In her article for Christianity Today titled My Train Wreck Conversion, Dr. Rosaria Butterfield reflects on her past as “a professor of English and women's studies, on the track to becoming a tenured radical.”1 She describes herself as one who “cared about morality, justice, and compassion,”2 and being “fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin...strove to stand with the disempowered.”3 This description of herself is important because it portrays her as an opponent of the postmodernism and feminism from which she was converted.4 However, a critical analysis of Butterfield’s latest book The Gospel Comes With a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World reveals that this is not the case.
Because the book is a series of non-academic reflective essays, it is easy to miss Butterfield’s dependence on and employment of postmodern and feminist concepts, a reality which has seemingly left many readers with the impression that her understanding of hospitality is derived from Scripture. Therefore, it is the aim of this essay to bring Butterfield’s philosophical roots and fruit into full view, revealing how they inform her doctrine of hospitality, how they subtly subvert Christian orthodoxy, and why Christians should steer clear of her writings.5
This will be accomplished by first briefly reviewing Jacques Derrida’s concept of true hospitality/pure hospitality, and demonstrating how it stands in contradiction to the Christian concept of hospitality. From this initial step, we will move on to compare Butterfield’s concept of hospitality to that of Derrida, and highlight some ways in which Butterfield’s doctrine deviates from the Christian doctrine of hospitality. Following this, we will draw attention to four postmodern concepts which are embedded in The Gospel Comes With a House Key’s essays. These concepts are –
- Labeling/Categorizing as “Violence” Against the Other
- The Other/Stranger as Absolute Other/God
- Fluid Subjectivities
- The Feminist-Theological Ethic of Hospitality
We will conclude by giving a brief summary of the postmodern philosophical roots of Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality, recapitulating how those roots subvert Christian orthodoxy, and admonishing Christians to steer clear of her writings.
§ II. Deconstruction is Hospitality: Derrida’s Concept of Hospitality
From the onset, it should be noted that “hospitality” is a concept that has been widely discussed in postmodernist literature. One of the more influential postmodernist philosophers to discuss the concept is the father of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. The concept is inextricable from his entire corpus of writings, and it is characterized by Derrida as a concrete instance of deconstruction. As he puts it –
Hospitality is the deconstruction of the at-home; deconstruction is hospitality to the other.6
This is because, according to Derrida, pure hospitality entails no economy of exchange between guest and host, and it does not set fixed boundaries on the identities of guest and host.
Mark W. Westmoreland expounds on this, writing –
The master of the home, the host, must welcome in a foreigner, a stranger, a guest, without any qualifications, including having never been given an invitation. […] In order to offer unconditional hospitality, the master must not allow for any debt or exchange to take place within the home. No invitation, or any other condition, can ever be a part of absolute hospitality. Hospitality, as absolute, is bound by no laws or limitations. The host freely shares her home with the new arrival without asking questions. She neither asks for the arrival’s name, nor does she seek any pact with the guest. Such a pact would instigate the placing of the guest under the law. The law of absolute hospitality does not involve an invitation, nor does it involve an interrogation of the guest upon entering.7
As Jason Foster explains,
Pure hospitality for Derrida means the complete foregoing of all judging, analyzing, and classifying other people that he believes are hallmarks of “actual hospitality”. Derrida believes we must forego all “violence” that tries to conform anyone into our own image through the setting of behavioral conditions on our extension of hospitality, or by slotting people into our own predetermined categories. An attitude of pure hospitality embraces an utter unconditionality and readiness to give everything we have for any and every other person. Put simply, to place limits or conditions on our extension and practice of hospitality is to commit an act of violence through exclusion and coercive conformity.8
Derrida’s concept of pure hospitality is recognized by him to be an ideal that will ever elude human interactions due to our finitude, resulting as it inevitably does in an aporia.9 Westmoreland writes –
Before the arrival of the guest, the master, or host, of the house was in control. […] It would be assumed that the host secures the house in order to “keep the outside out” and holds authority over those who may enter the home as guests. Derrida writes that hospitality cannot be “without sovereignty of oneself over one’s home, but since there is also no hospitality without finitude, sovereignty can only be exercised by filtering...and doing violence.” Limits and conditions are set in place to secure the [host] as master of the house. As such, these conditions betray the law of absolute hospitality.10
Nevertheless, as Richard Kearney and Kascha Semonovitch rightly note, “it is difficult to not read Derrida as suggesting that absolute hospitality might well serve as a regulatory ideal, unachievable but desirable.”11 For instance, Derrida writes –
Let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is the citizen of another country, a human, animal, or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male or female.12
The ideal form of hospitality toward which actual hospitality should strive, then, is one which is free of all binary oppositions.13
§ III. Derridean Hospitality vs. Christian Hospitality: A True Binary Opposition
According to Derrida pure hospitality, i.e. the ideal form of hospitality, results in
...an antinomy, an insoluble antinomy, a non-dialectizable antinomy between, on the one hand, The law of unlimited hospitality (to give the new arrival all of one’s home and oneself, to give him or her one’s own, our own, without asking a name, or compensation, or the fulfilment of even the smallest condition), and on the other hand, the laws (in the plural), those rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional, as they are defined by the Greco-Roman tradition and even the Judeo-Christian one...14
In light of these supposed “insoluble antinomies,” between “pure” hospitality and conditional hospitality, it becomes clear that Derrida’s doctrine of hospitality stands in contradiction to the Christian doctrine of hospitality. For as Foster correctly notes, Derrida’s failure to
…take seriously the current eschatological situation of boundaries that God has established during this period of redemptive history…necessitates a rather bizarre interpretation of Genesis and Revelation. In Derrida's approach, the hospitable reception of the serpent by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 must be viewed as an act of great hospitality that should be applauded, while the prohibition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2 must now be seen as a great act of inhospitality by God that violently insisted on Adam and Eve's conformity. On the other hand, the violent destruction of the serpent by God in Revelation 20 that is the triumphal source of the Christian's eschatological hope must now be viewed as inhospitably brutal and should be condemned. When Satan stands poised to eat the newborn child of promise in Revelation 12:4, the snatching up of the child by God and taking him to heaven as an act of divine protection instead must now be seen as an act of inhospitable deprivation toward Satan.15
These conclusions not only “contradict[..] the Johannine witness completely,”16 but the whole of God’s revelation. Derridean pure hospitality inverts the Christian faith in its entirety. This is, largely, due to its rejection of transcendence in general, and, in particular, its rejection of a transcendent rule or set of rules that universally and absolutely determines the limits of all being and thinking and action.
As Westmoreland explains, Christian hospitality is conditional. He writes –
Conditional hospitality concerns itself with rights, duties, obligations, etc. It has a lineage tracing back to the GrecoRoman world, through the Judeo-Christian tradition...It has been regulated.
[…]
...hospitality has been reciprocal, engaged in an economy of exchange, even an economy of violence...In other words, an exchange takes place between the host and the guest. In offering hospitality, in welcoming the other, the host imposes certain conditions upon the guest. First, the host questions and identifies the foreigner. “What is your name? Where are you from? What do you want? Yes, you may stay here a few nights.” Secondly, the host sets restrictions. “As my guest, you must agree to act within the limitations I establish. Just don’t eat all my food or make a mess.”17
M.T. LaFosse, summarizing Arterbury’s findings, further elaborates on the conditional nature of Christian hospitality. LaFosse –
Far from being synonymous with “table fellowship,” hospitality involved a series of dynamic elements, with some variation over time and culture. In broad terms, hospitality involved the host or traveling guest formally approaching the other. The host led the guest (who may be a god or angel in disguise) home, and offered provisions (water to wash, a meal, lodging) and protection. A relationship of reciprocity and permanence was often forged.18
Foster’s account of the reciprocal exchange which took place between guest and host in Christian hospitality, is helpful here. Foster explains that
...the ultimate reception of a stranger occurred in three stages. First, the stranger was tested in order to determine if they would subscribe to the norms of the community and not threaten its purity. Second, the stranger takes on the role of a guest of the host. The roles of guest and host were culturally well defined, with requirements concerning duties and manners being placed on both, including reciprocity. Third, the stranger leaves the company of his host either as a friend or an enemy.19
The Christian doctrine and practice of hospitality, thus, stands in marked contrast to “the contemporary Western idea of hospitality as casual and mostly non-binding,”20 a view which has the postmodern ideal of “pure hospitality” as its goal, and which seems to be, at least to a significant degree, shared by Rosaria Butterfield in her book The Gospel Comes with a House Key.
§ IV. Butterfield’s Postmodern Roots
- Labeling/Categorizing as “Violence” Against the Other
The Gospel Comes With a House Key (hereafter, TGH) opens with the claim that
...those who [practice radical ordinary hospitality] see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label. They know they are like meth addicts and sex-trade workers. They take their own sin seriously—including the sin of selfishness and pride.21
Rather than merely preaching at lost people, hospitality involves personal investment in strangers with the hope of “rendering [them] neighbors and neighbors family of God.”22 Investment of this kind stands in contradiction to what she calls “sneaky evangelistic raids into [unbelievers’] sinful lives,”23 raids which seemingly treat one’s neighbor as “a caricature of an alien worldview.”24 “Radically ordinary hospitality,” she states, “values the time it takes to invest in relationships, to build bridges, to repent of sins of the past, to reconcile.”25 Butterfield expands on this, writing –
Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently than we do as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God. It means we know that only hypocrites and cowards let their words be stronger than their relationships, making sneaky raids into culture on social media or behaving like moralizing social prigs in the neighborhood.26
For Butterfield, true hospitality, which involves becoming personally invested in those to whom we evangelize, stands in contradiction to “counterfeit hospitality” which “separates host and guest in ways that allow no blending of the two roles.”27 As she explains, “counterfeit hospitality creates false divisions and false binaries: noble givers or needy receivers. Or hired givers and privileged receivers.28
Like Derrida, Butterfield believes that central to hospitality is the rejection of labels, categories, and “false” binary oppositions which will limit or constrain our practice of hospitality toward our guests. And like Derrida, Butterfield views such limiting/constraining (based on reductive categorization/labeling) as an act of violence. Butterfield writes –
Our lack of genuine hospitality to our neighbors—all of them, including neighbors in the LGBTQ community—explains why counterfeit hospitality seems attractive. Our lack of Christian hospitality is a violent form of neglect for their souls.29
This “genuine hospitality,” it should be remembered, is one in which guests are not “reduced” to categories or labels, in which our hospitality is not constrained or limited by our consideration of the place guests occupy in a particular category.
By engaging in labeling, categorizing, and determining our behavior on the basis of labeling and categorizing, we are, according to Butterfield, committing an act of violence. In a word, she believes that “exclusion of people for arbitrary reasons—not church discipline–related ones (an important exception I discuss in chapter 6)—is violent and hostile.”30 Butterfield is not merely talking about the exclusion of Christians, however, but includes under the category of hospitality the act of “[making] room for a family displaced by a flood or a worldwide refugee crisis.”31 She elaborates on this elsewhere, writing –
It is deadly to ignore biblical teaching about serving the stranger—deadly to the people who desperately need help and deadly to anyone who claims Christ as King. Membership in the kingdom of God is intimately linked to the practice of hospitality in this life. Hospitality is the ground zero of the Christian life, biblically speaking. A more crucial question for the Bible-believing Christian is this: Is it safe to fail to get involved?
Jesus says, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matt. 25:35–36). When we feel entitled to God’s grace, either because of our family history or our decision making, we can never get to the core sentiment behind Jesus’s words. What would it take to see Jesus as he portrays himself here? To see ourselves? Is our lack of care for the refugee and the stranger an innocent lack of opportunity, or is it a form of willful violence?32
This effectively identifies any non-ecclesial act of disciplinary exclusion, seemingly toward any stranger, as an act of violence. For Butterfield, “Christian hospitality [i.e. true hospitality, as opposed to counterfeit hospitality] violates the usual boundary maintenance enacted by table fellowship.”33
Readers unfamiliar with postmodernist literature may not be aware of the fact within postmodern thought the term violence, as Iddo Landau explains, “is used by many postmodernists to refer to a wide array of phenomena.”34 Included within this “wide array of phenomena,” “Derrida argues that there is…the violence of the difference, of classification, and of the system of appellation [i.e. taxonomization].”35 For Derrida, differentiation, classification, and taxonomization are acts of violen__ce. Derrida’s thinking in this regard is shared by virtually all other postmodernists. Postmodernists, James R. Dawes writes, believe that –
The act of naming is a matter of forcibly imposing a sign upon a person or object with which it has only the most arbitrary of relationships. Names produce an Other, establish hierarchies, enable surveillance, and institute violent binaries: Naming is a strategy that one deploys in power relations. The violence cuts through at all levels, from the practically political (“They are savages,” “You are queer”) to the ontological (one critic writes of “the irreducibility of violence in any mark”).36
For postmodernists and Butterfield, hospitality deconstructs “violent” labels, categories, false binaries, and divisions, by “violat[ing] the usual boundary maintenance enacted by table fellowship.”37
- The Other/Stranger as Absolute Other/God
Butterfield’s idea of hospitality includes the belief that we can “see Jesus in those in need.”38 This broad characterization of those in whom we can see Christ is, in part, based on her interpretation of Matt 25:35-36. Seeing Jesus in others is “risky,” she argues, warning that, on the one hand, “when we fail to see Jesus in others, we cheapen the power of the image of God to shine over the darkness of the world,”39 and, on the other hand, that “when we always see him in others, we fail to discern that we live in a fallen world, one in which Satan knows where we live.”40 While Butterfield differentiates between seeing Jesus and Satan in the stranger/guest, she nevertheless says that we can see Jesus in others, which is to say those in need, indiscriminately considered. Butterfield does not differentiate between believers who are in need and unregenerate persons who are in need. Rather, for Butterfield, Jesus can be seen in the other/one in need/guest/stranger, indiscriminately considered.
Scripture, however, clearly teaches that only those who are being sanctified by the Spirit of God are those in whom we can “see Jesus.” This is because the children of God, alone, are being made in the image and likeness of the Son. Paul writes –
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.41
Paul’s words here are very clear. It is solely those who have been raised with Christ who can put on the new man which is being renewed according to the image of the Son. The image of Jesus is that into which Christians are being formed via the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification.42 According to Scripture, the image of the Son of God is the goal of sanctification, which will only be complete upon our glorification. As the apostle elsewhere writes –
...we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.43
Paul does not identify every person in need as potentially one in whom we can “see Jesus.” Rather, Paul explicitly teaches us that it is only the elect of God in whom we may see the image and likeness of Christ. The apostle clearly explains that the image of Jesus consists in holiness and righteousness, and it stands in contradiction to the “old self” which bears the moral/spiritual image of Satan and all who are in him.44
Butterfield, therefore, is correct to note that we are all the imago dei, and that as Christians we ought to recognize this and treat others accordingly with due respect and dignity.45 However, her belief that we can see Jesus in others – including the lost – is wrong. It is a belief that has more in common with the postmodern ethical theorizing of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, a seminal influence on Jacques Derrida’s own ethical and religious theorizing. Manuel Cruz explains that for Levinas,
In the face of the Other, one is confronted with a dialectical oscillation between the revelation of its infinite transcendence and its finitude: “This gaze that supplicates and demands, that can supplicate only because it demands, deprived of everything because entitled to everything . . . To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him whom one approaches as “You” in a dimension of height” .... Let us note the paradox: recognizing the other as vulnerable and deprived, as finite, depends on first recognizing the eminence and excess of its lordship as the infinite. The ethical significance of finitude depends on the prior significance of the infinite. There is a provocative intimation that the person I encounter on the street—subject to hunger, poverty, and murder—arrays itself with all the transcendent stature of a god, in essence signifying this vulnerable human in some way divine.46
Every person, Levinas believes, is one through whom we have an ethical counter with a third person beyond – namely, God. This is pertinent to note because although Levinas primarily reflects upon and discusses writings within the Continental philosophical tradition, as well as various Old Testament passages, he sometimes sets his attention on the New Testament.
Of particular significance here is Levinas’ interest in Matthew 25:31-46, a pericope of Scripture which he claims exemplifies his ethical theory. As Kajornpat Tangyin explains,
When Levinas mentions the teaching in...Matthew 25, he reminds us [that] the way we treat the other is the way we treat God. The infinite [i.e. God] is revealed through the other...Ethical relation, for him, begins with the response to the other’s material needs. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to the shelterless, are my responsibilities.47
Levinas believes this particular section of the New Testament reflects his own ethical belief that every individual, regardless of his relation to God religiously/spiritually, shows God to us. He explains –
The teaching in [the Gospels], and the representation of human beings in them, appeared always familiar to me. As a result, I was led to Matthew 25, where the people are astonished to hear that they have abandoned and persecuted God. They eventually find out that while they were sending the poor away, they were actually sending God himself away.48
On Levinas’ view, Jesus is teaching that when the poor – indiscriminately considered – are “sent away” and “persecuted” it is actually Christ who is being sent away and persecuted.49 As he explains elsewhere, in Matthew 25:31-46 “the relation to God is presented...as a relation to another [human] person.”50
What is absent from Levinas’ treatment of the passage, as well as from Butterfield’s use of the passage, is the Lord Jesus’ explicit identification of the recipients of mercy as “brothers.” Christ unambiguously declares – ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’51 These “brothers,” let us remember, are not the poor indiscriminately considered but only Christians. We know this because Christ states that “whoever does the will of [his] Father in heaven is [his] brother,”52 including not only the eleven disciples53 but every Christian,
For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why [Christ] is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”54
The brothers of Christ, “the least of these,” then, are those toward whom the Holy Spirit commands us to show hospitality. New Testament passages dealing with hospitality, moreover, have to do with Christian behavior toward other brothers. >
Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.55
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, [cf. John 13:12-20] has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.56
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.57
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another [within the body of Christ] earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another [within the body of Christ] without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace...58
Contrary to the kind of thinking espoused by Levinas and Butterfield, it is only in Christians who are strangers, imprisoned, hungry, thirsty, and naked that we see Christ.
