Doing Our Own Thing

Winner of “Best Book Subtitle of the Last Decade” must surely go to John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Music and Language And Why We Should, Like, Care. McWhorter is witty, disarming, and generally enjoyable (if, unfortunately, lewd in places) while arguing a serious and convincing thesis. He is no grammar-maven, writing another jeremiad about a general decline in proper grammar, or bemoaning folks (like us) who mix up their whos with their whoms. McWhorter’s point is more interesting than that.

Doing Our Own Thing points out what the grammar-police often miss: there has always been a difference between conversational language and that used in formal oratory or written prose. Just about every culture has a colloquial, spoken form, and a ‘dressed-up’, eloquent form, seen in its diction, precision, and overall style. Everyday conversation includes a lot of hedging (“like”, “sort of” “kind of like” “y’know”), repetition, and colloquialisms. McWhorter has no complaint about this, and documents historical examples of how the language on the street and the language on the page or behind the lectern are, and have always been, very different animals. Having made this point, McWhorter’s book gets interesting.

He shows, using examples of speeches and letters, that the tone of formal oratory and prose has been tending towards the conversational and colloquial since the 60s. Speeches by senators in the 40s, and in the early 2000s are markedly different. Articles from the 1920s read very differently from those 90 years later. McWhorter suggests that the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s enshrined informality, and turned the wider culture against any form of artifice. Language that is carefully written, artfully constructed, and poetic in quality, has come to be viewed as inauthentic, staged, and one more attempt by some intellectual-types to lord it over the common man. Sincerity, authenticity, keeping it real, is represented by an off-the-cuff, everyday style in  speaking and writing. Once again, McWhorter is not raging against the conversational language we all use.  He is asking why those domains where language used to put on its Sunday best now prefer that it  be in beach-clothes.

One cannot blame populism or the triumph of mass culture. These were present in the 50s, when the general public still expected speeches, letters and journalistic prose to contain English used with beauty, finery, and elegance. McWhorter homes in on the oratory of UC Berkeley activist Mario Savio in the 1960s, whose semi-refined, colloquial hybrid speeches set matters in motion for the counter-culture rejection of stylized form in oratory and writing. McWhorter’s thesis may be correct. Since then, the culture in general tends to be suspicious of form, suspecting some kind of chicanery, manipulation or power-play by The Establishment Elites when any artifice is detected. Only what seems to ooze out of us spontaneously is real, and anyone writing or speaking in a formal tone must be a snob, trying to strut his intellectual prowess before us all.

This has profound implications for preachers. Is preaching the same as teaching?  It seems to me that the teaching and admonishing of one another commanded in Colossians 3:16 can take place in all kinds of situations, which would surely use the everyday, conversational style of speaking. However, is the act of preaching the same or different from these contexts? Paul’s sermon in Athens (at least what Luke redacted into written form) appears to follow a rhetorical form that is elegant, artfully constructed and formalised. It certainly doesn’t seem like the language he would use while reasoning with people in the marketplace. Peter’s sermons seem likewise elevated in form and tone.

If preaching is meant to be a kind of authoritative declaration, with language employed to delight, convict, and disturb in ways not possible for conversational speaking, we are faced with a cultural dilemma. The average man is suspicious of artifice, and might be quick to believe that it represents more hypocrisy and religious snake-oil. He wants his preacher to be real, which to him means conversational, colloquial, and possibly, (here and there, at least) profane. The church needs to reach that man. How shall we go about it?

To answer that question, we will have to answer several others. Does Paul’s ‘plainness’ (or ‘boldness’) of speech (2 Cor 3:12) correspond to colloquialisms and conversational language? Does God’s providential use of koine Greek for the New Testament suggest that the high tones of oratory have little place in the church? Is formalized oratory the mere ‘wisdom of men’ (1 Cor 2:4-5)? Even if not, does its perceived pretentiousness call us to embrace a more conversational tone for the sake of ‘contextualisation’? Does the nature of the message, and the nature of the occasion of preaching call for a specific tone not found in other settings? Can the conversational tone fail to command responses that a more elegant tone can? Does our current cultural situation call for artful rhetoric all the more, or do the demands of reaching the lost call us to adapt our approach to what men are familiar with? How shall we limit our own freedoms, rights, and preferences to reach men (1 Cor 9:19-22), without peddling the Gospel (2 Cor 2:17)?

