How does forgiveness work?

The Washington Post's On Faith forum currently features bloggers commenting on how and whether the sexual lives (and infidelities) of public figures should be scrutinized. Underlying all this, of course, is the debate over whether the sexual behavior by individuals in a society is inherently a private or a public activity. And the opinions range from "It's nobody's business" (Susan Jacoby) to "Of course people have a right to know because it suggests something about the person's moral character and ability to lead" (Chuck Colson).

Christians might think how this issue relates to the way we treat one another in the church - particularly church leaders. In one Post commentary, the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy argues that adultery is no more serious than other sins and should be forgiven by the church. Grace, he says, is just as capable of healing folks of sexual sin as it is of any other sin. I say, "Amen to that!" But the question then becomes, "How does that forgiveness happen?" For instance, should we follow Matthew 18 and 1 Timothy 5 and make forgiveness a matter of the entire community? Following the logic of Titus 1, should forgiveness carry with it a necessary removal from ministerial office? That is to say, do we need to look hard at the way that grace and responsibility must go together? And is any of this different for a church leader than it is for a lay person?

My sense is that, while adultery is no more serious than other serious sin, it - like financial malfeasance - has the ability to do a disproportionate amount of harm to the body of Christ. Anyone familiar with a congregation where one of the pastoral leaders has commited adultery knows what I am talking about. And I worry that the church does not deal with such transgressions in ways that are both gracious and responsible. We get so freaked out by adultery that we either want to sweep it under the rug or punish it vindictively.

So what would a gracious and responsible ministry to sexual transgressors in the church look like? And why does this seem to be one area where the church fails so miserably?

Holy Habits

A couple of weeks ago, I began a column series on the means of grace. In that first column, I gave an overview on the means of grace in the Wesleyan tradition. We can understand the means of grace as spiritual disciplines, so long as we realize that - in a Wesleyan sense - spiritual disciplines encompass both those works of piety and works of mercy that are constitutive of the love of God and neighbor.

In my second installment of the series, I look at works of piety. It's a pretty old-fashioned sounding name, I admit, but works of piety are nothing more than those holy habits that draw us closer to God through regular worship and devotion practices. For practicing Christians, this is pretty familiar territory: Bible reading, Holy Communion, prayer, fasting, Sunday worship, etc. But I think there is also a great challenge in approaching works of piety in a true Wesleyan sense, and that is to do it with a high degree of rigor and commitment. I know that I am nowhere near I would like to be in my personal holiness. But I also know that I stand in a tradition rich with the resources to help me better respond to the grace the Christ offers me daily.

In the next two columns in this series, I will look at works of mercy and Covenant Discipleship. Stay tuned.

Yancey on Wesley

Philip Yancey has an interesting column in the current issue of Christianity Today. In it, he describes taking John Wesley's Journal along on a speaking tour of England. (The article is here.) Yancey challenges Wesley's reluctance to 'stop and smell the roses,' coming close to accusing him of not appreciating the beauty of God's creation in the here-and-now in his relentless quest to bring the saving message of the gospel to needy people.

Now I'll be the first to admit that Mr. Wesley could be overly intense much of the time. But I don't think it was because he was so heavenly focused that he was of no earthly good. Instead, I think he was trying to do what St. Augustine spends so much time talking about in the Confessions. Namely, that as we express our love for the things of this world, we should love them in God. We should not love the creation as an end in itself, but rather as an expression of the glorious God who made it. And we should not love people as ends in themselves - that does neither us nor them any good - we should rather love them because they are made in God's image and because in loving them we learn better how to love God. A proper orientation for our love (which is, I think, what Wesley was concerned with) helps to make sure our love does not turn us toward idolatry.

Yancey writes that he is interested in looking at the balance "between our investment in this world and in the next." I'm not sure that's the right way to frame it. Because if we love the creation in God, our love for it does not distract us at all from our focus on eternity. In fact, it prepares us for it by showing it to us in the present.

Albert C. Outler (1908-1989)

I first encountered Albert Outler during the video presentations for the Disciple I Bible Study series back when I was a kid. In those videos, he is an elderly, slightly rumpled, distinguished-looking scholar in a dark, three-piece suit. He carries on an on-screen conversation with Bishop Richard Wilke, where his wit and playful personality are evident. And he makes the bishop look positively youthful.

I'm not positive about the date of that video, but I believe Disciple I came out around 1987 (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Outler died in 1989, which means he would have been in his late 70s when those videos were made. But he still displays plenty of energy, and it is clear he is enjoying what he is doing.

Having been studying Wesley at Duke for the past 18 months, it is amazing how much of the contemporary resurgence in Wesley Studies owes its existence to the influence of Outler. I have heard both Dr. Richard Heitzenrater and Dr. Randy Maddox comment on Outler's key role in putting Wesley back in the forefront of Methodist theological conversations (with Dr. Heitzenrater's personal anecdotes being particularly interesting). It's probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that the work of people like Heitzenrater, Maddox, and the other top scholars in Wesley Studies would not have been possible without Outler and Frank Baker.

In the current issue of the United Methodist Reporter, Mary Jacobs has this article, which explores Outler's legacy from the standpoint of many of his more famous former students (among them, SMU professor Dr. Ted Campbell and Bishop Scott Jones). Their comments give a good sense both of Dr. Outler's legacy and his personality.