- Fluid Subjectivities
We began our exploration of Butterfield’s postmodern ideas with a comparison of her concept of hospitality to Derrida’s concept of pure hospitality. We then moved on to consider the similarities between Butterfield’s belief that Jesus can potentially be seen in any other human being – regenerate or unregenerate – and Levinas’ belief that every other stranger/needy human is, in fact, Christ, i.e. God, himself, specifically drawing attention to the similarities between Butterfield and Levinas’ misinterpretation of Matt 25:31-46. We now will focus our review on Butterfield’s implied concept of fluid subjectivity. Given that TGH is not dealing primarily with subjectivity, we will draw on some of her earlier work to demonstrate TGH’s implicit concept of fluid subjectivity.
First, however, we must disambiguate the term subjectivity. The popular use of the word “subjectivity” is defined as “the quality, state, or nature of being subjective,”59 wherein the term subjective is to be understood as signifying something that is, or is capable of being or having been, “modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background.”60 The term subjectivity within academic contexts, however, is a technical term whose meaning is only partly resonant with popular use. As Marina F. Bykova explains –
Originally, [subjectivity] was used to designate all that refers to a subject’s psychological-physical integrity represented by its mind, which determines the unique mentality, psychological state, and reactions of the subject. In this use, subjectivity meant the consciousness of one’s real self (self-consciousness), where the real self is what unites the disparate elements.61
Central to the modernist conception of subjectivity is the assumption of integrity, unity, and autonomy. With the advent of postmodernism, however, this changed. Postmodern philosophers deconstructed the concepts of unity, integrity, and autonomy, and consequently proclaimed “the death of the subject,”62 which in turn “necessitated the development of new approaches to the classical and modern concepts of subject and subjectivity.”63 Subjects are fluid, not fixed; identities have permeable boundaries, not uncrossable borders.
In TGH, the idea of fluid subjectivity appears as an assumed reality. For instance, Butterfield makes the claim that “in radically ordinary hospitality, host and guest are interchangeable,”64 as they are “permeable roles.”65 This is significant, for in the same section of her book she goes on to state that “those who don’t yet know the Lord are summoned for food and fellowship.”66 Whereas the Scriptures state unambiguously that “if we [Christians] walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,”67 and that this is due to our already having fellowship “with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,”68 Butterfield states that unbelievers are to be summoned for fellowship, implying that they are capable of engaging in Christian fellowship. This concept of hospitality not only stands in contradiction to what is taught in Scripture, it also suggests that those outside of Christ may move by degrees to being in Christ, and not by an instantaneous and radical break from being children of darkness to being children of light.
This is further suggested by Butterfield’s opening lines, wherein she states that “those who live [out radical hospitality] see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God.”69 Logically, her words imply that strangers, indiscriminately considered, are to be engaged with as family of God.70 This flatly contradicts the Scriptures, wherein the Holy Spirit says –
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”71
Butterfield elsewhere explains that hospitality renders strangers into neighbors and neighbors into family of God.72 However, this does not eliminate the problem mentioned above, for this rendering is a movement from one identity (non-Christian) to another (Christian) that is brought about through “radical ordinary hospitality,” in which boundaries between guest and host are permeable, and the hosts (i.e. Christians) and guests (i.e. non-Christians) engage in “fellowship,” an engagement which would effectively erase, or trivialize, the distinction between those who are in fellowship with God and with his Son (i.e. Christians) and those who are not (i.e. non-Christians).
A person’s identity is, it seems, fluid, moving along a continuum that begins outside the covenant family of God and ends in the covenant family of God, with each of these respective social spheres having permeable boundaries. What makes this more troubling is that in her earlier work Butterfield explicitly states that “all acts of self-representation exist on a continuum, and a continuum allows for fluidity and overlap.”73 This universal “all” logically includes one’s self-representation as a Christian. Indeed, Butterfield explicitly states that “if you stand in the risen Christ alone, your self-representation is Christian.”74 This, therefore, necessarily implies that if one’s self-representation is “on a continuum” that “allows for fluidity and overlap,” then one’s self-representation as a Christian is likewise one with permeable boundaries separating believer from unbeliever, child of God from child of wrath, righteous from unrighteous, living from dead.
Yet in what appears to contradict her belief that all acts of self-representation exist on a continuum, she writes –
...the Bible’s categories for self-representation are binaries: you are either saved or you are lost. If you are saved, you are saved for God’s glory and his righteousness. He made the categories, and you don’t get to blur the boundaries.75
These seemingly contradictory words are followed by Butterfield once again repeating that –
Self-representation76 travels on a continuum, as words can describe or identify a sense of deep and abiding persistency (situated on the continua of self-representation and identity), and assert an allegiance (situated in community).77
How these are to be reconciled is unclear.78 However, what is clear is that when “true” hospitality is viewed as a place where host and guest are permeable, in which the host is a Christian and the guest is a non-Christian, the lines between the Bible’s categories are blurred.
Significantly, moreover, Butterfield explains her movement from being heterosexual to being homosexual in just this way. She writes –
I...preferred the company of women. In my late twenties, enhanced by feminist philosophy and LGBT political advocacy, my homosocial preference morphed into homosexuality. That shift was subtle, not startling. My lesbian identity and my love for my LGBT community developed in sync with my lesbian sexual practice. Life finally came together for me and made sense.79
Butterfield’s movement from heterosexuality to homosexuality, in other words, happened by degrees as she was influenced by feminist philosophy and LGBT advocacy, worked within the LGBT community, and engaged in lesbian sexual activity. What is clearly portrayed is a movement from the outside (heterosexuality) to the inside (homosexuality), which is facilitated by a third both/and factor (homosociality) which allows for participation in a community’s practices (LGBT political advocacy and lesbian sexual practice).
Her description of her movement into the LGBT community is eerily reminiscent of her description of her movement into the community of God’s people. Between heterosexuality and homosexuality, binarily opposed sexual identities, Buttefield sets before us a bridge – homosociality – which is neither heterosexual nor homosexual. This idea of a both/and bridge between binaries is present throughout TGH. In the book, Butterfield gives emphasis to the imago dei as the both/and common factor between insiders (i.e. Christians) and outsiders (i.e. unbelievers) facilitating conversion from the latter to the former, and allowing for outsiders to actively engage in insider practices (e.g. psalm singing, discussing Scripture, etc).
Butterfield’s continuum thinking in these later works is, moreover, reflective of her pre-Christian academic work. In The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women’s Literature, and Feminist Theory Butterfield presents the same idea of transitioning from outside to inside by means of a common both/and factor, a bridge, facilitating the transition by allowing for interaction between the binary pair. Explaining why she chose to engage with novels in her book, she writes –
If novels can…be seen as a site of historical agency, then we can see how they serve to bridge the binaries that divide our social order: inside/outside, public/private, false/true. That is, novels are always already on both sides of the binary pair.80
Thus, in the context of The Politics of Survivorship it is the novel serves as a bridge between binaries dividing the social order. Like the postmodernists she learned from, Butterfield presents subjectivity as fluid, moving along a continuum, and facilitated by a third both/and factor that sits on both sides of a given binary pair.
- The Feminist-Theological Ethic of Hospitality
The traces of Derridean hospitality, Levinasian theo-anthropological ethics, and postmodern fluid subjectivity are present in TGH. It may be difficult to see how they can simultaneously co-exist in any book, let alone within a putatively Christian book, until one recalls that postmodern philosophy encourages blurring, mixing, and even “holding in dialectical tension”81 ideas that are utterly opposed to one another. Rather than converting to Derridean Deconstructionism or Levinasian Meta-ontologism, the postmodern thinker creates a bricolage of concepts, a mosaic of ideas that transgress lines of demarcation drawn between disciplines (e.g. literature and philosophy), and between philosophers (e.g. Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou).
This is true of postmodernists in general, but also of feminism in particular. Maurice Hamington notes that in the field of ethics feminist philosophers, in part following Derrida and Levinas, have begun to argue that “hospitality is a glaring moral imperative because of the escalation of world violence, global disparities in quality-of-life issues, international alliances, globalization, and widespread migration.”82 Hamington further explains that –
...Emmanuel Levinas (1969) and Jacques Derrida (2001) have offered rich explorations of hospitality, the significance of which has not been exhausted by contemporary commentators.
[…]
Although Derrida and Levinas have revitalized philosophical interest in hospitality, feminist ethicists have advanced alternatives to traditional moral theory that...can coalesce and contribute to a robust understanding of hospitality—that is, identity, inclusiveness, reciprocity, forgiveness, and embodiment.
At a minimum, feminist hospitality drives at a nonhierarchical understanding of hospitality that mitigates the expression of power differential, while seeking greater connection and understanding for the mutual benefit of both host and guest.
[…]
[This form of] hospitality...is embedded in a positive human ontology that pursues evocative exchanges to foster better understanding. In this manner, feminist hospitality explores the antimony between disruption and connection: The guest and host disrupt each other’s lives sufficiently to allow for meaningful exchanges that foster interpersonal connections of understanding. To this end...feminist hospitality reflects a performative extension of care ethics that seeks to knit together and strengthen social bonds through psychic and material sharing.83
Hamington is not alone in proposing this kind of feminist hospitality, finding like-minded contemporaries in feminist theology.
Kate Ward asserts that “by far the most in-depth and interesting recent work on the virtue of hospitality comes from authors with implicit or explicit feminist commitments.”84 This is revealing, given that there are many points of agreement – some even using nearly identical descriptions – between these feminist theologians and Butterfield. For instance, Butterfield, who believes that for most people “hospitality conjures up a scene of a _Victorian tea..._and...paisley-patterned teacups,”85 echoes “feminist authors [who] universally denounce visions of hospitality as ‘cozy’ and ‘sentimental,’ what Letty Russell associates with ‘tea and crumpets’...and ‘terminal niceness.’”86 Additionally, Butterfield declares that “radically ordinary Christian hospitality does not happen in La La Land,”87 echoing the sentiment of feminist theologian “Elizabeth Newman [who] blasts ‘Disney World hospitality’ which paints God’s realm as a magic kingdom of ease, free from challenge.”88 Butterfield’s assertion that “[hospitality]...forces us to deal with diversity and difference of opinion,”89 moreover, is nearly identical to feminist theologians’ claims that “since hospitality by definition is practiced across boundaries of difference, it forces host and guest to acknowledge and embrace their own differences rather than attempting to erase them.”90
Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality, moreover, puts emphasis on accepting guests just as they are, reflecting yet another aspect of the contemporary feminist-theological doctrine of hospitality. As Ward explains, feminist theologians argue that “hospitality…insists on encountering the other as she is, in her particularity, resisting any easy erasure of deeply felt distinctions of identity.”91 This come-as-you-are principle was a crucial factor in Butterfield’s relationship with Ken and Floy Smith, the Christian couple through whom she became introduced to Christianity, and who are presented throughout TGH as exemplary models of Christian hospitality. Butterfield writes –
Ken and Floy Smith treaded carefully with me. Early in our friendship, Ken made the distinction between acceptance and approval. He said that he accepted me just as I was but that he did not approve.92
For Butterfield and contemporary feminist theologians, accepting the other just as she is can be a risky endeavor, but that does not justify creating protective “walls” around our homes. When facing the risks involved with engaging in radical hospitality, Butterfield states that –
One option is to build the walls higher, declare more vociferously that our homes are our castles, and, since the world is going to hell in a handbasket, we best get inside, thank God for the moat, and draw up the bridge. Doing so practices war on this world but not the kind of spiritual warfare that drives out darkness and brings in the kindness of the gospel. Strategic wall building serves only to condemn the world and the people in it.93
This sentiment is identical in essence to that which is expressed by feminist theologians. For instance, Ward quotes Jessica Wrobleski who argues that
‘The legitimate need for safety can become so exaggerated that it builds walls of suspicion and hostility in place of limits of hospitality [...] While a measure of security is necessary for the creation of safe and friendly spaces, making the need for security absolute can also become idolatrous.’ 94
The idolatry she mentions is related to personal possessions because hospitality comes “at the cost of [possible] danger and plunder from others.”95 And this, too, echoes Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality in which concerns over one’s personal possessions that sets up “walls” or limits to the practice of hospitality are thought to be related to idolatry. Butterfield writes –
...Christians who have too much are the ones prohibited from practicing hospitality. They have so many cluttered idols that they can give nothing at all. For this reason, it is often the well-heeled and rich who are known for their lack of hospitality, and the meager and even poor who are known for their plentiful hospitality.96
Butterfield, moreover, true hospitality entails the interchangeability of guest and host roles. She writes –
In radically ordinary hospitality, host and guest are interchangeable.
[…]
Radically ordinary hospitality means that hosts are not embarrassed to receive help, and guests know that their help is needed.97
This view is identical in substance to that of contemporary feminist theologians. Ward –
Feminist theologians insist that hospitality can describe an exchange that brings benefit to those on each side. As Wrobleski writes, ‘the best experiences of hospitality are often those in which guests take on some of the roles of hosts and hosts also experience the presence of their guests as refreshment and gift’...Russell concurs: ‘Hospitality is a two-way street of mutual ministry where we often exchange roles and learn the most from those whom we considered ‘different’ or “other.”’98
Butterfield and the feminist theologians believe that hospitality deconstructs the rigid binary of guest and host, treating the roles as permeable, fluid, interchangeable.
§ IV.a Conclusions
In conclusion, let us review the ways in which Christian hospitality and Butterfieldian hospitality are at odds with one another, a reality which results in the subversion of Christian orthodoxy, and then conclude with an admonition to Christians to steer clear of Butterfield’s writings. For instance, we note that whereas Christian hospitality maintains a strict distinction between host and guest, Butterfieldian hospitality maintains that the roles of guest and host are permeable and, therefore, aims to deconstruct the binary opposition of host and guest, thereby rendering them interchangeable. Moreover, we also note that whereas Christian hospitality is evaluative, involving the fixed roles of guest and host, and can lead to either (a.)the guest revealing himself to be an enemy, or (b.)the guest revealing himself to be a friend,99 Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality is not evaluative but rehabilitative and transformative. Additionally, Scripture clearly and repeatedly identifies the subjects of hospitality as Christians, whereas Butterfieldian hospitality views all strangers indiscriminately as the subjects of hospitality.
We must also add that Butterfieldian hospitality seemingly flows from the assumption that subjectivity is fluid, whereas Christian hospitality does not. Thus, the former seems to allow for a social transition from outsider (i.e. non-Christian) to insider (i.e. Christian) by a gradual progression facilitated by a common third factor (i.e. the imago dei), whereas the latter clearly articulates that becoming a Christian is not a gradual process but a radical and immediate transformation accomplished by the Spirit of God.
Likewise, Butterfieldian hospitality indiscriminately assumes all people – saved or unsaved – have the potential to reflect the image of Christ, a view based in part on her misinterpretation of Matt 25:36-41. However, Christian hospitality strictly maintains that bearing the image of Christ is the end goal of sanctification and, consequently, glorification. This means that it is not the stranger or guest indiscriminately considered who can show us Jesus, but only Christian strangers or guests.
Finally, whereas Christian hospitality is derived from a proper exegesis of the Scriptures, Butterfieldian hospitality is derived from postmodernism, feminism, and feminist theology. Butterfield not only gives us the linguistic and conceptual data we need to draw that conclusion, she explicitly states –
Hospitality renders our houses hospitals [i.e. places of rehabilitation] and incubators [i.e. places of growth/transformation]. When I was in a lesbian community, this is how we thought of our homes. I learned a lot in that community about how to shore up a distinctive culture within and to live as a despised but hospitable and compassionate outsider in a transparent and visible way. I learned how to create a habitus that reflected my values to a world that despised me.
I learned to face my fears and feed my enemies.
[...]
This idea—that our houses are hospitals and incubators—was something I learned in my lesbian community in New York in the 1990s….we set out to be the best neighbors on the block. We gathered in our people close and daily, and we said to each other, “This house, this habitus, is a hospital and an incubator. We help each other heal, and we help ideas take root.”100
Butterfieldian hospitality is the fruit of a postmodern feminist-theological worldview that stands opposed to Christianity on the issues mentioned throughout the course of this essay.