The Power and Place of Ridicule

A post like this may seem to some like those who call evil good and good evil. Can there be anything edifying in ridicule? Is ridicule ever an exercise in saying what is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, virtuous and praiseworthy?

Our aversion to ridicule may not be because we side so strongly with principles of biblical communication. It may be that we have not sufficiently loved what God loves, so as to hate what God hates. Perhaps our dismissal of ridicule as a lawful form of expression for a Christian represents a concession to our culture’s apathy and indifference to right and wrong, and deference to a kind of social equanimity, so visibly manifested in what is called “Minnesota Nice” in that cheerful and chilly State. Courtesy, aversion to argumentativeness or conflict, quiet and modest disagreement, and a generous opinion of all others is seen as ‘niceness’, and of course, Christians are supposed to lead the pack in niceness.

No doubt we could quickly proof-text the importance of being peace-makers, of the courtesy and benevolence contained in love, and of being winsome witnesses to Christ. Who would deny these? No Christian I know of. However, what is often denied is the plain fact that Scripture contains plenty of ridicule, some of it from the lips of the godliest men in Scripture, whose examples we are to imitate.

Elijah is doing nothing less than ridiculing the prophets of Baal when he asks if their God is on a journey or otherwise indisposed. God, through the mouth of Isaiah, mocks the man who uses one end of a piece of wood to bake his bread, and the other end to become his god. Jeremiah does the same, adding that Israel reminds one of camels and donkeys in heat. God ridicules Job’s impertinence in demanding answers from the Almighty by asking him what would be elementary on a Grade One Creator exam. Solomon mocks the sluggard as a squeaky door on its hinges, the lustful youth as a dumb animal to the slaughter, the complaining wife as an incessant dripping on a rainy day, and the fool as a vomit-lapping dog. It’s hard not to see Paul’s descriptions of the Cretans as ridicule, and what else shall we call our Lord’s descriptions of the Pharisees, when He called them blind leaders of the blind, or pictured them praying with themselves thanking God that they were not as other men?

It is the quick-and-easy response of the Niceness Police to point out that these expressions came either from God Himself or from apostles and prophets, and we have no business trying to mimic them. To which I respond, how do you know? On what basis do you place the scorn and ridicule of the Bible as off-limits to God’s people today? Did Scripture teach you that? Do Scriptures such as Ephesians 5:4 or Philippians 4:8 actually indict the verbal behaviour of the prophets and the Lord Himself? It would seem we need to find a place for Scripture’s use of ridicule and scorn, not bowlderise it. We need to harmonise ridicule with principles of godly communication, not embalm it as a historical curiosity.

What does ridicule do? By making sport of the object, we laugh. When we laugh, we know that the object is not to be taken seriously. We are not to lend credibility to Baal worship, or Pharisaism. Such beliefs and behaviours are contemptuous and should be scorned. By encouraging and provoking contempt for what God hates, we may create a simultaneous piety toward what God loves.

Why should we choose ridicule over a less edgy form of expression? In the nature of things, not every opinion needs to be treated seriously, because not every opinion has been seriously considered or seriously articulated. Not every act deserves serious consideration, for not every act has been seriously contemplated for its meaning, or seriously performed. If the speakers and doers were not serious to begin with, do they merit being taken seriously? Should we unjustly lend them treatment they do not deserve? Should I listen to a nonsense rhyme with the scrutiny I give to Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion? If someone is acting like a duffer and a goofball, the perfectly appropriate response is to point out that he is acting like a goofball and a duffer.

Great danger looms here, however. Scripture warns us against the reckless scoffer and the careless mocker. Ridicule is a tool like fire. The trained fireman actually knows a constructive use for fire. He knows the importance of destroying for the sake of conservation: creating fire-breaks to prevent further damage, razing a condemned structure to prevent further injury or death, allowing fires to burn themselves out, lest they persist and spread. The eight-year-old boy is simply thrilled to see something burn. Scorn and contempt in the hands of a youth or a novice usually does little but harm.

Before we take up the flame-thrower of ridicule, we must be deeply committed to conserving the faith. We would not want to destroy anything true, good and beautiful while torching something else. We should demonstrate our deep love for what God loves, and display how much we cherish, the true, the pure, the just, the noble, the lovely, and the virtuous. Let those careful communicators who know what is to be kept, and what is to be incinerated, use the flame of ridicule to create love for what God loves.

