ClarkeComments.com

Hello all:

I’m a little behind because I haven’t had easy access to a computer. I’ll try and catch up in the next day or so.

We have been commuting from Calabasis every day to the campus, because we registered two late and all of the rooms were already taken…and since I have both my four year old son and my wife in tow, things haven’t always been smooth or gone according to plan, but they have been fun.

We tried to make it to Richard Cherok’s lecture on Alexander Campbell, but missed it due to traffic. I ended up making it to Robert Hooper’s lecture of David Lipscomb, however. I had the chance to chat with Dr. Hooper for a few minutes before the lecture as we were both waiting outside the classroom while the previous lecture was wrapping up. Dr. Hooper’s lecture was very enjoyable, he talked about Lipscomb and how he is a man for our time today, which I very much agree with. Dr. Hooper announced near the end that his book Crying in the Wilderness: A biography of David Lipscomb, was going to be reissued next year, with a new introduction and some new chapters with current research. I’m excited about that and looking forward to getting a copy when it comes out.

After the lecture, I ended up having to spend a couple of hours working on Art History homework, so we missed the main lecture and several of the afternoon lectures. We made it back in time to hear Randy Harris give what he called an “unSermon” on “The Care and Feeding of Enemies.” The sermon was powerful…he started by reciting the Sermon on the Mount from memory, and then talked about why he couldn’t actually preach the text. Harris’ thesis was that man in incapable of loving his enemy, and that this can only be done with the love God through the Christian in the Holy Spirit. Harris rightfully asserted that without a deeper, biblical theology of the Spirit, we cannot truly understand or live the Sermon on the Mount. I wish my description of the sermon could give justice to what I heard.

After the keynote, I went to Bobby Valentine’s second installment on the Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ. Again, the lecture was excellent, and I learned alot more about our more recent history. On a side note, it seemed that throughout the week, I ran into Bobby Valentine every place I went, it appeared impossible not to, which was okay. I promise I wasn’t following you around, Bobby!

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

I am at the Pepperdine University Annual Bible Lectures this week.

We arrived a little late for the 1st nights Song Fest, but what we heard sounded wonderful. It is so great to hear a couple of thousand voices singing praises to God at once. The lecture “Turning the World Upside Down” by Donny McLaughlin was excellent. Don spoke on how the church must be a group of revolutionaries for the Kingdom of God. The message was right on, and very timely.

After the main lecture, I went to Bobby Valentine’s lecture “The Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ, 1884 - 1984. Bobby spoke about the Nashville Bible School Tradition versus the Texas Tradition, the personalities behind the approaches and the theology that they pushed. It was a great lecture and I am looking forward to hear the next. John Mark Hicks was unable to join Bobby as he is tied up on other affairs; I was sorry to miss him but Bobby did a great job solo.

I hope to have pictures to follow once I get back to Portland.

-Clarke

Hello all:

In my last post in this series, I spent a few moments criticizing our hermeneutical lenses of Command, Example and Necessary Inference. In this post, I want to focus on the theological system that we use in examining scripture and salvation history as a whole.

The magisterium, and to some extent, the Restoration Movement in general, holds to a three part, or Tripartite, Dispensationalism. This is ironic because we in Churches of Christ enjoy criticizing “dispensationalists” all the time, especially when it comes to talking about eschatology. I think that this is in part because we do not recognize that we are, in fact, dispensationalists ourselves, though of a different strain than the dispensational pre-millenialists we so often spar with.

Dispensationalism generally serves to separate periods of time into categories, and these categories describe how God dealt with his people during those times. For a full treatment of Dispensationalism in general, you can check out the Wikipedia Article on Dispensationalism.

Tripartite Dispensationalism divides the history of redemption into three parts: The Patriarchal Dispensation, the Jewish Dispensation, and the Christian Dispensation. We see a difference in how God dealt with the patriarchs versus the Nation of Israel, and we see a difference in how God dealt with Israel versus the Church. This is biblical fact. The problem comes when we see no connection between the differences, or dispensations, and declare that nothing God has said or done during the prior dispensations, nor anything that occurred in the prior dispensations, applies to us today.