§ IV.b Admonitions
While The Gospel Comes With a House Key is not devoid of explicit statements of orthodox Christian belief, those expressions of orthodoxy are not the source material from which Butterfield has derived her doctrine of hospitality. Resultantly, her writing is a mixture of postmodern-feminist-theological language and concepts, on the one hand, and Reformed Presbyterian theology, on the other hand. This, at best, is due to inconsistent thinking and terminological imprecision. At worst, Butterfield’s writing is purposefully presenting a mixture of contradictory ideas for the sake of indirectly teaching readers to disregard or undermine the Scriptures’ teaching on hospitality, trading it for another version of hospitality that justifies the social justice “Gospel” by identifying social justice activity as part and parcel of the “ground zero” of the Christian life, namely radically ordinary hospitality.
That the latter seems to be the case is based, in part, on the most charitable reading one can have of a book written by a thinker whose knowledge of postmodern and feminist philosophy prior to her conversion was anything but deficient, asystematic, or unclear. The Politics of Survivorship, as well as her various academic articles and book reviews,101 demonstrate how proficiently, systematically, and clearly Butterfield is capable of writing and reading. This casts a dark shadow over TGH, for in it she presents contradictory data (orthodox and unorthodox beliefs, postmodern and reformed beliefs, and so forth), purposefully misinterprets Scripture to support her doctrine of hospitality, and promotes various social justice causes that have rightly been called into question by many sound reformed thinkers concerned with the infiltration of critical race theorists into otherwise theologically sound, Reformed, Calvinistic churches and institutions of higher learning.
Abuse of Scripture
Above, we have examined Butterfield’s misappropriation of Matthew 25:31-46 in her presentation of how Christians are failing to show hospitality to the stranger during the so-called refugee crisis. Here we must also draw attention to her eisegetical reading of Luke 24:13-17. Concerning Jesus’ interaction with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Butterfield writes –
This passage in Luke spills over with grace and care. Jesus models here what the future of our daily, ordinary, radical hospitality is all about.
First, Jesus does not come with an apologetics lesson. He comes with a question. And then he listens compassionately as the two share pain, disappointment, abandonment, betrayal. The pain in their heart is extreme, so much so that they must stop walking to compose themselves. And they don’t just stop—they stand still. The drama in the narrative halts with this reality: “And they stood still, looking sad.”
They are going somewhere, but they don’t know why. They lose their vision. A question derails them.
That happens to a lot of people.>>Jesus does not hurry them. He does not jolly them. He doesn’t fear their pain or even their wrong-minded notions of who the Christ should be or is.
[…]
The men tell their side of the story… [and] Jesus, after hearing their side of the story, speaks words of grace, words that tell the whole story, words that expose the goodness of both law and grace.
[…]
Jesus tells his fellow travelers that nothing has happened apart from what the Old Testament prophesied: the sufferings of the Christ are the appointed path to glory. The Old Testament had prepared them to hear this, but the cross itself became a stumbling block. Severity. Humiliation. They knew their Scriptures, but seeing them in the backdrop of the cross was too much to bear. Because it is too much to bear. And that is why Jesus takes their hands—and ours—and walks with us. Grace does not make the hard thing go away; grace illumines the hard thing with eternal meaning and purpose.102
Butterfield’s sentimental eisegesis of this narrative fails to deal with Jesus’ stern rebuke of the disciples. Luke records the following taking place within that very narrative –
And [Jesus] said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.103
Christ’s identification of these disciples as foolish and slow of heart to believe is not a compliment. Rather, it is a stern rebuke to these individuals who should have known better but, because of their unbelief, were disillusioned, sad.
Absent from the text is the idea that the disciples had to compose themselves due to the overwhelming nature of their grief. Absent from the text is the idea that these disciples knew their Scriptures, but were too emotionally overwhelmed to properly understand them in light of the crucifixion of Jesus. Absent from the text is the idea that Jesus took the hands of these disciples into his own because he knew their emotions were overwhelmed in light of the crucifixion. These are all read into the text in order to support Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality, as if Christ engaged in that same practice which identifies as Christian hospitality. The problem, however, is that the text neither explicitly nor implicitly teaches those things. Butterfield reads her ideas into this text in order to claim that Christ himself exemplified the doctrine she is promoting, but he did no such thing.
Social Justice
Adding to her misinterpretation of Scripture, we also can find the promotion of social justice activism under the guise of “radically ordinary hospitality” in TGH. For instance, Butterfield states that because the Gospel is “cosmological and holistic” 104
When a church identifies a sin pattern of its people (such as pornography), it also has a responsibility to protect the victims created by that sin. Repentance calls for nothing short of this. 105
The reasoning put forward by Butterfield here is extremely problematic. For if the sin pattern of a church is replaced with, for instance, the sin pattern of “white privilege” or “class privilege,” then it follows that if the church is to truly repent, then it must protect the victims of “white privilege” and/or “class privilege.”
This inference is likely sound given that Butterfield herself believes she benefits from “class and racial privilege,”106 and argues that
...Christians are coconspirators [in the evils perpetuated by the “post-Christian” world in which we live]....Our cold and hard hearts; our failure to love the stranger; our selfishness with our money, our time, and our home; and our privileged back turned against widows, orphans, prisoners, and refugees mean we are guilty in the face of God of withholding love and Christian witness.107
And when reflecting on how she addresses women in the LGBT community, showing “respect” to them by describing their relationships according to their own standards, she writes –
I ponder: Have I made myself safe to share the real hardships of your day-to-day living, or am I still so burdened by the hidden privileges of Christian acceptability that I can’t even see the daggers in my hands? Am I safe? If not, then why not?108
“Christian privilege” is a the conceptual fruit of critical theory, as are racial, class, and heterosexual privilege – and Butterfield embraces all of them as legitimate.109 Thus, while Butterfield contrasts “the social gospel” with “radical ordinary Christian hospitality,” she still embraces the critical theory ensconced social justice concepts that she claims to have left behind years ago. Even more problematically, she believes that it is the Christian’s moral duty to socially engage as if these critical theory ideas are legitimate. As she states in the opening of her book –
Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality [i.e. obedient Christians, as she elsewhere explains] see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged.110
If the church is to address sin patterns like racial, class, heterosexual, and Christian privilege, then the church is, by Butterfield’s reasoning, is to engage in social justice (as defined by critical theorists and critical race theorists).
Butterfield’s doctrine of hospitality is neither biblical nor innocuous. Rather, it subtly introduces a means whereby biblically constituted orthodox walls around the church may be slowly broken down under the guise of showing hospitality. There are contemporary theologians who, in fact, have used this feminist-theological doctrine of hospitality to promote religious inclusivism. While it may seem to be that Butterfield has important insights into LGBTQ+ issues, she is rehashing postmodernist feminist and feminist-theological concepts, none of which is compatible with Christianity. We admonish Christians, therefore, to not look to her books for guidance in how Christians are to share the Gospel with our neighbors, homosexual or heterosexual. Scripture is sufficient to address the matter, and it does. It is not radical ordinary hospitality that is the power of God unto salvation, but the Gospel alone.
1 February 7, 2013, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html, Accessed December 30, 2019.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 Butterfield explains that her conversion to Christianity marked her as a turncoat and traitor among her intellectual peers.
5 In the course of this essay, we will show that the postmodern ideas embedded in The Gospel Comes With a House Key are present throughout her writings, including her preconversion academic writing.
6 Acts of Religion, Ed. Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002), 364.
7 “Interruptions: Derrida and Hospitality,” in Kritike Vol. 2 No. 1 (June, 2008), 4. (emphasis added)
8 “Hospitality: The Apostle John, Jacques Derrida, and Us,” Third Millennium Ministries, Accessed Jan 13, 2020, https://thirdmill.org/articles/jas_foster/jas_foster.hospitality.html.(emphasis added)
9 i.e. an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.
10 Interruptions, 5. (emphasis added)
11 Phenomenologies of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality, ed. Richard Kearney and Kascha Semonovitch (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011),12.
12 Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle I__nvites Jacques Derrida to R__espond, Trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 77.
13 i.e. diametrically opposed pairs (e.g. good/evil, life/death, divine/demonic)
14 Of Hospitality, 77. (emphasis added)
15 Hospitality: The Apostle John, Jacques Derrida, and Us.
16 ibid.
17 Interruptions, 1-2. (emphasis added)
18 “Entertaining Angels: Early Christian Hospitality in its Mediterranean Setting,” Review of Entertaining Angels: Early Christian Hospitality in its Mediterranean Setting, in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology Vol. 62 (January: 2008), 102. (emphasis added)
19 Hospitality: The Apostle John, Jacques Derrida, and Us.
20 ibid.
21 TGH, (emphasis added)
22 ibid.
23 ibid.
24 ibid.
25 ibid. (emphasis added)
26 ibid. (emphasis added)
27 ibid. (emphasis added)
28 ibid. (emphasis added)
29 ibid. (emphasis added)
30 ibid. (emphasis added)
31 ibid. (emphasis added)
32 ibid. (emphasis added)
33 ibid. (emphasis added)
34 “Violence and Postmodernism: A Conceptual Analysis,” in Reason Papers 32 (Fall: 2010), 67.
35 ibid. (emphasis added)
36 “Language, Violence, and Human Rights Law,” in Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol. 11, Iss. 2 [1999], 215-216.
37 TGH.
38 ibid.
39 ibid. (emphasis added)
40 ibid. (emphasis added)
41 Col 3:1-11. (emphasis added)
42 See Eph 4:20-24.
43 Rom 8:28-30. (emphasis added)
44 cf. John 8:42-44; Gen 3:1 , Rev 12:9, & Matt 3:7, 12:34, 22:33, & 1st John 3:7-10.
45 See James 3:6b-10.
46 “Beyond Atheism and Atheology: The Divine Humanism of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Religions 10:131 (2019), 3. (emphasis added)
47 “Reading Levinas on Ethical Responsibility,” in Responsibility and Commitment: Eighteen Essays in Honor of Gerhold K. Becker, ed. Tze-wan Kwan (Edition Gorz: 2008), 156.
48 Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 255. (emphasis added)
49 ibid., 52.
50 ibid., 171. (emphasis added)
51 Matt 25:40.
52 Matt 12:50.
53 cf. Matt 28:10 & 16.
54 Heb 2:11-12. (emphasis added)
55 Rom 12:13. (emphasis added)
56 1st Tim 5:9-10. (emphasis added)
57 Heb 13:1-3. (emphasis added)
58 1st Pet 4:7-10. (emphasis added)
59 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “Subjectivity,” Accessed Jan 20, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subjectivity.
60 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “Subjective,” Accessed Jan 20, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subjective.
61 “On the Problem of Subjectivity,” in Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 56, no. 1, 2018, 1-2.
62 For a helpful introduction to this topic, see Hearfield, James. “Postmodernism and the Death of the Subject,” Marxists.org, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/heartfield-james.htm.
63 ibid., 4.
64TGH.
65 ibid.
66 ibid. (emphasis added)
67 1st John 1:7. (emphasis added)
68 1st John 1:3.
69 TGH. (emphasis added)
70 The law of transitivity states – If A is B, and B is C, then A is C. Thus, Butterfield’s opening line could be restated, according to the law of transitivity, as follows:
If strangers (indiscriminately considered) are to be engaged with as neighbors
and neighbors (indiscriminately considered) are to be engaged with as family of God,
then strangers (indiscriminately considered) are to be engaged with as family of God.
71 2nd Cor 6:14-18. (emphasis added)
72 Butterfield writes:
My prayer is that you would see that practicing daily, ordinary, radical hospitality toward the end of rendering strangers neighbors and neighbors family of God is the missing link.
[...]
This gospel call that renders strangers into neighbors into family of God is all pretty straight up when you read the Bible, especially the book of Acts. And it requires both hosts and guests. We must participate as both hosts and guests—not just one or the other—as giving and receiving are good and sacred and connect people and communities in important ways.
[...]
All these lists lead to this moment, when strangers are rendered brothers and sisters in Christ, heads bowed; when the Holy Spirit drives, Jesus speaks, and we receive.
[...]
TGH. (emphasis added)
73 Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. (emphasis added)
74 ibid. (emphasis added)
75 ibid. (emphasis added)
76 The absence of quantification or specification here implies universality. Butterfield is not speaking of one kind of self-representation over and against Christian self-representation, in other words, but of self-representation in general/universally.
77 Openness Unhindered, ibid. (emphasis added)
78 One possible solution to this contradiction can be found in Butterfield’s preconversion article titled “Feminism, Essentialism, and Historical Context,” in Women’s Studies Vol.25 (1995). There she writes –
My position...is that essentialism and constructionism, as theoretical positions that determine ways of reading, are not mutually exclusive, but inseparable and interdependent; they are complicated versions of each other. Although the doctrinaire anti-essentialist would necessarily resist this assertion out-of-hand, what we see when filtering the essentialist-constructionist binarism through a psychoanalytic/poststructural frame is that essence (essentialism) is to counter-essence (constructionism) as transference is to counter-transference.
...Thus, essentialism is only negatively charged when it operates as a critical return of the repressed.
[96-97, emphasis added]
In other words, for Butterfield fixity and fluidity as regards subjectivity are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are interdependent, complicated versions of each other. If Butterfield still maintains this view, then her contradicting beliefs may be capable of harmonization.
79 ibid. (emphasis added)
80 The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women’s Literature, and Feminist Theory, (New York: New York University Press, 1996)4. (emphasis added)
81 i.e. contradiction.
82 “Toward a Theory of Feminist Hospitality,” in Feminist Formations, Vol. 22 No. 1 (Spring), 22-23. (emphasis added)
83 ibid. (emphasis added)
84 “Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality: Pope Francis’ Virtue Response to Inequality,” in Religions 8, 71 (2017), 4. (emphasis added)
85 TGH.
86 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 4.
87 TGH. (emphasis added)
88 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 4. (emphasis added)
89 TGH.
90 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 5. (emphasis added)
91 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 5. (emphasis added)
92 TGH. (emphasis added)
93 TGH. (emphasis added)
94 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 6. (emphasis added) Butterfield similarly identifies concern for personal and national safety as possibly “obdurate sin.” She writes –
Who should take responsibility for this global humanitarian crisis? Is it safe to get involved?
[...] It is deadly to ignore biblical teaching about serving the stranger—deadly to the people who desperately need help and deadly to anyone who claims Christ as King….A more crucial question for the Bible-believing Christian is this: Is it safe to fail to get involved?
[…]
Is our lack of care for the refugee and the stranger an innocent lack of opportunity, or is it a form of willful violence? Is it a reasonable act of self-preservation, or is it obdurate sin?
TGH. (emphasis added)
95 Jesuit and Feminist Hospitality, 6. (emphasis added)
96 TGH. (emphasis added)
97 TGH. (emphasis added)
98 7. (emphasis added)
99 See our foregoing discussion of ancient Mediterranean practices of hospitality, which Christians practiced, above. Additionally, see Igor Lorencin’s insightful analysis of 3rd John’s comments on the practice of hospitality titled “Hospitality as a Ritual Liminal-Stage Relationship with Transformative Power: Social Dynamics of Hospitality and Patronage in the Third Epistle of John,” in Biblical Theology Bulletin Vol. 490 No. 3 (2018), 146–155. In particular, Lorencin explains –
...Normally people are treated according to their status, but with hospitality a guest’s status is not important, since in the liminal stage he is in transition to obtaining a new status as household friend.
What rights does the guest have? He is supposed to be served—the host is his servant who provides for the needs of his guest. The guest is like a king in a hospitality situation—he receives services, the best seating places, the best food and drink, as well as the best accommodation in the house. Regular social order is set aside, and the host is now a servant. Refusing the offered services would offend the host and indicate that the services were not good enough. Thus, there were certain rules of hospitality, and both parties were supposed to stay within the boundaries of their roles during a single hospitality event…
[Hospitality as Ritual, 149.]
100 TGH. (emphasis added)
101 For example, see Champagne, Rosaria M. “Women's History and Housekeeping: Memory, Representation and Reinscription,” in Women’s Studies Vol. 20 (1992), 321-329; “The Other Women’s Movement,” in The Women’s Review of Books Vol. 16 No. 3 (December: 1998),, 28-29; “Passionate Experience,” in The Women's Review of Books Vol. 13, No. 3 (December: 1995), 14-15; “Other Women: The Writing of Class, Race and Gender, 1832-1898” [Review], in Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 15 No.1 (1991), 88-93; and “Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/in the Postmodern” [Review], in NWSA Journal Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn: 1991), 477-479.