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Topics I’d Like To See At a Conference (But Probably Never Will)

1. “Ridding Your Church of Entertainment”
2. “Training Your Future Pastors When They’re Still Children”
3. “Music Education in the Church: A Priority”
4. “Replacing Youth Groups With Effective Discipleship of the Young”
5. “Meaning and Morality – Teaching Christians Discernment for All of Life”
6. “Preaching and Classical Rhetoric”
7. “Thinking Christianly: The Real Objective of a Christian School”
8. “Returning Four-Part Hymn Singing to Your Congregation”
9. “Less is More: Supporting Less Missionaries With More for Sustainable Indigenous Ministry”
10. “Why It Takes Ten Years (Or More) To Get a Church Planted”
11. “Equipping the Saints: The Pastor As Coach, Not Performer”
12. “Architecture and Reverence: Designing Meeting Places Meant for Worship”
13. “Membership and Covenanting: The Lost Art of Mutual Oaths”
14. “Pragmatic Ministry & Why It Doesn’t Work”
15. “Body-Life: Teaching a Church Community to Behave Like One”
16. “Contextualization: An Excuse For Anything-Goes Evangelism?”
17. “The Lost Art of Public Prayers”
18. “Evangelism in an Apostate Culture: Redefining ‘the Lost’”
19. “Table Manners – Approaching the Lord’s Supper As More Than A Tag-On”
20.

Feel free to add to the list.

Raise Thee, My Soul

Raise thee, my soul, fly up, and run
Through every heav’nly street,
And say, there’s naught below the sun
That’s worthy of thy feet.

Thus will we mount on sacred wings,
And tread the courts above;
Nor earth, nor all her mightiest things,
Shall tempt our meanest love.

There on a high majestic throne
Th’ Almighty Father reigns,
And sheds his glorious goodness down
On all the blissful plains.

Bright like a sun the Saviour sits,
And spreads eternal noon;
No evenings there, nor gloomy nights,
To want the feeble moon.

Amidst those ever-shining skies,
Behold the sacred Dove!
While banished sin and sorrow flies
From all the realms of love.

The glorious tenants of the place
Stand bending round the throne;
And saints and seraphs sing and praise
The infinite Three One.

But O! what beams of heav’nly grace
Transport them all the while
Ten thousand smiles from Jesus’ face,
And love in every smile!

Jesus! and when shall that dear day,
That joyful hour, appear,
When I shall leave this house of clay,
To dwell amongst them there?

- Isaac Watts

Scientific Creationism

Many moons ago, I attended – what shall we call it – an independent Baptist institution of higher learning. It was staffed almost entirely by American missionaries, who seemed urgent to inculcate in us the tribalism of American Fundamentalism, and to import to South Africa controversies among American Fundamentalist Baptists. We had never heard of Lordship Salvation, MacArthur’s view on the blood, or the inerrancy of the King James Version. Thankfully, these men made sure that Christians at the tip of Africa were thoroughly embroiled in the same controversies.

I was there for all of one year, before it began crashing down, under the weight of the not-unusual IFB in-fighting. It was an early exposure to how seriously Fundamentalists take the life of the mind, and to what degree differences could be tolerated among them.

One of our courses was “Scientific Creationism”. To be fair, there were commendable and helpful sections in this course, summarising views such as the Day-Age Theory, Theistic Evolution, and the Gap Theory. On the other hand, much of the material was supposed ‘scientific evidence’ for creation. I was reared in a secular home, attended public schools and a secular university, and was unaware of a ‘scientific’ defence of Genesis. I was impressed.

As the years rolled on, and my reading broadened, my impression of “Scientific Creationism” changed. It now seemed like a weird hybrid. After all, the scientific method is essentially 1) the observation or measurement of empirical phenomena, 2) the formation of predictive, explanatory hypotheses, and 3) the repeatable testing of these hypotheses through experimentation. Understood in this way, neither creation nor evolution qualifies as science. They are both history. Certainly, one is a true history of origins, and the other is false, but neither is science.

