Divided on the Bible
The United Methodist Church is divided on matters of Scriptural authority. However, there's excitement about where future unity on this crucial issue will lead church planting and reaching the nations for God's glory.
Topics Addressed
Click Questions to see answer.
Should emotion-based reasoning affect how we interpret Scripture?
How should Christians approach Adam Hamilton’s three-bucket approach?
How do we understand the divisions in the UMC about our understanding of the Bible?
What would our future church look like to join a fellowship of churches that have a shared understanding of the Bible?
Why disaffiliation will have rippling effects for the Glory of God?
Grant Caldwell: We're looking at chapter two about how we are divided on the Bible. As we look specifically at the first part of chapter two, we see the authors discussing John Wesley and his approach to the Bible. Can you discuss your perspective and your understanding of how did John Wesley understand, view, and esteem Scripture?
Rev. Paul Lawler: Yeah, first of all, we need to keep in mind that John Wesley was a product of the Reformation. He saw Scripture as authoritative.
This is anecdotal, but I think it might be helpful to some readers. I love seminary students, and of course, I once was one, but I always seek to be very conscientious in encouraging young individuals called into ministry. Part of the steps in pouring into them is that I steer them toward John Wesley's sermons, particularly the 52 standard sermons. I love to ask, "Well, tell me your first impressions."
One of the things that I occasionally hear is, "Paul, he sounds a little bit like a Baptist." I'm like, "Okay, well, tell me what you mean by that." They say, "Well, he just quotes Scripture so much. In fact, there are a couple of sermons where I'm not sure if I'm reading more of the Bible in what he's saying, or is this his personal commentary?"
That opens up a phenomenal dialogue because John Wesley saw Scripture as authoritative. It's important for the listener to also be mindful that as Wesley embraced the authority of Scripture, he was also ministering in an era where God, in his sovereignty, was ministering a spiritual awakening in a nation.
Through that spiritual awakening, historians have stated that England actually as a nation was preserved from revolt as many other European countries underwent revolutions at that time. It's important for us to remember that things were extremely dark in that era of history. Alcoholism was endemic, particularly among the poor, which was the majority of the country at that time. I think it was either one in five or one in four women who were prostitutes out of desperation. This breaks my heart to say, but some were as young as age nine. What I'm trying to illustrate is just how dark things were at that period of history.
So the correlation is when we look at revival and spiritual awakenings in history, they have always been tethered to Scripture. Wesley saw Scripture as authoritative and inspired. "I'm a man of one book," he said.
I confessed to you the first time I read Wesley. I felt the same way about the depth of his Scripture is amazing. His brother Charles, with his hymns, the depth and amount of theology put into each line intentionally is amazing to read how intentionally he was. He really lived out that quote, "I want to be a man of one book. Give me that book."
Just additional comment here, but If you ever read the things Wesley wrote before Aldersgate and the things he wrote after, you begin to see when his heart was strangely warmed, and I believe that was his conversion based upon Roman's 8. You can't see the kingdom apart from being born of the Spirit. Even though John Wesley had a zeal, a misguided zeal, I might add, just in light of his failure as a missionary in Georgia, after his Aldersgate experience, you see his confidence in the revelation of God ramped up.
When we recognize the inspiration of Scripture and its role throughout history, not only in the Wesleyan movement but certainly in movements all around the world, there is this correlation between an awakened heart and out of that awakened heart seeing and beholding what I would call the burning heart.
You shared a little bit about the cultural context. Was this primary for Wesley? How did that relate to the Church around him? Was that received well by the Church in England at the time? Was it something that led to any sort of divide or friction?
Throughout history, we recognize that the Church always goes through vulnerabilities in different eras. The vulnerability in Wesley's day was not so much heresy in the Church as it was dead orthodoxy. You had the Church of England and there just wasn't much life there. When Wesley began preaching in fields and in pulpits, he was persecuted and pelted with stones, fruits, and vegetables. A few times, a bull was even released into the pasture.
Early in his ministry, he dealt with a lot of hate from clergy as well as people in the Church of England. However, we are also aware, as we look back at Scripture and church history, that's often how prophets start out. Wesley was clearly a prophet. He was prophetic, and God's message in and through him is still affecting the world today. But no, he was not well received early on.
The phrase Wesleyan Quadrilateral appears in this chapter. Was that something that was original to Wesley's teaching himself? Was this a development that came later? I feel like that's a phrase or just an idea that I've heard thrown around in different church contexts. Can you help us explain just more about what the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is and how we should think about it?
