I’m currently reading Mark Noll’s America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, and I’d like to blog along with the book to capture my understanding of Noll’s thoughts. The book introduces itself as a “contextual history of Christian theology” (1) specifically in America from the 1730’s to the 1860’s. Noll is more concerned with Christian theology than with the history of the United States, and especially with the development of a distinctly “American” theology. Throughout the nineteenth century, this American theology is an “evangelicalism” marked by four characteristics (here, Noll paraphrases the British historian David W. Bebbington):

1. Biblicism - a “reliance on the Bible as ultimate religious authority”
2. Conversionism - “an emphasis on new birth”
3. Activism - “energetic, individualistic engagement in personal and social duties”
4. Crucicentrism - “focus on Christ’s redeeming work as the heart of true religion” (5)

Noll notes that, in the United States during the nineteenth century, a “surprising intellectual synthesis” (9) grows up between orthodox Christianity and republican government, a synthesis wholly different than in any other nation on earth. The purpose of this book is to examine the creation of this synthesis, its climax, and its ultimate collapse in the Civil War. Noll concludes this introduction with an outline of his plan for the book, which traces the beginnings of this American synthesis, explores in detail the various features of the synthesis in post-Revolutionary American, and then closes with a “theological history of the Civil War” (16). Ironically, the American emphasis on “simple” readings of Scripture (in Noll’s terminology), especially regarding slavery, leads to an “impasse [that] is far from simple” (17). Noll observes that, in no other country, did evangelical Christians attempt to defend slavery from Biblical arguments, as they did in pre-Civil War America.

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In this review, J. Matthew Sleeth discusses a Christian argument for small families, based on the Golden Rule. My wife and I desire to have a large family, of not only biological children, but also adopted and foster, if God sees fit to bless us. We have also chosen not to use contraception. Naturally, I was interested in this opposing viewpoint, printed in a journal that I respect.

Sleeth argues that it’s okay to use contraceptives for family planning purposes. I agree, mostly, that some contraception is an option for Christians, but I’ll get to my perspective in bit. Sleeth summarizes the argument against contraception as thus:

Is the use of contraception against Christian teaching? I have heard many versions of this argument, but they all boil down to the same thing: Contraception is against God’s law, since it interferes with the created purpose of sexual intercourse. In short, contraception is unnatural.

This is a straw man if I ever saw one, one that hits especially close to home. I believe that Sleeth has mischaracterized the argument against contraception and that he, ultimately, misses the point about sexual reproduction.

The Theology of Reproduction
Sleeth gets it backwards. Reproduction is not the “created purpose of sexual intercourse.” Reproduction is the natural fruit of intercourse. Here, I’m summarizing an argument I first heard from James Houston, who was discussing the Trinity and drawing on writings of the Cappadocians and C.S. Lewis. In the beginning, God made human beings in his image. But why did God need to make anything? The Trinity is a self-sufficient community. God is the great “I AM.” He exists because of himself, for himself, without need for prior cause, without need of anything at all, including human company. The pagan gods of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world needed human beings to make sacrifices, worship them, and honor their sacred places. YHWH transcends humanity.

So why bother with human beings, or a created universe for that matter? Because God is love, and love is expansive. It’s like yeast, or a mustard seed, or good news that spreads and spreads, filling everything and everyone. The Trinity created the universe, and created us, out of an expansive love that sought more persons to love. God did not need to create us, or anything at all. He wanted to. We are wanted by God.

And we are made in his image. “Be fruitful and multiple in number” are God’s very first words to human beings. We are to be productive like God - generating new persons to love. In the perfect marriage, children are created out of the love between ‘adam and ‘adamah. It is a joyful expansion of the love between the lovers. In a sense, children “proceeds” from the marriage. It is not a coincidence that emotional bedrocks of a marriage - the wedding, sexual union, and the birth of children - are part of a continuous whole.

To reduce the connection between sex and childbirth to a matter of mere purpose is like saying the created purpose of Jesus was to die on the cross. There’s nothing incorrect, per se, with that statement, but it misses the mark entirely.

Next, the theology of children.

Posted in Children and Family, Christian Theology, Sex and Gender | No Comments »

The Dallas Morning News religion blog has a strange quote from David Frankfurter of the University of New Hampshire about the current “Jesus tomb” controversy - no attribution as to the source, unfortunately.

It’s remarkable that Christian groups are getting so hot under the collar about the implications of this. Scientific archeology can’t touch religious tradition and conviction unless religions come to depend on science for their validity.

What a bizarre statement. The Christians opposing this “tomb of Jesus” nonsense are defending the historical truth of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension (and, of course, his non-marriage to Mary Magdalene). But Frankfurter’s position makes sense if you view “science” and “religion” as two independent spheres of knowledge with little or no overlap. (The assumption, to the popular mind at least, is that “science” is “real” while “religion” is “helpful.”)

The Unity of Knowledge
This is not what orthodox Christianity teaches, however. As the Nicene Creed begins,

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

All of creation - heaven and earth, visible and invisible - is unified, because it was made by the one God. By implication, all of knowledge is integrated. The content of Jesus’ sermons, the historical data of his birth and death, and the molecules forming his flesh are all part of the same, unified reality. We may not know all of that reality perfectly, but Christians, from the earliest days, have firmly connected their beliefs to the historical events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As only one example from many, when Jesus’ disciples were selecting someone to replace Judas as one of the Twelve, Peter said,

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. (Acts 1:21-22)

I am not at all sure what is so “remarkable” about Christians defending the reality of the event that forms the basis of our faith. Like the first disciples, we serve as “witnesses of his resurrection,” through our religion, our science, and through every other aspect of our lives.

Posted in Christian Theology, Science and Religion, Following Jesus | No Comments »