111 Sermon Illustrations on Apostasy

It has happened again. A prominent “Christian” artist has deconverted from the Christian faith. What is happening?

Deconversion is not new. A handful of “believers” have abjured the faith, especially if persecution was present or on the horizon. So we should not be surprised. If Judas Iscariot personally walked with Jesus for three years and ultimately sold Him out for 30 pieces of silver, we should not be surprised if lesser lights reject the faith.

We must remember that it’s not just about how we begin the Christian life, it’s also how we endure and finish it. Beginning is important. We hear the Gospel, repent of sin and place our faith in Jesus Christ. The ending is important as well. We rely on the Holy Spirit as we’re daily sanctified in Jesus Christ. We must finish well. Jesus said it is those who endure to the end who will be saved (Matthew 24:13). Paul reflects this same sentiment in his farewell address to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:6-8).

1 Timothy 1:18-20 describes how Hymenaeus and Alexander shipwrecked their faith. In working through this text, we can do an autopsy of deconversion.

First, people who deconvert, in the end, reject the Gospel calling. There are only two callings in life – salvation and sanctification (service). While Paul tells Timothy not to reject the “prophecies” made about him, by implication, he is saying that this is exactly what Hymenaeus and Alexander had done, thereby forfeiting their faith. God called them and, in the end, they stiff-armed God. God calls and we must answer, continually, daily, to the end.

Second, people who deconvert stop waging spiritual warfare. Paul wanted Timothy to “wage the good warfare.” Again, by implication, those who reject the faith stop struggling for the faith and start struggling with the faith. We do new believers a disservice by making following Jesus sound easy. It is not. Jesus said we are to strive to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 13:24). This is not salvation by works, but salvation by a faith that works. People who deconvert stop running, working, investing, studying and fighting the fight of faith. They stop growing (2 Peter 3:18).

Third, people who deconvert invert subjective and objective faith. Hymenaeus and Alexander stopped embracing “the faith” (Jude 3) and in the process they lost “their faith.” When a person elevates their faith journey above the historic faith of the Bible, they are in danger of abandoning the faith. The standard by which we are to judge what we believe is not our subjective experience but the objective truth of God’s Word.

Fourth, people who deconvert lose their conscience (1 Timothy 4:2). We must not violate our conscience. When we stop listening to a conscience informed by the Word of God, we end up with a dead conscience. When this happens, spiritual drift no longer troubles us. Spiritual truths that once made sense don’t seem to line up with worldly wisdom, and ultimately, biblical truth is rejected, and worldly wisdom is adopted as the “smarter route.” Result: deconversion.

Fifth, people who deconvert publicly reject the faith with great fanfare as noted in 1 Timothy 1:19. The word rejection is a violent word – it means to repel, to throw away. The public rejection of the faith is often preceded by a private rejection of the faith. Rejecting the faith often seems sudden but is usually the result of a long journey away from Jesus.

Finally, people who deconvert blaspheme Jesus. Let’s not make deconversion heroic. Many will say about those who deconvert – “Oh, how authentic they are. How brave they are. How smart they are.” They are none of these.

In the end, Hymenaeus and Alexander not only abandoned Jesus, but they made a shipwreck of their faith. Shipwrecks are ugly and disastrous. As one who believes in the security of the believer, deconversion simply exposes what was not there all along – true, genuine, enduring faith (Matthew 24:13; 1 John 1:19). In the meantime, while we’re on our way across Jordan’s stormy banks, as the old saying goes, we’ll run across many shipwrecks. Let’s remain faithful.

________

Kevin Shrum is pastor of Inglewood Baptist Church in Nashville.

[Article defends Humanism and shows interesting parallels with the New Age movement. -Holwick]

Humanists, of all people, have been the slowest to leap into the breech, to capitalize on the changes occurring in the public mind-set. Yet the opportunity is ready-made for just such an entry. Proof of this can be found in the rapid and surprising growth of the New Age. Contrary to the way many Humanists think, the New Age is not merely some new superstition to replace the old. Though it certainly has its share of nonsense and foolishness, it also has some important parallels with Humanism and Freethought. Let me list a few ideas that are shared by many followers of the New Age and by almost all Humanists and Freethinkers. These ideas are:

1. Rejection of the notion of a jealous and punishing god.

2. Rejection of the dogmatism of fundamentalist Christianity.

3. Rejection of religious angst and feelings of guilt.

4. Strong belief in the power and significance of human beings.

5. Acceptance of a concept of human evolution.

6. Interest in mental self-development.

7. Recognition of the joys in the here and now, particularly in relation

to food and sex.

8. Support for global and ecological thinking.

9. Flexible and excited interest in new ideas.

I could add more, but this will provide an adequate sampling to demonstrate that a significant percentage of the North American population is ripe for a number of the ideas Humanists and Freethinkers have been advancing for years. Many followers of the New Age turn to it not because they are inclined toward superstition, but because the New Age is the only show in town.

Rev. Timothy Bonney wrote, "The problem is that prayer, religion, and the Bible are not in American homes and families."

True enough, but not the whole picture.

A big part of why these are no longer in American homes is because the CHURCH lost its grasp on biblical truth (thanks in no small part to numerous seminaries which preceded the churches in their failure to guard the things entrusted to them). Many have proven unfaithful with the things with which they have been entrusted. Woe is them when the time finally comes to give an account. Lost churches have led to lost families, leading, in turn, to a society adrift. (And yes, as Bob asserts, in many places attitudes and even policies of hostility toward Christianity have developed.)

How long will God allow this drift away from righteousness before He judges this nation?

Some say our nation's further drift into wickedness and unrighteousness IS the judgment of God -- the withdrawal of His blessing, His grace, His righteousness -- our just rewards as well as the natural consequence for turning from Him. Watch network TV for several nights in a row, talk to teens in public school, chat with your unsaved neighbors and coworkers under age 35 (let alone read the papers and watch the news!) and see if it isn't so. Let's face it, apart from a mighty move of the Spirit, America is a spiritually hurting land (contrary stats from Barna notwithstanding). Even many of the churches which call themselves "evangelical" are simply pragmatic, poll-driven consumers of the next market-driven fad.

Sadly, it seems the spiritual depth of the average American "Christian" isn't much deeper than his CD of "Andy Griffith's Favorite Hymns." The average American Christian is much more American than he is Christian. And the Church owns much of the blame.

Say what you will about the Puritans, but they were a people with a truly biblical world view who saw every aspect of their lives as being lived out before the face of God. I'm not advocating a government run by the church. But I think there's something to be said for a society in which the average ten-year old can give you a fairly good explanation of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Given a choice between the convictions of the average Puritan family and those of today's average American "Christian" family, I'd take the Puritan convictions hands down.

Why the difference? Probably many factors, but none more important than the Puritan pursuit of consistent submission to the authority of the Word of God. The preachers preached without compromise and the Spirit blessed it in the lives of the people. The church leaders took their cues from Scripture, rather than from the philosophies of the world -- the "authorities" on which so many church leaders lean today. In many pulpits it seems only those teachings which are substantiated by scientific research and endorsed by contemporary thought get any attention. Truly biblical thinking is vanishing, not only from our society, but from our churches as well.

A biblical church is a powerful church. A worldly church is a weak church. Only a biblical church can speak into the world with Spirit-endued, life-changing power. The compromised, worldly church cannot do this because it is the same as the world: fleshly and futile in its thinking (though it pays lip service to the Scriptures in honor of the One who may exist somewhere -- if only we could know). In its good intentions to be "relevant," the church often ceases to be worth listening to. It fails to remember (or believe) that simply speaking the Word of God to the world and applying the Word of God in the world IS relevant, because it is the Word of GOD.

Say what you want about Lindsell [the writer of "The Battle For the Bible], but he was right about the slippery slope one climbs onto when one jettison's submission to the utter authority of God's Word (define it as inerrancy, infallibility, or however). Compromise the Word of God and you lose everything.

America is a godless nation because that's where its churches have led it. ... Many in our ranks still seek to reach out to the spiritual needs of others by drawing from "broken cisterns that can hold no water." By effectively denying the Word of God, they have lost their attachment to the God of the Word. They are thus unable to offer the world to drink of Him who is "the fountain of living waters." Instead they offer the world more of its own, making disciples who denigrate biblical faith and mock holiness. How many ... churches do you know that fear God?

Barry Pierce

First Baptist Church

Leominster, Massachusetts

*

John Wycliffe, John Knox, David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Charles

Haddon Spurgeon, G. Campbell Morgan--what a notable list of Christian

leaders from Great Britain! They established vital churches,

publishing houses, and mission societies. In spite of this godly

heritage, a recent edition of the London Times stated, "Britain

emerges as one of the most irreligious countries in the Western world

from the latest survey by the British Social Attitudes team."

What happened? The emotional scars of two World Wars, the loss of

a world empire, and the weakening effects of liberal clergy could all

be cited as causes. But there is a deeper, spiritual reason for the

decline of any nation. Its citizens lose interest in God. They don't

believe He makes any difference in their lives, so they make gods out

of their own accomplishments. --David Burnham

At the request of his father, Karl Marx was baptized at 6

years old into the Evangelical Established Church. Marx's

adolescent writings exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and

longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity.

Later at the University of Berlin, he fell under the influence of a

young lecturer in theology named Bruno Bauer who was developing the

idea that the Christian gospels were a record not of history but of

human fantasies arising from men's emotional needs and that Jesus had

not been an historical person. Marx also enrolled in a course of

lectures given by Bauer on the prophet Isaiah. Bauer taught that a new

social catastrophe "more tremendous" than that of the advent of

Christianity was in the making. Marx would eventually call religion the

opiate of the masses.

When Marx wrote his book Das Kapital, he wanted to dedicate it to

Charles Darwin. Darwin also was once a theology student and

eventually repudiated the Bible and became an agnostic.

There was a pastor of a very well-known Bible church, one that

taught the Word of God. Today he is a denier of the deity of Jesus

Christ. He is a professor at USC, one who does everything he can to

turn young people away from Christianity. He also falls into the

category of an apostate, somebody who knows the truth, has all the

information about the truth, and willfully turns his back on the truth

for his own pursuit.

- Cited by John MacArthur, Sermon in \reference{Jude 8-13}{Jude

1:8-13}

One writer said of apostates, "One is reminded by way of contrast

with the Lord, whom these men deny. He is the rock of our salvation;

they are hidden rocks, threatening shipwreck to the faith. He comes

with clouds to refresh his people forever; they are clouds that do not

even bring temporary blessing. He is the tree of life; they are trees

dead. He leads beside still waters; they are like the restless

troubled sea. He is the bright and morning star heralding the coming

day; they are wandering stars presaging a night of eternal darkness."

My Source: THE GOSPEL REMINDER

Bay church of Christ, Bay, Arkansas

January 16, 2000

Author: Marvin Rickett

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QUIT THE CHURCH AND NOT QUIT CHRIST?

by Marvin Rickett

Amazingly, many folks think they can quit the church without quitting Christ. They have left the church but believe they are still connected with Christ, retaining their salvation, having fellowship with Him in private, and generally enjoying His approval. They are out of fellowship with the church but still in fellowship with Christ on an individual basis, they think. It is difficult to convince a person with this attitude that he needs to repent.

One cause of this problem is the influence of Protestant "Christianity." Protestant "Christianity," in the attempt to justify the satisfactory existence of denominations, conceive of the universal, invisible church to which all good "Christians" belong. It has no organization, no visible congregations, no boundaries. It is manifested by various divisions (denominations) which do have organization, are visible, and to which individuals belong. Every "Christian" is a member of the church universal, and may join one of the many denominations to express his religion and perhaps serve God better. Or he may choose not to join any denomination and still be a faithful Christian in the great universal, invisible church. He doesn't have to go to church, associate with a group of people, worship with other people, yet he is still a "saved Christian." Thus the expression, "I think you can be a good Christian and not belong to any church (denomination)." A good many of our brethren have this concept of the church. They view the "Church of Christ" as just another denomination to which church membership is optional. Therefore, they think they can quit the "Church of Christ denomination" and still belong to Christ because they remain members of the mysterious, invisible, universal church.

The above system of theology, though widely held, is thoroughly erroneous and complete anti-scriptural. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the head of the body, which is the church: "And he is the head of the body, the church" (Colossians 1:18). "And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body" (Ephesians 1:22). There is one and only one body (Ephesians 4:4). The one body, which is the church, is visible in local congregations. It exists only in local congregations. It does not exist in denominations because denominations have no authority from the Lord even to exist. The Lord never approved of a denomination, nor does He place His church in denominations. he manifests His church in local congregations which are all identical in faith and practice. His body is the church of Christ, its congregations are churches of Christ (Romans 16:16). Everyone who is a member of the church will be a part of a local congregation of the church. There is no such thing as one remaining a "member at large," outside of any local congregation.