The quadrilateral is a way of approaching what we believe and why. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is looking at what we believe and why through the lenses of Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, with Scripture being primary.
Now we need to make a couple of comments around this.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is actually not found in the corpus of Methodism. I'm going to circle back to that in just a moment. But Albert Outler, who is one of the great theologians of the Church, shall we say, extrapolated the Wesleyan Quadrilateral both out of the Anglican tradition as well as reading John Wesley's works because part of the quadrilateral was already found in the tradition of the Church.
But what's happened over time, as I referenced in part one, and where we have begun, or we gravitated into theological indifferentism, is we have cases where persons are doing, saying, and teaching things in the name of theology where experience or their own reason trump's the revelation of Scripture.
Albert Outler actually regretted that he formed the Wesleyan Quadrilateral later. It became something that was abused and in the context of people trumping experience over Scripture.
So what was intentionally set up with Scripture is the foundation that's non-negotiable and leads to other dynamics that we see things through has been changed over time. Where experience is becoming the primary foundation creates a whole mess of problems with biblical authority, inspiration, and interpretation. This is where the chapter leads us after that is differing views on the authority of Scripture.
Yes.
Let's respond to that in a multiplicity of ways.
First, Rob talks about the influence of postmodernism on the Church. When one tries to define the movement of postmodernism and the influence of revisionism and reductionism, this is a very complicated, complex discussion. I'm someone who enjoys reading widely and learning from people who see things from different perspectives. It doesn't mean that I agree with them, but I want to be well informed. But Wesley always operated from a lens of trust in the Scripture.
What's happened in the culture is that we are still dealing with the effects of postmodernism, which gained a stronghold in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, a part of the effects of postmodernism is that we begin, in some circles, looking at biblical interpretation through the lens of suspicion. That's why you hear a lot of people talk about deconstruction. I'm in favor of being thinkers and engaging in what we would call biblical criticism.
Now, let me explain why I'm in favor of that. The Bible makes some audacious claims, and if the Bible makes audacious claims, it should be able to stand up against criticism. So what I advocate, particularly for people in their 20s and 30s, is if you're embracing some type of process around deconstruction, it's healthy. I grew up on the Tennessee River, so if you're going to knock the barnacles off the pier, awesome. But if you're going to knock the very pylons out from under the pier that supports the structure itself, we're outside the bounds of what it means to be Christian.
The influence of postmodernism, reductionism, and deconstruction, all of this is not healthy. There's a lot to bore into with that.
So postmodernism affects and changes Outler's quadrilateral. How much does emotion play into that? I feel like when we discuss matters of Scripture especially, and this is the next chapter, matters of human sexuality, emotional, and emotion-based reasoning seem to be very high on people's priority.
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think a lot of people sitting in pews in the United Methodist Church even realize the number of times that emotion-based reasoning is utilized. Because if we're not rooted in teaching clearly what Scripture says, we can use rationalizations that are very palatable to the listener. For instance, "Surely God would not judge people like that."
Yet we see examples in Scripture where God pours out wrath on a nation or even uses another nation to discipline his people. If we minimize those things, we're missing something about the nature of God. I'm aware that even when I'm talking this way, emotions begin rising in some people, and they push back on these dimensions of the character of God. Now He's loving and merciful, but there's a point where we see in Scripture where God will judge.
There's a reason, again, in the originating impulses of Methodism, that John Wesley would not only ask the question but require the question to be answered when you entered a Methodist society, band or class, "Do you desire to flee the coming wrath and be saved from your sins?"
Now, once again, people hear that, and they go, "Well, that sounds Southern Baptist." Forgive me if your background's Southern Baptist, and I don't mean anything offensive by that. But the reason John Wesley asked that question he's not only read his Bible thoroughly, but he also studied patristics and was aware that based on Scripture, we experience the judgment of God that's sewn into creation, as well as God, chastens those He loves.
There is a sense of wrath and a diminishing of human flourishing that we experience in this life. Based on Romans and other passages of Scripture, Jesus certainly talked about, and I say this tenderly, lovingly, but because I care, he talked about the consequences of heaven as well as hell. So Wesley was asking a very loving and caring question that he wanted to be embedded in the originating impulse of the Methodist movement.
But my point is we allow emotion-based reasoning in many environments to rule because we recognize that kind of question and the biblical support that substance that supports it. That's not very comfortable or palatable.
