Posted by Eliza on: 12.07.2006 /
Finally got there again! I had missed 2 classes to attend other events, and there were 2 weeks without class, so this class was the first one in 4 weeks for me.
This class was not only about the Holy Spirit, it was also about atonement and the various ways it has been misunderstood, and that led into some discussion about other denominations, and how to make sense of things that are hard to figure out.
In this class, I learned:
1) This class started with a review of class #7 (which I’d missed), on Jesus & the crucifixion and resurrection.
Some of the comments from the pastor in this part:
a) The pastor said, If there had been no resurrection, it would mean Christianity is a sham.
b) The pastor said, a Christian funeral isn’t saying goodbye, it’s saying “we’ll see you later”. He said that it’s comforting to know that when a loved one dies, we’ll [that is, the Christians will] see him again, in a new body for eternity.
c) The pastor said that this includes Jesus. The pastor promised his students [except me, I suppose]: “You’ll see Him in His glorified body!”
d) Weirdest moment for me, an atheist: During this part of the discussion, when one of the students raised her hand and started a question by stating, “When we’re all alive again, in our perfect bodies, for eternity…” (then asked her question). It sounded like a trip that’s being planned, and they’re all getting packed. I know that Christians believe this, but it sounded really weird to me to hear this coming from a mortal person, dressed in a sweatshirt, & sitting around a a meeting room table with coffee in front of her. The way she put it really highlighted for me the disconnect between Christian belief, and my (atheist/agnostic) belief that there’s no afterlife, that when we’re dead it’s all over for us.
e) The pastor held up an electric light (like you might see hanging in a garage) & said the lantern was Jesus as a human, the electricity was the Holy Spirit, the light was God (again pointing out for me how difficult it is to visualize this idea of a triune God) — when Jesus was in human form on earth, only flashes of light showed. One person, 2 natures. But in Heaven, Jesus is the lantern with the light on all the time — his human body wasn’t shed, it’s just that he became God full time. He quoted from Ephesians 4:10 about Christ filling the whole universe, & says this occurs with him still having his human nature. He said that Jesus was with us in the classroom right then, in his human form, and said “don’t worry, I don’t understand it either.”
f) One of the students (an older church member) asked “What about people who follow false teachers, who don’t know better? What will happen to them?” The pastor said that was a real concern. He said that each person has a responsibility to check out God’s Word. He said that Catholics, for example, tend not to know the Bible and believe whatever the Catholic Church believes (even if they don’t know what that is).
He said, let’s just say I’m wrong. When you’re in front of God, you’ll say “but I believed it because my pastor said it!’. God will say, “But didn’t you look into it for yourself?’ So, he was encouraging people to read the Bible, but it was clear to me that he meant it to be read within the format he has laid out in this course.
It might have been coincidence, but before this week I have not heard him encourage people to pick up & read the Bible, we’ve been skipping through it looking at one line of scripture here and another there. I do think that he and the text have managed to craft a framework that can support the claims I’ve heard from him (and in the text), but imo it was at the expense of having to put blinders on at first and only focus on the specific lines, clustered together to support certain points, to develop the framework. And I’m impressed by this framework that has been developed, but I don’t see any reason to think that it’s reflects the One way that God wanted the Bible interpreted, if in fact it is His word. It took too much careful crafting to get to this point.
2) Opening the discussion on the Holy Spirit, the pastor commented:
a) Some of you might ask, did I commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Well, if you’re worried about it, you didn’t.
b) Denying the work of the Holy Spirit in you is a sin against the Holy Spirit. He distinguished this from someone who is “spiritually dead”, for whom he said only God (Holy Spirit) can spiritually awaken that person. But, he said, if someone hears the gospel and the Spirit is working on them, and they believe it’s true, but they deny it, they’ve sinned against the HS. For example, he said, many of the Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus was claiming, but they rejected it. As the text says, “Men, in their unbelief and hardness of heart, stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit and are thus lost by their own fault.” (We came back to this idea later in this class; more below.)
3) The pastor talked about the 4 things that Jesus did in the 40 days after his resurrection:
a) Repeatedly appeared to the disciples
b) Taught the disciples (in this 40 days, they matured from bumblers to authoritative teachers)
c) Gave the disciples The Great Commission (Matthew 24:14 Make disciples of all nations); this is the reason that the end hasn’t come yet
d) Promised the Holy Spirit (which came on the Pentecost, 10 days after the Ascension). He said that as Christians and churches evangelize, the Holy Spirit is there. (Which makes me wonder, does the HS disappear when they stop evangelizing? I don’t think that’s what most Christians would say…I didn’t ask him.)