Can one quit the church and not, at the same time be quitting Christ? The church is the body of Christ. To have life, the body must be connected to the head. An individual member must remain connected to the body to receive the life from the head. The body is where life is. Salvation is in the body. "Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body" (Ephesians 5:23). To dissociate oneself from the body is to be severed from the body. To be severed from the body is to be severed from Christ, the head (Galatians 5:4 ASV. To quit the local church is to quit the universal church because that's the only way the universal church functions. To leave the church is to leave the only place where salvation is. To quit the church is more than just leaving a group of fallible, imperfect human beings. It is quitting the body of Christ, and one cannot quit Christ's body without also quitting Christ. So when you quit the church, you quit Christ. That sounds a whole lot more serious, doesn't it?

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DRL NOTE: Brother Marvin Rickett is one of my favorite writers of bulletin articles. He is a friend and one for whom I have tremendous respect. I have been impressed with the fact that he often writes articles which get right at the heart of problems within the church. I believe the article above is one such example. Brethren, there is no telling how many Christians have the above stated improper view of the church. Wherever you are located the likelihood is very high that some in your area have this perverted view. If we could convince them of the truthfulness of brother Rickett's biblical argument above, our congregations would reclaim many lost souls!!! I hope you appreciate the importance of this post.

Reflections on Christian Assurance

I. Introduction

So far as I know, there has been no English-language, full-scale treatment of the biblical theology of Christian assurance for more than fifty years. There have been numerous dictionary articles and the like, along with occasional discussions in journals. There have also been sophisticated studies of assurance as found in the theology of some notable Christian thinker or period, such as the book by Yates that examines assurance with special reference to John Wesley, or the discussion of assurance that pervades Kendall’s treatment of the move from Calvin to English Calvinism, or the dissertation by Beeke that studies personal assurance from Westminster to Alexander Comrie. There have been countless studies of related biblical themes: perseverance, apostasy, the nature of covenant, the nature of faith, justification, and much more - too many to itemize; and there have been numerous popular treatments of Christian assurance. But although at one time assurance was not only a question of pressing pastoral importance but in certain respects a test of theological systems, in recent decades it has not received the attention it deserves.

This paper makes no pretensions of redressing the balance. My aim is far more modest. First, I shall identify a number of tendencies in contemporary literature that bear on Christian assurance. Then I shall offer a number of biblical and theological reflections - really not much more than pump-priming - designed to set out the contours in which a biblical theology of Christian assurance might be constructed.

II. Some Contemporary Tendencies

By "Christian assurance," I refer to a Christian believer’s confidence that he or she is already in a right standing with God, and that this will issue in ultimate salvation. This definition of assurance maintains the future orientation that has dominated much of the discussion in past centuries, but there are two entailments: (1) This is a far narrower definition than might have been deployed. For instance, the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the boldness Christians enjoy in coming before God, now that their high priest has entered into the heavenly tabernacle to intercede on their behalf. John writes of the confidence believers enjoy when they approach God in prayer. These, too, are dimensions of Christian assurance, important dimensions-but not the assurance that is the focal point of this study. (2) It should be immediately obvious that there is no single word that gives us access to the theme. Some studies have begun by analyzing pivsti" or parrhsiva or some other word, but questions about Christian assurance rise from the pages of the NT wherever believers are promised consummated salvation, or warned of apostasy, or are assured of eternal life conditional on some factor; and so we must probe, however superficially, a representative number of such themes and passages. Ideally, we should begin with inductive study of each corpus; pragmatically, the limitations of this study dictate that we attempt no more than brief explorations.

Before embarking on such explorations, however, it is important to grasp the dominant parameters of the discussion today. What, then, are some of the more important tendencies in contemporary biblical and theological literature that bear on the subject? I begin with the most narrowly academic tendencies, and work down to the most popular.

A. Not only is there a tendency to stress the diverse emphases in many biblical texts, there are even more diverse interpretations of them. Certainly the question of Christian assurance is raised by what appear to be tensions within the biblical documents themselves. On the one hand, Paul insists that all those who are foreknown, predestined, called and justified will one day be glorified (Rom 8:30); on the other, he tells the Corinthians to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). On the one hand, Christians are given "very great and precious promises" (2 Pet 1:4), but on the other, such promises properly function to enable them to make their calling and election sure (1:10). If the Fourth Gospel repeatedly assures us that Jesus, and then the Father himself, preserve all those the Father has given to the Son (e.g., John 6:37-40; 17:6-17), Jesus’ interlocutors nevertheless are told that only those who hold to his teaching are truly his disciples (8:31). On the face of it, passages such as Hebrews 6:4-6 envisage the possibility of apostasy from which there is no reprieve. If so, how can believers be finally certain that they will not fall into such abysmal loss? John writes his first epistle in order that those who believe in the name of the Son of God might know that they have eternal life: this certainly sounds as if it is possible to believe in the name of the Son of God without knowing that one has eternal life.

Many scholars attempt no synthesis; indeed, they judge any attempt at synthesis to be illegitimate. But even amongst less skeptical scholars, these and many more passages are variously interpreted. One need only read, say, the published form of I. Howard Marshall’s dissertation, and the recent dissertation by Judith Volf, to appreciate how differently many of the same texts can be read. Meanwhile, the voluminous writings of E. P. Sanders, and the growing number of responses to them, have shifted the center of discussion on Paul from justification and freedom from law to "covenantal nomism," thereby giving rise to notions of "getting in" and "staying in" that are quite different from those historically assumed by much of Protestantism, especially Lutheran Protestantism. At the risk of simplification, "getting in" turns on God’s grace; "staying in" turns on the believer’s obedience. The texts that can be lined up to defend this reading of Paul are substantial. If accepted without qualification, the implications for Christian assurance are stunning: Christian assurance becomes entirely hostage to Christian obedience, and is not established as a constituent element of saving faith itself.

Or again, one need only compare Protestant and Catholic commentaries on 1 John to observe a chasm between their approaches. With but rare exceptions, the former treat 1 John as a treatise that provides criteria or tests (understood and arranged rather differently from commentator to commentator) to foster assurance amongst believers; the latter largely bypass the theme of assurance, and see in this book a depiction of proper Christian communal life.

B. A major reexamination of relevant Reformation arguments is currently underway. Although some pre-Reformation Christian thinkers had treated the possibility of Christian assurance (e.g., Augustine, Duns Scotus), the consensus in the period leading up to the Reformation treated such assurance as conjectural, since knowledge of God’s saving grace depended on good works and penance that "tied forgiveness to ecclesiastical authority."7 Not only did the Reformation, by emphasizing Scripture, reduce the intermediary authority of the Church, and therefore its role in binding and loosing the Christian conscience - its virulent emphasis on sola fide led Luther to see assurance as an element of saving faith. If one truly trusts Christ for the forgiveness of sins and full justification, so far also is one assured of his forgiveness. The same connection can be found in Calvin (Inst. 3.2.7); ultimately, he grounds assurance on Christ himself (Inst. 3.24.5). It is disputed just what place Calvin allows for works in Christian assurance; certainly in his thought they do not enjoy more than a subsidiary role. By contrast, the English Puritans, greatly dependent on the transitional figure of William Perkins,8 himself deeply indebted to Beza and others, placed much more emphasis on the role of a transformed life in lending assurance to the Christian mind and conscience.

Most scholars, I think, would not demur from this potted history. Debate has become heated, however, owing to the work of Kendall and those who have rushed to support him or to detract from his argument that English Calvinism owes far less to Calvin and far more to Beza than is commonly recognized, and to the work of Bell, who argues that

whereas Calvin taught that faith is fundamentally passive in nature, is centred in the mind or understanding, is primarily to be viewed in terms of certain knowledge, such that assurance of salvation is of the essence of faith, and is grounded extra nos, that is, outside ourselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ, Scottish theology, on the other hand, gradually came to teach that faith is primarily active, centred within the will or heart, and that assurance is not of the essence of faith, but is a fruit of faith, and is to be gathered through self-examination and syllogistic deduction, thereby placing the grounds of assurance intra nos, within ourselves.10

For Kendall, the challenge is not merely one of naming the right heroes, but of returning to the pristine Calvinism of Calvin, over against what he judges to be the scholastic Calvinism of many of his successors. There are important (and disputed) entailments in Kendall’s study for the doctrine of definite atonement -- and for understanding Christian assurance. Positions are sufficiently entrenched, and the topic sufficiently current, that in the second volume of the biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, recently appeared, Iain Murray devotes six pages to refuting Kendall. Murray concludes that if Kendall is right and "full assurance" inheres in saving faith, there are "devastating practical consequences":

If it were true then it would follow: (1) that anyone lacking “full assurance” has to be treated as not being a Christian at all; (2) that all converts can be told that their assurance is complete, contrary to the New Testament directions to converts to press on to fuller assurance (Hebrews 6:11; 2 Peter 1:5-10; 1 John 1:4); and (3)that if faith means full assurance then the many warnings of Scripture on the need to observe that true faith is always accompanied by holiness of life become needless.12

Of course, Kendall might well reply that Murray makes assurance dependent not on justification but on sanctification (understanding the latter term in its use in Reformed dogmatics, not in its more flexible use in the Pauline corpus), and ultimately fosters an unhealthy introspection that functions not unlike Arminianism or semi-Pelagianism. For his part, Beeke in his doctoral dissertation13 argues that the differences between Calvin and the (later) Calvinists on the relations between faith and assurance are largely quantitative, not qualitative. Faced with changing pastoral contexts, Beeke argues, Calvinists allotted greater sensitivity to the degree of assurance that a Christian might experience, but nevertheless in their "meticulous argumentation" adhered to the fundamental principles of the early Reformation. It was within this framework that they could argue that assurance of faith has more complex grounds than a simple resting on God’s objective promises. On the whole, Beeke is correct for the notable figures he treats. Unfortunately, he writes history as if the "Annales" school of historiography had never developed, and makes no attempt either to limit his conclusions to those he studies or to probe how faith and assurance were handled in the lives of ordinary Christians in both English Puritanism and the Calvinist infiltration of the Dutch Reformation.

Certainly both sides of this essentially historical debate have full arsenals by which to take on the other’s positions. For our purposes, however, it is worth observing that both sides recognize that the debate is not merely a historical one-viz., What did Calvin (or Beza, or Perkins, or Comrie) actually teach?-but a doctrinal one with substantial theological and pastoral implications. We may range from the experience of many Scottish highlanders who habitually refuse to receive the communion elements on the ground that they lack personal assurance (and this lack stems from their own estimate of unsatisfactory evidences of grace in their lives), to the wretched "easy believism" of many in the Western world who, having professed faith, feel no pull toward holiness and no shame when they take the elements. A thousand variations of experience dot the landscape between these two extremes.

C. In America, the basis of Christian assurance has erupted as the distinguishing banner of a small but vociferous segment of evangelicalism. The movement is strong enough to have formed its own organization, the Grace Evangelical Society, complete with its own journal. All of the publications that have emerged so far are at the popular or semi-popular level; but that ensures wider circulation, not less. Doubtless the most influential of these writings is a book by Zane Hodges, The Gospel under Siege. The popular preacher John F. MacArthur, Jr., has responded at about the same level, but with so large a number of unguarded statements or overstatements that his work has spawned more controversy than healing.

The concern of Hodges and his colleagues is to make Christian assurance absolutely certain. To accomplish this, they tie assurance exclusively to saving faith, and divorce it from any support in a transformed life. The countless passages that tie genuine discipleship to obedience are handled by making a disjunction between "discipleship" passages and those that promise eternal life. Eternal life turns on faith in the saving Son of God; discipleship turns on obedience; and Christian assurance is tied only to the former. To link assurance in any way to the latter, it is argued, is to corrupt a salvation of free grace and turn it into a salvation partly dependent on works. If my salvation depends only on free grace, then the basis of my assurance is as steadfast as the freedom of that grace. But if my assurance depends on observing certain changes in conduct in my life, themselves the fruit of obedience, then implicitly I am saying that, since I cannot be assured of salvation without seeing obedience, salvation itself depends on some mixture of faith plus obedience-and free grace is thereby destroyed. Hence the name of this new evangelical society. Its members are persuaded that the purity of the gospel of grace is at stake.

There are numerous entailments to this analysis. Those who disagree with them are dismissed as supporters of "Lordship salvation," understood to mean that these opponents insist that part of the requirement for becoming a Christian, for receiving salvation, is the confession of Jesus as Lord. In the view of Hodges and his colleagues, trusting Jesus as Savior is all that is required for salvation. "Repentance," in their view, must be understood in a narrowly etymological sense: it is the mental "change of mind" that accepts Jesus as the Savior, but entails no necessary sorrow over sin or turning away from it. That is the fruit of confessing Jesus as Lord; it is the fruit of obedience, and properly emerges from the confidence of knowing that one’s sins are already forgiven. In some of the writings of this camp, this analysis is justified by referring to 1 Corinthians 3 and Paul’s division of the race into the natural man, the carnal man, and the spiritual man. The natural man is unredeemed; the carnal man enjoys salvation, but lives like the world, and is finally saved "only as one escaping through the flames" (3:15), while his works are burned up. The spiritual man knows Jesus as Lord and is walking in growing obedience. Hodges would feel offended to have his view branded as "easy believism" or "cheap grace" or "greasy grace" or the like. He insists that Christians who do not constantly commit themselves to obedience pay high prices for their rebellion. But the price, he says, is never loss of salvation, nor (assuming the initial trust was genuine) a post facto discovery that the initial trust was not genuine, for that would tie assurance, and therefore salvation itself, to works.

