Secondary Matters: Part III-Community and Conviction

This is the conclusion to the "secondary matters" posts. After you first see how clear and often things are presented in scripture, and then look at how the church over the years has understood something to be clear in scripture, you should then move on to the present. This is the THIRD and final step. I apologize for it being so long.

How has the Christian community within your denomination understood an issue? How have those outside your denomination or particular history (Baptistic, Reformed, Ana-Baptistic/Mennonite, etc...) or cultural background (Eastern, African-American, etc...) understood the scriptures to be speaking to certain matters? How have you personally, in your experiences, in your personal time of study, in your reflections understood the scriptures to be speaking to the issue?

The degree to which you find greater agreement among the steps should affect your certainty. The greater the agreement, the greater the certainty. And vice versa.

As you interact with your personal experiences, denominational understanding, those outside your theological/cultural camp you will find some universally held beliefs. Things like the Apostle's Creed. If people want to argue about Jesus' real resurrection from the dead, or whether or not He's essentially the same as Allah, or Shiva the Destroyer (Hinduism), then you ought to "contend for the faith."

Then there are issues which I believe the scriptures clearly teach regarding God's ultimate sovereignty and baptism, which I hold to a high (not highest) degree of certainty. So I'm going to pastor or join a church with those things in mind. However if there is no such church with those standards in my area (speaking as if I weren't a pastor), I will look for one that aligns itself with my highest degree of certainty: Apostles Creed. There are many folks who don't think I should have had Connar baptized. And they would probably re-baptize them if they could. However, I still learn from folks like John Piper (Reformed Baptist), Mark Driscoll (Reformed non-denominatonal "baptistic") and Don Miller (not Reformed at all).

For folks like these, I can enter into a dialog with them. But neither will probably convince the other, and that's fine. No big deal. Scripture just isn't as clear as we would like to think on these issues. Even though that pains me to say!

And even within denominations there are areas which need to be revisited and thought through today. So that they are as scriptural as possible. For instance, in my denomination, the role of women. Should they be deacons? I personally think so, but I'm submitting myself to the larger body. However, that doesn't mean that this will always be the case, nor should it always be the case. There is debate and dialog going on. And it is being done with these steps in mind, with people smarter than myself (Tim Keller leading the pro-side). So the stance could change someday.

Finally, there are individual convictions and interpretations of scripture which need to have all three steps in mind. Something that may seem so clear to you could perhaps be due to your past, the way your family did things, the way your church did things, your friends, your enemies, your political party, your socio-economic standing, your exposure or lack thereof to good training, etc..We all need to recognize that we have certain biases which we bring to the scriptures. Some helpful. Some quite harmful. That's why it is SO important to limit these biases with the help of the church over the years and the wider Christian community today. For these issues, dialog is fine. Personal conviction in these areas is fine. But trying to force these on others, judgment, harassment, isolation, arrogance that YOU hold the key interpretation and application is not Christianity. It's more gnostic (secret knowledge God gives to an enlightened few) than anything.

We need to keep in mind that even the Reformers who broke away from the Catholic church looked to those before them for their interpretations of scripture. Augustine believed in salvation by grace through faith before Luther, Calvin, Zwingli. And John Huss, said it a 100 years before all of them. And while not perfect examples of fellowship, they all interacted with their contemporaries, in addition to their personal studies. Unfortunately some of their convictions did sourly affect and limit their fellowship as things with lesser clarity were held with higher certainty (view of Lord's Supper). So the next time you think you've discovered an interpretation and application that no one, or only a few have discovered in 2000 years, think again. You're most likely wrong. In the slight chance you're not, keep it personal and gracious when you dialog with others.