The pastor talked about the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the disciples; they received power and became changed. The Festival of Pentecost is the Festival of Harvest, a Jewish holiday, from which comes the Christian idea of “bringing in the sheaves” (harvesting men for Christ). He said that at/after the Pentecost, the old testament era was finally completed, all had been fulfilled, and the new testament finally begins. He called the Pentecost the birth day of the new testament. (He skimmed Acts, giving us the citations for the lines that talk about the ever-growing number of Christians converted, so we got a sense of the groundswell of conversion that was happening in Acts.)
A woman, church member, who has asked more questions in prior classes than anyone else (except maybe me) asked now about speaking in tongues, whether it still occurred. The pastor was quite clear that he disagrees with Pentecostal or charismatic churches about this. He said even this still happened (people getting “filled” with the Holy Spirit) it should happen according to Paul — no women should speak in tongues in the church, 2 or 3 people at most should speak in tongues (sequentially, not at the same time), and there should be an interpreter. (In reading after this class, I came across the term “cessationism” — that seems to fit with the belief he described.) My notes indicate that he moved from this idea to the idea that the Gospel of John was written to address gnostic heresy which was already seeping into the church; I’m not sure if that was supposed to be directly related to the idea that charismatic Christianity has it wrong.
(By the way, this is the same woman who looked unhappy when the pastor talked about women’s roles, roles in relationships, and childrearing in a prior class. She is pregant, as I’d thought last month. She and her husband leaned together and whispered several times during this class, after the pastor answered her questions and, it seemed to me, at other times after he’d said something I thought was dogmatic.)
4) We are saved by Faith alone (not works). The text gives John 6:44, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. The same woman asked why, then, don’t all people believe? The pastor said she was getting ahead, but he promised to address that near the end of class.
He expanded: “We are born as enemies of God. Christians should never be holier than thou, because if you understand what I’m saying, you realize that I’m a poor worthless sinner, and all I have is a gift from God.” But then he added again, if you’re spiritually dead, you can’t do anything spiritual. God has to raise you up. He has said this before, and I picture myself as one of those people he sees as “spiritually dead”. But later I wondered about that, see below.
He talked about the Word (the gospel), Baptism, and L.S. (I missed what the L meant – Lutheran Sacrament? lesser sacrament? I didn’t ask) as the means by which the Holy Spirit being faith (since the Pentecost). He said that God in his raw power cannot be resisted (for example, on Judgment Day) but when He acts through these means, He can be resisted.
He said that to be born again (1 Peter 1:23) means nothing more than to have faith in Christ. (“Some Christians get that wrong,” he said.) He said some people wonder, “How may I know whether am converted — a Christian?” and answered that all it takes is to believe in the Lord Jesus (not an “experience”).
Here comes the part I have trouble with. He said, if you are saved, it’s God’s doing. If you are not, it’s your doing (man’s doing). “If someone isn’t saved, it’s not God’s fault!” (1 Timothy 2:4). He said that thinking you could make a decision for Christ, choose to be saved – that’s a popular idea now, but it’s wrong. Thinking that some people are “lost by God”, the Calvinist approach, he likewise said was wrong. (The vicar said this is the “crux teologorum” (sp?) they study in seminary.) He spent some time on this whole idea: God draws man toward him. Man can accept, or can push away (that’s my wording). So, if someone isn’t “saved”, it’s his own fault. The text says, “The Holy Spirit earnestly desires all men to be saved. But men, in their unbelief and hardness of heart, stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit and thus are lost by their own fault. (Man is saved wholly by the grace of God. Man is lost wholly by his own fault.)” So, I’m lost and it’s my own darn fault.
But I don’t see how that fits with the idea that some people are “spiritually dead” and only God can awaken them, if God draws all people toward Him. That would have to mean that His drawing starts at some point, isn’t always there – but that’s not the impression I got from the pastor’s discussion on this. (I did not ask.)
The pastor talked about antecedent will (God nevers condemns someone before the fact) and consequent will (God condemned some people after a bad act, in OT).
