Happy Fourth everyone! I pray you have a fun and safe holiday. Thanks for reading my newsletter. It means so much. As always, I’d love to know your thoughts.
Over thirty years ago, I surrendered to the call of ministry. Unlike most who do the same, I didn’t attend seminary, graduate, and then take a pastorate. It was the opposite. God quickly threw a church in my lap, and I got my education on the fly. I don’t recommend it.
I will never forget my first year as a pupil. Being freshly exposed to established (dispensational) doctrine and systematic theology was intoxicating. Learning amidst all that mahogany and marble makes a fellow think the professors and textbook authors have God factored into neatly arranged formulas. I knew other views were out there, but surely my institution had it right. Looking back, I realize that, without a doubt, there is no more brilliant and knowledgeable being on this earth than a Baptist seminary student with two semesters under his belt.1 By the way, I’m using male pronouns because back then, one of those solid doctrinal bents I held to was God only qualified men to receive theological training, and because I’m pretty sure women are not prone to such hubris.
I’m telling you this because our present chapter in Mere Christianity opened my eyes and helped me see the dangers of packaging God into anything—a formula, a doctrine, a denomination, or even a book. He’s infinitely bigger than that. Lewis is careful to distinguish between the doctrine explaining something about God and the thing about God it’s trying to explain. In this case, as it relates to the atonement, the work of Christ’s death on the cross. He writes,
Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to; but that is not the point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work. I will tell you what I think it is like. All sensible people know that if you are tired and hungry a meal will do you good. But the modern theory of nourishment—all about the vitamins and proteins—is a different thing. People ate their dinners and felt better long before the theory of vitamins was ever heard of: and if the theory of vitamins is some day abandoned they will go on eating their dinners just the same. Theories about Christ’s death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works. Christians would not all agree as to how important those theories are. My own church—the Church of England—does not lay down any one of them as the right one. The Church of Rome goes a bit further. But I think they will all agree that the thing itself is infinitely more important than any explanations that theologians have produced. I think they would probably admit that no explanation will ever be quite adequate to the reality. (Emphasis mine)
I learned these various views in my religious education. They are important and should be examined, but ultimately, they are just theories contrary to what the “TheoBros” on Twitter banter about.2 And if you get caught up in promoting the “right” theory, you miss the wondrous mystery they all try to explain: Jesus was God come to us in the flesh who took our place on the cross, dying to rise again, and somehow that opens the door for us to be made right with him.
Lewis helps us stay on track by explaining how the atonement reveals we all have gotten ourselves into a hole we can’t escape.
Now what was the sort of ‘hole’ man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our ‘hole’. This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.
Can we all agree that it is better to bring a chap to the place of repentance than to make him choose an atonement view? Somehow—and there are more than a few doctrines on how this works—God helps us in our helplessness to turn away from ourselves and our sins toward him. Lewis describes it as when a teacher guides a child’s hand to form letters.
Lewis closes by writing, “Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it.” I can’t remember where, but I read a book about Lewis’ view on theology where the author explained it this way: don’t mistake the tracks for the thing that laid them down. That’s a good word and one I try to practice these days.
Similarly, as Beth Moore puts it in her memoir, All My Knotted Up Life, “Let it be nailed on some sacred door that there is no scrutiny on earth like that which proceedeth from the mouth of a first-year seminary student.”
From slang.com: A theobro is a conservative male (likely evangelical) obsessed with arguing Christian theology with others, often on Twitter.
"God helps us in our helplessness to turn away from ourselves and our sins toward him." What a beautiful truth! And why we can't take credit for a bit of it. Rather relaxing and wonderful, isn't it?