102 TGH. (emphasis added)
103 Luke 24:25-27.
104 This phrasing is significant in light of the fact of Butterfield’s positive association with, and varied media contributions to, Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, and The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. These organizations/ministries all promote social justice as articulated by proponents of critical theory and its various offspring (e.g. critical race theory), and seem to also connect it with a “cosmological and holistic” “gospel.” See, for instance, Graves, Rayshawn. “Nothing Less Than Justice,” Desiring God, August 29, 2016, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/nothing-less-than-justice; Wax, Trevin. “Sheep & Goats 3: Human Need,” The Gospel Coalition, February 11, 2008, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/sheep-goats-3; and Hough, Casey B. “What Sheep and Goats Teach Us About the Sanctity of Life: Matthew 25 and the Least of These,” Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, January 29, 2020, https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/what-sheep-and-goats-teach-us-about-the-sanctity-of-life.
105 TGH. (emphasis added)
106ibid.
107 ibid. (emphasis added)
108 ibid. (emphasis added)
109 We have above mentioned racial and class privilege, but can add more examples here. For instance, when speaking about “Lisa”’s difficult time in medical school, Butterfield writes –
During medical school [Lisa] struggled with sleep deprivation and imposter identity, as she was daily surrounded by people in her medical program who came with social privilege. [emphasis added]
Similarly, when speaking about why some professing Christians become progressive in regards to homosexuality Butterfield writes –
They [i.e. progressive “Christians”] wish to be an ally. They desire to stand in the gap for their friends. They want their friends to have the same rights and privileges as they do. [emphasis added]
110 TGH. (emphasis added)
Edward Snowden. Permanent Record. Read by Holter Graham. New York: Macmillan Audio, 2019. Audible edition. https://www.audible.com/pd?asin=1250622689&source_code=ASSORAP0511160006
In his autobiography, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden lays out stimulating discussions on education; identity and privacy; the Internet; whistleblowing; government power, contracting, surveillance, and abuse; cloud storage; and encryption.
Alter ego
Snowden makes an interesting case for using alternate identities and anonymity online, which can make people more willing to learn, admit when they’re wrong, and change their view; whereas using real identities tends to defensiveness and obstinacy in order to preserve reputation. He blames government and business for the Internet’s shift towards the latter. Anonymity, however, is a double-edged sword that just as easily emboldens people to be vicious and wicked (needless to say, much online behavior reflects this) and to shirk responsibility/accountability.
Growing Up…Online
Snowden’s upbringing sheds light on a number of issues. In some ways the young Snowden reminds me of my younger self, an obsessive, all-or-nothing kind of guy, diving headlong into whatever captured my attention, rarely coming up for air. Growing up, especially through puberty, Snowden spent most of his time playing video games and going online, learning as much as he could on messaging boards, without hardly any moderation or supervision. He advocates this kind of activity as a way of self-discovery, of growing up and finding identity; and sees hacking as a way of becoming equal with adults, since technical skill and acumen matter more than age. Somewhat similar to Snowden, however, several mass shooters spent lots of time in the Internet’s sewers, messaging boards like 8chan:
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/8chan/
The truth is that the Internet, video games, and media in general are often too much for young impressionable minds to handle, especially without close parental supervision. They’re highly addictive, even for adults, and much of the content is inappropriate for youth. They foster impatience, heighten irritability, fuel tempers, destroy self-control, the list goes on and on:
https://www.frictionlessfamilies.com/technology-in-the-family
https://www.drkardaras.com/research.html
Parents need to wake up and stop overexposing their kids to technology and media.
Snowden’s life is also a sad but all too common object lesson of the devastating impact of divorce on children. It affected Snowden deeply when his parents were no longer together. He rightly describes it as both becoming a parent—maturing too quickly by being overexposed to adult problems—and as losing a parent, at the same time. Divorce is a vicious cycle that harms the children the most, including, but not limited to, the separated parents outdoing each other by buying the nicer gifts for their kids, and using the kids to spy on the other parent’s love life; kids having to choose which parent to stay with, and having to “be the parent” with their own parents when they become unstable; and, one of the worst consequences, kids constantly blaming themselves for the divorce. Even though his parents eventually “reconciled” by agreeing to flourish separately, the damage is done and requires supernatural intervention to truly overcome.
Cyber Religion
It’s interesting how Snowden uses overtly religious language to describe the early Internet, what he calls the most successful anarchy he’s ever experienced, which is consistent with his general distrust of authority, and thinking people are better off raising themselves in an online world that’s free of government corruption and corporate greed. He claims that the nascent Internet was more forgiving of online transgressions, and gave people the freedom to start over. The Internet was his idol, and the online communities he frequented his church, an attempt to find community and a sense of belonging. It reminds me of the documentary Ringers: Lord of the Fans, which shows real people forming cults that practically worship Tolkien’s fictional characters. One woman claimed The Lord of the Rings saved her life. Ian McKellen, the actor who played Gandalf, made the stupefying assertion that The Lord of the Rings is true and the Bible is false. John Calvin rightly said the human heart is a perpetual idol factory. It’s sad to see even conscientious individuals, who want justice to triumph corruption, idolize the most ridiculous things, exchanging “the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25); rather than worship Christ Jesus, the real God-Man, “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the only One who can truly forgive all our sins and give us, not just a fresh start, but a perfect record of righteousness based on Christ’s perfect life and finished work on the Cross. No works required, just faith: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).
“Homo contractus”
Snowden levels sharp criticisms against the Intelligence Community’s (IC) government contracting, a way of “hacking” the federal head count limits placed on each agency. The black budget he leaked implies that the IC employs just as many contractors as government employees. Due partly to rapid advances in technology, the government turned to the private sector to hire contractors, sidestepping the established vetting and hiring process. Employees often start working for the government to get clearance levels and then jump ship to the highest bidding contractor the first chance they get. IC directors and Congresspeople land cushy jobs with the contracting companies they hired for the government, a blatant conflict of interest. What passes off as “innovation” is more like governmentally assisted corruption. This in part made it possible for Snowden to gain access to all the NSA’s secret documents as a contracted sysadmin fairly quickly.
The Cloud of centralized servers
I appreciated Snowden’s criticism of “cloud” storage, which is regressive technology that stores our data in untold racks of servers consolidated in large data centers, euphemistically pitched as “the cloud.” Consenting to these cloud services means that companies do whatever they want with our data: read it, scan it, sell it, delete it. We don’t really know where our data is and what cloud companies are doing with it. And who knows what parts of the cyber world our data has traveled.
Overall, this is an important book that deals with many pertinent issues affecting us today, though I would’ve liked for Snowden to add VPNs to the discussion, but he didn’t mention them; or to treat some of the controversial fallout resulting from his leaks, such as Operation Socialist:
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/48/
He gives an excellent discussion of the need for encryption to permeate our online activity and for users to take advantage of anonymous browsers like Tor and messaging apps like Signal, which will reform the Internet back to the “purer” form that Snowden reminisces about:
Disclaimer: The book has some salty language, which was a little unexpected because it starts relatively clean.
To start, I didn’t sympathize with Piper's irrational emotive appeal for writing this book:
[T]here is another way to commend the vision. A person also wants to know, Is the vision beautiful and satisfying and fulfilling?... Commending Biblical truth involves more than saying, "Do it because the Bible says so." That sort of commendation may result in a kind of obedience that is so begrudging and so empty of delight and hearty affirmation that the Lord is not pleased with it at all.... Not only must there be thorough exegesis, there must also be a portrayal of the vision that satisfies the heart as well as the head.... This little book is meant to fit mainly into the second category. (15-16, emphasis his)
Believers keep God's laws precisely because “the Bible says so.” Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:21). Period. Not because we find them "satisfying": "Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law" (Romans 3:31). "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3). A true believer desires to obey, and grows in obedience to, his heavenly Father out of gratitude, because he's been forgiven by Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. The Law of God is only burdensome and "empty of delight and hearty affirmation" to unregenerate sinners because it condemns them and because they hate God. We don't need to somehow be emotionally convinced in addition to "thorough exegesis." The Bible simply says, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord" (Isaiah 1:18).
The Bible also contrasts the mouth (what one professes) and the heart (the true, inner self—not mere emotions) rather than the “head” and the “heart.” That’s why Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me'" (Mark 7:6). The psychological distinction between head ("intellect") and heart ("emotions") is unbiblical, which leads Piper to overemphasize emotions and create a false dichotomy between obedience and desire. Unfortunately, this is one of Piper’s most fundamental convictions that drives his entire ministry, from his preaching, to his teaching, to his writing. Much of what John Robbins said in his review of Colson's Loving God applies to Piper's book as well:
...In your [Colson's] book and tapes you attack creeds and philosophies and emphasize the Person and cross of Christ. You contrast a “magnificent philosophy” with a “living truth,” and “academic theory" with a “living Person.” But the Bible makes no such contrast. Indeed, it teaches the opposite: As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Christ said, “My words are spirit and they are life.” The words are the Spirit. The Gospel, the truth, the words are powerful. There is no contrast in the Bible between words or teaching or doctrine or philosophy and Christ. There is a contrast between profession of belief and actual belief, but not between Christ and his words. The contrast is a figment of modern psychology. We know Christ only insofar as we know about him. One cannot know Christ, or any other person, except by knowing propositions about him. Knowledge is always knowledge of a proposition. Saving faith is always assent to one or more Biblical propositions. Therefore, please do not disparage knowledge or teaching or doctrine, for by doing so, you are disparaging Christ. As Calvin put it, we owe to Scripture the same reverence that we owe to God. (See http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=187)
Piper also confused me when he, apparently referring to liberal theologians Emil Brunner and Paul Jewett, states that "our best Christian thinkers claim not to know what masculinity and femininity are" (20). Those men are a far cry from being “our best Christian thinkers,” especially if they can’t define something as basic and fundamental as manhood and womanhood. Anyone who studies the Bible can know exactly what true masculinity and femininity are.
The book's subtitle, "Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible," is misleading as well. Piper defines manhood and womanhood as the following:
At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's differing relationships.
At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships. (22)
These definitions are “an attempt to get at the heart, or at least an indispensable aspect, of manhood and womanhood” (21). But a more appropriate subtitle would be, "Manhood and Womanhood defined in relation to each other." Although Piper is a complementarian (20-21), his definitions of manhood and womanhood tend to overlook the fundamentals: God's order and creation roles. And why does a woman, according to Piper's definition, seem to have more than one head? 1 Corinthians 11:3-13 reads:
I [Paul] want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.... For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God.
Piper doesn't mention that man was made for God and woman for man. And although spiritually "there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), Christ explains why there is a prescribed natural order:
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. (Luke 20:34-36)
So in this life, God institutes an order for us to follow until the resurrection because we are still in the flesh and marry and have kids...and die. Women should "have a symbol of authority on their heads because of the angels," that is, a woman's "hair is given to her for a covering" (Ephesians 5:16), and the man also covers her because even though women are spiritually equal to men and to the angels in heaven, they are still in the flesh, so they must "submit to [their] own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands" (Ephesians 5:22ff.). This order won't be necessary for believers after the resurrection because they will no longer marry and die, and because there will only be one marriage in heaven: Christ, the Husband, and the church, the bride (Revelation 19:7-9). This also shows why God has historically destroyed societies that embrace homosexuality: it violates God's natural order and unravels the moral fabric of society. The most fundamental institution of society is the one that God Himself established first and foremost—marriage.
Piper also argues that "It is not primarily the responsibility of women to build procedural and relational guidelines to protect themselves from the advances of ill-behaved men. Primarily it is the responsibility of mature manhood to establish a pattern of behaviors and attitudes" (45, emphasis his). Nonsense. It is primarily the responsibility of both! Not just the man's. A woman's head is her husband or her father, or God if neither are available; she does not need to rely or depend on any other man to "establish" boundaries. Women must protect themselves and establish biblical boundaries with other men, especially if she’s alone. Piper later claims that "the natural expression of...womanhood will be hindered by the immaturity of the man in her presence" (55). This is also absurd, for true womanhood is affirmed by God and her husband or father, and is only hindered by other immature men if the woman is insecure. But even a mature married woman, according to Piper, "will affirm and receive and nurture the strength and leadership of men in some form in all her relationships with men" (59). This too is false and even dangerous, for the only men a woman needs to "affirm and receive and nurture" is her father and husband! Not every "worthy" man she comes across!
The book had some helpful points, but overall it confuses rather than clarifies biblical manhood and womanhood. For better material see Gary Smalley's If Only He Knew, Pastor Tom Nelson's teachings on marriage and the Song of Solomon (http://dbcmedia.org/), and Pastor G. Craige Lewis' teachings on creation roles (http://www.exministries.com/sermons/atcp-archive/) instead.
Dave Harvey. When Sinners Say “I Do”: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage. Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2007.
The Good
This book has thoughtful research and excellent quotes from writers such as Charles Spurgeon; Thomas Watson; Matthew Henry; and John Owen, Newton, Calvin, Edwards, and Wesley. It's also refreshing how this book explains that a biblical mystery is not something that we can never understand, as Romanists and pietists claim; rather, it is something that God obscured in the Old Testament but reveals or explains in the New. Harvey cites George Knight:
Unbeknownst to the people of Moses' day (it was a "mystery"), marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be a picture or parable of the relationship between Christ and the church. Back when God was planning what marriage would be like, He planned it for this great purpose: it would give a beautiful earthly picture of the relationship that would someday come about between Christ and His church. This was not known to people for many generations, and that is why Paul can call it a "mystery." But now in the New Testament age Paul reveals this mystery, and it is amazing. (qtd. in 27. Italics always in original unless noted otherwise)
Harvey furthermore does a good job of stressing how important it is for believers to solidify a biblical worldview, for no Christian can avoid theology, nor should he want to. "What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage.... Your theology governs your entire life" (20, 21). Theory always precedes practice. It's great that Harvey emphasizes sound doctrine and the power of the gospel for maintaining a healthy Christian walk and marriage. His treatment of spousal death and difficult situations such as spousal abuse was instructive as well.
The Bad
Unfortunately, the book is too imbalanced to recommend. A major problem is that Harvey has an inadequate view of regeneration. There are two extremes. The first is instant or entire sanctification, or sinless perfection, the belief that Christians are instantly perfected at conversion—or can eventually achieve a state of perfection in this life—and thus no longer sin, so they don't need to grow in holiness and grace every day of their lives. The problem here is an unbiblical view of sin and of the flesh, for believers do still sin, and when sin is not repented of it gets worse and eventually leads to death; and even shows that the person may not be regenerated to begin with.
The second extreme is the belief that Christians are forgiven but don't really change after their conversion. They remain wicked sinners in constant rebellion against God. This view undermines the power of God in our lives, and implies that believers never really mature or grow in holiness, even as they get older and learn more about God. It ignores the Bible's clear teaching about believers becoming a “new creation” with a renewed nature, continuously growing in sanctification and holiness till the day they die.
Harvey leans far towards the second extreme:
We are all the worst of sinners, so anything we do that isn't sin is simply the grace of God at work.... As the worst of sinners...I should be primarily suspicious and regularly suspicious of myself!... [M]y heart has a permanent tendency to oppose God and his ways.... You see, your wicked heart and mine are amazingly similar. They both crave vindication. They want to insist that something else made us sin...something outside of us...beyond our control. Aha—our circumstances!" (43, 64, 70)
The apostle Paul, however, affirms the opposite of what Harvey claims in Romans 7. Believers sin—not because of their circumstances—but because the law of sin, something outside of the believer, works through their flesh: "So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.... Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me" (Rom. 7:17-18, 20). Believers still sin—not because their hearts are wicked—but because their unredeemed bodies can be triggered by sensual, sinful temptations. We must therefore “die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31) because we “have crucified the flesh” (Gal. 5:24). Part of the problem is that Harvey doesn't adequately define what a sinner is. This is all I could find:
Now recall that the Bible has a specific way of describing human beings—as sinners.... We are all in this category together. It's hardly an exclusive club. To accept the designation of "sinner" is to acknowledge who I am in relation to God. It also says who I am not: I am not a neutral actor. By my very nature (which is sinful), I am an offense to God's very nature (which is perfectly holy). So the term "sinner," when used in Scripture, clearly implies there is one (at least one) who is sinned against. (41)
But believers are no longer sinners in relation to God; they are given a new "designation"—saints. A sinner—which is a legal term—is designated a criminal by God for violating His Law “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15:22; cf. Rom. 5:12-21) and for personal sins committed. A saint is a former sinner who has been forgiven by Christ's blood atonement, has a renewed nature, and is being perfected through the Holy Spirit. A saint also becomes legally adopted into the family of God (Gal. 4, Heb. 12), hence God is no longer his Judge, but his Father. When a believer sins it is no longer a legal issue, but a family/domestic issue requiring fatherly correction and discipline instead of condemnation and judgment, for Christ has propitiated the wrath of God that was formerly on the believer. Formerly we were unrighteous wrongdoers, "such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11).
The Sinfully Ugly
It is disappointing, then, that Harvey's most emphatic point throughout the entire book, which is evident in the title itself, is that "by the gospel we understand that, although saved, we remain sinners" (25). I think he stresses this far too much and makes the Bible say what it doesn't, resulting in several doctrinal imbalances. Later Harvey cites 1 Timothy 1:15: "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost."