He read Matthew 15:9 “in vain they do worship me” from the text as part of a teaching point that “Good Works in God’s sight are thoughts, words, and actions that flow from faith and love for God, conform to the will of God as expressed in the Ten Commandmants, are to the Glory of God, and [lastly] benefit our fellowman.” I raised my hand saying that in that verse, Jesus was quoting Isaiah 29:13, but that Isaiah 29:13 has a different meaning, in my reading. In my ESV Bible, Isaiah 29:13 does not have the line “in vain they worship me” – and the next line after the quote in Matthew 15:9 is a much more hopeful, uplifting one: “therefore once more I will astound these people!” The pastor said those sounded like they had the same meaning. (I went up after class, had found in the NIV Bibles provided in class that a footnote to that Isaiah passage says that the Septaguint includes this extra line “in vain…” which isn’t there in the Hebrew version. Once I read the version without, then the version with, that line he agreed that there was a different meaning conveyed, but he thought it was a minor point (basically, I was reading too much into it). He also said that the Septaguint – which I learned how to pronounce in my conversation with him! – may actually be more accurate than the Hebrew Bible, we don’t know.)
5) During this class, largely around the times he was addressing the questions the woman student (church member) was asking, the pastor made some interesting comments about the limits of rationality. I don’t remember exactly when/where in the class he said each of these things, except one was at the closing prayer:
He said to the questioning student, “I used to intellectually challenge what the Bible said, but I just gave up. You just get a bloody forehead doing that.”
He said to her (and the whole class): “I’m telling you about things you won’t understand and you won’t like. I don’t understand them. But it’s God’s word, it’s in the Bible. I can only tell you as clearly as I can what the Bible says.”
He told the questioning student, “You’re absolutely right to ask those questions. But there is no answer” (other than the Bible).
In his closing prayer for this class, the pastor said “We pray that however we struggle intellectually, we come back to your Word.”
I see that as kind of a final touch to the construct that’s been built up: that ours is not to question God & the Bible.
As I said above, I am fascinated by the internal consistency that has been built up in this course (with the pastor supplementing when questions come up). I think that’s one reason I’m asking many fewer questions than I did in the first 1-3 classes – now it’s clear that he’ll have a succinct answer that it all makes sense, and in some cases I can ever see where his answer will be based on. The other reason may be that now he’s not challenging my beliefs – I’m deep in their territory, haven’t accepted their system so apparent inconsistencies don’t bother me as much; it doesn’t, in the end, make much difference to me. Whereas the other students seem to have more questions now, maybe because he’s addressing things they wonder about – they want to get right.
Related to that, the focus has shifted from Christians v. non-believers (in which I felt picked on, a bit) to Lutherans v. other Christians (in which beliefs from other Christian denominations are being called false and mistaken). And on that note, I’ll end.
Thanks for reading/listening to my class report!
Comment by: Karen
1Thanks for another interesting report! I’m interested in the comment above.
What does “at their great peril” mean, if he explains it? Does he go so far as to say that non-Lutherans are not saved? (I would be very surprised by that.) Or is it just that they are somehow “missing out” on certain truths of scripture that are important but not vital to salvation?
Comment by: Helen
2Eliza wrote:
*sigh*
This is what makes conservative Christianity an impenetrable fortress.
Instead of discernment and intellect being valued, they are dismissed as irrelevant/unhelpful with “you won’t like or understand this”.
So now no rational argument against the faith can be made – because it’s not supposed to make sense.
Comment by: benjamin ady
3Eliza
Can I just say thankyou so much for attending the class and sharing with us. It’s helpful for me to “see again” the sort of basic tenets of Christianity (from a … conservative Lutheran viewpoint) as I go through my current process of unbecoming … whatever I was (evangelical christian?).
I’m guessing “L.S.” is “Lord’s Supper”?
I love the phrase “god, in his raw power, cannot be resisted”. It made me immediatly think of several snide sarcastic phrasal spin-offs about christians which I will refrain from sharing. Isn’t that idea kind of inherent in any christian definition of god?
Eliza–just in case you aren’t aware–(although I rather suspect you are), as far as I understand it, there are certainly christians who have a much more inclusivist view–who would even say that you, an atheist, will get to “go to heaven”.
Comment by: Eliza
4He didn’t spell it out, but I suspect he actually does mean that they will not be “saved”. He used a somber tone when answering the older lady who asked how much of a concern it was if someone was following a “false teacher”, and that came up right after his comments about charismatic churches being mistaken about the Holy Spirit. (I didn’t mention in my writeup, that lady went up to talk with him for quite a while after class; they spoke quietly but intently, and he showed her several Bible passages. It sounded like maybe she has a loved one who is on the “wrong track”.)
I can ask him during the first 30 minutes of class tonight, in the review of last week’s class, whether that’s what he meant. Any suggestions on how best to phrase my question?