Perils of Gen X Life

So for everyone who is losing his life to Facebook, here's a song especially for you.

(And if anyone can tell me how to embed the Youtube screen into a blog post, I'd appreciate it. I spent more time than I'd like to admit trying to figure that one out this morning.)

Oh, and here's a UM Reporter column I wrote on Facebook friendships a few weeks ago.

The Reformation ain't over...

... at least not if the conversation over at Ben Witherington's blog is any indication.

Prof. Witherington's post is about the recent illicit ordination of two women to the Roman Catholic priesthood in St. Louis (for a story on that, see here). But the conversation immediately turned to the subject of ecclesial authority - with Prof. Witherington taking a very Protestant ad fontes and sola scriptura approach to church history and Scripture, and several respondents (led by the mysterious and passionately Catholic "Aelfwine") appealing to the principle of the magisterial authority of the RCC.

Around here at Duke, you will occasionally here folks drop the comment that "the Reformation is over," as if there's nothing left to argue about and all we need to do is realize that we are all part of one catholic tradition. Now I'll admit that I hold the authority of the tradition in much higher esteem than your typical Protestant (which is just to say that I am a Wesleyan), but I could never go all the way to the RCC's understanding of the Magisterium. Papal jurisdiction as we see it today is the result of real historical developments - developments that hinge on accidents of history - and thus claims of its absolute and providential sovereignty over the whole church are gross overreaches of the early church's conciliar understanding of authority (not to mention the 19th-century dogmatic assertion of papal infallibility when speaking ex cathedra).

In addition, the claims that medieval doctrines (e.g., the transubstantiation of the Communion host and claims about Mary such as the immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, and bodily assumption) should be considered to have dogmatic authority even when they are either extra-biblical or even contra-biblical is an overreaching of authority as well as, in come cases, bad theology on the part of Rome.

So no, the Reformation is not over. And it is worth saying that it's not just the Protestants who've still got a legitimate argument against Rome. Neither the Orthodox nor the Coptic faiths are willing to accept the primacy of Peter in the way Rome asserts, particularly with some of the doctrinal baggage that comes along with it. As for us Methodists, I'm glad we've got someone as eloquent as Prof. Witherington to make our case.

Channels of grace

My current column in the United Methodist Reporter is on spiritual disciplines as means of grace. This is the first column in a planned four-part series, which will examine the theology of spiritual disciplines from a Wesleyan perspective. A little personal background:

One of the most effective means of growing in grace that I have ever experienced is participation in a Covenant Discipleship Group. I was a member of a CD Group (or some similar type of accountability group) every year from my first year in divinity school until last year. Having that regular relationship of accountability with brothers and sisters in Christ is crucial in battling sin and growing towards Christian maturity. Once you get used to it, it is a real spiritual lifeline.

Then my wife and I moved to Durham so I could go back to graduate school, and I had to leave my CD Group in Searcy, Arkansas, behind. The first year we were here, I met with a friend each week to discuss issues in our faith and pray together. Those weekly meeting were crucial touchstones for my faith as I dove headlong back into the books. But it wasn't the same as a CD Group.

But that's changed in the past couple of months. A number of students at Duke Divinity School are interested in incorporating a Wesleyan spiritual discipline into their lives, and the result has been the formation of two CD Groups - a group of five men and a group of five women. I am helping to resource these groups, in addition to participating as a member myself. And I can't tell you how great it is to be back involved in Covenant Discipleship. I have encountered no better way to receive the grace that sanctifies.

Pro Vita Christians

I am pro-life, all the way down. That causes confusion, though, because of the connotations that the term "pro-life" has in debates around abortion. "Pro-life" opponents of abortion are contrasted with "pro-choice" advocates of legalized abortion. And of course, pro-lifers are seen as generally conservative and pro-choicers as generally liberal.

Then there is the distinction between anti-death penalty advocates and pro-death penalty advocates. The former are stereotyped as liberal and the latter as conservative.

Then there are people like me, who see God's valuation of all human life as sacred and who are pro-life (in the abortion sense) and anti-death penalty. I recently heard an anti-death penalty comment that it is important to realize that life does not begin at conception and end at childbirth. And that's true. It begins at conception and ends at natural death, whenever that comes. I believe in protecting and upholding life at every stage along the way (and as a correlate to that, I believe in Christ's power of redemption no matter what a person has done).

So what label describes people like me? (Confused, maybe? I hope not!) I think there are actually a lot of us out there, Gen X'ers especially, who want to consider their views from a Christian perspective first (rather than from a polticial perspective that then gets imported into a supposedly Christian context). And I think the number of these people is growing.

I propose a new term: Pro Vita Christians. It is a way of saying "for life" or "in favor of life" but without the political baggage of the term "pro-life." It is a way of affirming God's love and care for all of his creatures - from the unborn baby in the womb to the convicted killer on death row.

This is a confessional stance, to be sure. And it is sure to be unpopular with both conventional liberals and conventional conservatives. But isn't it time Christians started thinking about their stances based on theology rather than secular political ideology?

I'm a Pro Vita Christian. All the way down. Who's with me?