D. Apart from these movements, there is a tendency to say very little about Christian assurance in most of our churches. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that a major reason why so many aberrant views are being so widely circulated is that there is a vacuum that cries out to be filled. I have not conducted a scientific poll to establish changing patterns over the last few decades. My impression, however, is that in many churches Christian assurance is not a major topic for sermons or discussion groups, largely because popular eschatology has become so realized that there is very little futurist element left, except at the merely creedal level. If we do not long for the consummation of our salvation in the new heaven and the new earth, for the visio Dei that is the believer’s inheritance, then there is little point in talking about our assurance of gaining it.

In what follows, I shall sometimes engage one or more of these tendencies directly; but my principal aim is to offer some biblical and theological observations that may help us to cut a swathe through the debates and refocus them a little. For instance, whatever the rights and wrongs of the historical arguments over the influence of Calvin, it is arguable that some of the lines of the debate are seriously askew because they too quickly press toward atemporal dogmatic questions without pausing adequately to reflect on redemptive-historical matters lodged in Scripture itself. I shall also argue that there is one major biblical-theological motif that has largely been overlooked in these debates, a motif that has the potential for orienting the discussions, both academic and popular, in fresh directions.

III. Biblical and Theological Reflections

A. The New Testament writers admit no qualitative, absolute disjunction between genuine believers who display obedience to Jesus in their lives, and genuine believers who do not.

Limitations of time and space require that I restrict my comments to one passage and one theme:

(1) 1 Corinthians 3. All of 1 Cor 1:10-4:20 is devoted to Paul’s handling of the divisiveness of the Corinthians (cf. esp. 1:10-11; 3:5-6, 21-23; 4:6ff.), itself tied to their conviction that they were preeminently wise and spiritual (cf. 1:18ff.; 2:6ff.; 3:18ff.). Meanwhile, their thinking and their conduct are so spiritually immature-they are "mere infants in Christ" (3:1)-that Paul could not address them as "spiritual" (pneumatikov"), as they thought themselves to be, but as "worldly" (NIV). This last word is perhaps better rendered more literally as "fleshly" (savrkino"), i.e., made of flesh. The charge has extra bite, since the Corinthians think themselves so "spiritual" that they are not even sure there is a resurrection body still to be gained (1 Corinthians 15). They were certainly "fleshly," "made of flesh," when Paul was among them (v. 1); the tragedy is that they are still "fleshly" (v. 3): here Paul changes to sarkikov" (in the best reading), i.e., having the characteristics of flesh, clearly with ethical overtones. They are "acting like mere men" (a[nqrwpoi, v.3). The evidence for this is found in their "jealousy and quarreling," in their determination to lionize this or that human leader.

The crucial question, then, is whether Paul is introducing a new ontological level of Christian existence. He does not place the Corinthians amongst all whom he dismisses as yucikoiv (2:14), those who are "natural" and therefore without the Spirit. Not only has he already noted their spiritual endowments (1:4-9), Paul elsewhere repeatedly insists that one cannot be utterly devoid of the Spirit and be a Christian (Rom 8:9; Gal 3:2-3; Titus 3:5-7). Yet by saying that the Corinthians are acting and thinking not like "spiritual" but "fleshly" people, like "mere men," he is charging them with the thoughts and conduct of those who do not have the Spirit. The tension is palpable, and the result is centuries of debate and misunderstanding. But the most obvious way to take Paul’s words is that he is using strong language to force his readers to face up to the inherent inconsistency of their position. They have the Spirit, but at this junction they are neither thinking nor acting as if they do.

This is a more believable approach than those which suppose Paul himself is introducing an ontological distinction in the congregation. That is surely intrinsically unlikely, given the concern of the first four chapters to establish unity. Others try to find a shift in meaning in pneumatikov" from chap. 2 to chap. 3, or base a massive tripartite division of humankind (natural / carnal [KJV] / spiritual) on these verses. But apart from the fact that the same division cannot be found clearly drawn out elsewhere in Paul, such a reading flies in the face of one of the principal emphases in Pauline ethics, viz., the appeal "to be what you are."

Thus, when Paul says that he could not address them as "spiritual," there is a sense in which he is admitting that there are "unspiritual" believers. He does not mean the Corinthian believers do not have the Spirit-there are no "unspiritual" believers in that sense-but that they are displaying a great deal of "unspiritual" behavior, which must stop. Three observations must be entered: (1) If this is a fair reading of the passage, there is nothing here that introduces an absolute, qualitative disjunction between those who are "fleshly" ("carnal" if you prefer) and those who are spiritual. All apart from perfectionists will admit that at the level of behavior, all Christians, insofar as they too participate in jealousy and quarreling, are sometimes "carnal." There is no attempt to tie the distinctions here to a theoretical disjunction between those who accept Jesus as Savior and those who accept him as Lord. (2) The sins in view are not of the sort that make us think the Corinthians are distancing themselves from their baptismal vows. This is not the case of someone who made a profession of faith at an evangelistic rally, followed the way of Christ for a few months, and then lived in a manner indistinguishable from that of any pagan for the next fifteen years, despite conscientious pastoral interest. Nor is it the case of a person who indulges in gross sexual immorality and who will not repent, like the man described in 1 Corinthians 5, of whose spiritual state not even the apostle seems to be sure, let alone confident. This is not to minimize the sins of jealousy and quarreling; it is to place them within the context of Christians who at many levels do display the presence and power of the Spirit (1:3-8), even though in this regard they are thinking and acting in ways that are out of step with the Spirit. (3) Above all, there is nothing in this chapter to connect these "carnal" Christians to the person described in vv. 14-15. To justify this point, we must press on to the contribution of the next two paragraphs in the text.

Because the Corinthians’ carnality is displayed in their propensity to form parties attached to particular leaders, Paul finds it necessary to explain the limited contribution such leaders have made. He develops two extended metaphors. The first is agricultural (3:5-9): Paul planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God alone made it grow. Both the sower and the one who waters the seed have one purpose. Each "will be rewarded according to his own labor" (3:8). In this metaphor, the Corinthians do not figure as laborers. Paul and Apollos are "God’s fellow workers"; the Corinthians are "God’s field" (v. 9).

Then the metaphor changes, but with the same distinctions firmly in place. The Corinthians are "God’s building" (v. 9); Paul is the contractor who has laid the foundation, Jesus Christ himself, with others building on the foundation that he laid. Within the constraints of this metaphor, it is the builder whose work will be shown up for what it is on the last day; the fire will test the quality of each builder’s work. "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" (3:14-15; emphasis mine). It is slightly misfocused to conclude, with Conzelmann and many other commentators, that "unsatisfactory works performed by the Christian as a Christian do not cause his damnation."21 Doubtless there is some sense in which that is true, but Paul’s concern in this context is not to make application to the ordinary Christian, and certainly not to those whom he thinks are still "mere infants" (3:1), but to raise a standard that holds Christian leaders to account. In short, we are not here dealing with perennial backsliding or utter moral indifference, but shoddy workmanship amongst those who are accounted the leaders of the Christian church.

Only in vv. 16-17 is there a hint of a broader application, and it is no more than a hint. Maintaining the metaphor drawn from the building industry, Paul specifies, more closely, that the Corinthians are not merely a building, but God’s temple, his dwelling. If "anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple." It is possible to read these verses as nothing more than a forceful reiteration of the lesson drawn in vv. 10-15. Nevertheless, because Paul now speaks of "anyone" and not simply the builders, it suggests, in the context of the first four chapters, that those given to division, jealousy, and quarreling in the church are also in danger of doing damage to the church, God’s temple. Since they are that temple, they are simultaneously doing damage to themselves and courting God’s judgment.

It appears, then, that in this chapter Paul acknowledges that Christians do not always live up to what they are called to be, that every such failure is a serious breech, that those who do damage to the church are particularly threatened by God’s judgment, and that some who are viewed as leaders in the church, though they will themselves be saved on the day of judgment, will have nothing to show for their labor. It does not encourage us to think that it is possible to accept Jesus as Savior, and thus be promoted from the "natural" to the "carnal" level, in transit, as it were, to the "spiritual" stage, at which point one has accepted Jesus as Lord. Still less does it encourage us to think of the "carnal" Christian as someone who once made a profession of faith and who now lives in every respect like the surrounding pagan world.

(2) The new covenant. New covenant language is fairly pervasive in the NN, its themes far more so. Both Luke (Luke 22:20) and Paul (1 Cor 11:25) report that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took such language on his own lips and tied the theme to his impending death. If Matthew and Mark omit "new," the implication is present anyway, since it is difficult to discover any sense in which Jesus’ impending death signalled or ratified the old covenant. Hebrews 8 and 10 specifically tie the prophecy of Jer 31:31ff. to the substance of Christian faith; 2 Corinthians 3 and Galatians 4 are no less insistent on setting forth the significance of the (new) covenant. Beyond such explicit language lies a large array of NT themes that presuppose the OT promises of the new covenant (e.g., Jer 31:29ff.; 32:36-41; Ezek 36:25-27; Mal 3:1), not least the "new birth" language of John 3.22

The point to be observed is that these OT promises foresee a time when God’s law is written on the heart of his people. Teachers will no longer say, "Know the Lord," for they will all know him (Jer 31): the outlook is not of a time when there will be no teachers, but no mediating teachers, no mediators, whose very office ensures them that they have an endowment not enjoyed by others. The new covenant will not be like the tribal covenant associated with Moses’ name, when the fathers ate sour grapes and their children’s teeth were set on edge. Rather, it is characterized by the removal of the heart of stone amongst all of God’s covenantal people. To use the language of Ezekiel 36, the new covenant will be characterized by cleansing (sprinkling with water) and spiritual renewal (a new heart and a new spirit).

Add to this the many OT passages that anticipate the time when God’s Spirit is poured out on his people (e.g., Isa 44:3-5; Ezek 11:19-20; 36:25-27; Joel 2:28-32), along with the fulfillment of these passages in the NT, and another important part of what is characteristic of the new covenant age is dropped into place. The Spirit is bequeathed by the glorified Christ (John’s Gospel), the Spirit is given as the ajrrabwvn of the ultimate inheritance (Paul), the Spirit vivifies, empowers, and directs the church (Acts). The period between Pentecost and Christ’s return is supremely the age of the Spirit, the powerful Spirit who renews, convicts, cleanses, empowers. Doubtless we "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23), but meanwhile God has sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful man, "in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit" (Rom 8:4; emphasis mine).

It appears that a great deal of the debate over assurance has been controlled by forensic categories associated with justification and faith, but has largely ignored the categories of power and transformation associated with the Spirit and new covenant. A fundamental component of such themes is that the people of the new covenant are by definition granted a new heart and empowered by the Spirit to walk in holiness, to love righteousness, to prove pleasing to the Lord. This means that, insofar as the writers of the NT thought of themselves as new covenant heirs, they could not think of themselves as other than Spirit-endowed, regenerate, transformed. The NT does not preserve the old covenant distinction between the locus of the covenant community and the locus of the remnant, or between the locus of the covenant community and the locus of the leaders on whom special endowment had fallen. It is of the essence of the new covenant that those who are in it have been given a new heart, have been cleansed, have received the Holy Spirit. Moreover, this theme cannot rightly be divorced from the entailments of justification and of salvation through faith. The gift of the Spirit is tied to justification (Romans 5-8); salvation by grace through faith (Eph 2:8), "not by works so that no one can boast" (Eph 2:9), is tied to the fact that we are "God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Eph 2:10).

