On Getting It Right: Doctrinal Confession Gone Wrong
Three quick postlude items from my recent series blogging through Dallas Willard’s book Knowing Christ Today.
First, I recently conducted an interview with Dallas Willard on this book for Christianaudio.com. If you’re interested, you can download the interview for free by clicking here (registration is required).
Second, Dallas will be speaking at a conference in Anaheim CA called “Knowledge For Life,” on these same themes. The date is April 17, and you can register by clicking here. I’m planning to attend, so if you are too I’d love to connect, so shoot me an email!
Finally, in my recent series in Dallas Willard’s book, Knowing Christ Today we discussed what he calls “soft pluralism” or “inclusivism.” There was an excellent footnote in Chapter 7 that didn’t fit my post on that day, but is important enough that I want to quote it here and open it up for discussion.
Willard is talking about recognizing that other religions may indeed contain true knowledge about God that we can respect, saying:
“This “pluralism” might well concede that all of these features of religions involve important aspects of truth and goodness and should be respected as such. Those dead set against pluralism in any form would of course deny that. But disciples of Christ certainly would not have to do so. [...] outstanding spokespeople for Christ in the Bible have been more generous toward other religions than that and have held that the God of the Bible and of Christians deals lovingly and justly with those who fall far short of “getting it all right” in their understanding and in practice.”
This is where the footnote begins, and where it really gets good:
“In any group the vast majority of those in “good standing” do not believe many of the things the leaders of the group teach as “necessary.” More often than not they don’t even know about them, and if they did, they would not be able to understand them. An example of this would be what is stated about salvation it he Athanasian Creed. After laying out extremely subtle points about the Trinity, it is declared there that “he therefore that will be saved must think thus of the Trinity,…neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance” of the Trinity. The issues in this creed are extremely important. But if one must “think thus” to be saved, 99 percent of professing Christians are not going to make it. Try this creed on and see what you think. Groups and their institutions tend to confuse what they need to teach with what one must believe in order to be saved. This leads to their members professing lots of things they neither believe nor are committed to – indeed, do not even understand. That, in turn, makes it inevitable that they will not “live up to what they profess,” for they actually do not believe what they profess. The effects of this on genuinely trusting and following Christ is devastating. They can be abundantly observed in most Christian groups.”
What do you think might be the “devastating” effects of pressuring people to profess what they don’t actually believe and do you think they’re readily observable?
This kind of belief is handed down wholesale from the top to those below. One danger that I say (among many) is that it essentially silences the voice of the Holy Spirit in the context of the community of faith. People are implicitly taught that belief is received uncritically from the “expert” and “authority”, not formed, embraced and obeyed for its implications within the context of the Body.