transpositions of, and our extractions out of the book of God, are all in open hostility to the restoration of a pure speech, and are all under the curse, and we are punished with famine and sterility on account of them. — I have seen a confession of faith all in bible terms, extracted and transposed, like putting the eyes and ears and tongue in the right hand. Now I object as much to a creed in bible terms transposed and extracted, as I do to worshipping the Virgin Mary instead of Jesus the Messiah. The transposition of the terms or the extraction of sentences from their connexions is just as pernicious as any human innovation.
(emphasis in original). And, I would add, if our faith is in a Plan, even if in addition to Jesus, we may just find ourselves accidentally worshiping the Plan. Indeed, when our members beg to be preached to about the Plan, just one more time, and don’t ask for more and more sermons about Jesus, we are very much at risk of idolatry.
But it’s not the Plan we worship. Rather, we worship the feelings of affirmation and superiority we feel when the preacher reminds us how very right we are and how very wrong everyone else is. And this is much more pleasant than learning about Jesus — whose perfection makes us feel unworthy and unlovable — whereas the Plan, well, the Plan can be followed perfectly, leaving us feeling quite good about ourselves indeed. It’s so simple. So understandable. So easily followed. Whereas Jesus isn’t.
The cure is, of course, much larger than cleaning up our language. That would help, but it wouldn’t be enough, because our language is merely symptomatic of how poorly we understand grace. You see, if we really understood what Jesus did for us, deep down in our bones, we’d define our preacher’s orthodoxy by often and well he tells us the story of Jesus, not how often and well he preaches the Plan of Salvation on Sunday nights to a crowd of already saved people.
The grace that Jesus bought with his blood, our redemption from slavery, came by virtue of Jesus’ work, not our own. And we should feel affirmed and confident, not by the assurance of our understanding of the Plan but by the assurance of Jesus’ love for us, shown on the cross.
(1Jo 5:4-5 ESV) 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
(Gal 6:14 ESV) 14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Now, I’m not picking so much on Phil as on the entire doctrinal edifice constructed by the 20th Century Churches of Christ. His article simply demonstrates how far removed 20th Century Church of Christ theology can be from biblical theology. The Bible says we’re saved by faith in Jesus. The 20th Century Churches of Christ find faith inadequate unless supplemented by a plan.
It would unthinkable to claim that we are saved by faith in a plan (whether by metonymy, syndoche, or whatever) in any community of believers other than the 20th Century Churches of Christ — but that’s because the 20th Century Churches have created a theological system that has serious deficiencies. And the biggest deficiency is in not being sufficiently focused on the work of Jesus, insisting on presenting grace as a work to be accomplished by humans. Indeed, I remember seeing tracts as a child that told me what to do and said next to nothing about what Jesus did. You can, after all, recite all five steps without even mentioning Jesus.
You see, the use of the Plan of Salvation as a teaching device has created a theological bias toward what we do rather than focusing on what Jesus does. It seems a small thing to many, as there are proof texts for each step in the Plan, but the overall approach found subtly in the Plan is to point the spotlight on what the convert does, and therefore away from Jesus. The “free gift” of salvation becomes a step-by-step process that those who know the rules can follow and so become saved. It’s very nearly contractual. And that just sucks the grace out of grace. And that should warn us that we’ve not gotten it quite right.
So I return to a theme I mentioned in the comments. The scriptures judge us. We don’t judge the scriptures. Therefore, the real test of Plan theology is found in comparing the Plan to the scriptures. And there are reasons to doubt that we have the Plan quite right, which we’ll begin to cover in the next post.
Jay,
I consider your thoughts "right on" and believe you articulated them very well. Thanks for your work.
How in the world did those unfortunate Christians in the first several years after Pentecost win thousands and thousands to Christ before the "5 step plan" could have possibly been conceived? Some of the texts used to support the "plan" had not yet been written.
What they preached was the all sufficiency of Jesus Christ, that his doing and dying and rising again from death could set the sinner free and make him immortal.
I hope that God has mercy on thousands of poor people who have been led to believe that because they have done 5 things on a list and been faithful to attend church they are thus right with God. The greatest need in our churches, both conservative and progressive, is the preaching of the gospel of the grace of God as demonstrated in the person and work of Jesus for sinners. He alone is eternal life and gives that life to those who trust him alone.
Royce
Jay,
In general, you do a far better job of getting your point across in writing than I. Let me reflect how I understand the discussion on this particular topic.
You seem to be saying the emphasis on the 'plan' by the 20th century cofC has grown so strong that it has disconnected the plan from Jesus himself and His true teachings and lifestyle.
The rub is you sound like you are emphasizing an opposite extreme which also splits Jesus from His teachings (plan). 'All we need is faith in Jesus' sounds like there are no teachings that we need to follow. I don't think that is your intent but that is how it sounds.
I see the two (Jesus and His plan/teachings) intertwined. We shouldn't emphasize one without the other.
In other words, It's not the Man vs. the plan. It's the Man and His plan.