Just as Darwinists are guilty of using junk science to supposedly verify their mythology, Christians do the same thing with Scientific Creationism. Instead of accepting the Word of the only Observer present at the beginning, we try to gain credibility for God’s own Testimony by referring to Moon dust, ocean sediment, the Earth’s magnetic field, and the Moon’s distance from the Earth. In other words, we say to the unbeliever, “We agree with you: science is objective truth! Look, we have science to prove the Bible!” This is not apologetics; it is politics. We want respect, so we insinuate supposed science into the conversation to ‘prove’ Genesis.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a creationist. I see value in Christians’ examining of the natural world and countering of the Darwinist interpretations. Christians ought to be interested in understanding if carbon-dating, dinosaur bones, or star distance is unassailable evidence for Darwinism. Origins is a deadly serious discussion. And to the degree that Christian botanists, palaeontologists, geologists, and astronomers can help us understand the physical phenomena interpreted through a Scriptural framework, this can help believers, and at least provide a serious discussion with committed evolutionists. I enjoy reading scientists who are creationists. I enjoy reading unbelievers (such as David Berlinski) who express doubts over Darwinism. I am not calling for scientists who are Christian to withdraw from the conversation. Besides, what we discover from the natural world ought to turn into worship.

What I now object to is masking faith with science. If we object to Darwinists pretending that their theory qualifies as science, let’s not be the kettle  who’s calling the teapot black. Let’s admit our theory is history, and state boldly that we trust history as written by the Creator over history written by 19th century Englishmen. Let’s not claim we are objective scientists, who have happened upon incontrovertible evidence for a Young Earth, and then present this stuff in biology classrooms or in church services. Rather, let’s affirm that Genesis 1 and 2 were spoken by One who cannot lie. Let’s put (or leave) science in its place – and it’s not in the pulpit.

Om God Bo Alles Lief Te Hê

 “Jy wil by my weet waarom ons God moet liefhê en hoeveel. Ek antwoord, die rede om God lief te hê, is God self; en die mate waarin ons liefde aan Hom verskuldig is, is onmeetbaar.” – Bernard van Clairvaux, On Loving God.

Ons wil God liefhê, nie net die idee van God liefhê nie. Ons moet God liefhê soos Hy is, as ons die eerste en grootste gebod wil vervul. ‘n Mens het God nie op dieselfde manier lief as wat jy ‘n kind, ‘n kameraad of klassieke musiek lief het nie. Ons moenie vir God lief wees soos ons ons troeteldiere, ons rekenaars of ons beroepe liefhet nie. Soos C.S.Lewis dit stel, “die tipe begeerte is gesetel in die voorwerp van begeerte …” Om God op die regte manier lief te hê, moet die liefde wat jy gee ooreenstem met wie Hy is.

Die ou uitdrukking is, daar is ‘n gewyde liefde vir God. As jy God op dieselfde manier liefhet as wat jy  vir roomys, sagte speelgoed, romantiese situasies of oulike klein hondjies lief is, dan sou jy skuldig wees aan ‘n liefde wat nie ooreenstem met wie God is nie  -  ‘n onvanpaste liefde.

Wat as die liefde wat ek dink ek vir God het nie ooreenstem met wie of wat God werklik is nie? As my liefde vir God totaal van koers af is, maar ek ervaar tog ‘n warmte, waarmee is ek eintlik besig? Eintlik is ek besig met selfbevrediging. Die menslike hart is so bedrieglik (Jer 17:9), dat wat ek liefde vir God noem, eintlik afgodsdiens is: ‘n aanbidding van myself en my eie geluk. In die lig van die groot onenigheid in hedendaagse Christelike kringe oor hoe ons moet sing, aanbid of preek oor God,  is ons dalk net die geslag wat in ‘n groot mate daarin uitgeblink het om onsself tevrede te stel en dit dan aanbidding te noem.

Christian First-Graders

A first-grade teacher does not require, but typically expects the five and six-year-olds that arrive in class to be able to:
* understand enough language to communicate with other humans
* eat their own food without assistance
* sit in a chair (or on the floor) without rolling on the stomach and 
flailing helplessly
* relieve themselves without assistance
* walk from one place to another without getting lost

These basic functions are unwritten expectations of how five or six-year-olds ought to be in terms of linguistic, social and physical development by the time they are placed in a school with other children. Schools typically don’t make these things a written requirement, but most first-grade teachers are ill-equipped to teach or train a first-grader who lacks these skills. Were the teacher to devote her time to training a five-year-old to speak, sit or use the bathroom, it is safe to say that she would do little else. The expectation is that parents are responsible for these things.

Similarly, the Bible does not require, but typically expects that the adults that arrive in church under its instruction be able to:
* sense the difference between appropriate and inappropriate loves
* have some sense of what is beautiful and what isn’t
* read a serious text with carefulness
* sustain attention to and experience comprehension of arguments
* understand something of why form matters
* respect the need for authority and differing roles
* retain a sense of tradition and posterity.