Benjamin, thanks. I’ve read a little bit about Universalism. It sounds like it has never been a majority view…I’d guess it’s still a minority of Christians (of whatever denomination, flavor, approach, etc) who hold this view. Would you say that’s right? (As in, “correct” – not as in, “just”?) ;-)
Comment by: NCxian
5Wow, they must have been whispering the whole time! ;)
Comment by: Eliza
6Benjamin, I’m curious but won’t ask what snide comments this reminded you of.
The “raw power” comment did kind of make me wonder whether free will only exists before death, & after death free will is moot. (What would that make heaven/eternity like??)
Comment by: Eliza
7Helen wrote:
Yeah, that’s why it seemed like such a capstone to the approach that’s been built up in this class – the final touch.
Comment by: Karen
8Hmmm….
I guess I’d just ask him what he meant by a “false teacher” and what happens to people who are innocently following one and don’t recognize their error. Do they go to hell, or just miss out on the full experience of Christian life here on earth?
Maybe if you have a chance to follow up, you could ask how he’d define a “false teacher” – for instance, could it be someone leading another Protestant church, or a Catholic leader, or just leaders of religions other than Christianity?
Comment by: benjamin ady
9Eliza,
Now I’m actually feeling kind of sorry for you, because you are going off tonite to (what seems to me to be) a rather … unpleasant at best interaction with/experience of Christians, whereas *I* am going off tonite to the meeting of Monkfish Abbey (which as best I can understand is the home fellowship of Paul of PAF fame) which i have rather high hopes will be quite an enjoyable experience. (so nananananana) (sorry–that’s totally uncalled for–a pathetic attempt at humor)
Yes–you are correct about universalism being a very small minority view among Christians. The funny thing is, these are the christians who are most tolerable.
No–I was thinking of my own self created spin offs of “God, in his raw power, cannot be resisted” where one replaces “God” with “Christians” or perhaps “evangelical Christians” or perhaps “fundamentalist Christians”, and one replaces “power” with … well, something slightly or greatly more negative, and one replaces “resisted” with something like “tolerated” or “suffered” or … well, you get the idea.
Comment by: Rachel
10What a disrespectful blanket assertion!
Comment by: benjamin ady
11I’m guessing that the folks at Monkfish would definitely be spoken of “in a sombre tone” by Mr. Lassman
Comment by: Rachel
12That is true, although some of the great theologians of the early church, including Clement and Origen, were Christian universalists.
Ben, I’m jealous! Please give us a report.
Comment by: Mike C
13Yeah, L.S. = Lord’s Supper, i.e. Communion, the Eucharist, that whole bread and wine thingy.
Comment by: Eliza
14Yes, Mike C and Benjamin were right on it – L.S. is Lord’s Supper. (It was spelled out tonight, & will be the topic of a future class session.)
In the review of class #8 tonight, the focus was on faith, faith, faith is all you need – so I did ask my question: I said that he had said at the last class that it was important to watch out for false teachers, and that some churches may misunderstand the Bible (he nodded)…but if faith is really what matters, what difference do those things make?
He said it was a good question, said what really matters (that is, what matters to being saved) is what’s in a person’s heart at their death – whether they believe in Christ. He said that there are brothers and sisters of all denominations who have that core of belief and will be saved, and that there are some Lutherans who won’t be saved. But, he said, it is better to have the right understanding (I’m paraphrasing here, didn’t want to take notes while he was talking to me); he based that on 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, in which Paul says if you have the core right, the rest doesn’t have to be right, but on Judgment Day all of the erroneous stuff will be burned up. (1 Cor 3:15 talks about people “escaping through the flames”.)
Ben, I do hope your evening was enjoyable – it sounds like a really interesting group!
Comment by: Kathleen
15It seems like he’s advocating for the class something remarkably similar to what he’s condemning Catholics for – accepting what they’re told, whether they understand it or not. I guess the big difference here is the Bible? Catholics accept what they’re told, without knowing whether it’s in the Bible, while he wants the class to accept what they’re told about what’s in the Bible (because it’s coming from him, and he knows his stuff).
It’s not that I think God can be understood – I’m fairly firmly convinced that He can’t be – but I do think you should understand what you believe – AND I don’t see anything wrong with having help coming to that understanding, whether your help comes from the Pope (who I’d imagine knows his Bible fairly well) or your local Lutheran pastor.
Comment by: DonnaV
16Thanks again Eliza…I don’t think I could sit thru these classes…but your notes are interesting as is your perspective!!