The question might be asked, "Well, how did we get where we are now?" Two degrees at a time, over the decades and over the century. I would also reason that emotion-based reasoning if the Scriptures are inspired, can be very dangerous, and that's what's happened in many mainline expressions of the Church.
It becomes so hard in the midst of a moment to contrast the self-sovereignty of postmodernism and the feelings of the comfort of this emotional-based approach to really rest yourself on truth, to really go, "What is true is what matters more than my desires or my feelings."
We can desire, feel, or want something that may not be true. I've heard it shared before, I can desire or be earnest about taking medicine in the morning, but if the lights are off and I grab the wrong pill bottle, the truth of what I did is going to be true regardless of my emotions and regardless of my feeling.
We see some of that on pages 30-36. It was mentioned earlier in the book, but we see a deeper discussion in this chapter on the Bible, on Adam Hamilton's three-bucket approach. How should thinking Christians engage with this approach to Scripture?
If you've read the chapter, then the reader is aware that Adam Hamilton, who pastors the Church of the Resurrection, has written many books and developed a series of looking at Scripture through three buckets.
The first bucket reflects the timeless will of God for human beings. Another bucket in certain parts of Scripture would fall into a category of a bucket that reflects God's will in a particular time but not for all time. The passages that would go in a third bucket reflect the culture and historical circumstances in which they were written but never reflected God's timeless will.
Adam Hamilton did a presentation in Birmingham, AL where he illustrates the use of three buckets to set up a revised perspective on human sexuality. (WATCH: Adam Hamilton: "A Thinking Person's Guide to the Christian Faith")
In response I wrote a two-part response.
A Thinking Christian's Response to "Adam Hamilton Comes to Birmingham" Pt. 1
A Thinking Christian's Response to "Adam Hamilton Comes to Birmingham" Pt. 2
Now, before we move on to the next question, let me say this. There are some things that require us to do some deep thinking. We live in a microwave culture where everything happens fast. But I'm asking the reader to stop to digest this material. It'll take you about 45 minutes to listen to what Adam presents and then read slowly through the two-part response that I've written. I'm sharing that because I love you, and I want people to have a biblically rooted understanding.
I'm coming from the perspective that all Scripture, as John Wesley would say, is inspired by God. Those things that Hamilton reasons in his presentation would go in the third bucket. They are still relevant because they reveal the nature of God. It is essential that we do not abandon our understanding of God's full-orb nature. There's so much we could dive into right now, but I think the best thing I can ask the reader to do is to take the time to go deep with this discussion by actually watching him present and then reading how I responded to him.
Which is so needed in this age. We live in an age with quick clips. If we're prone to suspicion to even ask the question: Is he being quoted fairly in this book? But we're asking the reader to invite to say, "Take a listen and respond and think for yourself clearly and weigh it."
Again, not to deconstruct, but to reconstruct and say, "Is this true? When I sift this through and hold it up to Scripture, can it bear the weight? Is it trustworthy, true, and clear?"
Don't rely on us, but listen and think for yourself. It's very helpful to think through these approaches to the Bible, whether it be this three-bucket approach, one that's more emotion-driven, or one that's more postmodern-driven. These are not small issues.
If we ask the question about the division in the UMC, these are major divisions looking at the book that we hold most dear. What do we do with that?
This gets into why I believe we need to step into a new day. So here's what I would invite the reader to consider. We are divided in the United Methodist Church, and it is a deep divide. As Rob points out in the book, it's not helpful.
Harvard Business School and other business schools around the nation have done some deep-dive studies around synergy in companies. When there is synergy around your mission and vision, effectiveness is heightened exponentially. We're dealing in an era where we don't have synergy.
Again, we have the same vocabulary but not the same dictionary. I have sat on committees on discipleship, yet the United Methodist Church can't agree on what discipleship is, and it hinders effectiveness. How can you make disciples when there's a lack of agreement on what a disciple is? I remember pressing for the question, "Let's define what this is," and there was resistance even to giving a definition of what a disciple is.
Now, I recognize that my point was one anecdotal incidence that may not represent the whole, so I want to concede that. But my point is that Jesus once said, "A house divided against itself can't stand." So I go back to the need for separation so that we can become part of a movement where there is synergy.