One must not conclude from this line of reasoning that new covenant believers are anywhere promised moral and spiritual perfection this side of the new heaven and the new earth. Nevertheless, both the OT prophecies regarding the new covenant and the age of the Spirit, and the NT claims regarding their fulfillment, lead us to expect transformed lives. Indeed, it is precisely this unequivocal expectation that authorizes Paul to set up the tension we have already noted: the exhortations to live up to what we are in Christ are predicated on the assumption that what we are in Christ necessarily brings transformation, so that moral failure is theologically shocking, however pragmatically realistic it may be. Indeed, it might be argued that this accounts for some of the tension in 1 John. The setting that calls forth that epistle I shall briefly discuss a little farther on. For the moment, it is worth recalling John’s insistence that believers do sin, and people who claim they do not are liars, self-deluded, and guilty of charging God with falsehood (1 John 1:6ff.). At the same time, he repeatedly insists that sinning is not done amongst Christians. Various explanations have been advanced, but the most obvious is still the best: although both our experience and our location between the "already" and the "not yet" teach us that we do sin and we will sin, yet every single instance of sin is shocking, inexcusable, forbidden, appalling, out of line with what we are as Christians.24

It would take too much space to treat all the passages that are adduced to justify the counterclaim, or to demonstrate the methodological flaws inherent in Hodges’ treatment of repentance. But even on the basis of the brief probings here, especially into the nature of the new covenant, it appears justified to claim that the NT writers nowhere admit an absolute, qualitative disjunction between genuine believers who in their conduct display obedience to the Lord Jesus, and genuine believers who do not. This at least raises the possibility that some forms of Christian assurance might be validly based on observably transformed conduct, without in anyway suggesting that such conduct wins or earns or gains salvation. How that might be related to other themes-the grounding of Christian assurance in the object of faith, Jesus Christ himself-is still to be explored. But ignoring the covenantal aspects of Christianity in favor of narrowly forensic categories has been one of the chief reasons for confusion in this area.

B. Several NT writers recognize the existence of spurious or transitory faith, and this recognition must be factored into any responsible doctrine of Christian assurance.

This subject is exceedingly complex, for it is tied to the nature of apostasy and to protracted debates over the security of the believer in the NT. For the sake of clarity, I shall proceed in seven steps.

(1) Discussion of a figure like Judas Iscariot is extremely problematic. Frequently comparisons and contrasts are drawn between his "defection" and that of Peter (I use "defection" in an attempt to find a word that can reasonably refer to the actions of both men). But quite apart from the intrinsic value of the exercise, it is doubtful if the apostasy of Judas is to be construed as apostasy from full-blown Christian faith. To put the matter another way, the experiences of "coming-to-faith" of men and women in the four Gospels is in certain respects unique, unrepeatable in any generation after the resurrection and Pentecost. Their coming-to-faith required the lapse of time until the One they came to confess as Messiah was crucified and rose again. Doubtless they struggled with doubts and sins and selfishness, and therefore in certain respects they may serve as paradigms for our own spiritual pilgrimages. Nevertheless, none of us today, in our own coming-to-faith, had to wait for the next major redemptive-historical appointment, the death and resurrection of God’s Son, before our fledgling faith could become fully Christian. Nor did we have to tarry in Jerusalem until the day of Pentecost had fully come. But if the first disciples’ coming-to-faith was not exactly like ours, then Judas Iscariot’s apostasy from whatever level he had attained before the crucifixion was not exactly like apostasy in, say, Hebrews 6 or 10. This is not to minimize his sin in the slightest; it is to argue that no substantial view of what apostasy might mean under the new covenant can begin with Iscariot, still less with, say, Korah.

(2) Little help on the nature of apostasy is to be gained by simple word studies. The word ajpostasiva, for instance, occurs only twice in the NT, once to refer to turning away from Moses on the part of Jews (Acts 21:21), the other to refer to the great rebellion that takes place when the man of lawlessness is revealed (2 Thess 2:3).

We may perhaps adopt a working definition of "apostasy", independent of any Greek word, along such lines as these: it is the decisive turning away from a religious position and stance once firmly held. It differs from ordinary unbelief in that it involves turning away from a position of belief; it differs from backsliding in that it is calculated, decisive, and irrevocable; it differs from merely changing one’s mind over some relatively minor theological point in that it involves the rejection of an entire position and stance.

(3) It is disputed how many passages in the NT describe or refer to such apostasy. Was Demas an apostate (2 Tim 4:10)? Did the immoral man of 1 Cor 5:1ff. die an apostate? But however many or few, some passages cannot easily be circumvented. It must be strenuously insisted that attempts to reduce the shock and power of severe warnings like those in Heb 6:4-6 and 2 Cor 13:5, by arguing that the warnings are merely hypothetical, or that the turning aside of those described in Heb 6:4-6 and 1 John 2:19 is from useful service but not from salvation, are desperate expedients that responsible exegesis will happily avoid.

(4) The real question is whether, with Marshall26 and others who follow him, we shall say that in these instances genuine believers have fallen away, or that although they were believers in some sense they were not genuine believers at all. There are genuine difficulties both ways.

One of the most competent treatments of some of the issues is the study by Volf, which examines the theme of perseverance in the seven Pauline Epistles over which there is least dispute as to their authenticity. In the first section, she describes what it is like to "stay in." "A continuity in the divine work of salvation emerges in which a particular aspect of salvation is seen to imply the succeeding ones."28 Paul repeatedly draws attention to the "eternal divine initiatives in salvation: divine election, foreknowledge and predestination"29 (cf. Rom 8:23, 29-30; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Phil 1:6; 1 Thess 5:9; 2 Thess 2:13-14). On the other hand, for Paul "the process of consummating the work of salvation is more like an obstacle course than a downhill ride to the finishline"30 (cf. Rom 5:1-11; 8:28, 31-39; 1 Cor 1:8-9; 10:13; 1 Thess 5:23-24; 2 Thess 3:3). God’s faithfulness is manifested in strengthening and protecting and preserving his people.

Paul gives clear and ample evidence of his view that Christians’ salvation is certain to reach completion. This thought is integral to his understanding of individual salvation. Though threats to the consummation of Christians’ salvation may and will appear, they cannot successfully challenge it. God’s faithfulness and love make divine triumph the unquestionable outcome. For Paul, certainty of final salvation rests on God’s continued intervention to that end.31

In the second section of her book, Volf examines an array of passages (Rom 14:1-23; 1 Cor 5:1-5; 6:9-11; 8:7-13; 10:12; 11:27-34; Gal 5:9-11) to argue that for Paul "continuity in salvation does not make Christian conduct irrelevant."32 Against E. P. Sanders, Volf argues that although morality and integrity and obedience matter enormously to Paul, and although Paul envisages punishment falling on some believers who disobey, "Paul does not make Christians’ final salvation dependent on their repentance from post-conversion sins."33 Then she makes what is in my judgment one of the few false steps in her book: she argues that it is possible to lose one’s membership in the "in-group" by "falsifying one’s Christian profession by one’s behavior.... But when this happens, continuity in actual salvation is not interrupted."34 In other words, at this point she agrees with Sanders that staying in the "in-group" is conditional on good behavior, but she qualifies Sanders by arguing that this is not the same as remaining in salvation. In my judgment, her exegesis is to be questioned at a number of points, and, above all, she has not adequately come to grips with the significance of what belonging to the new covenant community entails; for as we have seen, the nature of the new covenant drives us to the conclusion that there is a certain sense in which extra ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the church there is no salvation].

In part three, Volf examines Romans 9-11; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 5:1-4 in order to discover what unbelief signifies amongst those who profess to be Christians. In 2 Cor 13:5, for instance, she argues that Paul cannot be warning against loss of salvation, since the context "shows that ajdovkimo" can only mean rejection as a non-convert, and that the exhortation to self-testing has the main purpose of pointing out Paul’s own provenness as an apostle and possibly the subordinate purpose of exposing some Corinthians to be falsely professing Christians."35 She holds that the election of Israel does not entail automatic participation in salvation "apart from faith in Christ"36 (emphasis hers). She might have done a little more work on the diverse ways Paul thinks of "election"; but that is perhaps a picky point. In her final section, Volf examines Paul’s reflections on the final outcome of his own apostolic mission (1 Cor 9:23-27; 15:2; 2 Cor 6:1; Gal 2:2; 4:11; 1 Thess 3:5; Phil 2:16). If he fears that his labor might prove to be "in vain" (Phil 2:16; 1 Thess 3:5; Gal 2:2; 4:11), it can only be because he fears that some of "his seeming converts would have no salvation. Whether failure in the eschatological test should be traced to his converts’ false profession or their apostasy from salvation is a question not answered by Paul in these texts."37 But Volf notes that Paul, while distrusting his own success, seems to give way to confidence "when he views the situation from the perspective of God’s faithfulness to professing Christians in whom he sees the divine work of salvation taking place."38 I shall shortly argue that this is an extremely important observation.

(5) Apart from points of exegetical detail, the methodological difference between those who hold that genuine believers fall away and those who hold that those who fall away are not genuine believers seems to turn on two issues.

(a) How strong are the passages that seem to affirm the ultimate preservation and perseverance of God’s people? This is something that Marshall, for instance, does not directly address. He fairly expounds some of the passages that affirm that God’s people continue in salvation to the end, but then diminishes their weight by setting over against them those passages that emphasize human responsibility to persevere, or those passages that refer to apostasy (however defined). The resulting formulation always makes the preservation of God’s people unto consummated salvation absolutely contingent: God is the one who faithfully preserves his people, provided they do not defect. But what warrants such diminution of the apparent weight of the perseverance passages?

For example, John refers to the elect as all that the Father gives Jesus (John 6:37a), and by a litotes insists that Jesus will keep in or preserve all of these people (i.e., he will not drive them away, 6:37b), on the ground that the Son came to do his Father’s will, which is none other than that he should preserve all those whom the Father has given him (6:38-40). It is exceedingly difficult to diminish the finality of this statement without implying that Jesus proves unwilling to preserve or incapable of preserving all those the Father has given him. Most Christians would be aghast to use texts that affirm or assume Jesus’ humanity to diminish those that affirm his deity, and vice versa. We have come to accept some mystery in our Christological formulations; we seek interpretations that allow complementary texts to have their full vigor without permitting diminution of their most obvious meaning by some form of mutual annihilation. Can a case be mounted that in this area, too, there is a definable mystery that should not be allowed to be diminished by such mutual annihilation? I shall shortly argue that there is. But meanwhile, it seems to me that the strong NT emphases on the security of the believer should not be qualified by mere subtraction, unless there is the strongest exegetical warrant for doing so.

(b) More positively, is there warrant for thinking the NT writers have categories for transitory faith, spurious faith-in short, for faith that seems like saving faith, but which proves to be spurious? If there is, then the passages that speak of falling away do not force us to conclude that the defection is from genuine faith. In fact, in every major NT corpus, there are numerous warnings against or descriptions of spurious faith. For instance, in Matthew Jesus envisages that some who have addressed him as "Lord, Lord," and who have prophesied in his name and driven out demons in his name and performed many miracles in his name, will be excluded from the kingdom of heaven: "I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’" (Matt 7:21-23). The one who enters the kingdom is "he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (7:21). John (2:23-25) testifies that when Jesus attended the first Passover Feast of his ministry, "many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name,"40 but Jesus would not entrust himself to them: he knew what was in their heart. A little later (John 8:31), to "the Jews who had believed him,"41 Jesus gives a criterion that establishes who are genuine disciples: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples." The same stance is reflected in 1 John 2:19. Those who have seceded from the church are described in telling terms: "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us." In other words, genuine faith, by definition, perseveres; where there is no perseverance, by definition the faith cannot be genuine. Again, "anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9). Paul says as much: he informs the Colossians that God has reconciled them by Christ’s physical body through death, to present them holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-"if," he writes, "if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel" (Col 1:22-23). In short, genuine faith is tied to perseverance; transitory faith is spurious. We find similar emphases in 2 Peter 1:10-11. Before we come across the "apostasy" passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read (in Heb 3:14), "We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first" (cf. also 3:6; 4:14; 6:11; etc.).

The range and diversity of these sorts of passages (I have, after all, cited only a small percentage of them) utterly preclude the possibility that they all refer to persevering in discipleship that goes beyond "mere" salvation. Whereas a few of these passages, taken alone, might simply suggest that continuing in salvation to the end depends absolutely on our own efforts at perseverance, responsible biblical theology must seek to integrate them with the promises of God’s preserving initiative, not less rich in each major NT corpus, and with the passages in this list that make perseverance a criterion of genuine faith. For example, those who had seceded in 1 John 2:19 had once belonged to the church; otherwise John could not say that "they went out from us."42 To all observers, for all practical purposes, the seceders were once baptized members of the church, fully accepted as Christians. Nevertheless, John insists, they were never really "of us," for if they had been "they would have remained with us" (emphasis mine). In other words, John presupposes that spurious faith is possible, but that genuine faith, by definition, perseveres.

In short, the methodological point of division between the two principal interpretations-the one that argues genuine believers can fall away, and the one that argues that those who fall away are necessarily spurious or transitory believers-turns on the two issues I have just defined.

(6) If the tack I have taken is largely correct, the doctrinal area where we must become a little more sophisticated is in the theology of conversion. The question could be put several ways, but perhaps this will do: Is there NT warrant for thinking that there is some third alternative to being clearly "in" or "out"? To simplify the discussion, let us grant that God knows precisely who is "in" or "out." The question then becomes, Is there NT warrant for thinking that, as far as Christian observers are concerned, some people are not clearly either "in" or "out," that the step of conversion is not always luminously clear?