Harvey claims Paul "is saying, in effect, 'Look, I know my sin. And what I've seen in my own heart is darker and more awful; it's more proud, selfish, and self-exalting; and it's consistently and regularly in rebellion against God than anything I have glimpsed in the heart of anyone else' " (36). But this sounds like a description of an unregenerate, God-hating sinner! For "whoever says 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:4). How then can a born-again Christian's "heart" be "consistently and regularly in rebellion against God"? Especially when God Himself promises to sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Eze. 36:25-27)
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col. 2:11-12)
For "even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Cor. 5:16-17; cf. Gal. 6:15). And how can God "give you the desires of your heart" (Ps. 37:4) if your heart is perpetually evil, as Harvey claims?
Previously in verses 12-14, Paul writes, "I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." Both before and after verse 15 Paul asserts that he received mercy, and in verse 13 he says that he formerly was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent.
1 Timothy 1:15 gave me a hard time. I couldn't understand why Paul would say he is the chief of sinners in the present tense, even though twice in that passage he said he received mercy, past tense. Especially since God also promises that He "will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more" (Jer. 31:34, Heb. 10:17). If God forgives and forgets our sins, why then did Paul call himself the chief of sinners? Then I remembered that "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.... Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.... For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Jas. 4:6, 1 Pet. 5:5, Matt. 5:5, Luke 14:11). Paul therefore was humbling himself. He's saying that without God's grace and Holy Spirit he is the very worst of sinners, "but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Cor. 15:10).
Countless verses negate the notion of I'm-just-a-sinner-saved-by-grace: "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God" (Rom. 5:8-9). But wait, there's "more than that": "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation... For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous" (Rom. 5:10-11, 19; bold emphasis always mine). Several other verses clearly distinguish sinners from saints, or the righteous (Psa. 1:5; Prov. 11:31, 13:21-22; Ecc. 9:2, Matt. 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32, 15:7; John 9:31; Rom. 3:7; 1 Pet. 4:18).
Simul justus et peccator, meaning “simultaneously righteous and a sinner,” is a strongly embedded concept in the Reformed tradition in general (see the confessions of eminent believers that A.W. Pink cites in “The Christian in Romans 7,” http://www.chapellibrary.org/book/cirs/christian-in-romans-7,-the) and Lutheranism in particular, which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I saw what John Calvin has to say on the matter:
[F]or as iniquity is abominable to God, so neither can the sinner find grace in his sight, so far as he is and so long as he is regarded as a sinner.... He, on the other hand, is justified who is regarded not as a sinner, but as righteous, and as such stands acquitted at the judgment-seat of God, where all sinners are condemned. As an innocent man, when charged before an impartial judge, who decides according to his innocence, is said to be justified by the judge, as a man is said to be justified by God when, removed from the catalogue of sinners, he has God as the witness and assertor of his righteousness.... [A] man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.... We must always return to the axioms that the wrath of God lies upon all men so long as they continue sinners....
When the Lord, therefore, admits him to union, he is said to justify him, because he can neither receive him into favor, nor unite him to himself, without changing his condition from that of a sinner into that of a righteous man. We add that this is done by remission of sins. For if those whom the Lord has reconciled to himself are estimated by works, they will still prove to be in reality sinners, while they ought to be pure and free from sin. It is evident therefore, that the only way in which those whom God embraces are made righteous, is by having their pollutions wiped away by the remission of sins.... But if there is a perpetual and irreconcilable repugnance between righteousness and iniquity, so long as we remain sinners we cannot be completely received. Therefore, in order that all ground of offence may be removed, and he may completely reconcile us to himself, he, by means of the expiation set forth in the death of Christ, abolishes all the evil that is in us, so that we, formerly impure and unclean, now appear in his sight just and holy.... [A]fter the Lord has withdrawn the sinner from the abyss of perdition, and set him apart for himself by means of adoption, having begotten him again and formed him to newness of life, he embraces him as a new creature, and bestows the gifts of his Spirit." (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.xi.2, 21; IV.xvii.3, 5)
Calvin rightly recognizes that the Bible uses the term sinner to describe the legal standing of a person in God's court, namely, an unpardoned criminal. Later on, however, he writes:
As God is the fountain of all righteousness, he must necessarily be the enemy and judge of man so long as he is a sinner. Wherefore, the commencement of love is the bestowing of righteousness, as described by Paul: “He has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,” (2 Cor. 5:21). He intimates, that by the sacrifice of Christ we obtain free justification, and become pleasing to God, though we are by nature the children of wrath, and by sin estranged from him.... But because believers, while encompassed with mortal flesh, are still sinners, and their good works only begun savor of the corruption of the flesh, God cannot be propitious either to their persons or their works, unless he embraces them more in Christ than in themselves. (Institutes IV.xvii.2, 5)
The Bible clearly teaches that we "were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind" (Eph. 2:3). But Calvin seems to mean that believers are still sinners—i.e., believers still sin, not that they are criminals—because we are still "encompassed with mortal flesh," the part of us that has yet to be redeemed. The difference is that a believer is no longer a sinner by nature, not in the same sense that an unforgiven sinner is, because the believer's very nature has been regenerated. So he no longer sins by his inner man, but by the "law of sin that dwells in [his] members" (Rom. 7:23); in other words, by the law of sin working through what's left of his old nature, the “old man”—primarily his physical body. This is why "those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24) by mastering sin (Gen. 4:7), abstaining "from every form of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22), and fasting when necessary (Matt. 6:16 ff.), "for God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness" (1 Thess. 4:7).
The flesh still wars against the Spirit but no longer has dominion over us if we walk by and are led by the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul refers to in Galatians 5 and Romans 7, though Romans 7 primarily refers to Paul’s pre-conversion experience rather than his Christian walk, yet the passage can apply to believers because they still have unredeemed bodies: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom 7:24-25).
Martin Luther—who supposedly said believers are like snow-covered dung (if anyone finds out where he said that, please let me know)—in his Bondage of the Will wrote:
For if there be nothing by which we are justified but faith only, it is evident that those who are not of faith, are not justified. And if they be not justified, they are sinners. And if they be sinners, they are evil trees and can do nothing but sin and bring forth evil fruit—Wherefore, "Free-will" is nothing but the servant of sin, of death, and of Satan, doing nothing, and being able to do or attempt nothing, but evil! (Sect. 154)
In other words, what we do does not determine who we are; what we do is a reflection of who we already are. But the more an unbeliever sins, the worse he becomes because of the corrosive nature of sin and because "every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit...for what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person" (Matt 7.17, 15.18; cf. 1 Tim. 4). I like how John Robbins puts it in his review of Chuck Colson's Loving God:
You [Colson] write that faith is “not just knowledge, but knowledge acted upon. It is not just belief, but belief lived out—practiced.” This blurring of the distinction between faith and practice is fatal to Christianity, for it makes the conclusion inescapable that we are justified by faith and works. Augustine defined faith as knowledge with assent. So should you. Practice is the result of faith, not part of faith. Faith is the cause; practice is the result. Bonhoeffer’s statement is precise and true: Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes. If a person does not believe, he cannot be obedient, no matter how “good” his behavior is; and if a person believes, he will be obedient, as James says. To put it in more technical language, sanctification is a necessary consequence of justification; and justification is a necessary precedent for sanctification. But justification and sanctification are not the same. To confuse them is to be ignorant of the Gospel. (http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=187)
I think Harvey should've defined what a sinner is more carefully and not apply it so indiscriminately to born-again believers. I understand that he's trying to make Christians realize that they still sin, and that sin can ruin marriages and lives. But claiming that we are wicked sinners who constantly rebel against God seriously undermines what God has already done for us through Christ's finished work on the cross and continues to do for us through his Spirit. Theology is all about making proper distinctions, and Harvey should strive to be as careful as, for example, John Knox was in the Scots Confession:
Chapter 15: The Perfection of the Law and The Imperfection of Man
We confess and acknowledge that the law of God is most just, equal, holy, and perfect, commanding those things which, when perfectly done, can give life and bring man to eternal felicity; but our nature is so corrupt, weak, and imperfect, that we are never able perfectly to fulfill the works of the law. Even after we are reborn, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth of God is not in us. It is therefore essential for us to lay hold on Christ Jesus, in his righteousness and his atonement, since he is the end and consummation of the Law and since it is by him that we are set at liberty so that the curse of God may not fall upon us, even though we do not fulfill the Law in all points. For as God the Father beholds us in the body of his Son Christ Jesus, he accepts our imperfect obedience as if it were perfect, and covers our works, which are defiled with many stains, with the righteousness of his Son. We do not mean that we are so set at liberty that we owe no obedience to the Law—for we have already acknowledged its place—but we affirm that no man on earth, with the sole exception of Christ Jesus, has given, gives, or shall give in action that obedience to the Law which the Law requires. When we have done all things we must fall down and unfeignedly confess that we are unprofitable servants. Therefore, whoever boasts of the merits of his own works or puts his trust in works of supererogation, boasts of what does not exist, and puts his trust in damnable idolatry. (Qtd. in https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/simuliustus.html)
Oddly enough, Harvey also claims that Jesus never got "irritated or bitter or hostile" (71), even though he detested religious hypocrites like the Scribes and Pharisees, cursed and condemned them almost every time he encountered them (John 8, Matt. 23); and even fashioned a whip to beat money-changers out of the temple (John 2) on more than one occasion, according to some commentators (see Chapter 8 of John MacArthur’s The Jesus You Can’t Ignore). Not to mention that He's coming back "in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thess. 1:8).
His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. (Rev. 19:12ff.)
Other than that the book was ok. I recommend Tommy Nelson's teachings on marriage and the Song of Solomon (http://dbcmedia.org/), Gary Smalley's If Only He Knew, G. Craige Lewis’ teachings on creation roles and fasting (http://www.exministries.com/sermons/atcp-archive/), and Paul Washer's sermon on Romans 6, “Being What You Are: Having Too Low a View of Regeneration” (http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=428082310290).
Wills, Garry. What Jesus Meant. New York: Viking, 2006. Print.
It's not uncommon for liberal scholars who can read the New Testament in its original language to remain utterly clueless as to what it truly teaches. Garry Wills, a historian and classicist who is proficient in Greek, ironically wrote What Jesus Meant to dispel popular cultural misunderstandings of Jesus, not realizing that his polluted theological presumptions grossly distort Christ's teachings and promote a perverted anti-Christ agenda.
This book is terrible, but it's interesting how Wills, a practicing Catholic--albeit an unorthodox one according to Roman Catholic dogma, though ironically he and Pope Francis seem to have much in common (see Richard Bennett, "Francis: Stalwart Reformer or Diehard Pontiff?", http://trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=297)--criticizes and rejects the papacy, knowing that Jesus would have too (15), and argues that the New Testament has no sacrificial system of priests like the Roman Catholic church does (67ff.). He also provides his own translations of all the New Testament passages he quotes, which are sometimes, though not always, better than popular translations, such as John 3:16: "Such was God's love for the creation [world] that he gave his only-begotten [unique] Son to keep anyone believing in him from perishing, to have a life eternal" (122). This does a better job of rendering πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων--"everyone believing"--into the present progressive, which delimits "the world" to refer to believers only.
Unfortunately, Wills completely distorts what Jesus really meant.
The Money-Hatin' Jesus
Wills rightly says "that Jesus wore no gorgeous vestments. He neither owned nor used golden chalices or precious vessels. He had no jeweled ring to be kissed" (44); but then he goes too far, claiming that, "though the gospels make it clear that riches are the enemy of the spirit, they raise an even more urgent warning against power, and especially against spiritual power" (44). According to the Bible riches in themselves are not evil; "the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs" (1 Tim. 6:10). Jesus even promised: "There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life" (Mark 10:29-30).
The Rebellious Ahistorical Jesus
Wills imposes his irrational, mystical unbelief--"Jesus as a person does not exist outside the gospels, and the only reason he exists there is because of their authors' faith in the Resurrection.... So this book...will treat the Jesus of faith, since there is no other. The 'historical Jesus' does not exist for us" (xxvi, xxviii)--and his anti-Christian ethics into the Gospels, resulting in a pro-homosexual, social justice, pacifistic, egalitarian, inclusive, disobedient, rebellious Jesus who
went a different way,...neglecting (no doubt) the family business of cabinetmaking.... Though we are not explicitly told anything about "the hidden years" beyond Luke's description of his running away from his parents when he was twelve, the stance of the rebel who would not be contained in the expectations of his hometown comes out again and again when family ties are mentioned. (6, 7)
In an effort to criticize Christian leaders who "have often rebuked the rebelliousness of young people by offering them a pastel picture of the young Jesus as a model of compliance and good behavior" (7), Wills eisegetes the Gospels. The Bible never says that Jesus was disobedient and ran away from his parents. On the contrary, Jesus "went down with [His parents] and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (Luke 2:51-52). Jesus never broke God's law; He is the only person in existence that has kept the law fully and perfectly:
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.... For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.... For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Matt. 5:17, Rom. 5:19; Heb. 5:14)
The Cultic Jesus
Wills also claims that "when [Jesus] moved from the spiritual isolation of the Essenes to the activist denunciations of [John] the Baptist, that would have dismayed his family even more profoundly. They would have felt what families feel today when their sons and daughters join a 'cult' " (11). But the Bible says nothing about Jesus being an Essene, and why would Jesus' family think that He joined a cult with John the Baptist if "everyone considered John to have been a real prophet"? (Mark 11:32) Far from being Essenic, "cultic" leaders, prophets played an integral role in Jewish society.
Additionally, Wills claims that John the Baptist mentored Jesus, though the Bible says that they were almost the same age, and John himself said he wasn't worthy to untie Jesus' sandals: "One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Luke 3:16). Wills promotes the typical Catholic portrayal of Jesus as a weak and frail ascetic, though neither He nor His disciples fasted (Luke 5:33); but He did do the hard work of a carpenter and was strong enough to turn tables over and whip money changers out of the temple (John 2:13ff.). Wills seems to forget that Christ couldn't carry the cross because He was beaten mercilessly beforehand, not because He was naturally weak (23).
The Quixotically Pacifistic Jesus
Next, Wills claims that, "though [Jesus] is opposed to war and violence, he is choosing followers for a form of spiritual warfare.... Jesus consistently opposed violence. He ordered Peter not to use the sword, even to protect his Lord... he never accepted violence as justified" (25, 53-54). Jesus Himself, however, told the disciples to buy swords so that, when the time came, they could defend themselves, not Him:
"Whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one. For I tell you that this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, 'And He was numbered with transgressors'; for that which refers to Me has its fulfillment." They said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." And He said to them, "It is enough." (Luke 22:35ff.)
Wills, furthermore, doesn't believe in demons and tries to explain away certain passages which describe demons possessing people: "Many of Jesus' miracles are worked for outsiders...with whom observant Jews are to have no dealings...with those made unclean by their illnesses (therefore "possessed").... He casts the uncleanness out of one man into forbidden animals, into pigs (Mk 5.13), to show that no person made in God's image should be treated as unclean" (30). But if demons don't exist, then why was Jesus "choosing followers for a form of spiritual warfare"? (25) If Wills was consistent, he would have to say that Jesus was certifiably insane for talking to Satan, who, according to Wills, doesn't actually exist because he is merely evil personified (120).
Wills also argues that the Father's "love is undiscriminating and inclusive, not graduated and exclusive" (29). But doesn't God love Esau and hate Jacob, and prepare vessels of wrath that are fitted for destruction? (Rom. 9) Are not "the wicked reserved for the day of doom" and also "be brought out on the day of wrath"? (Job 21:30, cf. Prov. 16:4) Wills asks:
Why did the payment [of sin] include Jesus' death, and such a horrible death? Was the creditor so exacting? Behind this conclusion lies the imagery of an angry God, hard to appease but by the most terrible of sacrifices. This is a view that some people call 'gruesome.'... If we talk of salvation as sacrificial in the sense of appeasement or propitiation, there is a note of assuaging an angry God. If we talk of it as rescue, the power from which mankind has to be rescued is not God but the forces at work against God--all the accumulated sins that cripple human freedom.... He sheds his blood with and for us, in our defense, not as a libation to an angry Father.... God initiates [Christ's sacrifice] to conquer sin, not to placate himself.... it is a proof of God's love, not his anger. (115, 121, 122)
Here Wills denies the most fundamental doctrine of the Biblical Gospel--propitiation. He tries to impose his passive god into the Bible and fails miserably, completely ignoring all the verses that speak of God's wrath. I would like to see how Wills would reconcile his pathetic, pacifistic Jesus and Father with passages like
Romans 12:19--"Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord" (NASB);
2 Thessalonians 1:7-9--"the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power";
2 Peter 3:7--"But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men";
Jude 14-15--"the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him";
and Revelation 19:11-16--
And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS."
And let's not forget the passage where Jesus violently whips the money changers out of the temple (John 2). Or this one: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:36). Or this one: "Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Rom. 5:9-10). This one too: "The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity" (Ps. 5:5). And last but not least: "God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day" (Ps. 7:11).