There will never be perfection on this side of heaven. That is not what we're saying. There will always be problems on this side of heaven, but we need to be a part of a movement where there is agreement on just the core of what Christianity is, where there is healthy accountability and synergy around making disciples, church planting, and expressing mercy and justice ministry. Right now, we are not in that reality, and we need to move into a new day.
I want to continue with this thought with the last question, and to do so, I want to quote from this chapter.
(Pg. 39) "The Church's mission is not to be a debating society, a faculty lounge, or a perpetual town hall meeting. Its mission is to proclaim the gospel in word and deed. To do this effectively, there must be a modicum of shared beliefs about the Bible, how the community of faith reads it and understands it, the authority it is willing to ascribe to it, and the ethics it derives from it."
What would it look like for Christ Church five years, ten years, or 50 years from now, to belong to a fellowship of churches that have that shared understanding of the Bible?
There's a vision in the Global Methodist Church to plant 3,500 churches sooner than later. The mechanism already exists for training and equipping under Steve Cordell's leadership. I chair the global missional partnership team that's developing a strategy to take the gospel from everywhere to everywhere, among all peoples throughout the earth, but also with a particular sensitivity to the 10:40 window where there are 6,000 unreached people groups.
Let me put that this way: When Jesus said, "Go and make disciples," which is something He said in all four gospels, that's clear. He also said, "Go and make disciples among all ethne," meaning all people groups of the earth.
If I said to my daughter, Laura, "Go clean your room." My daughter, God bless her, would get up, and she'd clean her room because the command was clear.
We are living in an era where there are two to three billion people who don't know Christ, and they primarily live in the 10:40 window, which is mostly in Asia. The reason I'm bringing this up is when many United Methodists hear people begin to talk like this, that feels so foreign to them. Is it not like a mind-boggling disconnect that something that's so clear in the originating impulse in Scripture sounds foreign to us?
Thomas Koch, one of the first Methodist bishops, was nicknamed "The Flea" by John Wesley because he was hopping around from nation to nation, sharing the gospel. He perished on the way to India to take the gospel of Christ there.
Yet, here we are. How did we get where we are now? Where in most Methodist pews and many pastors, there's an indifferentism. Thomas Koch, what was a part of the early Methodist movement? How did we get here? Two degrees at a time.
What excites me about the future is the rekindling of the flame. Now, if you're going to kindle a flame, you've got to have the right firewood. I believe, conventionally, that the arrangement of the kindling is through starting a new movement. That's what excites me about the Global Methodist Church.
This is an hour where we need to be convictional. We need men and women to say it's time for a new iteration of the expression of Christianity through Methodism. There have been those laboring for many years in developing this new iteration that is designed to touch the planet.
When you hear the term global Methodist church, she may begin global because there are people represented in different parts of the earth, but I also invite you to think about it this way. This movement will have a heart for reaching the globe as a part of her originating impulses that mirror the originating impulses of Methodism.
I appreciate that vision so much, and I appreciate the thought that this truly matters. This discussion of disaffiliation and where we're going as a church body isn't an abstract church decision. This isn't business as usual. This isn't, "Let's talk about it and move on." This is something that we're conventionally being led to do something and will have rippling effects around the world for the glory of God.
Grant, I believe that to be true.
Dr. Billy Abraham, who passed away last year, and whom we all love so deeply and admire, he and I shared the commonality not only of good Wesleyan theology, but we're both Irish. So I miss him and know many others do too.
But I want to share something he said before he passed. He shared that in this new movement, one of the things that excited him was the unleashing of the latent apostolic DNA. He didn't use that exact phrase, that's my phrase, but that was essentially what he was saying.
Here's what is meant by that. There are all types of people in Methodism that are highly talented and gifted and who are a part of the great evangelical tradition. Not evangelical the way it's been hijacked in contemporary Western society with all the dysfunction we see politically. That is not what I mean by the word evangelical. I mean that in its classic sense. There are waves of people that are coming into the global Methodist Church who have that kind of DNA. The persons who are gifted to birth things out of nothing, which is why many of them have been dynamic church planters. When that is unleashed into movement globally, I believe we are in for exciting days.
Now, once again, it doesn't mean that there won't be problems. We will navigate the complexities and the brokenness of the human condition. So I want to be very careful we're not sugarcoating the future, but I believe that the best days are ahead of us. But it's necessary for things to come to a head so that there is this grand unleashing of all of this latent DNA that's going to be uncapped and unleashed in disciple-making, church planting, justice ministry, and mercy ministry on a global level. May God give us grace as we go forward.