In my facebook news today were two blog posts: this one from Jay, and the other from a fellow software developer friend of mine:
http://thereforenow.com/?p=211
When similar themes begin popping up in different corners of the Kingdom, it's a signal to be quick on listening, and long on meditation.
Brad,
Good points here. There is both art and science within software development. Some prefer discussing the science, some the art. When one side of my brain gets tired of the one, it is soothing to focus on the other. Both are key to success.
Perhaps the complexity of biblical study gets tiring and the simplicity of the Christian lifestyle becomes soothing.
When I had been a "full-time preacher" for several years, I made a commitment to preach at least one sermon each week about Jesus – something He did or said, something said about Him in the prophets or epistles.
Immediately, my preaching took on more depth and relevance and I began to grow as a person.
I believe such a commitment would help us all.
Jerry
Royce, I had a post all ready to go yesterday that said about the same thing you wrote and decided not to put it in. Peter's sermon on Penecost did seem to miss a few of the significant points of the "The Plan" but people were convicted of their sin and were saved. If our message is focused on a Plan instead of Jesus, we've missed the message of the Gospel. From my poing of view, the CofC is very focused on getting people baptized and the focus would be better placed on getting them to truly know the man, Jesus. If Jesus is intimately known, I think the points of the Plan take care of themselves.
Rich W,
When you wrote:
who were you quoting? Where did you find that phrase anywhere in Jay's writing in this series? When I searched Jay's blog for that sentence, this is what WordPress told me.
I believe the sentence you wrote and put quotes around is a true sentence, as scandalously true as the gospel Paul preached that convinced his opponents that he was preaching a "sin more, that grace may abound" message. You see, you can't have Jesus without some sort, some level of, some attempt at obedience. Traditionalists are convinced that progressives don't know or believe this, and it is pure misinformation.
But regardless of my opinion about it, the fact remains that when you wrote it, you weren't quoting Jay, so I'm not sure who you were critiquing or giving an example of when you posted it. Who were you talking about?
Nick,
Thanks for bringing to my attention my honest mistake. As I was rereading my post before submitting it, I noticed it didn't read as well. I wanted the phase, all-we-need-is-faith-in-Jesus, to stand as a noun for the sentence and I just hurriedly put single quotes around it. I tend to either use the html blockquote (like you) or full double quotes " " around intended quotations.
I was, however, thinking of one of Jay's past posts when I wrote it.
This comes from: /2010/06/the-fork-in-the-ro…
Interestingly, I was trying to address the issue of why some don't seem to understand Jay's point. I was reflecting how the verbiage being used was being interpreted differently than perhaps intended. I know I can be quick with criticisms at times but this one was trying to help clarify the issue. Sorry about that.
Romans 4 makes it so clear that we have little role in our own salvation, except to rely on God. And that was God's approach from the beginning.
It is not what we do, but rather what God does.
The fundamental disagreement on this blog and many others is how much our salvation depends upon what we do v what God does.
Paul makes it very clear the path to salvation is thru reliance on who God is and what he does.
Rich, my tone was more critical than it should have been, so we're at least even 🙂 if I'm not even more at fault.
You're right, the verbiage we're dealing with can be really challenging to interpret – I know it confuses me when I wrestle with this material in Scripture. Paul, in Romans 6, dealt with the same challenge: people were misinterpreting "faith in Jesus" promises into licenses to disregard "God's plan." Jay's no Paul, of course, but I think his answer would be the same as Paul's: may it never be!
The quote from Jay that we're discussing right now really whacked me over the head when I read it, and the volume of verses that followed. In the Churches of Christ, we never get inundated with the faith-promise passages. Anytime one of them gets mentioned, someone reflexively throws in Mark 16:16 or Acts 2:38 or another verse. It's happened to me just in the course of this particular series of blogs.
I've been told that Mark 16:16 is a valid, take-it-to-the-bank promise, but John 3:36 is not. Acts 2:38 is a valid-take-it-to-the-bank promise, but Acts 10:43? Not so much. Matt 7:24? COUNT ON IT. Rom 1:16-17? Insufficient data.
It wasn't until Jay overwhelmed me with that voluminous list of passages that I began to realize two really serious problems I have. First, those promises appear far more frequently than the verses we seize to qualify them. Second, I've been badly misusing Scripture.
See, these are very old arguments we're having. That's not a bad thing – I prefer old arguments to new ones, because we have Scriptural responses to the old arguments. Romans 6 is a fantastic chapter of Scripture for addressing anyone who believes that "faith in Jesus" language denies the call for obedience. That's what Paul wrote it for, and that's what it's good for.
But that's not what I used it for: I used it as ammunition in the war against the faith-promise verses. And I just don't think that way anymore.
Most of the time.
Nick,
You said:
"I’ve been told that Mark 16:16 is a valid, take-it-to-the-bank promise, but John 3:36 is not. Acts 2:38 is a valid-take-it-to-the-bank promise, but Acts 10:43? Not so much. Matt 7:24? COUNT ON IT. Rom 1:16-17? Insufficient data."
Perhaps because many have erroneously understood these passages to bear some sort of contrastive or tension-laden character to one another? (For instance, maybe a CoCer has been beaten over the head by Baptists so many times with a verse like Acts 10:43 that she has come to assume that Acts 10:43 means something that is in tension with or countermanding to Acts 2:38.)