These basic abilities are the unwritten expectations of how the Bible expects a human being to be, before he or she enters the classroom of the Bible. The Bible itself is a serious text, the Bible itself makes use of extended argument, the Bible itself makes use of several forms within its covers, the Bible assumes that we come to the task of worship with certain understandings of form, occasion, and tradition already in place, the Bible tells us God is beautiful (glorious), and the Bible tells us not to take God’s name in vain. Certainly the Bible does not make these sensibilities and perceptions a requirement to salvation or even obedient Christian living. They are rather like what a first-grade teacher expects to be in place before she can instruct the children further. There is no point talking about mathematics if the child cannot speak English. In the same way, pastors find themselves preaching texts that often require many of these things to be in place to be really comprehensible.

Where are these things supposed to be learned? Ideally, a culture teaches people these things. And it need not have been the pinnacle of Western high culture either. Most folk cultures have taught people to judge beautiful from ugly and appropriate from inappropriate, give honour to whom honour is due, recognise particular forms and ceremonies for particular events, possess some sense of heritage and so on.

The problem instructors of the Word face today is this: we no longer have a culture like this. We are in a post-cultural era, with little still existing of the early schooling of the human being which most cultures have supplied. Were a pastor to spend his time training his people to do or know what years inside a culture ought to have done, he would do little else.

Yet I suggest, to a large degree, this is the situation in which we find ourselves. The state of emergency that characterises Western Christianity is the religious equivalent of trying to teach people to sit in a chair and do the multiplication table at the same time, or trying to teach people to say their first words and write them simultaneously, or trying to do potty-training and reading in one go. Pastors need to teach the meaning of form alongside biblical forms, the meaning of beauty alongside God’s glory, the meaning of ordinate affection alongside those affections.

If a first-grade teacher receives a group of five-year-olds who cannot speak, walk, or sit, she will do little good by simply keeping to her lesson plan. She needs to recognise the problem before she can correct it. I suggest the beginning of change is to recognise how little we possess of what the Bible assumes we already have. From there, we can begin small and humble efforts to try to restore what the Bible expects of its first-graders.

Conserving the Whole Counsel of God – 4

To conserve the whole counsel of God, conservative Christians must understand how fellowship with other Christians works. Christians will not find exact agreement on the whole counsel of God, therefore we must understand how we are to respond to our differences in doctrine. Because many Christians have not understood fellowship, and its corresponding doctrine, separation, they have often failed to conserve the whole counsel of God. This is because of the two extremes in approach towards Christian fellowship.
The one extreme, common to some fundamentalists, is to treat fellowship or separation as an all-or-nothing deal. In other words, someone like this might say “I am either in fellowship with you, or I am separated from you!” With this kind of thinking, separation becomes akin to finding leprosy in a person in Old Testament Israel. Once the separatist discovers some difference in doctrine or practice deemed important by him in another believer, he ‘separates’. This, to him, means that he no longer fellowships with the person he has separated from, on almost any level. To this thinking, the people you fellowship with you are not separated from, and the people you separate from you have no fellowship with.

The problem is, after some time the pool of people with whom you are actually still in fellowship with grows ever smaller, until it begins to produce a kind of incestuous fellowship with ‘our group’, ultimately breeding a schismatic, if not ultimately heretical, attitude towards Christianity. Eccentricities abound, religious pride seeps in, political in-fighting occurs, territorialism grows and it is safe to say that many such groups end up falling on their own swords while dying for some quirky doctrine far removed from the gospel.

The other extreme, common to ecumenists, is to treat unity as an end in itself, and to regard all instances of separation as disobedient acts of schismatic believers sniping at each other. For the ecumenists, the reason for unity is not defined, except for the unquestioned premise that Christian unity is always more desirable than Christians separating. “If unity is possible on any level, it must be experienced on every level”, they reason. Ecumenists are definitely minimalists when it comes to deciding on what (if anything) Christians must agree on to be in unity, and usually work to artificially create or foster outward forms of unity between Christians of all stripes. The problem with the ecumenist is that because his guiding principle is inclusiveness of fellowship, his restrictions on fellowship grow ever smaller. At some point, he meets people who are outside the boundary line of the gospel itself, while professing to believe some of the things inside the boundary line. Usually, his response is to extend Christian fellowship to them as well. This goes back to the problem of indifferentism. The gospel is demeaned, the Christian faith re-interpreted, and the whole counsel of God loses some of its integrity in the eyes of observers.

