A few days ago, Bob at Mr. Standfast commented on one of my posts in the charismatic/cessationist debate and suggested that I do a post "on identifying the particular risk of over-emphasis that might result from any particular doctrinal view." He was actually commenting not only on my post, but on some excellent comments from Diane Roberts on that post. Diane is a charismatic who had some insightful thoughts on some particular charismatics who went too far.
Bob's right - I like to think of Christian doctrine as a huge and beautiful tapestry with many different patterns and shades of color which all paint one great picture. Take one color and magnify it out of proportion to the others and the picture looks distorted.
A metaphor I have often used to help myself in this regard is the metaphor of theology as a web of truth. I'm not using the term "web" in the sense that many are using it today in distinguishing "web" thinking from "linear" thinking. What I am saying is that the Bible is full of different theological truths, which are all interconnected and which all influence one another. When you pull on one string of truth, there are other strings which get pulled, they all influence one another.
Keep reading for more thoughts on this.
For example, in his comment Bob brings up the doctrine of sola fide:
Even something like Luther's battle-cry of sola fide has resulted in the distortion of other truths of Scripture--this does not of course negate the truth of sola fide. This is something I think we should all beware of.He's right. I am not sure I would say that there has been an over-emphasis on "sola fide" as much as this doctrine has been lifted from its larger biblical context and distorted. The distortion has taken the form of "easy believism," the kind of stuff that MacArthur wrote against in "The Gospel According to Jesus." Up until the time MacArthur wrote that book the "easy believism" approach to sola fide had become dominant in broad evangelical circles. It was expressed in phrases like "I've accepted Jesus as my savior, but haven't made Him my Lord." This was all an outgrowth of a view of salvation that has often been called "decisional regeneration." "Decisional regeneration" grows out of a legitimate desire to protect the doctrine of justification by faith alone, but it lifts this doctrine completely out of its biblical and theological context and fails to do justice to passages like Matthew 7:15-23 and James 2:14-26. The entire picture, with all appropriate passages and theological issues factored in looks much closer to something like "we are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone." This is something the overemphasis missed.
Diane Roberts commented that some of the extremes we have seen in the charismatic movement came out of such overemphases on particular issues. Every group has its extremists. Those who practice infant baptism as a sign of membership in the covenant community have their sacerdotalists, believers-only baptists have their baptismal regeneration advocates, Calvinists have their hypers, Arminians have their open theists and charismatics have their Ben-Henny-Hinn's. Eschatology is ripe for extremism. Dispensationalists have their sensationalists and date setters, postmillennialists have their full preterists and amillennialists have their liberals and . . . well, um . . . Harold Camping (ugh!).
Someone has said that error is truth out of balance. Although I think that the word "balance" has been way overused and is often a synonym for "watered down," there is a good deal of truth in that statement. Using my metaphor, I might say that error is truth disconnected from the larger web of truth.
Strangely enough, I think error is often a result of an effort to be logically consistent. For instance, Calvinists who try to be logically consistent with their doctrine of predestination often end up in hyper-Calvinism or some type of fatalism or determinism. This is the kind of thing that gives rise to that (in)famous exchange between William Carey and his church leaders, when they told him "young man, when God is pleased to convert the heathen he will do so without your help."
A few years ago I read a book by an author who was virulently anti-Calvinist. He said things like "nothing will kill a person's zeal for evangelism or get him out of the ministry quicker than being a Calvinist." This guy was a Baptist and it pained him a great deal to have to acknowledge that the great Spurgeon, a Baptist, was also a Calvinist. It was very difficult for him to believe that Spurgeon could be a Calvinist and such a great evangelist. So, he dealt with this by saying that Spurgeon was inconsistent with his Calvinism.
But he missed the point - Spurgeon never tried to be a consistent Calvinist, he wanted to be consistent with Scripture. He said that if you have a system and there is a verse of Scripture that doesn't fit with your system, too bad for your system. He was a Calvinist and an evangelist because he felt the two were consistent with Scripture and therefore complementary.
There is a sense in which most of us are happily inconsistent. When I say this I mean that most of the better thinkers from whatever theological persuasion do their best to be consistent with the Scripture, not with their system. This is why not all Calvinists end up as hypers, nor Arminians as open theists. Calvinists who seek to be consistent with the doctrine of predestination will end up like Carey's leaders. Arminians who seek to be consistent with their doctrine of human freedom can end up as open theists or pelagians.
This is why most Calvinists and Arminians never reach those extremes. When Calvinists talk about predestination, we have other strings pulling on that doctrine, like the doctrine of the personality of God, His love, mercy, and justice, and the doctrine of man. Most Arminians never fall into open theism or pelagianism because of their own strings pulling against those tendencies. Even though I disagree with them on the particulars of these matters, they do have doctrines of God's sovereignty and omniscience and man's sinfulness that keep them from going all the way into open theism or pelagianism.
In my mind, Arminianism is a breeding ground for open theism. Open theism seems to me to be the logical end of Arminianism. However, I don't go around blaming Arminians for the errors of the open theists, simply because the better Arminian thinkers like Wesley kept other truths in view that held them back from grievous errors like open theism. While I disagree with the Arminian scheme, it would be unfair of me to use the reductio ad absurdum on them in this regard. Besides, they could use the same tactics on me as a Calvinist in regard to hyper-Calvinism.
When I went to seminary at RTS-Orlando I was introduced to a type of "kinder-gentler Calvinism." My first systematic theology class was with Dr. Frank James (who, by the way, is now President of the RTS-Orlando campus), and we had two major papers we had to write for the class - one on the holiness of God and one on the nature of man. Dr. James said that these are the two main issues you have to work through in arriving at your theology, particularly your doctrine of salvation. He said that, though he would disagree with the conclusions of an Arminian, he respected them as long as they wrestled adequately with those two issues.
That's the kind of thinking that can help us avoid extremism - a willingness to wrestle with all of the biblical texts and theological issues that affect any particular issue. There is a reciprocal relationship between the whole and the particular. Particular passages of Scripture and particular points of doctrine influence our understanding of the whole of Scripture and theology. Yet, to understand a particular passage of Scripture or a particular doctrine we have to understand them in the context of the whole of Scripture and theology. Hence, we have a web, and we have individual threads. This may sound overwhelming, to think you have to understand the whole of the Bible to understand any of it. But that has never bothered me too much - the fact that I can't understand all of it doesn't keep me from enjoying the parts I can understand. And, that's half the fun of biblical and theological study for me - the process of continually learning and refining my understanding of Scripture, knowing there is always more to learn.
Keeping this "web of truth" metaphor in mind won't make us all agree, but it will go a long way to helping us avoid unhealthy extremes.
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