Implicitly, of course, we have already answered this question by listing a few of the NT passages where apparent conversions proved spurious (e.g., 1 John 2:19), or where the genuineness of the profession is irrefragably tied to perseverance (thereby implying that transitory faith is under a cloud). The parable of the sower - or, better, of the soils (Mark 4 par.) - illustrates the same point. In addition to the receptive soil that enables the seed to produce fruit in varying measure, there are three other kinds. The hard pathway stops the seed from embedding itself in dirt, and the birds of the air eat it: the picture is of people who hear the word of God, but from whom it is snatched away by Satan before it can germinate. The seed that falls "on rocky places" lodges in a thin layer of topsoil that covers limestone bedrock. Because it is so shallow, this topsoil heats up quickly, encourages the seed to germinate, and therefore initially produces what seems to be the most promising crop. Unfortunately, as the sun burns throughout the long, hot summer, these plants are scorched: their roots search for moisture, but come up against the bedrock, and the plant dies. The explanation tells us that this pictures those who receive the word with joy. Sadly, because they have no root, "they last only a short time" (emphasis added). When trouble or persecution comes, they fall away. And finally, some seed falls on thorny ground. Here, too, the seed germinates and sends up tendrils, but the competition exerted by the more robust thorns chokes the young plants, so that they bear no grain. Here we are to think of those who hear the word, but whose hearing faces the competition of worries, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things. These distractions "choke the word, making it unfruitful."

The important thing to observe, for the purpose of this paper, is that two of the three fruitless soils sprout life, but do not bear fruit. This is not bleeding the parable for more than it is worth: recall that in the case of the seed that falls on rocky soil, the interpretation of the parable provided in the text itself describes the reality pictured by the parable as people who "hear the word and at once receive it with joy," but who "last only a short time." To all observers save God himself, this seed promises the best harvest, but this spiritual life proves transitory.

Several popular interpreters associated with the Grace Evangelical Society find this so uncomfortable that they reinterpret the parable. They say that instead of having three soils that are viewed negatively and one that is viewed positively, the alignment should go another way: there are two soils that are viewed negatively (the pathway and the thorns), and two that produce life (the rocky soil and the good soil), one of which also produces fruit. This will not do: the seed scattered on thorny soil also produces plants, but these plants never bear grain (Mark 4:7): the thorns choke the plants, not the ungerminated seeds. I suppose they could respond by suggesting that there is only one soil treated negatively (the pathway), and three treated positively, only one of which bears fruit. But: (a) the narrative parable simply does not read that way: such an interpretation is being imported from an alien theological structure; (b) it would be strange in the context of a Gospel tradition that repeatedly insists people are known by their fruit, not by their life without fruit; and (c) in its context the parable of the soils, especially in Mark and Matthew, joins other parables in elucidating the nature of the kingdom that has already dawned but is not yet consummated. Its purpose is to show that the kingdom is not now dawning with apocalyptic suddenness and clarity, but in the lives of those who hear the gospel of the kingdom and produce fruit. To argue that it is also introducing a category for spiritual life that is nevertheless fruitless is simply alien to the concerns of the chapter, and contrary to one of the driving motifs of all three Synoptic Gospels.

Ideally, it would be helpful at this point to offer a detailed exegesis of Heb 6:4-6, and of similar passages in the NT, but we must here limit ourselves to some focal observations. Too often the challenge raised by Hebrews 6 is cast in a simple alternative: Are those who are so warned Christians or not? If one argues for the "not," one is hard-pressed to explain the string of descriptions: "those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age." If one argues they are Christians, the dominant alternatives in the commentaries are (a) that the warning is merely hypothetical-which is utterly at odds with the driving repetition of the theme in the book, and the seriousness with which it is presented; (b) that the falling away is not from salvation-which simply will not square with 6:6 and especially with 10:26ff.; or (c) that genuine believers may lose their salvation-which resurrects the problems of reconciling this view with the many passages that urge us to trust the certain, preserving work of the grace of God, not least in this epistle, where God offers comfort and incentive to his people by promising, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (13:5).

But there is a better alternative, once we have recognized that our theology of conversion is too simplistic. We have already seen that three chapters earlier Hebrews virtually defines true believers as those who hold firmly to the end the confidence they had at first (3:6, 14). In other words, like other NT books the Epistle to the Hebrews allows for a kind of transitory faith, a form of conversion which, like the seed sown on rocky soil, has all the signs of life, but which does not persevere. The Spirit brings initial enlightenment; the person enjoys the word of God (like the one in Mark 4 who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy), and tastes something of the power of the coming age: perhaps old habits fall away, and a new love for holiness and for God and his reign emerge. But according to the description of genuine Christianity already provided by the book, none of this is enough: there must also be perseverance.

Against the background of the theology of the epistle, the reasons for such warnings are clear enough. The incarnate Son of God is God’s last word to humankind (1:1-4). Therefore those who neglect the great salvation that only he brings cannot escape (2:1ff.). The sacrifice the Son offered was "once for all." There is therefore no more offering for sin (10:18, 26), still less no repetition of this one sacrifice (9:25-28). This one sacrifice, offered once for all, is forever entirely sufficient for all of God’s people (10:10-14). Therefore any who taste of its fruit, recognize its origin, ally themselves with its significance, and then deliberately reject this gospel, have no place left to turn: there is no more forgiveness of sins. This is apostasy: it is turning away from a religious position and stance once firmly held. But that is still shy of saying that the faith so exercised was necessarily saving faith in some ultimate sense, if part of the definition of saving faith includes the criterion of perseverance.

(7) What is the essence of the difference, then, so far as assurance is concerned, between (a) the person who holds that all genuine believers will be preserved to the end, and that those who fall away from apparent faith only enjoy spurious, transitory faith, and (b) the person who holds that genuine believers

may fall away? Marshall’s analysis, using "Calvinist" and "non-Calvinist" to denote the two groups respectively, runs like this:

If a person is in the former group, he has still to heed the warning: only by so doing can he show that he is one of the elect. In other words, the Calvinist ‘believer’ cannot fall away from ‘true’ faith, but he can ‘fall away’ from what proves in the end to be only seeming faith. The possibility of falling away remains. But in neither case does the person know for certain whether he is a true or a seeming disciple. All that he knows is that Christ alone can save and that he must trust in Christ, and that he sees signs in his life which may give him some assurance that he is a true disciple. But these signs may be misleading.

It comes down to a question of assurance. Whoever said, ‘The Calvinist knows that he cannot fall from salvation but does not know whether he has got it’, had it summed up nicely. But this can be counterfeit and misleading. The non-Calvinist knows that he has salvation-because he trusts in the promises of God-but is aware that, left to himself, he could lose it. So he holds to Christ. It seems to me the practical effect is the same.

At a merely mechanistic level, I think this analysis is largely correct. But three caveats must be added. (a) Even if at certain levels the practical effect is the same, that does not mean the underlying structures are the same. One must still decide which approach is most faithful to most texts. In my view, Marshall does not adequately handle the numerous passages and themes that do promise the security of the believer. (b) Psychologically, the focus is not the same. Historically, of course, it is a commonplace that some branches of Calvinism have developed their own forms of introversion, believers constantly examining themselves to see if they were displaying sufficient fruit to justify their conclusion that they were amongst the elect-thus strangely mirroring their Arminian counterparts who sometimes gave themselves to worrying if they were truly holding on to the promises of God. Thus at their worst, the two approaches meet in strange and sad ways. But at their best, the focus of the two systems is nonetheless quite different. Despite Marshall’s salutary emphasis on the promises of God, at the end of the day the security of the believer finally rests with the believer. For those from the opposite camp, the security of the believer finally rests with God-and that, I suggest, rightly taught and applied, draws the believer back to God himself, to trust in God, to renewed faith that is of a piece with trusting him in the first place. (c) In any case, this analysis entirely neglects to wrestle with the way we are to think of God’s sovereign preservation of his people, and our responsibility to persevere.

[for continuation, see HolwickID #16814]

A Christian family living in Cairo recently flew out of the city for a visit to their home country. Before they even reached cruising altitude, they felt a physical heaviness lifting from them.

"We didn't realize what kind of spiritual burden we live under there," recalls a family member. "A load had been taken off of us."

What is it about Cairo? Something heavier than the weight of age, the push of traffic or the choking mixture of sand, smog and heat that presses down upon its millions.

Some Christians believe Cairo labors under an ancient and massive weight of sin.

"When an individual sins, it opens the door, gives a foothold to the devil," says a Christian worker who has studied the city's long spiritual history. "Repeated, unrepentant sin builds strongholds in people's lives that become barriers to the gospel."

Can a city or a country also have unrepentant sins? Scripture gives examples: Sodom and Gomorrah, for instance. Or Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, which were explicitly warned of impending judgment by Jesus (Luke 10:13-15).

Christian workers have begun identifying corporate sins that have created strongholds in Cairo -- strongholds they believe are defended by the sort of demonic principalities the Apostle Paul spoke about in 2 Corinthians 4 and 10 and Ephesians 6.

Five such corporate sins continue to influence Cairo -- and all Egypt -- some workers contend. Three are so old that Moses confronted them; two have emerged in more "recent" centuries:

-- IDOLATRY: The oldest ancestor cities of Cairo were possibly history's first centers of institutional idol worship. Already ancient by Abraham's time, idol worship drenched the Pharaonic dynasties. It persists to this day, some claim, in the veneration of real or symbolic idols, in materialism and cultural pride, and in the blind adoration of various Egyptian leaders in society, government and religious institutions. It can be found around the world in various belief systems, including New Age cults.

-- COVENANT WITH DEATH: The royal city of Memphis (a few miles south of present-day Cairo) was birthplace of a millennia-old cult of death. The god Osiris personified it. The people worshiped it. The seers wrote about it. The Pharaohs obsessively prepared for it. Its influence today? "What other city do you know of that has a million people living in tombs?" asks a worker, referring to Cairo's City of the Dead. The sprawling necropolis, an entire city-within-a-city of tombs begun in medieval times, swarms with squatters who have no place else to live in teeming Cairo. The veneration of shrines and graves and praying for the dead crosses religious boundaries, seeping into Egyptian Christian tradition.

-- MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT: Egypt's association with magic predates Moses' "power encounter" with Pharaoh's court magicians. Centered around the Nile and the goddess Isis in ancient times, its practice continues in folk religion, séances, the casting of spells, the "evil eye," etc., cutting across all social and economic classes.

-- OPPRESSION: Egypt's subjugation by foreign conquerors began five centuries before Christ -- and lasted some 25 centuries. "The Egyptians were oppressed by others, and they began to oppress one another," observes a worker. The cruelty took many bloody forms over the centuries and persists today in social corruption, a rigid class system and harsh divisions between rich and poor.

-- TURNING AWAY FROM CHRIST: Egypt was one of the great early centers of Christianity. The majority of Egyptians continued to claim Christ as Lord long after Islamic military/political domination began in the seventh century. But that changed, says a worker: "After the establishment of al-Azhar [Cairo's millennium-old center of Islamic learning and evangelism], over a period of about 200 years, there was a large turning to Islam from Christianity and an abandoning of the faith." Egyptian Christians remain a significant population to this day, but they have wandered in the margins of society for centuries -- a fearful and often persecuted minority in the heartland of Islam.

How can the strongholds of Cairo be broken? It can be done by intensive and extended prayer for the city. By confession, repentance and obedience -- inside and outside the church. By true worship, rather than idolatry and obsession with death. By compassion, justice and mercy. By lifting up the Son of God once again.

Can Cairo be transformed? Isaiah 19:18 declares: "In that day five cities in Egypt will ... swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty. One of them will be called the City of Destruction" (NIV).

Many Egyptian Christians believe the prophecy refers both to ancient and modern Cairo -- and that it will be fulfilled once again.

*

Kicking off a film festival ironically searching for faith in movies meant to inspire shrieks of terror, horror-film guru Wes Craven talked not only about his classic "A Nightmare on Elm Street," but his own conservative Christian upbringing.

Sandwiched between the screening of "Elm Street" and "Wes Craven's New Nightmare," the director's appearance launched the City of the Angels Film Festival last weekend at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. Now in its eighth year, the festival screens classic Hollywood and foreign movies, then features filmmakers and theologians who unpack the films' religious meanings. The festival's theme for 2001 was "Touches of Evil."

Creator of the claw-swinging cinematic bogeyman Freddy Krueger, filmmaker Craven has unmistakably evangelical Christian roots.

Born in Cleveland, Craven was raised in a conservative church where "we didn't smoke, drink, play cards, dance or go to movies," he said. He attended one of the nation's best-known evangelical Christian institutions, Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois, before earning a master's degree in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. Before making movies, he taught college.

Craven recalled his Wheaton years as a period of both searching and rebellion. "I really frankly was in trouble a lot," he said, explaining that he and about a dozen classmates, while considering themselves Christians, chafed under the college's restrictive interpretation of the faith.