Conservative Christians must know that neither of these approaches will succeed in conserving the whole counsel of God. They must instead remember that fellowship and separation are not either-or propositions, and that unity, while crucial, is not to be attained at the expense of the gospel.

Fellowship and separation are best understood like two points of the compass. The closer I am to west, the further I am from east. The more fellowship I have with certain Christians, the less separation I have from them. The more I separate from them, the less fellowship I have with them.
And here is the point: as a Christian, you never experience complete fellowship or complete separation from another believer. Here is why.
Fellowship is what we hold in common. By definition, two believers, at absolute minimum, have the gospel they believed in common. Even if they agree on nothing else, they have fellowship in the gospel. Extending inwards from the boundary of the Christian faith is the whole counsel of God, with its various doctrines, of varying importance. At the beating heart of Christianity is our loves – loving God supremely, loving what He loves, to the degree He loves them, in the ways He loves them.
Maximum fellowship includes the whole counsel of God and extends right into the centre of our affections. The more of the whole counsel of God that I hold in common with another believer, the more fellowship I have with him or her.
This is where the taxonomy of doctrine detailed in the last post becomes so important. If you cannot work out the relative importance of doctrines, or see the relative weight of errors in doctrine, you will not be able to know if you hold in common is more or less important.

Following on from this definition of fellows ship and separation we see that depending on how much fellowship actually exists determines how it will be worked out in real life. On the lowest level, I might have minimal fellowship with a believer who has a completely skewed system of theology. But, we can have a cup of coffee together and rejoice in Christ’s grace in the gospel. You could say I am separated from him as far as ministry partnerships, church membership, and other such things go. I did not have to engineer such separation: the fellowship simply didn’t exist in enough areas to merit those endeavours.
I might meet a charismatic believer who becomes my friend. Our differences are very wide, but it is possible, because of his openness, for us to begin a type of discipleship relationship. He is not yet close to being able to teach in my church, evangelise with me, break bread with me or lead – but where fellowship exists, we take it and grow it.
On a higher level, I might have friend who is a Presbyterian elder. We have fellowship on a number of doctrines, but not on the matter of baptism, nor on certain issues of church polity. We could enjoy each other’s company, we will discuss baptism privately, and I might have him preach in my pulpit – but not on the topic of baptism or church polity. We couldn’t plant a church together, nor could he be a member of my church (or I of his), nor could he be an elder in my church or vice-versa. On those levels, we practice separation, because of the areas in which fellowship does not exist.
On a higher level, I might have a friend who is a dispensationalist Baptist pastor. We have more areas of fellowship between us, and we be able to do all the things mentioned in the previous levels, and furthermore undertake a joint evangelistic outreach. We have enough fellowship to make such targeted collaboration possible, and fruitful. However, he does not hold certain views on the Regulative principle of worship, and is more pragmatic in some of his ministry philosophies. He probably wouldn’t be comfortable in my church, and couldn’t be a member, nor be a leader. Our fellowship is quite thorough, but where it does not exist, by implication, we are separated.
On an even higher level is church membership, for to covenant together in church is to agree on fairly specific doctrine, agree with the church’s philosophy of ministry, and find great like-mindedness.
On the highest level would be church leadership – the level of agreement needed here is as high as it gets.

The point of all of this is to say that conserving the whole counsel of God includes how you relate to other professing believers who do not believe the whole counsel of God as you do. We do not have to submerge our differences beneath a façade of Christian unity, hypocritically pretending to have fellowship on all levels, when we don’t. We don’t need to turn our backs on every believer who differs from us, however slightly. You do not have to drop the doctrine to gain an artificial unity. You do not have to drop your brother to conserve the doctrine.
Our taxonomy of doctrine and militancy towards error informs our taxonomy of fellowship and on what level it can be realised. Our understanding of how much agreement is needed for what kind of collaboration further informs it.
We experience fellowship where it exists, and by implication, we experience separation where the fellowship does not exist. We design our interactions to include as much fellowship as can be experienced, given what we actually hold in common.

We Interrupt This Broadcast…

of heavy philosophical thought, with a timely comedic intermission. Enjoy.

(For those who can’t see it, click on this link.)