–guy
Yeah, that's likely – because Baptists aggressively try to convert CoCers.
Nick,
Not sure what converting has to do with it. The fact is CoCers and Baptists have argued a lot. i've certainly had Baptists initiate debates with me just when i even mention i'm CoC. And many CoC's certainly have a general stance of opposition to denominational doctrine based on such debates. So that "these passages versus those passages" mentality trickle down.
–guy
Hey everyone,
I need help with a question about the Holy Spirit. I posted on one of Jay's other posts which is about the Holy Spirit. Could you please check it out and help me?
The link is below.
/2010/09/ephesians-111-14-h…
Nick,
Let's say we're even. That perhaps puts me in better standing than I deserve.
I wrestle with the scope of faith within all of those passages. Does it include believing Jesus is the son of God? I believe so even though not explicitly stated every time.
Does it include repentance? I believe so although not explicitly stated every time. Luke 13:3
Does it include grace? I believe so although it isn't explicitly stated every time.
Does it include baptism? Ahh, there's the rub. Why does it have to be explicitly stated every time to be valid when repentance or grace doesn't?
Perhaps the 5 steps in the plan of salvation was an overly structured way of remembering and teaching biblical truth. Is it's intent fundamentally flawed or is it our over reliance in highly structured systems that causes problems?
One downside of the 5 step plan method of communication is it seems to divide faith, repentance, confession, baptism and Christ-like living into separate compartments that are, in reality, heavily intertwined. I'm not sure that means some elements aren't correct either.
Just thinking out loud.
Jay,
I understand what you are talking about, and can identify with your pilgrimage to truth because I have been there myself. I have been identified with NI churches ever since the division took place more that 50 years ago. I began to see the inconsistencies in this position more than 20 years ago and have been discovering more and more truth ever since. I have long since understood that much of what passes as truth among us is "church of Christ-ism" taught by "church of Christers."
As to the inability of some to see the difference between the man and the plan, it seems to me that their difficulty lies in the fact that they are living illustrations of the very thing you are trying to get across. They have put their faith in the plan and to change would be to deny their faith. If they ever could understand that our faith must be in Jesus and the steps of the so-called plan are but the logical and appropriate responses of one's faith in Him they would be able to put their trust in Him and not in their accomplishment in conforming to a "plan" no first century Christian ever thought of.
Now you're singing my tune! You've been a fantastic conversation partner, and I'm glad to have bent our heads over the Scriptures together.
I don't think the intent behind the 5-step plan was any more flawed than any other creed – at least the ones which began as mnemonic devices in pre-literate cultures rather than shibboleths for fellowship.
Not only does it compartmentalize, as you neatly described, but it gives the illusion of satisfaction. Most people I know love to keep some sort of list of things they need to get done during the day, and derive a great deal of satisfaction from being able to look at that list at the end of the day, each item neatly checked off. There is a sense of security there – you got it done. Whew! Now let's put together tomorrow's list.
But when you wake up in the morning, there's a whole new list of things to be done before you can experience that fleeting sense of security again.
I was thinking about this today, musing over the question Anne asked me a few days ago, about "how do I know?" The answer is, actually: I don't. Not in the way she's asking. God loves me, and I desperately love and trust Him. He's given me His Spirit, but that isn't exactly the kind of proof you can whip out of your wallet (like a baptismal certificate). I trust that He is setting all things right, and whatever He does with me will be according to His redemptive mission. I'm merely his "unprofitable servant." Any good thing that I do comes through me from Him.
Plan theology, with its "highly structured systems" and "compartments" just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
Most of the time *sigh*
Oh the wonderful hours I've spent discussing these types of thoughts with close friends! The Lord's presence is so tangible in a room filled with people that don't have it all together! Humble Abrahams looking for seasoned Melchizedeks, both just wanting to know what the other knows about this great God.
It's like there were two brothers: one who said he would do the work, then didn't do it because he was so busy arguing with others about doing the work right. Then there was the one who refused to give into all this faith/spirit/intangible stuff, but who believed enough to give everything away, including himself.
Depending on the day, I could be (and have been) either one.
Would the Kingdom suddenly collapse if we all traded debate for encouragement for a year, and just focused on helping people in whatever way we understand God as of this minute?
Or would it suddenly grow?
Isaiah 4:1 In that day seven women will take hold of one man and say, "We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!"
Understanding this is a prophecy of the church we can know that faith in Jesus is good enough. Christianity looks basically the same denominational. We all have value and faith that Jesus is taking away our disgrace.
Exactly!
"Would the Kingdom suddenly collapse if we all traded debate for encouragement for a year, and just focused on helping people in whatever way we understand God as of this minute?"
Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? Perhaps we should all give it a try, it may just catch on.
I actually believe it is compartmentalizing of faith, repentance, grace, etc. that causes most to miss the essential aspects of baptism. In scriptures all elements: faith, repentance, confession, baptism, living a new life, grace, love …. are intertwined and not separated into what's essential and what's not.