"I was going through a very slow, but definite ... questioning of my own inner realities," he said.

Asked if he considered himself a religious person now, Craven responded, "I don't do anything in an organized way." Rather, he has come to see filmmaking as the most significant way to express his beliefs and longings.

Many people were shocked when, at a banquet in Orlando, Florida, where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment and world peace, cable television mogul Ted Turner criticized fundamentalist Christianity and said Jesus probably would be sick at his stomach over the way his ideas have been twisted.

According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Turner said he had a strict Christian upbringing and at one time considered becoming a missionary. "I was saved seven or eight times," the newspaper quoted him as saying. But he said he became disenchanted with Christianity after his sister died, despite his prayers. Turner said the more he strayed from his faith, the better he felt.

________

Spokesman-Review, May 1, 1990

Only 43 percent of Baptists believe that works don't earn salvation and 66 percent believe Satan isn't a real being, according to a new study released by the Barna Research Group and reported by the Florida Baptist Witness.

The study explored the religious beliefs of the nation's 12 largest denominations and determined that only 41 percent of adults in those denominations could be classified as "born again."

"The Barna report is a credible perspective on the state of Christian conviction in America today," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the Witness. "The report is a striking indictment of the loss of doctrinal confidence and the erosion of biblical beliefs that marks American Christianity."

George Barna, president of the California firm that conducted the research, said the study was not intended to report the official teachings of any denomination. "The data reflect what the people within those churches believe," Barna said. "If nothing else, this outcome highlights the substantial theological shift that has been altering the nature of the Episcopal church, in particular, as well as other Christian churches, in recent years."

The study's findings identify an alarmingly high number of church members whose beliefs fall far short of orthodox Christianity. For example, 41 percent of all adults surveyed believed in the total accuracy of the Bible. Catholics had the lowest percentage (23 percent) who believed the Bible to be accurate, while 81 percent of those attending Pentecostal churches held to the same belief. Only 40 percent of those surveyed believed Christ was sinless, while 27 percent believed Satan to be real.

"The trends Barna traces have been progressing for several years," Mohler said. "Americans have been negotiating away the core doctrines of the Christian faith -- all the while claiming to remain Christians. But Christianity is defined by certain definite and non-negotiable doctrines. Without these, there is no Christianity at all -- just the emptying sanctuaries of declining churches and denominations."

The numbers were better for Baptists than for the whole sample, but not by much. Of the Baptists surveyed, 57 percent believed works play a part in salvation, and 45 percent believed Jesus was not sinless. Only 34 percent of Baptists thought Satan was a real being, while 51 percent believed Christians have the responsibility to witness to others. Sixty-six percent of Baptists considered the Bible to be totally accurate, 81 percent considered their religious faith to be important and 85 percent believed God is the all-powerful creator of the universe.

The Barna study didn't break down the Baptist category into specific denominations like Southern Baptists or General Baptists, so the results may not be typical of Southern Baptists as a whole.

"What we've found is that when you interview people about what kind of Baptist church they attend, a large proportion of them either don't know or they will give you information that's inaccurate," Barna told the Florida Baptist Witness. "So, we typically don't break that out."

But even if the results would be even marginally better for Southern Baptists, they're still disappointing, said Phil Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

"This should not be too surprising," Roberts said. "We have 16 million members [in the Southern Baptist Convention] and I think it's a fair estimate that less than half actually attend church on Sunday. It's pretty hard to believe that Christ was not sinless and call yourself a Christian."

The two denominations with the highest number of members who hold to orthodox Christian beliefs were Pentecostals and Assemblies of God. Catholics and Episcopalians had the lowest percentage of members reporting a belief in traditional Christian teachings. Just 20 percent of Episcopalians and 17 percent of Catholics believed Satan was real; 33 percent of Catholics and Episcopalians believed Jesus was sinless; and 26 percent of Episcopalians and 9 percent of Catholics believed works don't earn salvation.

"The Christian body in America is immersed in a crisis of biblical illiteracy," Barna said. "How else can you describe matters when most churchgoing adults reject the accuracy of the Bible, reject the existence of Satan, claim that Jesus sinned, see no need to evangelize, believe that good works are one of the keys to persuading God to forgive their sins and describe their commitment to Christianity as moderate or even less firm?"

The study determined that evangelicals are scarce. Barna defines "evangelicals" as a subset of "born again" believers -- those who say their faith is very important in their lives, believe they have a responsibility to witness to non- Christians, acknowledge the existence of Satan, contend that eternal salvation is possible only through God's grace and not good deeds, believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth and describe God as the all-knowing, all- powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Those who fit in such a category include only 8 percent of adults.

Fourteen percent of Baptists qualified as evangelicals, compared to 33 percent from Assemblies of God churches, 29 percent from nondenominational churches and 27 percent from Pentecostal churches. Only 1 percent of Catholics and 1 percent of Episcopalians could be classified as evangelicals.

"The most disappointing finding of the report is the loss of doctrinal clarity among evangelicals," Mohler told the Witness. "We have come to expect doctrinal compromise in the liberal denominations, but we now see the same process at work among those who call themselves evangelicals. The Barna report helpfully defines evangelicals by beliefs -- not by denominational membership, etc. For too many 'evangelicals,' all that remains is emotional fervor and religious participation -- not the living faith founded upon the truth of the Gospel."

Roberts said one solution to such biblical illiteracy lies in pastors' diligence in preaching truth and in their willingness to go house to house, if necessary, to inquire about each person's spiritual condition.

"The church needs to take seriously its shepherding role," he said.

Mohler added that all Baptists should be alarmed at what the study reveals. "The Barna report is a warning of what is to come, if these trends are not reversed."

The study's results came from telephone interviews with a nationwide random sample of 6,038 adults.

*

Most members of churches in the 12 largest denominations in America have beliefs that "fall far short of orthodox Christianity," T.C. "Tommy" French told messengers to the Louisiana Baptist Convention. He based the statement on the recent findings by the Barna Research Group.

Such "shocking" statistics "represent only the surface of a deeper crisis of faith and practice within the Christian faith and our Southern Baptist Zion," French, pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, said in his presidential address.

French's texts for his message -- titled "Another Generation" -- were Judges 2:6-10 and Hosea 4:6. They record the "transition from a godly to an ungodly generation of Hebrews that was ignorant of God's Word and of his mighty works," he said. "They were uneducated in God's Word and in their historical relationship with God....

"Have we raised up a new generation that knows nothing about the vital and fundamental doctrines of the gospel? ...

"According to the recent Barna report, it is apparent that many Baptists are without instruction in orthodox Christian doctrine, and if this trend is not checked, like the Hebrews of old, they will be destroyed for lack of knowledge.'"

The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 "by Baptists who believed that the Bible was truth without any mixture of error," French said, and by 1945, Southern Baptists had grown to a membership of more than 6 million.

"Then there arose another generation," French said. "It came subtly like tares among the wheat, a stealth generation that flew below the radar, unseen and undetected."

French maintained this new generation -- "clandestine and subversive, an advocate of neo-orthodoxy" -- sneeringly questioned, "Hath God said?"

This was a "'vertical invasion' of another generation that does not know the Bible as our forefathers knew it...." French said. "They use the sacred language of Zion, but they have a different dictionary. They declare, 'We believe the Bible is the Word of God,' but a careful analysis of their theology reveals that their concept of biblical authority is different from that of the vast majority of Baptists.

"Their unorthodox views undermine the foundation of biblical authority. Once our Baptist theology has been seduced by this pattern of thought, it will have lost touch with the historical roots that have sustained and nurtured it."

French used the words of A.H. Strong to state that the invasion of this new generation can be countered "by vigorously asserting the authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures."

"We must stand firm on God's infallible Word," French stated as his first point of exhortation to messengers.

French referred to a newspaper article about meetings of two Baptist bodies in that city. "One of the leaders said that Southern Baptists have the Bible for their authority, but the Baptists of their brand have Jesus for their authority....

"This is highly deceptive, because Christ and the Bible are one united authority," French said. "The two cannot be separated. Not only does the Bible tell us all we know objectively about Christ, but Christ also identified himself with the truths, concepts, words and meanings of the Bible."

French then offered a second exhortation -- "We must affirm pastoral authority."

He quoted a newspaper article in which someone said, "Baptists believe in the democracy of the congregation and their ability to hire and fire a pastor."

French decried that position, insisting, "This attitude downgrades the office of pastor and relegates him to the role of a hireling. ... Baptists enjoy a congregational church government that places all the members on an equal basis in the transaction of church business, but this does not remove nor diminish the scriptural authority of the pastor. ... Pastors are chosen, not hired, by the churches over which they preside. ...

"Let it never be forgotten that God has called out a special class of men and set them apart officially and has committed to them certain official duties," French said. "The pastor has been given the title of overseer that has special duty and authority as he directs the labors of those he oversees."

When some individuals send letters to church leaders and bypass the local pastor "in a brazen attempt to undermine his authority and influence the membership, this certainly smacks of an arrogant papal attitude and assumes an authority that is not Baptist or New Testament," French said.

In his third point, French emphasized the need for a strong confession of faith.

"The ringing cry of 'no creed but the Bible' does not have a Baptist origin," French said. "It received its origin from Alexander Campbell, founder of the Church of Christ, whose theology was rejected by Baptists before he was disfellowshiped.

"If by 'creed' we mean any state-imposed religious test or any human standard that is held to be equal or superior to the Bible, Baptists are not and never have been creedalists nor have they advocated creedalism," French noted.

"[But] despite this Baptist aversion to creedalism, the idea of voluntary, conscientious adherence to an explicitly doctrinal standard is not foreign to Baptists....

"It is not enough to say, 'No creed but the Bible,' for immediately there comes to mind two imperative questions -- what is believed concerning the Scriptures and what is believed according to the Scriptures?" French said. "The answer to these questions becomes a person's creed and confession of faith."

Baptists have always been a confessional people -- "and anyone that declares we are not truly is a different kind of Baptist," French continued.

In addition to those emphases, French told messengers, "We must lash Christian education to the Bible."

French said the goal of a professor at a Baptist college should not be, "I intend to teach you to think for yourself and to decide what you believe is the truth."

In that case, "objective truth does not matter [and] only what you believe is true...." French charged.

"A Baptist college justifies its right to exist and can claim the generous support of God's people only when it lovingly and faithfully instructs the students under their care in the Holy Word of God. None but the pious can teach the Bible properly. It is the solemn duty of those that govern a Christian institution to see that it is filled with the Spirit of Christ....

"Let future historians record that Louisiana Baptists, in our generation, lashed Christian education to God's Holy Word and to the cross of Jesus Christ in their homes, in their churches, in their educational institutions and agencies." ...

"Recently, I read the new slogan of the Baptist Message [state newspaper]: STICK TOGETHER -- ACCOMPLISH MORE," he recounted. "We must continue to walk in the footsteps of our Southern Baptist forefathers and the apostles. Let us march on together as tried soldiers of Christ in the conflicts and successes that await us, for we have the certain knowledge that the work in which we are engaged is not our own, but God's. "I urgently call on all Louisiana Baptists: STICK TOGETHER -- ACCOMPLISH MORE."

*

People who leave the church aren't necessarily abandoning God, according to a pastor and sociologist studying what he calls "post-congregational" Christians.

Rather than being marginal churchgoers, Alan Jamieson found in research for his book, "A Churchless Faith," that 94 percent had been leaders -- such as deacons, elders or Sunday school teachers -- and 32 percent had been full-time ministers.

To Jamieson's surprise, he also found that for many the break came not because they lost their faith, but because they wanted to save it.

Rather than writing off those who leave the church due to burnout, spiritual abuse or frustration at not being allowed to ask hard questions, Jamieson believes congregations should listen to those who opt to go their faith journey alone. Ironically, he says, they might be the Christians best equipped to reach postmoderns.

Twice a month, 30 or more people gather at Jamieson's church, First Baptist Church in Wellington, New Zealand. Seated at cafe-like tables and sipping tea in the subdued light of the basement, they talk freely. No topic is off limits -- the nature of God, homosexuality, spiritual abuse, the role of women.

The focus, Jamieson told FaithWorks magazine, is "on where we are going instead of what we have left."

"Spirited Exchanges is not designed to be church," Jamieson says. "It is a place where people can talk about anything they want to talk about, without any sense of being 'out of line' or being told their thoughts are inappropriate."

Jamieson says he is aware of about 50 other groups like Spirited Exchanges.

Not surprisingly, the three-year-old program has brought Jamieson criticism from all directions. "Some people insist I am encouraging people to leave the church, and others are just as indignant that I am scheming to lure people back into the church."

But Jamieson is unshaken in his commitment to teach churches to become "leaver sensitive." The reasons: (1) Leavers need the church, (2) the church needs leavers, (3) leavers take their time, skills, efforts and wallets with them, (4) leavers tell their stories to others, and (5) leavers take their children with them.