This idea of disconnected dispensational time periods is most clearly seen in our view of the Old Testament as a whole. The magisterium holds that nothing in the Old Testament applies to us, because the Old Testament describes the Jewish and Patriarchal dispensations. For example, then, according to the Magisterium, the fact that we can read about Instrumental Music being used in the Old Testament to worship God does not mean that we can use it today.

A more obvious problem comes though, when we study the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and the teachings of Jesus. Tripartite Dispensationalism claims that the Christian Dispensation started at Pentecost. What does this mean, then? It means that Jesus’ teachings are lumped in with the Old Testament, were only for first century Jews, and that his teachings have no bearing on our conduct and lives as Christians.

It is absurd for us to think that God came down as a man into time, lived life as a human for 33 years, then died on a cross for us, but to also think that God doesn’t want us to take note of how he lived his life on Earth, or what he taught his disciples during that time. Such a claim makes a mockery out of Jesus’ life; a pure, holy, undefiled, perfect life, that he gave up in order to give us eternal life.

Furthermore, such a view of the Old Testament is in sharp contrast with Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. Here, Paul is refering to the Jewish scriptures, not the “Christian” scriptures which haven’t yet been compiled into the Bible at the time of his writings.

Our Tripartite Dispensationalism is more damaging than pre-millenial dispensationalism. The premillenialists don’t deny the Old Testament its significance. We must find a more biblical way of talking and thinking about the History of Salvation. Removing our anti Old Testament bias isn’t enough; we must jettison our Tripartite Dispensationlism and adopt a biblical view. What that view might entail will be the subject of a future post.

-Clarke

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Thank you to Bobby Valentine for writing about the Old Testament and our Tripartite Dispensationalism, I was looking for sources and he provided a great one at just the right time.

Hello:

In my last post we talked about the existence of a Magisterium in Churches of Christ. In this post we’ll examine one of the main holdings of the Magisterium: The Hermeneutic of Command, Example, and Necessary Inference.

Direct Command, Approved Apostolic Example, and Necessary Inference, or CENI as many call it, has become “our” way of reading the bible. It was taught—and still is in a few—of our colleges for many years. It is the lens through which most of our members read the bible.

This teaching states that we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the direct commands given to us by God, his son, and his apostles, and follow those commands. Then we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the examples provided by the apostles, and follow those examples; and finally, again we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out those inferences that are necessary to be followed.

While CENI is the hermeneutical process, there is also a set of assumptions that sit behind CENI. Those assumptions include:

That the New Testament has been handed down as new law to replace the old law.

That the new law is basically a pattern that describes the worship of the church and what a person must do to be saved.

That God expects us to figure out the biblical worship pattern, and to adhere to it.

That lack of adherence to the biblical worship pattern is sinful.

That the sin of not following the biblical worship pattern is not covered by God’s grace and puts eternal salvation in jeopardy.

While I could attack each of these at length, I will at this point just state that there is no biblical evidence that backs up the hermeneutical assumptions of CENI.

As far as the method, it is flawed in many ways. Commands are usually easy to determine.

Examples, though, are far harder. Who approves the examples? What happens when we disagree on which example is approved? A common example that Pentecostal churches follow is the washing of feet. We reject this example out of hand. Is it wrong to wash feet? Is it wrong to not wash feet?

Necessary inferences are even harder. Who says the inference is necessary? Inferences depend totally on human logic. Being a fallen human myself, I don’t know that I want to trust my salvation to how great a job I do at deducting logic problems correctly.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time attacking CENI. Many others have done so, with great success. Brother (and bishop!)Alan Rouse has a great series on the topic if you wish to read further. What I will say is this: CENI is a snag, sitting silently on the woods, waiting to make a widow out of some unsuspecting churchgoer in our fellowships.

-Clarke