It always amazes me…if God is our creator(and I do believe He is) why do so many Christians think we need to “check our brains at the door” so to speak & it amazes me as well how the bible can be “cut and pasted” to fit what ever theology is represented. Thanks again for giving me something to THINK about!!!
Comment by: benjamin ady
17Donna,
Your “check our brains at the door” reminded me of a funny story. When I first visited “The Farm”, which is the country house of my lovely wife’s lovely parents, I spotted a book on their bookshelf there entitled “Don’t check your brains at the Door”. Naturally curioius, I picked it up and opened the front cover, and saw that it was inscribed to my wife by an old boyfriend of hers, on her birthday, or for christmas, or some such. I found this hilarious, in it’s implications about his estimate of her intelligence. What sort of a gift is that to give to your girlfriend?
Comment by: Eliza
18Benjamin,
Obviously Megan made a far better choice in marrying you!
:)
Comment by: benjamin ady
19Oh dear, have I … unwittingly been practicing self-aggrandizement?
Comment by: Helen
20Benjamin don’t worry about it – we know it was unwitting so we forgive you :)
(Even if it wasn’t we’d probably forgive you!)
Comment by: Eliza
21I’m thinking Megan would agree that you were by far the better choice, so why shouldn’t we accept that as objectively true?!? ;-)
Besides, this is an example of evolutionarily normal behavior – males compete for the female, demonstrating the characteristics they think she will like. The female chooses the one she thinks will be the better mate, the better father. Voila! You got the girl!
Comment by: benjamin ady
22In response to Rachel’s request…
I had a lovely time at ThursdayPM/Monkfish Abbey. I felt very … safe, and understood, and … familiar. Brilliant. Like the fact that such a time/place exists makes me lean toward believing in god and that she loves me.
On the other hand … I’ve made a committment to do something service oriented every week for these 7 weeks while my family is gone–kind of an attempt on my part to stay out of trouble. So today I went with my excellent friend Walter to help out at the monthly … thing where guys from the church get together and go out and do service for people in the community. Oh–it’s a thing that they do at Calvary Fellowship in Mountlake Terrace.
I almost cried when Andy told us about the family we were going to help today–they have a one year old who has cancer. So about 10 of us went over to their house and just did a bunch of odd things that needed doing to try to help out. It was fun kind of working and talking with the guys.
The senior pastor, Wayne, was along, and he was a reaonably kewl guy, but he did try at least 4 times in our conversation to convince me to come to some event at their church. So that didn’t feel very … excellent. I find it especially … unfortunate since just now looking up their web site I see they have this almost at the top of their main page
I didn’t even want to check out their church–I said right up front “I don’t go to church”.
Now I feel like maybe I was somehow wrongly taking advantage of the opportunity they provided for me to fulfill my service task for this week while failing to allow for the implied associated … aggresive invitations. Or maybe I’m excessively sensitive. Hmmmm….
Comment by: benjamin ady
23(some) christians make me nervous. Like again, on Calvary Fellowship’s (mentioned above) web site, in the “our purpose” section, right at the top they say
. Now not only is it monga wierd to capitilize pronouns referring to god, it also strikes me as very very strange to say of anything or anyone “who alone is sufficient for every need”. What does that mean exaclty? Because it seems to me that in order to say something like that, you either have to seriously wrest the word “sufficient”, or else you have to be brain dead (I mean as in a human vegetable–oh dear–I don’t mean to be crude–Eliza could help me out here–I mean literally completely cut off from almost all sensory experience or even consciousness) so you don’t see or feel the gargantuan enormitude of the need.
(I seem to have climbed onto a soap box. I’m stepping down now)
Comment by: benjamin ady
24I think this might be related to HHJJ…
Comment by: Helen
25Thanks for your interesting comments, Benjamin. I’ll repost them tomorrow as their own blog entry.
Comment by: Rachel
26I think it’s awesome that you have made that commitment to service, Ben. Although, the staying out of trouble part seems highly unlikely. he-he-he
Comment by: Rachel
27Oh yes, I forgot to ask…did they teach any feminist Jedi mind tricks at Monkfish?
Comment by: Helen
28Let’s continue the conversation about Ben’s experiences tomorrow – I’ll repost them as a new blog entry.
Comment by: benjamin ady
29woohoo–I get to be posted at the top of CatE. yippee.
No–no feminist Jedi mind tricks were taught. Maybe I should ask about that when I go back. I’m still looking forward to that session at next years off the map conference.
Comment by: Helen
30Benjamin, yes, you get top billing today! :)
I’ve reposted your comments here: Benjamin’s recent church experiences