Other researchers back up Jamieson's findings that many of the unchurched are still spiritually inclined.

"Relatively few unchurched people are atheists. Most of them call themselves Christian and have had a serious dose of church life in the past," pollster George Barna said in "Re-Churching the Unchurched."

David Barrett, author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates there are about 112 million "churchless Christians" worldwide, about 5 percent of all adherents, and he projects that number will double by 2025.

Jamieson isn't the only recent author to focus on reaching out to these churchless pilgrims.

American pastor and student worker Mary Tuomi Hammond, in "The Church and the Dechurched," turns her attention to those battling emotional, spiritual or mental scars they associate with their church experience.

Included among that population, she identifies "rabid atheists, silent agnostics, committed humanists, practitioners of distinctly non-Christian spiritualities." But she also finds believers who still cling weakly to a faith they carried with them when they fled.

Hammond's wounded souls "are among the church's strongest critics, because they are outsiders who were once insiders."

Hammond has been chastised for "attacking the faith" by recounting stories of spiritual abuse, but she denies that charge.

"My love for the church compels me to challenge the church to hear and attend to the cries of its own wounded," Hammond replies. "I love the church and I wrestle with it. I love the Lord and I wrestle with my faith as well. In that visceral relationship between loving and wrestling, I find strength, hope and life that cannot be extinguished."

She challenges congregations to become "church for the dechurched." She points out that Jesus spent most of his ministry reaching out to the "de-synagogued." But she warns it can be a long and difficult effort, as her own journey attests.

When her husband, Steve, was called to be pastor of a Baptist church in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1979, it had 12 members. Mary and Steve, who eventually became co-pastors, prayed for the church to grow but with little success. Then one morning in 1998, Mary said, she felt a definite call of God: "I have sent you to the one and not the 99."

They have since rearranged their ministry to address needs of the dechurched. Mary admits that ministering to the "one" is time-consuming and filled with contradictions. The "one" is "off the beaten trail, perhaps too unorthodox for the 99, too needy, too confused or even too cynical."

But, she insists, "As Christians we must face the issues we would rather not address, ask the questions we cannot always clearly answer, and listen to the voices that are most difficult to hear."

Jamieson, meanwhile, asks the larger question of why so many people with a deep longing for God are coming to the conclusion that they must abandon their congregational homes in order to continue growing spiritually.

Adapting the work of sociologist James Fowler's landmark "Stages of Faith," Jamieson divides "leavers" into four types: disillusioned followers, reflexive exiles, transitional explorers and integrated wayfinders.

Jamieson says many churches are unaware -- and unconcerned -- about those who have left. The overwhelming majority of 108 leavers he interviewed in his study said no one from their church ever talked with them about why they left.

Jamieson recalls one successful pastor's declaration that Jesus' parable of the lost sheep doesn't apply to those "who know where the paddock is and intentionally wander away."

Jamieson feels differently, and he uses a different analogy to make his point. He envisions a non-swimmer attracted to the beach. Befriended by a swimming club, he enters the water and takes lessons. A quick study, he soon is going to the beach at every opportunity and inviting his non-swimming friends to do likewise.

But eventually, perhaps after years, he senses a faint inner stirring to swim beyond the flags that mark the "safe" area. His old coach advises him such thoughts are dangerous. Gradually he becomes uncomfortable at the beach and begins staying at home. But the call of the deep haunts him. Eventually he plunges back into the ocean, this time to swim beyond the flags, totally alone if necessary.

Rather than abandon such swimmers, Jamieson says, the church should accompany them.

Recently someone sent Jamieson a copy of a water-safety poster that pictured a fish swimming toward the left as the rest of the school swam to the right. The caption read: "Don't swim alone."

Although he works with a lot of lone swimmers, Jamieson admits the poster is "a pretty good reflection of my feelings. That's why we need to go out beyond the flags ourselves. It's dangerous for anyone to swim dark spiritual waters alone."

_______________

Craig Bird is a free-lance writer living in San Antonio, Texas.

*

Like many Italians in decades and childhoods past, Giampaolo Servadio used to go to Roman Catholic Mass every week. He even served as an altar boy.

But last Sunday morning, as church bells tolled around this city of storied cathedrals, he followed a different ritual: he went running. It struck him as a more relevant use of time.

“The church seems really out of step,” said Mr. Servadio, 39, mentioning issues like birth control and questioning the very utility of prayer. “I don't see how something like a confession and a few repetitions of the 'Hail Mary' are going to solve any problems.”

He wondered if he should call himself Catholic: “When you realize that for 20 years you don't do this -- you don't even go to church -- what kind of Catholic are you?”

A fairly typical one, at least in Italy and much of Europe, where the ties of Christianity no longer bind the way they once did -- and often seem not to bind at all.

This week Pope John Paul II is to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, which is both Europe's and Christianity's largest denomination.

It has been a quarter century of enormous changes, and few have been more significant, for his church and mainstream Protestant denominations, than the withering of the Christian faith in Europe and the shift in its center of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere.

Christianity has boomed in the developing world, competing successfully with Islam, deepening its influence and possibly finding its future there. But Europe already seems more and more like a series of tourist-trod monuments to Christianity's past. Hardly a month goes by when the pope does not publicly bemoan that fact, beseeching Europeans to rediscover the faith.

Their estrangement has deep implications, including the prospect of schisms in intercontinental churches and political frictions within and between countries.

The secularization of Europe, according to some political analysts, is one of the forces pushing it apart from the United States, where religion plays a potent role in politics and society, shaping many Americans' views of the world.

Americans are widely regarded as more comfortable with notions of good and evil, right and wrong, than Europeans, who often see such views as reckless.

In France, which is predominantly Catholic but emphatically secular, about one in 20 people attends a religious service every week, compared with about one in three in the United States.

“What's interesting isn't that there are fewer people in church,” said the Rev. Jean François Bordarier of Lille, in northern France, “but that there are any at all.”

DEBATES OVER GAYS AND GOD

While France is an extreme case, its drift from Christian institutions and disparity with the United States hold true throughout much of Europe, where faithful attendance at Christian services, be they Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, is the province of a small minority of people.

They show up to mark crucial milestones in their and their loved ones' lives. But they pay minimal heed, between those visits, to their churches' exhortations and admonitions.

The tension between contemporary attitudes and traditional church teachings has forced an emergency meeting this week of the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

They are expected to debate the acceptability of openly gay bishops in their church. Representatives from congregations in the developing world have threatened to break the church in two if their Western peers head in a permissive direction.

The preamble of a new, unfinished constitution for the European Union omits any mention of Christianity or even God among the cultural forces that shaped Europe, although the pope and other Christian leaders raised vehement objections.

“My own view is that there is a form of secular intolerance in Europe that is every bit as strong as religious intolerance was in the past,” said John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister who was involved in the drafting of the document. He lobbied for God's inclusion.

Mr. Bruton's vantage point is Western Europe, but many Eastern European countries -- with a few exceptions, like the pope's native Poland -- are no more demonstrably devout. Having gone through religious outbursts after their emergence from Communism, they too seem poised to pivot in a secular direction.

Christianity's greatest hope in Europe may in fact be immigrants from the developing world, who in many cases learned the religion from European missionaries, adapted it to their own needs and tastes, then toted it back to the Continent.

In cities like Paris, Amsterdam and especially London, there are many thriving independent black churches, packed with newcomers from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other African countries.

A recent report by Christian Research, a British group, determined that blacks and, to a lesser extent, Asians represent more than half the churchgoers in central London on a given Sunday, though they represent less than a quarter of the area's population.

By some estimates, more than 25 million people in England identify the Church of England as their denomination. Only 1.2 million actually go to one of the church's services every week.

Other Protestant denominations are in the same shape.

“In Western Europe, we are hanging on by our fingernails,” wrote the Rev. David Cornick, the general secretary of the United Reformed Church in Britain, in the June-July edition of Inside Out, a religious journal. “The fact is that Europe is no longer Christian.”

BELIEVING VS. ATTENDING

That is something of an overstatement. Despite a recent influx of Muslim immigrants and the rise of mosques in countries like Britain, France and Germany, an overwhelming majority of Europeans who profess religious devotion consider themselves Christian. But for most, Christianity has evolved into an amorphous spiritual inclination rather than an exacting creed.

Stéphanie Vercamer, a 31-year-old florist in Lille, wears a gold cross around her neck and said it saved her from injury in a car crash several years ago. “There is a God,” Ms. Vercamer said. “I wouldn't be here today if there wasn't.”

But she said that she almost never sets foot in a church and that while she wanted to arrange a Roman Catholic baptism for her daughter, who was born out wedlock, she had not been able to yet. The little girl is 3 years old.

At the Saint Sacrement church in Lille, attendance at Mass often drops below 50 but rose above 125 on a recent weekend. The Rev. Émile Reyns, a priest there, gladly reported that he had recently done prenuptial counseling for six couples: proof, he said, that young adults still wanted Catholic weddings.

But he sadly conceded that all the couples had been living together for a while.

“They say it without blushing,” said Father Reyns, 66, who added that he did not expect to see the couples much once they moved on to their honeymoons. At Saint Sacrement, like many other congregations, the regulars tend to be much older.

“In terms of religion, Europe is very complicated,” said the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley, the author of “Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium,” which was published this year.

Sizable majorities of people in most European countries believe in God, and sizable majorities believe as well that some kind of religious service is important when a person dies, according to the European Values Study, a sweeping survey conducted in 1999 and 2000 and published this summer.

But they are less familiar with, or tethered to, the specific rituals and roots of Christian worship. “If you ask the average European the basic credo or statements of the Christian church, most of them don't know,” said Grace Davie, a sociologist at the University of Exeter and the author of several books about religious trends in Britain and Europe.

That assessment is supported by the caretakers of the faith themselves.

Last month Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the archbishop of Milan, said at a news conference, “The parishes tell me that there are children who don't know how to make the sign of the cross.”

“At the elementary schools, they don't know who Jesus is,” added the cardinal, who is widely considered to be a strong candidate for the papacy.

According to the European Values Study, only about 21 percent of all Europeans said religion was “very important” to them. Although the methodology was not precisely comparable, a Gallup Poll this year showed that 58 percent of Americans defined religion that way.

Even in Italy, where 33 percent of respondents described religion as “very important,” the percentage of Italians who go to church every week is as low as 15 and no higher than 33, according to various polls.

Most Italians seem not to listen to the Vatican, even though about 85 percent identify themselves as Roman Catholic and the pope resides smack in the middle of their country.

John Paul has exhorted them to be fruitful and multiply, forbidding artificial birth control. But Italians have had one of the world's lowest fertility rates for a quarter century now.

In a 1981 referendum, Italians defied an aggressive campaign by John Paul and other Roman Catholic leaders and voted by a margin of two to one in favor of legal abortion. Abortion is now readily available and commonplace in most European countries, as it is in the United States.

Europeans are moving well ahead of Americans -- and more aggressively challenging traditional Christian teachings -- by providing civil recognition for same-sex couples. Despite stern opposition from the Vatican, the French, Belgian, Dutch and German governments have granted same-sex couples legal entitlements and protections, and Britain is considering it, too.

But the diminished sway of Christianity is evident in more than low fertility rates and bold new legislation.

Public schools throughout Western Europe have removed crosses from walls. Many congregations have been forced to close or combine operations, to make do with part-time ministers or to import pastors from the developing world.

On this continent, ministry has lost much of its luster.

“In Western Europe,” said Archbishop Giuseppe Pittau, the secretary of the Vatican congregation in charge of seminaries, “it's been almost a tragedy. A diocese that once had 10 priests ordained every year might have two, or one, or less.”

The desperation is evident. In September, when a group of Catholics in a rural town near Rome heard that the local monastery would be closed and the monk would be sent away, they kept him there for several days by bricking up and barricading the entrances.

URBAN STRESSES, WIDER CHOICES

There are many suggested reasons for Europe's drift, which happened gradually, over decades, as the continent grew wealthier and better educated.

One is a modern European cynicism about big institutions, grand ideologies and unfettered allegiances, manifest not only in partly empty churches but also in weakened support for labor unions and political parties.

“It's an overarching thing, a diminishing trust,” said Rüdiger Noll, director of the Brussels-based Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches, an interdenominational group.

The process of urbanization moved Europeans from quiet places where the church was at the center of life to chaotic bazaars where it got lost in the din.

The Rev. Enzo Bianchi, a Catholic theologian in Italy, said that in today's heterogeneous and often hedonistic European capitals, “there are more and more morals and ethics on the market.”

“There's Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age spiritualism, consumerism,” Father Bianchi said. “With all these competitors, it's harder for the church to sell.”

But in the United States, to name one country, many of the same dynamics have not prompted a similarly pronounced estrangement. Some experts say that in Europe, suspicion of major denominations may run higher because religious leaders directly wielded political power in the past. Others say the unchallenged supremacy of state-blessed faiths in Europe -- like the Lutherans in Scandinavia and Anglicans in Britain -- perhaps turned out to be a curse.

