Two ways to live

[nameandnature]

robhu made a post on the Two Ways to Live presentation, which summarises the important points of evangelical Christianity. That particular posting's intended to be evangelistic without getting de-railed by knowledgeable atheists, so I've move my original comment on it from there to here at Rob's request. This posting remains open for whatever discussion you'd like to have on it (as do most of Rob's), subject to my comment policy. Here's my comment:

Serious points about the video, rather than silly ones, in no particular order:

The video doesn't summarise Christianity, it summarises evangelical Christianity. You won't find many universalists or liberals agreeing with it, and I think the Catholics would at least take a different slant on it. So I think it's a mistake to leave out the "evangelical" qualification when talking about TWTL, unless you really do think those people aren't Christians (which I don't think you do).

TWTL assumes the hearer is prepared to accept that God exists in the first place, and that reading the Bible the evangelical way is a good way to find out what God thinks. This isn't a problem if the intention is to summarise evangelical Christianity, but it is a problem if your intention is to persuade other people to believe it (which is usually what TWTL is for), because you're not presenting any evidence.

There's a difference between creating an inanimate object (like a mug) for a purpose and creating a person. People develop their own ideas about what their purpose is, and we don't accord their creators (parents) the absolute right to determine it. Of course, a Christian could respond that God is supposed to be much greater than human parents, but in that case he stands in relation to us as a parent does to a very young child, or to an animal. In that case, we'd accept his right to bring us up how he wanted, but the way he ignores some children in favour of others and his eventual decision to shove those who aren't his favourites in an oven when he's tired of being patient with them would then become a matter for the NSPCC.

Penal substitutionary atonement doesn't make an awful lot of sense. God is supposed to be so keen on justice that someone must pay for sin, but not so keen on justice that it matters whether he punishes the right person. Furthermore, in the Trinitarian understanding, Jesus is himself God, so the action of punishing himself starts to look like a game of solitaire. As gjm11 says, sin is so trifling that turning to Jesus can get you off, but so grave that an omnipotent God really has to send people to Hell if they don't turn to Jesus.

The video guy repeats the claim that we shouldn't wish God to deal with evil in case he zaps us right now, making God out to be about as clever as George Bush, with shock and awe the only thing in his toolbox. As we've discussed before, that argument doesn't hold up.

Comments

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I stand by my statement that these are core truths of Christianity. The gospel message is not unique to Evangelical Christians, and neither is it a uniquely modern idea. Indeed the whole point of Evangelicalism is to point people back at what the original Christians (that wrote the canonical texts) thought. Evangelicalism by it's very nature seeks not to point to itself and it's own ideas, but draw people back to the original texts themselves, and that happens not only in churches but in theological colleges where wider more academic issues are taken in to account.

It's true that if you spoke to other Christians you'd get a different emphasis, and that there are those who would disagree that it is completely untrue. If you spoke to Bishop Spong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Spong) he'd essentially give you a message of atheism dressed up in the clothes of Christianity, but that doesn't mean that if I were to say that Christians believe that God is real that I need to clarify that not all Christians believe this. Some of those who have the label Christian will be wrong. It's also true that if you spoke to Christians from other denominations you'd hear the core truths of Two Ways To Live with different emphases, or perhaps with different things tacked on - that doesn't mean that Christians fundamentally disagree, for example you have argued at length elsewhere that N.T. Wright disagrees that 2WTL is 'the gospel', Wright would have different emphasis in his message and would say that Paul meant something slightly different when he talks about the gospel (essentially it's a big argument about semantics), that doesn't mean that he would disagree that the content of 2WTL is Biblical and a core thing that everyone needs to understand.

You're right that I don't confine the term Christian to Evangelical Christians, and I'd be cautious of coming up with a tightly reigned in list of what things are necessary to be a Christian. At the very least I'd say that believing that there was a Christ and that the person follows them is necessary (by simple linguistic definition), I'd also want to say there is a good deal more than that to it. As you know the various creeds created by Christians in the past have not only been about what they as Christians do believe, but also what they don't believe (I know you've blogged about this in the past). Christians have by necessity had to create creeds to define what Christianity isn't both because they have lacked the ability to create an absolute all encompassing creed to start with, but also because new heresies pop up all the time. Mike Reeves covers this in more detail in his article Why do we have a declaration of belief? (http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/why-do-we-have-a-declaration-of-belief-htm)

So when you state that I don't mean to say that only Evangelicals are Christians you're right. I don't rule universalists or liberals out of being Christians in the same way that I don't rule them in. I think universalism is false (as you know Jesus talked about hell repeatedly, and referred to it as a place of torment that has no crossing so that people may return from it (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016:22-28&version=31)), and that fundamentally liberalism is also flawed. Obviously to deal with all the different emphases that Christians might give, the kind of things liberals and atheists like Spong might say, and so on, would make for an incredibly large, unwieldy, and un-useful post. At best what I can I do is communicate what I think are authentically Christian beliefs. I'd encourage anyone who is interested to look at the passages (and their wider context) in the Bible for themselves. This isn't an exercise where I merely state what I think is true and have the original source documents locked up in my private safe, the Bible is easily accessible to anyone.