Wills rejects the doctrine of propitiation, even though it's clearly taught in the Bible, because it means that God is angry with unrepentant sinners, and the only way He could forgive them is by crushing His unique Son: "The LORD was pleased To crush Him [Christ], putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering...whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness" (Isa. 53:10; Rom. 3:25) and to satisfy His wrath, the wrath that we deserve, so "that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26).
The Social Justice Jesus
Wills asks another important question but gives another horrible answer:
What are the tests for entry into the reign or exclusion from it? They are very simple. One will not be asked whether one voted, whether one was a good citizen, or even whether one dealt justly. That is not enough.... The simple test is this. Did you treat everyone, high and low, as if dealing with Jesus himself, with his own inclusive and gratuitous love... "Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me." [This] means that...those who despise the poor are despising Jesus. Those neglecting the homeless are neglecting Jesus. Those persecuting gays are persecuting Jesus.... Our test for entry into heaven's reign is whether we fed Jesus in the hungry, clothed him in the naked, welcomed him in the outcast. (58, 137)
Contrary to the Biblical teaching of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (Eph. 2), according to Wills' social justice Jesus, if we don't love everyone, help the poor, and affirm homosexuals, then we will not be saved. But it gets worse: "How can we tell who among us is securely affixed to the Vine? We cannot. He [Jesus] told us as much" (140). The real Jesus, however, told us, "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out" (John 6:37), and John the apostle wrote his letter "to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13, bold emphasis always mine). Wills continuously misapplies verses to make them fit his fictional Jesus. Matthew 25:35-40 does not command Christians to help the poor; it commands Christians to help other Christians--brothers--when they are in need, especially during persecution. Jesus also said,
Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'... For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. (Matt. 7:21-23, John 6:40)
According to the Bible, salvation is by grace "through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:8-10).
The Unclean Jesus
This is one of the worst parts of the book. Wills asks:
Who are the Jews of our day? Who are the cursed? Some Christians tell us who. At the funeral of a well-known gay man who died of AIDS, a "Christian" group showed up with placards saying "God hates fags." In the San Diego diocese, a Catholic bishop forbade Christian burial to an openly gay man. Is there any doubt where Jesus would have stood in these episodes--where, in his mystical members, he was standing then? He was with the gay man, not with his haters. This is made all the clearer by the fact that gays are called unclean for the same reason as were other outcasts of Jesus' time--because they violate the Holiness Code of the Book of Leviticus. (32)
Unless they become new creatures by repenting of their sins and believing in Christ, God is with neither the gay man nor his haters, "for unless you believe that I [Jesus] am He, you will die in your sins...unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (John 8:24, Luke 13:3). And if gays are called unclean (an abomination, actually, cf. Lev. 18.22, 20.13) because they violate the Holiness Code of Leviticus, then why does God still condemn homosexuality in Genesis 19, Ezekiel 16:50, Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:8-10, Jude 7, etc., none of which are a part of the Holiness Code? Because homosexuality violates God's natural order and is done outside of the Biblical definition of marriage. Wills, however, conveniently leaves these passages out.
The Heretical Jesus and Heroic Judas
Wills also makes a blunder I'd never seen before. He claims that Jesus shared His divinity with the Father, implying that He was not fully divine in Himself:
[Christ's] own divinity is a divinity in the Father, not apart from him. He will not test the Father, because he is too closely identified with him. It would be putting himself on trial. As he says in John's gospel: "The Son, I tell you the truth, can do nothing but what he sees the Father doing. And whatever he does, the Son does in his turn. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him whatever he does" (Jn 5.19-20). (16-17)
Wills distorts this passage, which actually teaches that the Father and the Son are so close that they are united in will, not that they share divinity. Christ Himself is fully God, just as the Father and Holy Spirit are, "For in Him [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form...and He is the head over all rule and authority" (Col. 2:9, 10). Wills should read the Athanasian Creed:
We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.
But Wills doesn't just fictionalize Jesus; he turns the traitorous thief, Judas Iscariot, into a good guy as well:
There must have been some good in the man for Jesus to have chosen him not only to follow him but to be one of the Twelve and the trusted bearer of the common purse (Jn 13.29). Judas is a practical man, who deplores the waste of money on precious oils, but he seems idealistic as well, wanting to save money for the poor (Jn 12.4-5).... Jesus knows that Judas is fulfilling the plan of the Father, which leads to the disgraceful death and burial of both men. He says of his followers in general: "Not one of them is lost but the one marked out to be lost to fulfill the scripture" (Jn 17.12). Judas is involuntarily following the will of the Father, as Jesus does voluntarily. (101)
Wills doesn't believe in radical depravity either, the Biblical teaching that all men are naturally evil and thus unable to do any good (Rom. 3, Rom. 8). Jesus chose Judas to fulfill the prophecy, not because there was something good in him: "I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition [Judas], so that the Scripture would be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Judas was not an "idealist" at all. The reason he didn't want the money to be wasted on precious oils was "not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it" (John 12:6). Judas was not "involuntarily following the will of the Father" because he himself "was intending to betray Him [Jesus]" (John 12:4). He also claims that Judas
killed himself for having killed God. It was an act of contrition that redeems him, makes him a kind of comrade for all of us who have betrayed Jesus. He is our patron. Saint Judas.... I believe the Shepherd [Jesus, when He supposedly descended into hell after He died] was first seeking out his special lost one, Judas. (104)
Aside from the fact that we're saved by grace through faith, not by "acts of contrition," Judas was not redeemed; he was the "son of perdition," which means he was damned to hell for being a wicked, God-hating sinner who betrayed Christ. "Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place" (Acts 1:25 NKJV).
What Jesus Meant is the worst interpretation of the Gospels I've ever read. I find it fitting to conclude with a message for Garry Wills from the historical, complementarian, divinely just, exclusive, obedient, King of kings and Lord of lords Jesus: "You blind guide, who strains out a gnat and swallows a camel!" (Matt. 23:24) That's what Jesus meant.
Rev 5/17
William P. Young, in collaboration with Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings. The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity. Ca: Windblown Media, 2007. Print.
One of William P. Young’s major themes in The Shack is how God relates to people in diverse ways. “For any created being, autonomy is lunacy. Freedom involves trust and obedience inside a relationship of love” (Young 132). Young makes humans incredibly powerful and autonomous when compared to God, to the point where God Himself (or herself, according to Young) must work out His own will “without the violation of one human will” (125). The nature of God, how God relates to man and how He communicates to us, obedience, free will, expectations, election and predestination, submission, and the law of God are some of the Christian doctrines that Young severely, even blasphemously and heretically, distorts in The Shack.
Young seems confused at best when he answers important questions about Christianity. The following quote contradicts the one previously stated: “To force my [Jesus’] will on you [Mack]…is exactly what love does not do… Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we [the Trinity] are submitted to you in the same way” (145).[1] Young stresses a “relationship of love” with God and claims that submission is not about obedience or authority—even though Christ commanded, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15)[2]—yet he also asserts that freedom is about obedience, so is obedience part of it or not? Despite these contradictions, we will see that Young ultimately does not advocate any type of obedience.
The Shack’s passive and pagan mama-god complex
According to the Bible, God does force or impose His will on people: “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). He has no alternative because “there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside” (Romans 3:10-12). Moses did not want to stand up to Pharaoh, but God never gave him a choice: “Moses said to the LORD, ‘I am slow of speech and slow of tongue’… Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said…‘You are to speak to [Aaron] and put the words in his mouth; and I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do” (Exodus 4:10, 14-15). And contrary to what the god of The Shack teaches, the God of the Bible does get disappointed with people, including His own, because He holds all of them accountable for their thoughts, words, and actions, and will judge them according to the standard He has set forth in Scripture:
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent… It is for discipline that you [believers] endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are [bastards] and not sons… For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome…let us [therefore] keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. (Revelation 3:19; Hebrews 12:7-8; I John 5:3; Philippians 3:16)
If a person is not disciplined and rebuked by God, then he is not God’s adopted son, which is the exact opposite of what Papa—Young’s blasphemous and idolatrous portrayal of God the Father as an overweight black woman—tells Mack: “Honey, I’ve never placed an expectation on you or anyone else… And beyond that, because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me” (206). The reality is quite the contrary, for it would be impossible to grieve and disappoint the Spirit of God if He never places any expectations on us as Young alleges: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). God judges unrepentant sinners and condemns them to hell because they are guilty criminals who have broken His righteous, holy law (Psalm 7:11; John 3:36; I Corinthians 6:9-10). The reason repentant, born-again believers are no longer condemned is that they have the blood of Jesus as a propitiation—appeasement of God’s holy wrath—for all their sin. They are thus forgiven and are no longer sinners and criminals in God’s eyes but have been regenerated, washed, and sanctified through the Holy Spirit, and become adopted sons and daughters, and saints of God (Galatians 4:5; Titus 3:5). Contrary to what Papa says about expectations, the God of the Bible expects many things from His people,
for we [believers] are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them… [Jesus] appointed [us] that [we] would go and bear fruit… Therefore, beloved, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless… Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification [holiness] without which no one will see the Lord. (Ephesians 2:10; John 15:16; II Peter 3:14; Hebrews 12:14)
Believers are constantly exhorted throughout the Scriptures to be obedient followers of Christ and to maintain a holy, righteous, loving, and godly standard in their lives. The end of almost every New Testament letter commands believers to do something that God expects of them. Christians are called to be “the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men” (Matthew 5:13).
To choose, or not to choose, that is the question
Just as it was in the Old Testament with Moses having no choice, so it is in the New. God did not give Mary a choice because she was already chosen, and there was nothing she could do to change that: “Behold, you [Mary] will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus… The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:31, 35). God did not ask Mary permission to use her womb, just as He never asked Paul to go to Damascus—He commanded them. In fact, God has never given anyone a choice because He “commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man [Jesus] whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31, cf. Luke 13:3, John 14:15), even though He has already chosen whom He will save:
All that the Father gives Me [Jesus] will come to Me… No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… You did not choose Me [Jesus] but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit… He [God the Father] predestined us [believers] to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will…having been predestined according to His purpose [not ours]… For many are called, but few are chosen…who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God [alone]. (John 6:37, 44, 15:16; Ephesians 1:5, 11; Matthew 22:14; John 1:13, NASB)
The Bible teaches election and predestination, for God “has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires… So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Romans 9:18, 16). Ultimately it is up to God to determine whether he will save someone because he has foreordained all things to come to pass according to his will: “and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). God does not consider human free will because it doesn’t exist; the will has been in complete bondage to sin ever since the curse of sin came into the world,
because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God… Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil… The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked… Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. (Romans 8:7-8; Jeremiah 13:23, 17:9; Romans 5:12, 15; cf. Genesis 3, Romans 3, 8:18-25)
The Jesus of The Shack, however, tells Mack the very opposite: “You’re not supposed to do anything. You’re free to do whatever you like” (89). I’ll address this antinomianism (lawlessness) shortly, but Sarayu—Young’s blasphemous and idolatrous feminine portrayal of the Holy Spirit as a “windy” oriental woman—also tells Mack, “Relationships are never about power… We carefully respect your choices,” and Papa later tells him, “We won’t use you [without your consent]” (106, 123-124). All of this blatantly contradicts the Bible, which states that a person must become a “born-again” slave of righteousness to become a true follower of Jesus Christ:
Most assuredly, I [Jesus] say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God… Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (John 3:3; Romans 6:16-19)
Do what thou wilt
Concerning the relationship that Jesus wants with His chosen people, the Jesus of The Shack once again tells Mack the opposite of what the real Jesus says in Scripture: “I don’t want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me…[but] we will never force that union on you” (146, 149). This is partly based on the assumption that “true love never forces” (190). Yet the Jesus of the Bible says, “No one is able to come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross day by day and follow Me… No servant can serve [Greek douleuein, derived from doulos ‘slave’] two masters… A pupil is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master… He who has My orders and observes them loves Me” (John 6:44; Luke 9:23, 16:13; Matthew 10:24; John 14:21, MLB; see also Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English). Christians are commanded to “glorify God in [their] bodies” (1 Cor. 6:20) and to present themselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God…[for] [they] were bought with a price” (Romans 12:1; I Corinthians 6:20). The Bible commands sinners to repent, deny themselves, and follow Christ, who becomes their Master, “for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25, cf. 16:24). Young contradicts Scripture when he has Jesus say things like, “I don’t want slaves to my will,” because that’s exactly what God wants.
Moreover, Papa and Sarayu teach Mack antinomianism, or lawlessness:
“The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules… Just don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship…
…………..
“Are you saying I don’t have to follow the rules?”...[Sarayu answers,] “Yes. In Jesus you are not under any law. All things are lawful….”
“Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control….”
“Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.”
“Whoa!” Mack suddenly realized what Sarayu had said. “Are you telling me that responsibility and expectation are just another form of rules we are no longer under? Did I hear you right?”
“Yup”, Papa interjected again. (197-198, 203)
To Young’s dismay, the Bible does teach you to follow rules and obey commands—obedience is the very mark of a Christian’s love for Christ: “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (I John 2:3-4). Young is promoting the heresy of antinomianism, or, in the words of Jesus, the doctrine of those “who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:23). Jesus warns against this kind of false teaching: “Many will say to Me on that day [of judgment], 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness' ” (Matthew 7:22-23). Yet the Jesus of The Shack also tells Mack, “Seriously, my life was not meant to be an example to copy. Being my follower is not trying to ‘be like Jesus,’ it means for your independence to be killed…. But, we will never force that union on you” (149). Young clearly has no regard for what the Bible says, for he is at odds with the Apostle Paul: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1). It’s no wonder that he attacks and undermines Sola Scriptura—the Bible as the supreme authority in all matters of doctrine and practice—all throughout The Shack:
Try as he might, Mack could not escape the desperate possibility that the note just might be from God after all, even if the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges? (65-66)
Can’t we all just get saved?
The Shack contradicts the Bible on numerous levels and presents an entirely different God. Young flirts with universalism, the belief that everyone—including unbelievers—will eventually be saved, regardless of their belief about Christ. This is evident when Papa tells Mack, “Son, this is not about shaming you. I don't do humiliation, or guilt, or condemnation. They don't produce one speck of wholeness or righteousness, and that is why they were nailed into Jesus on the cross" (223). It gets worse when Jesus tells Mack:
“I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu. To see me is to see them. The love you sense from me is no different from how they love you. And believe me, Papa and Sarayu are just as real as I am, though as you’ve seen in far different ways.”
“Speaking of Sarayu, is she the Holy Spirit?”
“Yes. She is Creativity; she is Action; she is the Breathing of Life; she is much more. She is my Spirit.” (110)
It doesn’t take much to see that the Bible reveals an altogether different God:
The boastful shall not stand in Your [God’s] sight; You hate all workers of iniquity… God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day…God [is] the Judge of all… For the LORD is our Judge, The LORD is our Lawgiver, The LORD is our King; He will save us… God is the Judge: He puts down one, And exalts another… He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God… He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him (Psalm 5:5, 7:11; Hebrews 12:23; Isaiah 33:22; Psalm 75:7; John 3:18, 36)
Problem Seven: A Wrong View of the Way of Salvation
Another problem emerges in the message of The Shack. According to Young, Christ is just the “best” way to relate to the Father, not the only way (109). The “best” does not necessarily imply the only way, which then means that there may be other ways to relate to God. Such an assertion is contrary to Jesus’ claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes unto the Father except through me” (John14:6). He added, “He who believes in Him [Christ] is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:18). Jesus is not merely the best way, but He is the only way to God. Paul declared: “There is one God and one mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).[3]
What’s worse is that Young calls God the Father “Papa” yet blasphemously and idolatrously portrays and embodies Him as an obese black woman:
I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning. (93)
My criticisms are not based on racism or sexism. The problem is that Young wants us to shake off the “religious conditioning” that the Bible itself imposes on us, since it always and only refers to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit with masculine pronouns, and whenever He appeared in human form it was always and only as a man. Not to mention that the reason God expresses and manifests so much wrath and retribution on sinners is because of the rampant idolatry and “humanizing” of God that The Shack shamelessly promotes:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exodus 20:2-4)
…although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:22-25)
Look! It’s the Father! No, it’s the Son! No, it’s the Spirit! No, it’s all three!
Young attempts to affirm the orthodox view of the Trinity when Papa explains to Mack: “We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father, and worker. I am one God and I am three persons, and each of the three is fully and entirely the one” (101). But he disregards this definition by promoting the heresy of patripassionism:
Patripassionism is a theological error dealing with the Godhead which states that the Father became incarnate, was born, suffered, and died on the cross, hence, the Father's (patri) passion (suffer) on the cross.
This is an error because we know that Jesus spoke to the person of the Father, and that it was Jesus who went to the cross. If the Father and Son are the same person, that how is it possible for the Father and Son to speak to one another and have separate wills? It is not. Therefore, the doctrine of patripassianism is incorrect and heretical.[4]
The Shack unabashedly promotes this heresy, such as when Sarayu (Young’s version of the “Holy Spirit”) says, "Haven't you seen the [crucifixion] wounds on Papa too?" (164). But Young doesn’t stop there; he compounds his heresy by including the Holy Spirit in Christ’s suffering for good measure, as if portraying all three persons as humans, two of them as women, wasn’t bad enough:
When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood… Don’t ever think that what my son chose to do didn’t cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark… We were there together. (99; 96)
Patripassionism also presupposes the heresy of modalism:
Modalism is probably the most common theological error concerning the nature of God. It is a denial of the Trinity. Modalism states that God is a single person who, throughout biblical history, has revealed Himself in three modes or forms. Thus, God is a single person who first manifested himself in the mode of the Father in Old Testament times. At the incarnation, the mode was the Son; and after Jesus' ascension, the mode is the Holy Spirit. These modes are consecutive and never simultaneous. In other words, this view states that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never all exist at the same time--only one after another. Modalism denies the distinctiveness of the three persons in the Trinity even though it retains the divinity of Christ.[5]
These are illogical heresies because, rather than suffer with Christ, God the Father was pleased to pour out His own wrath on Christ to satisfy His perfect justice, for
it pleased the LORD to crush Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin… (Isaiah 53:10)
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23-26)
It should be obvious that God the Father has no body because “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24), and the Holy Spirit is, well, spirit. Another odd Trinitarian heresy promoted in the book is that all of the persons in the Trinity are equally submitted, not only to each other, but to mankind as well: “Papa is as much submitted to me [Jesus] as I to him, or Sarayu [Young’s “Holy Spirit”] to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way” (145). This denies in the worst possible way the orthodox understanding of the economic Trinity regarding authority and order: that the Father is preeminent—“My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28)—that the Son submits to and proceeds from the Father, and "who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 1:6-9). And that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son[6]:
“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me." (John 15:26)
The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. (The Athanasian Creed)[7]
But it’s just fiction...
It’s convenient to say that The Shack is just a novel because it gives Young plausible deniability. Earlier self-defensive poets like Geoffrey Chaucer used dream visions and allegory, partly to detach themselves from their writing and avoid suspicion from church and state:
And afterward the story I engage
To tell you of our common pilgrimage.
But first, I pray you, of your courtesy,
You'll not ascribe it to vulgarity
Though I speak plainly of this matter here,
Retailing you their words and means of cheer;
Nor though I use their very terms, nor lie.
For this thing do you know as well as I:
When one repeats a tale told by a man,
He must report, as nearly as he can,
Every least word, if he remember it,
However rude it be, or how unfit;
Or else he may be telling what's untrue,
Embellishing and fictionizing too.
He may not spare, although it were his brother;
He must as well say one word as another.
Christ spoke right broadly out, in holy writ,
And, you know well, there's nothing low in it.
And Plato says, to those able to read:
"The word should be the cousin to the deed."[8]
Many defend The Shack in a similar way that some defend Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code because they are novels, even though they promote anti-Christian agendas. After all, it’s just a dream, right? It’s just a work of fiction, right? Here’s one prominent example from CBN:
The Shack's depiction of God is an interesting portrait that isn’t meant to be taken literally as much as it is meant to capture many of the attributes of God that we read about in the Bible. These characters’ interactions with Mack show that God is compassionate, loving, and that He desires a close relationship with each of us.
God relates to us in the ways that we will best be able to hear Him. Because of Mack’s painful childhood memories of an abusive dad, perhaps he would not have embraced God the way we typically see Him portrayed, as a Father-figure.[9]
The problem is that the ways in which Young “captures” the many attributes of God are utterly opposed to what “we read about in the Bible.” God relates to us through His Word, and the Word reveals God as a holy, just judge and a Father who rebukes those he loves, so if Young cannot embrace God as a “Father-figure,” then he’s embracing an idol of his imagination, which is what The Shack is a product of.
The Shack is such a wild and synergistic concoction of heresies that new theological terms and categories must be coined to accommodate them. I couldn’t find hardly anything in the book that was Biblical. I marvel how so much heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry can be packed into one book and be marketed as Christian literature and, in the words of Eugene Peterson,[10] author of The Message bible, even be compared to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which has virtually nothing in common with The Shack, because The Shack has virtually nothing in common with the Bible. I have never read a book claiming to promote Christianity that is so blatantly blasphemous and offensive. It is no wonder that Scripture warns how “false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect…. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light” (Matt. 24:24; Luke 16:8).
Don't stop here! Put on heresy repellant with these resources:
The Shack: Uncovered (Full Sermon) - Michael Youssef, https://vimeo.com/4479699
Paul Flynn’s The Shack: Its Dangerous Theology and Error (Full Documentary Film), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epEQv6-5u0U
Matt Slick’s book review of The Shack and interview with the author, William P. Young, https://carm.org/the-shack
Tim Challies’ book review of The Shack, http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/a-review-of-the-shack-download-it-here
Theology Gals | Episode 5 | The Shack & Christian Discernment, http://biblethumpingwingnut.com/2017/03/07/theology-gals-episode-5-shack-christian-discernment/
Coleen Sharp, “Why The Shack Isn’t for Christians,” http://biblethumpingwingnut.com/2017/02/23/why-the-shack-isnt-for-christians/
Tim Hurd, “Is Paul Young (Author of “The Shack”) Really A Universalist?”, http://biblethumpingwingnut.com/2017/03/10/paul-young-author-shack-really-universalist/
Al Mohler, “The Shack — The Missing Art of Evangelical Discernment,” http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/01/27/the-shack-the-missing-art-of-evangelical-discernment/
David Ruzicka, http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-shack-book-was-totally-whack-will-the-movie-be-like-that-175857/
Notes
[1] Bold emphasis always mine.
[2] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from the New King James Version (NKJV).
[3] “The Shack: Helpful or Heretical?” A Critical Review by Norman L. Geisler and Bill Roach, http://inplainsite.org/html/the_shack.html#Shack4
[4] Matt Slick, “Patripassianism,” https://carm.org/patripassianism
[5] Matt Slick, “Modalism,” https://carm.org/modalism
[6] See Matt Slick’s “What is the filioque clause controversy? Is it biblical?”, https://carm.org/what-is-the-filioque-clause-controversy-biblical
[7]http://reformed.org/documents/index.html
[8] Geoffrey Chaucer, “The General Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales, Translated by Edwin Duncan, Lines 723-742, https://tigerweb.towson.edu/duncan/chaucer/duallang8.htm
[9] Belinda Elliott, “What’s So Bad about The Shack?”, CBN, http://www1.cbn.com/books/whats-so-bad-about-the-shack
[10] “When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of ‘The Shack.’ This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his. It’s that good!” –Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., quoted in Ken Silva, “STAY AWAY FROM ‘THE SHACK,’” http://apprising.org/2008/09/15/stay-away-from-the-shack/
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. New York: Dutton, 2008. Kindle edition. Although Keller is a Reformed pastor in good standing with the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA), he strays considerably from sound biblical doctrine and compromises the gospel in one of his better-known publications, The Prodigal God. More unfortunate is that few seem to realize this. This review will apply Scripture to correct the doctrinal errors in Keller’s The Prodigal God, for “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tm 3:16).[1]
It is not enough to simply recognize doctrinal errors; they must be corrected publicly. Any pastor who recognizes such errors, especially ones that pertain to the essentials of the faith, yet remains silent is derelict in his duty to uphold sound doctrine. This is why Paul tells Titus that an elder is to “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Ti 1:9). It is important to examine popular and influential works like The Prodigal God in light of what the Bible mandates in places such as 1 Thessalonians 5:21 and Acts 17:9-11.
The purpose and target audience of The Prodigal God are clearly stated by Keller in the introduction:
THIS short book is meant to lay out the essentials of the Christian message, the gospel. It can, therefore, serve as an introduction to the Christian faith for those who are unfamiliar with its teachings or who may have been away from them for some time.
This volume is not just for seekers, however. Many lifelong Christian believers feel they understand the basics of the Christian faith quite well and don’t think they need a primer. Nevertheless, one of the signs that you many not grasp the unique radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do.
This book, then, is written to both curious outsiders and established insiders of the faith both to those Jesus calls “younger brothers” and those he calls “elder brothers” in the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.[2]
Keller states that his book “lays out the essentials of the Christian message,” which he correctly identifies as the gospel, and it is for this reason that we will examine what Keller teaches about the gospel. The reader should keep in mind that Keller wrote this book for “seekers” and “curious outsiders” as well as “established insiders of the faith.” That Keller is writing to non-Christians as well as mature Christians is troublesome, considering the book’s doctrinal errors. We can also wonder why there aren’t more Christians calling Keller to give an account of his many false teachings in this book.
Throughout The Prodigal God Keller identifies the “curious outsiders” as the younger brother and the “established insiders of the faith” as the elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. While Keller rightly identifies the elder brother in the parable as the Pharisees, he also calls them “established insiders of the faith,” which is confusing and misleading because the Pharisees adamantly rejected Christ. And while Scripture states that we are to “examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith” (2 Cor 13:5), Keller nevertheless calls them “established insiders of the faith.” One has to ask: What is the criterion Keller uses to identify the Pharisees as “established insiders of the faith?” And what “faith” is he referring too? We will take a closer look at this too and show from Scripture that in order to make this portrayal, Keller has to ignore—and often blatantly contradict—what the Bible teaches concerning the Pharisees.
One of the most troubling statements made by Keller in the introduction is that “one of the signs that you may not grasp the unique radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do.” Not only is this absurd, it is troubling in light of what Keller says regarding the believer’s assurance of salvation in later chapters of the book. This statement is for the “established insiders of the faith” who “think they don’t need a primer” on the Christian faith. If it is true, though, that one of the signs you may not grasp the gospel is that you are certain that you do, then you can never be certain of your salvation. If you are certain that you have grasped the gospel message, then that is one of the signs that you may not have grasped it at all! This is a serious problem because understanding the gospel is necessary for salvation. Why else did Paul write, “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ”? (Gal 2:16). Is Paul’s confidence in having grasped the gospel to be taken as a sign that he has not grasped it at all? Why did John “write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God”? Answer: “That you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 Jn 5:13). The truth is that believers can be certain of their salvation because of what Christ has done on the cross. We will compare this statement further with what Keller describes as assurance later in this review.
The Elder Brother and the Pharisees
Keller’s portrayal of the elder brother is sure to leave his readers with an unbiblical understanding of the Pharisees. We will first look at what Keller says about the elder brother and then what he says concerning the Pharisees. We also need to consider why he portrays the Pharisees the way he does.
Keller and the elder brother
Keller correctly identifies who the elder brother in Jesus’ parable represents and to whom the parable is directed. He knows Jesus is using the elder brother as an illustration of the Pharisees and that he is directing his parable at them:
The second group of listeners was the “Pharisees and the teachers of the Law,” who were represented by the elder brother. (7)
So to whom is Jesus’s teaching in this parable directed? It is to the second group, the scribes, and Pharisees. (7)
It is because the real audience for this story is the Pharisees, the elder brothers. Jesus is pleading with his enemies to respond to his message. (27)
The elder brother gets no harsh condemnation but a loving plea to turn from his anger and self-righteousness. Jesus is pleading in love with his deadliest enemies. (74)
So while Keller correctly identifies the elder brother as representative of the Pharisees and even correctly calls them the “enemies” and the “deadliest enemies” of Christ, he also calls them “insiders of the faith”:
This book, then, is written to both curious outsiders and established insiders of the faith both to those Jesus calls “younger brothers” and those he calls “elder brothers” in the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.” (Introduction)
The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders.” (8)
Keller identifies the Pharisees as both the “moral insiders” and “established insiders of the faith,” the same Pharisees who were the “deadliest enemies” of Jesus. While it may be true that many churches today have legalistic “elder brother Pharisees,” no legalistic Pharisee is “in the faith.” Keller applies the illustration of the elder brother to modern-day Christians, even though it’s impossible for a true Christian to be a legalistic Pharisee. Jesus is not directing his teaching to “insiders of the faith.” It appears that from Keller’s perspective it is possible to be an “established insider of the faith” and yet at the same time be an “enemy” of Jesus. Of course, a person can “profess” to be a Christian, attend a church every Sunday, and yet be a legalistic Pharisee, but Keller never makes this distinction.
Keller and Pharisees
So what does a Pharisee look like from Keller’s perspective? Keller identifies the Pharisees as the moral conformists who believe and obey the Bible and put the will of God and the community first. He blurs the line between a Christian believer and a Pharisee, which seems hard to do since they are polar opposites. In other words, Keller portrays the Pharisee as a picture of what Christians should be! He argues that the second group of listeners was the
Pharisees and the teachers of the law, who were represented by the elder brother… They studied and obeyed the Scriptures. They worshiped faithfully and prayed constantly. (7)
So to whom is Jesus’s teaching in this parable directed? It is the second group, the scribes, and Pharisees… The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. (8)
Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing religious people of his day. (15)
So from the quotes above, we have the Pharisees depicted as the Bible-believing religious people of Jesus day who studied and obeyed the Scriptures and did everything the Bible requires. Let’s compare this with how the Bible describes the Pharisees and ask some basic questions.
First, even though the Pharisees read and studied the scriptures, did they believe and obey them? Note that the “Scriptures” the Pharisees had at the time was the Old Testament.
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (Jn 5:46)
Jesus also said, “But you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:26-27).
The Pharisees did not believe Jesus and therefore did not believe what Moses wrote. They did not believe the Scriptures and they were not the “Bible-believing religious people of [Jesus’] day.” John Robbins writes, “It is a complete fiction to say that Orthodox Jews believe the Old Testament. Those who assert that unrepentant Jews believe the Old Testament call Christ a liar.”[3] In passages like John 10:26-27 Jesus plainly says that they did not believe because “You are not part of my flock.”
Second, did the Pharisees obey Scripture as Keller asserts? It is clear from Jesus’ own words that they did not obey. Jesus said they were lawless hypocrites: "Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Mt 23:26). Just as the reprobate cannot be the elect, a person cannot be both lawless and obedient at the same time. The Pharisees had an outward expression of obedience but they did not actually obey the Scriptures: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men… You have a fine way of rejecting the commandments of God in order to establish your own tradition” (Mk 7:8-9). Unfortunately, Keller does not point any of this out and contradicts what the Bible says by stating that they were “religious people who do everything the Bible requires.”
And while Keller says that “they worshiped faithfully,” the Bible says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (Mk 7:6-7). The Pharisees may have been devoted false worshipers but Keller makes it appear as if they were faithfully worshiping the one true God.
Keller also knows that he can’t press every single detail literally from the metaphor:
Let me be careful to avoid a misunderstanding here. This story is a great metaphor of sin and salvation, but we can’t press every single detail literally. Neither Jesus nor any author of the Bible ever implies that any human being is flawless, without sin or fault, except Jesus himself.” (74)
While Keller gives this disclaimer he nevertheless continually draws out details from the parable that contradict the Bible. He is correct in saying that no “human being is flawless, without sin or fault, except Jesus himself,” yet he neglects what the Bible actually teaches concerning the true condition of man’s depravity. This is only part of the truth; which he continually betrays in what he writes about the Pharisees. This “Reformed” pastor undermines the Biblical doctrine of total depravity, especially when he attempts to make a distinction between the Pharisee and the true believer by claiming that the Pharisees are “being good”:
They key difference between a Pharisee and a believer in Jesus is inner-heart motivation. Pharisees are being good but out of a fear-fueled need to control God. They don’t really trust him or love him. To them, God is an exacting boss, not a loving father. (85)
So while Keller virtually erases the line between a Christian and Pharisee and actually applies the elder brother image to true Christians, he does make a distinction between Pharisee and true believer. Normally this would be helpful but unfortunately, he once again ignores what the Bible says and creates false distinctions and contradictions.
It would appear by and large that many young, restless, and reformed readers are not even batting an eye when they read this book. Let’s compare again Keller’s teachings with the Bible. He says that the Pharisees are “being good” but Jesus said, “no one is good except God alone” (Lk 18:19).
One might argue that Keller doesn’t exactly call them good in the quote, but rather he just says they are “being good.” This is still baffling! When were they ever “being good?” Was it when they “were persecuting Jesus” (Jn 5:16)? Or how about when they “were seeking all the more to kill him” (Jn 5:18)? Were they being good when Christ called them lawless hypocrites (Mt 23:26)? Or when he told them they were doing the desires of their father the Devil (Jn 8:48)? Were they being good when they were going to stone him (Jn 10:33)? Or was it when they cried, “Crucify him!” (Lk 23:21)?
Keller argues that the “key difference” is “inner-heart motivation.” It’s not repentance, it’s not faith in Christ, it’s not that one has Satan as their father and the other is the child of God, it’s not that one is in the kingdom of darkness and one in the kingdom of light, and it’s not even their unconverted human depravity. No, it’s just their “heart motivation.” Keller says that the “inner-heart motivation” is the problem but then identifies this inner-heart motivation as a “fear-fueled need to control God.” Yet the Bible clearly says that “there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18). Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks,” and the inner heart-motivation of the Pharisees was revealed when “they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” (Lk 23:21). The true difference between a Christian and a Pharisee is repentance and faith in the redemptive work of Jesus that bears fruit in keeping with repentance (Lk 3:8).
Keller also says “they don’t really trust him or love him,” and he is correct but he fails to mention the true disposition of the unconverted sinner, which is that they’re all “haters of God” (Rom 1:30). Perhaps this would be too offensive to his curious outsiders. He writes, “to them God is an exacting boss, not a loving father,” suggesting that the problem rests in their perception of God rather than identifying man’s actual relationship with God as the real problem. To them, God is not a loving father because they have a different father, as previously mentioned.
Such a trivial distinction doesn’t matter though because the Bible makes it clear that “no one does good, not even one,” (Rom 3:12) as long as we remain unconverted. Only after we are made alive in Christ can we do any good works “which God prepared beforehand, that we should just walk in them” (Eph 2:10). The Bible thunderously denounces all merit placed in man outside of faith in Christ: “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23), for “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Is 64:6).
So from the Bible we can see that the Pharisees were not the Bible-believing religious people of Jesus day. They did not obey the Scriptures, they did not do everything the Bible required, and they did not put the will of God first. Keller abuses the text and wrongly portrays the Pharisees as what Christians should look like, while at the same time misapplying the illustration of the elder brother to this same group of “Christians,” or, as he puts it, “insiders of the faith.” Why does Keller distort the Biblical view of the Pharisees so much and equate them with conservative Christians? Keller claims that “if our churches aren’t appealing to the younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think” (14). He seems to think that because our churches have “conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people” (14) in them, that is why “the licentious and liberated or broken and marginal avoid church” (14). Dr. E.S. Williams writes:
Keller uses the image of the elder brother to caricature conservative Christians as judgmental, hostile bigots. In Keller’s mind, the reason that conservative churches are so unpleasant is because they are filled with elder brothers (conservative Christians), who speak out against liberal, immoral values on sex and politics. Keller is profoundly hostile towards conservative Christians, whom he regards as the major cause of most problems in the world. So we have the remarkable paradox of a leading Presbyterian theologian who is vehemently opposed to the Reformed Christian faith. Even more amazing is the fact that he is the leader of The Gospel Coalition.[4]
Keller’s motive for writing such things is irrelevant if he is unfaithful to Scripture. It is egregious that Keller makes the Pharisees look like Christians, applies the elder brother image to Christians, and then makes a false distinction between the Christian and Pharisee. In so doing he contradicts the Bible repeatedly. This, however, is not the only problem with the book.
Redefining Sin
The title of Chapter 3 is “Redefining Sin.” Keller here distorts the biblical view of sin and attaches his own view to the parable of the prodigal son while at the same time appealing to the authority of Jesus. It is not uncommon for liberals, heretics, and false teachers to use orthodox language only to redefine the language in their teachings. Both Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses use the name of Jesus only to redefine the biblical doctrine of Christ. It is also very common for false teachers to make appeals of authority to Jesus in an attempt to pass off their unbiblical teachings. Many false prosperity preachers likewise appeal to Jesus’ own words in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” to preach their false health, wealth, prosperity gospel. In this chapter Keller once again injects his own views into the biblical text, contradicts the Bible, and makes a false appeal to Jesus as the one who is teaching what Keller is teaching:
Why doesn’t the elder brother go in? He himself gives the reason: “Because I’ve never disobeyed you.” The elder brother is not losing the father’s love in spite of his goodness, but because of it. It is not his sins that create the barrier between him and his father, it’s the pride he has in his moral record: it’s not his wrongdoing but his righteousness that is keeping him from sharing in the feast of the fathers.” (33)
Keller says that it is because of the elder son’s “goodness” that he is losing the father’s love and that creates a barrier between them, rather than his sins. Keep in mind that the elder brother represents the Pharisaical moral insiders of the faith and the father is a representation of Jesus. Can we lose God’s love because of our goodness? What else but sin could create a barrier between us and God? Can goodness and righteousness separate us from God?
Keller contradicts what Jesus said to the rich young ruler in Luke 18:19. While Keller affirms that the elder brother is good and righteous, Jesus, on the other hand, tells the rich young ruler, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Once again Scripture says, “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10). What definition of righteous and good is Keller using if not a Biblical one? Apart from Christ, we have no righteousness or goodness. Keller identifies pride as the real problem but this pride is nothing less than sinful and is, therefore, wrong. Therefore, it would be the elder son’s wrongdoing, not his “goodness” that keeps him from sharing in the feast.
But Keller claims the opposite. He says that “the elder brother is not losing the father’s love in spite of his goodness, but because of it.” Yet when the rich young ruler boasted of his own goodness by saying, “All these [commandments] I have kept from my youth” (Lk 18:21), Jesus did not tell him that he was losing the father’s love because of his goodness. Instead, Jesus pointed him back to the first commandment by showing him that he loved his money more than God when he told him to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Lk 18:22). Jesus’ response to the young man was consistent with what he said in response to the question about the greatest commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment” (Mt 22:36). By loving his money more than God he was violating the first and greatest commandment. The young man left very sad because he was very rich (Lk 18:23). Notice that Jesus didn’t affirm the rich young ruler’s goodness in Luke 18, nor did he affirm the Pharisees’ goodness through the parable of the prodigal son. Jesus tells the Pharisees in Luke 16:15, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” So Jesus in no way intended to affirm the “goodness” of the Pharisees in the parable because they are “an abomination in the sight of God.”
And Jesus certainly did not intend to teach that it was “not his sins that create the barrier between him and his father.” Keller is a terrible expositor. Of course, it is our sin that creates a barrier between us and God! This is why Jesus pointed the rich young ruler back to the law to show him his sin. This is why Galatians 3:24 says the law was our schoolmaster, and why Paul says in Romans 7:7, “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” Jesus showed the rich young ruler it was his sin that was the problem, not his goodness. So while Keller says it was not his sin that created a barrier, Isaiah 59:2 reads, “It's your sins that have cut you off [created a barrier] from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.” Clearly then, the real problem is the elder brother’s sin, not his “goodness” and “righteousness.”
Keller unravels his false teaching further:
Each one [of the sons], in other words, rebelled—but one did so by being very bad and the other by being extremely good.
Do you realize, then, what Jesus is teaching? Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently.” (36)
How can a person rebel against God by being extremely good? If a person is rebelling against God at all then they clearly are not being good in any sense. It is impossible to rebel against God by being extremely good because the qualities of rebellion and goodness are contradictory. That is, unless you equivocate on the terms good and evil, in which case you should consider Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
In the second part of the quote, Keller attributes his false teaching onto Jesus. He says that Jesus is teaching that “you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently”; yet this is not what Jesus told the rich young ruler, and it’s not at all what Jesus is teaching in the parable. He did not tell the young ruler that he was “alienated” from God for keeping all of the laws since his youth, but instead showed the man that he was in trouble for not keeping the law. Perhaps it’s true that both sons in the parable were using the father but the conclusion Keller draws is false. While Keller says that we can be alienated and can rebel against God by “keeping all of the rules diligently,” the Psalmist writes, “You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently” (Ps119:4)! Keller contradicts the Bible yet again, for God commands us to keep his moral laws diligently! The real problem is that we fail to keep them, and this is sin.
Here is another of Keller’s false appeals to Jesus:
With this parable, Jesus gives us a much deeper concept of “sin” than any of us would have if he didn’t supply it. Most people think of sin as failing to keep God’s rules of conduct, but, while not less than that, Jesus’s definition of sin goes beyond it.” (34)
Here, then, is Jesus’s radical redefinition of what is wrong with us. Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the placed of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.” (42)
It’s hard to imagine that one of the founders of the Gospel Coalition could be such a terrible expositor. Keller wants us to believe that Jesus told the parable to provide us with a much deeper concept of sin, even though Jesus himself said, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Mt 13:13). Jesus spoke in parables to confuse his hearers and to keep them from understanding, and the prodigal son parable was meant to mock the Pharisees’ self-righteousness and total ignorance of God (Lk 15:1-3). How is it that Keller thinks that only in this parable do we have access to this deeper understanding of sin when Jesus magnified the law and gave a deeper understanding of sin in Matthew 5 when he discussed anger and lust?
Keller wants his readers to believe that Jesus is redefining sin, but Jesus was always consistent and in perfect harmony with Scripture. Jesus is not redefining anything at all in this parable. Keller wants us to believe that “sin is not just breaking the rules [commandments], it is putting yourself in the place of God.” But putting yourself in the place of God is breaking the very first rule! “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3). This is exactly what Satan did when he said, “I will make myself like the Most High” (Is 14:14). Sin, whether in thought or deed, is a violation of God’s holy standard. This is why the Westminster Confession (which Keller is also fond of contradicting) reads in Chapter VI.6, “Every sin—both original and actual—is a transgression of the righteous lawof God and contrary to it.” What Keller writes is nothing short of confusion, yet he intends this book to be an introduction to the Christian faith for outsiders and a primer for “established insiders.” No, thank you. Paul tells Titus to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Ti 2:1), but Keller’s teaching does not accord with sound doctrine.
Keller’s Gospel
While Keller intends The Prodigal God to be a sort of primer which “is meant to lay out the essentials of the Christian message, the gospel,” it is Keller himself who distorts the biblical doctrine of atonement and compromises the gospel.
Keller writes that “one of the signs that you many not grasp the unique radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do,” but he later writes, “The inevitable sign that you know you are a sinner saved by sheer, costly grace is a sensitive social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of service to the poor.” (112)
Keller suggests that you really can’t know if you're saved by believing in what Jesus has done, but that you can have assurance of your salvation based on what you have done. This is Romanism at its heart: “The Romanists held that a man is to believe in the mercy of God and the merits of Christ, but that this belief brought with it no assurance of justification; though possibly, if the man lived a very holy life, God might before he died reveal his grace to him, and give him assurance.”[5] The Protestant view of assurance is rooted in the knowledge of the historical redemptive work of Jesus on the cross.
It is also wrong to say that the “inevitable sign” that you are saved is a “sensitive social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of service to the poor” simply because many who are not saved do this. What about repentance and faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins?
Keller contradicts himself still further and betrays the gospel of justification by faith alone when he writes, “As long as you are trying to earn your salvation by controlling God through goodness, you will never be sure you have been good enough for him. You simply aren’t sure God loves and delights in you” (61). This is a lie. By making the problem of a works-based salvation one of assurance, Keller compromises the gospel and allows his readers to keep the idea that the only thing lacking is assurance of salvation, not salvation itself when they attempt to earn salvation. The problem for those who are trying to earn their salvation is not a lack of assurance but a forfeiture of the gospel. If a person is trying to earn their salvation, then they are not saved because they are not trusting in the finished work of Christ. Keller blurs the true distinction between the true gospel of justification by faith alone and a false gospel which includes works. Paul writes, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). In fact, it is the one who does not work but believes that is justified. “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom 4:5).
Keller also seems to think that if we are not attracting people to our churches then it must mean that we are not preaching the same message as Jesus.
The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to the contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones.
If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on the people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. (14)
Paul warns Timothy to “follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me,” (2 Tm 1:13), and he commands Titus to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Ti 2:1), but never does he attribute the lack of success in ministry to a compromising of the message of Jesus. In fact, we see just the opposite. Those who compromise sound biblical doctrine often have the biggest ministries, which is why Paul warns, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tm 4:3). Paul does not say that if you are not filling your churches then you must not be preaching the same message as Jesus. This kind of thinking leads to tampering with the message of Jesus, which is exactly what Keller has done in this book. Keller reduces the gospel to a message of feigned humility:
Jesus says: “The humble are in and the proud are out” (see Luke 18:14). The people who confess they aren’t particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know that you need it. The people, who think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God. “The Lord… cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud” (Psalm 138:6 – New Living Translation).
When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G.K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who grasped the message of Jesus. (45)
Keller once again attributes his false teaching to Jesus by misquoting him from the text in Luke 18:14. The verse actually reads, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” The reader should note that Jesus never says, “The humble are in and the proud are out.” Keller misleads his readers on two accounts here. First by misquoting Jesus and second by the conclusion he makes from the text he misquotes. The verse says that “this man [the tax collector] went down to his house justified,” but why was he justified? It was not simply because he was humble, as Keller claims. It is true that the man showed humility but that was only part of the whole message, and Keller substitutes the part for the whole in order reduce the gospel to an issue of humility. Jesus was speaking the parable to “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous” (Lk 18:9), but it was the tax collector who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13). Furthermore, the Greek word for “be merciful” is hilasthēti, which literally means “be propitious.” The tax collector cried out and asked God to be propitious—to turn away His wrath from him. This is not just a depiction of humility but rather a depiction of saving faith. We see that the Pharisees trusted in their works and good deeds but it was the tax collector who was justified by rightly understanding his depravity and expressing saving faith.
Keller’s false gospel manifests itself by giving as an example someone who did not believe in the gospel of justification by faith alone. Keller, a Reformed pastor, affirms G. K. Chesterton, a Roman Catholic, as “someone who grasped the message of Jesus” on the basis of nothing more than a feigned expression of humility. The message of Jesus was, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:15), but as a Roman Catholic Chesterton did not believe the true gospel of justification by faith alone. He was hostile to the Protestant faith, became an apostate, and affirmed the false gospel of justification by faith and works. He was nothing less than an Antichrist who opposed the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Mt 12:30), and those who oppose the true gospel set themselves against Christ himself. It is remarkable that Keller affirms a Roman Catholic who affirmed a false gospel as someone who grasped the message of Jesus. This is the necessary consequence of Keller's false gospel that the “humble are in.”
Keller also has a history of ecumenism and fondness for Roman Catholicism. Timothy Kauffman has made mention of this on his blog:
Tim Keller (PCA Minister): “The best things that have been written [on meditation] almost are by Catholics during the counter-reformation—Ignatius Loyola, Francis de Sales, John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila—great stuff!”[6]
These people whom Keller endorsed to his own church led the Counter-Reformation and wanted nothing more than to rid the world of justification by faith alone. They vehemently opposed Luther and Calvin and despised the true gospel. Keller has been known to frequently use and even endorse those who preach a false gospel. He quotes N.T. Wright liberally in The Reason for God, yet Wright teaches a works-based salvation. Paul wrote, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Rom 16:17 KJV). Yet we have the leader and co-founder of the Gospel Coalition endorsing and affirming those who preach a false gospel. Shame on Keller.
Unfortunately, that isn’t all. Keller distorts the gospel further by substituting the biblical doctrine of atonement for heresy.
He came and experienced the exile that we deserved. He was expelled from the presence of the father, He was thrust into darkness, the uttermost despair of spiritual alienation – in our place. He took upon himself the full curse of human rebellion, cosmic homelessness, so that we could be welcomed into our true home. (101)
This is heresy. “The full curse of human rebellion” is not “cosmic homelessness”; it is God’s wrath. Keller only talks about exile, alienation, and homelessness in his book as the sole punishment that befalls wicked sinners. He never mentions the wrath of God that abides on sinners and instead eliminates it by claiming that the full curse is “cosmic homelessness.”
This distorts the gospel by denying the doctrine of propitiation. The word propitiation refers to the satisfying of God’s wrath against the sinner through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus on the cross. If we exclude propitiation by excluding God’s wrath, then we forfeit the gospel, and that is exactly what Keller has done in this book. Jesus did not redeem us from the curse of the law and become a curse for us (Gal 3:13) by merely being forsaken or becoming spiritually “homeless”; He suffered and bore the full wrath of God.
Paul tells us that we were by nature “children of wrath” (Eph 2:3). If propitiation is removed from the gospel, then the wrath of God still abides on the sinner’s head and we have no gospel at all. If Jesus only saved us from exile, then He did not ultimately satisfy or propitiate the wrath of God on behalf of his people. Paul tells us that it was Jesus “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith…. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:25, 26). Without propitiation, there can be no justification. Jesus, therefore, did not just experience exile or homelessness as Keller teaches, for “it was the will of the Lord to crush him” (Is 53:10) as well.
Keller distorts the gospel in The Prodigal God along with various other doctrines and must be held accountable for what he teaches. I, therefore, do not recommend this book or its author.
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[1] Scripture references are ESV unless otherwise noted. All emphases in Scripture quotations are mine.
[2] Brackets and emphases are mine.
[3] John W. Robbins, “The White Horse Inn: Nonsense on Tap,” The Trinity Review 271 (September/October, 2007), http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=245.
[4] E.S. Williams, “The Prodigal God,” review of The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller, The New Calvinists, accessed March 10, 2014, Keller’s books, http://www.newcalvinist.com/tim-kellers-false-gospel/the-prodigal-god/.
[5] Horatius Bonar, “Assurance of Salvation,” The Trinity Review (April, 1994), http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=185.
[6] Timothy Kauffman, "And the Diviners Have Seen a Lie," accessed June 1, 2014, http://www.whitehorseblog.com/2014/05/18/and-the-diviners-have-seen-a-lie/.
[7] See E.S. Williams, “Keller redefines the gospel,” The New Calvinists, http://www.newcalvinist.com/tim-kellers-false-gospel/keller-redefines-gospel/.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]