“Monopolies damage religion,” said Massimo Introvigne, the director of the Center for Studies on New Religions in Turin and a proponent of the relatively new theory of religious economy. “In a free market, people get more interested in the product. It is true for religion just as it is true for cars.”

It also has reverberations well beyond the pews.

“I've been struck by the way in which religion now serves to underpin the divergence between Europe and the United States, and where I particularly saw that over the last year or two was in attitudes about the Middle East,” said Philip Jenkins. Dr. Jenkins is a British scholar who teaches history and religious studies in the United States and wrote “The Next Christendom” (2002), about changing patterns of Christian worship around the world.

“Americans still take biblical and religious arguments very seriously, and therefore give a credence to the Zionist project that Europeans don't,” Dr. Jenkins said.

He said that for many Americans, the frequency with which President Bush invoked morality and religion in talking about the fight against terrorism was neither striking nor discomfiting. “But in Europe,” he added, “they think he must be a religious nut.”

The president's brand of certainty and fervor is not easily found here. But it exists, if one knows where to look for it.

'HALLELUJAHS' AND PRAGMATISM

At least 3,000 people, some clapping, singing and swaying from the moment they left their cars, turned out on a recent Sunday at the Kingsway International Christian Center in East London.

That was just for the first of three scheduled services.

Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo could not welcome each of the worshipers personally, but his face beamed from screens and monitors scattered throughout the gargantuan assembly hall. His voice thundered over loudspeakers.

His message was a blend of Corinthians and Hallmark, gospel truth and pop psychology, rendered in the style of a convention center motivational speech.

“If you don't change your thinking from stinking thinking, your life will stink,” he told the parishioners, who shouted “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!”

“Turn the dream machine on,” he said.

Pastor Ashimolowo, a Nigerian immigrant, started Kingsway 11 years ago, and it now claims about 10,000 members in East London, along with thousands more elsewhere. Many are from Africa, or their parents were.

They belong to a stream of European newcomers who were already Christian when they arrived in Britain -- or France or Switzerland or Holland -- but did not find in the Protestant and Catholic churches of Western Europe what they remembered and relished from home.

They wanted excitement, spontaneity and a kind of inspiration that spoke directly to them. Throughout many European cities, independent Pentecostal churches that are unaffiliated with traditional denominations sprung up to deliver that.

London today is full of them. Some are gigantic, like Kingsway. Others inhabit narrow, indistinct storefronts in working-class neighborhoods.

Worshipers often speak in tongues and take part in faith healings, practices that have begun to crop up as well in more traditional settings, like a United Reformed congregation in East London.

A decade ago, that congregation had dwindled to fewer than 10 members, some white and some black. Then the Rev. John Macauley from Sierra Leone took over. He gambled that the future of the parish was in a more ebullient style of worship.

“I was the only one clapping my hands back then, like I was from Planet Cuckoo,” he said.

But that sound and sensibility, which soon led to a drum kit and baptismal pool on the altar, tugged new congregants into his orbit. His church now has more than 250 members.

Both it and Kingsway deliver more than an adrenaline rush. They strive to be practical, and they market themselves that way.

At Kingsway, glossy brochures for a new religious seminar promise advice on “how to be entrepreneurs,” “mastering your finances” and “managing your relationships.”

There is emerging evidence that the promise of a tightly knit community and a certain intensity of experience can lure more affluent, established Europeans into church as well, especially if those Europeans are young.

Some sociologists say new data suggest a possible reawakening of Christian interest in people under 30, and Christian movements throughout Europe are reaching out aggressively to them.

The Emmanuel Community in France has wooed hundreds to gatherings like one in Paris on a recent Saturday night, where scores of well-dressed professionals nibbled quiche and sipped wine in a courtyard under the moonlight.

Then, around 10 p.m., they hurried across the street to a centuries-old cathedral where they titled their heads backward, lifted their palms heavenward and rocked back and forth, in thrall to a religious ardor that most of Europe has lost.

__________

Copyright © 2003 The New York Times Company.

*

Folks who live among the coastal redwoods of the western United States are aware of something called “second-growth.” Old-growth is the term used for trees that have never been harvested. Second-growth refers to trees that have grown from the stump of harvested old-growth. Lumber from second-growth is not as good as old-growth; it has less tannic acid (meaning it is less resistant to pests, especially termites), has an outer edge of white wood (an inferior grade of softwood), and its heartwood is slightly different from that of old-growth redwood.

Likewise, next-generation Christians have similar problems. The children of committed believers have shown an historical tendency to be less committed. They seem to be less resistant to sin, tend to have a softer exterior, and their hearts are apparently unimpressed by the price paid for their faith.

Passing on the doctrines or polities of our churches and cultures to succeeding generations is extremely difficult. One Jewish commentator, speaking relative to Israel during the time of the judges, made the following observation: “The difficulty of transmitting tradition intact has been a problem from time immemorial...” [Judah J. Slotkin, Soncino, p. 171]

Younger generations tend to allow the principles and traditions of preceding generations to decay or even disappear. Consider the continuing decline of all “mainline” denominations in the United States. Worse yet, survey the spiritual landscape of Europe, birthplace of the great reformation.

__________

Source/Attribution: John Gillmartin; Sermon-Illustrations-Each-Week

*

G. K. Chesterton once described the Victorian loss of faith as “a great silent collapse, an enormous unspoken disappointment.” In our own times, the collapse is often anything but silent or unspoken. Indeed, one of the most noteworthy developments of our age is the rise of the theologian or church leader who, once orthodox, now declares before the world that he has outgrown biblical Christianity.

One of the latest entries in the race to abandon the faith is John Killinger's TEN THINGS I LEARNED WRONG FROM A CONSERVATIVE CHURCH. In this book, Killinger sets out to prove once and for all that he has outgrown the conservative Christian faith of his childhood and moved on to an enlightened postmodern form of religion.

Killinger is no stranger to those who observe liberal Christianity. As a young theologian, Killinger traced theological themes in modern literature. He held teaching positions at various colleges and universities, most notably a position in homiletics at Vanderbilt. Later, Killinger served as senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Lynchburg, Virginia and the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, California. In TEN THINGS I LEARNED WRONG FROM A CONSERVATIVE CHURCH, Killinger caps his literary career with a testimony of how he moved from orthodox Christian conviction to something very different and very unorthodox.

Needless to say, Killinger's approach is not subtle. The title of his book declares controversy and this author is looking for a scandal. Of course, those who would scandalize the church find themselves facing a new challenge in this generation. So many heretics have paved the way, it is now difficult to come up with anything genuinely new in terms of denial. But give Killinger credit -- he is trying to catch up.

Basic to Killinger's theological transition is his rejection of the Bible as the literal, inerrant Word of God. Having been taught as a young Southern Baptist that the Bible is, word for word, the very Word of God, Killinger moved on to see the Bible as a mere record of theological reflections, limited and corrupted as they are, of ancient people. Those who believe that the Bible is actually God's Word are, by implication, just simplistic fools yet unenlightened by modern scholarship.

He is untroubled by questions related to biblical translation and accuracy because, “I believed then, and still do, that God rises above the Bible so majestically and transcendently that whatever happens to the Bible in its various translations and paraphrases is not likely to have much affect on him.” What does that mean? Killinger evidently believes that the actual words of Scripture are relatively unimportant. God “rises above the Bible” whatever the translation.

In 1970, Killinger had written FOR GOD'S SAKE, BE HUMAN, arguing that Christians should outgrow their juvenile ideas of biblical authority. As Killinger now reflects, “I argued that the Bible should not be discarded in our time as an arcane book about a Middle Eastern divinity, but should be seen as a dynamic record of countless people over a span of thousands of years trying to break through the veil of mystery and comprehend enough of the being of God to reorient their lives and reposition their culture. The Bible's authority, I suggested, rests in the very ingenuity and irresistibility of the experiences it describes, not in its having God as its author.” So, inerrancy and infallibility are to be replaced with INGENUITY and IRRESISTIBILITY. Evangelicals must resist the ingenuity of that proposal.

Killinger lampoons conservative Christians, labeling those committed to biblical authority as fundamentalists. His heroes are on the theological left -- like retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, to whom he acknowledges “a strong kinship.” Spong, we might note, has abandoned virtually every Christian doctrine, suggests that the Apostle Paul was a repressed homosexual, and now calls upon the church to abandon monotheism.

As is common to much of the “I left conservative Christianity behind” literature, Killinger makes statements that can hardly be taken seriously. At one point, Killinger vows: “I love the Bible so much that it drives me to insist on its true character as a compilation of exploratory words about God, not the final, irrevocable Word of God as painted by the fundamentalists. To make of it anything more is to do it an ultimate disservice.” By that perverse logic, the most appropriate way to honor an important Christian doctrine is to deny it.

Along the way through his TEN THINGS I LEARNED WRONG FROM A CONSERVATIVE CHURCH, Killinger denies that human beings are fundamentally sinners in need of rescue from the wrath of God. Observing evangelicals, Killinger advises that “the theology of atonement appeals to people who carry around a strong sense of personal guilt.” So, theology is basically reduced to psychology and atonement is now a spiritualized form of personal liberation.

Conservatives completely miss the boat by believing that the wrath of God is ultimately something we should fear. Thus, God's righteousness is reconstrued as something very different than the Holy One of Israel's hatred of sin. Likewise, Killinger reinterprets God's omnipotence in order to free the Creator from all responsibility for floods, plagues, tornados and other disasters. “The God I love is a LIMITED God -- limited as all artists are limited, as all builders are limited, as all parents are limited.”

Killinger's limited God is not a moral judge we should fear, but rather “the highly Benevolent Mind and the Intelligent Heart behind every good and noble spiritual impulse we ever have.” Furthermore, God is the “Parenting Force,” and the “Restless Spirit,” who guides and urges us “ever onward toward love and fulfillment.” Just imagine a prayer addressed to “Our Parenting Force who art in Heaven.”

What about Jesus Christ? Killinger identifies belief that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and thus the only way to God as one of the lessons he had to UNLEARN in his theological pilgrimage. Of course, specific biblical texts such as John 14:6 are likely to get in the way. This is no problem for Dr. Killinger. He describes the Gospel of John as “a completely histrionic and somewhat unreliable Gospel,” that is “unreliable from a factual standpoint.” Well, with the Gospel of John out of the way, and the authority of the Bible denied, anything becomes theologically possible -- and probable.

The Book of Acts is dismissed as “our at-times-somewhat-dubious 'history' of the early church.” Whether or not the Apostles taught the exclusivity of the gospel, it now must be abandoned in the name of Jesus Christ, “who taught universal love and acceptance.”

In a fascinating narrative, Killinger laments an attempt he made as a young believer to convert his father to Christianity. Given what he described as his “indoctrination,” Killinger had been convinced that his father was destined for hell because he had never confessed Christ. Concerned for his father's salvation, he enclosed some evangelistic tracts in a birthday present. Killinger looks back on this evangelistic attempt with great embarrassment. “I have always been heartily ashamed of that. How presumptuous it was, and how invasive of his privacy!” This passage ranks among the saddest personal accounts in modern literature.

As should be clear by now, Killinger rejects conversionist theology. He acknowledges that human beings need transformation, but this transformation is nothing like the salvation of a sinner by grace. Killinger now declares that “after all these years of study and scholarship,” he cannot believe that “the Jesus of history or the Christ of faith would endorse a view limiting salvation to those who have publicly confessed him as their personal savior” and follow Christ in baptism. Of course, the Jesus of the Bible made precisely this claim. The only way around that is to claim some knowledge of Jesus apart from the Bible.

Conservative Christians, we are now told, are also hung up on sex. This leads to our repressive understanding of human sexuality and explains, of course, why we believe homosexuality to be sinful. Jesus, Killinger claims, “almost never said anything condemning sexuality.” Freed from a commitment to the comprehensive truthfulness of the biblical text, he can just ignore whatever passages declare all sexual expression outside of marriage to be sin.

In the confrontation between the Bible and science, science wins. We should not be concerned about this, Killinger assures, because, “God doesn't need an inerrant Bible to be God. True believers shouldn't need it either.” At this point, Killinger commends the example of Benjamin Franklin, who said that he read the Bible as he ate fish, throwing aside the parts that would stick in his throat. Accordingly, Killinger relates that “I learned to live by the deep wisdom of the Scriptures without worrying about their literal facticity. If I preached on the creation story in Genesis, it was only to speak of the creativity of God or the beauty of the created order, not to apply a calculator and modern timetable to the schedule by which creation occurred.”

If the Bible is taken too seriously, Killinger warns, we limit our ability to grow beyond its ancient worldview. Killinger points us to “the loftier passages” of the Bible and insists that “God never intended it to become the restrictive document it has become in the hands of the fundamentalists.”

In the end, the Bible is to be acknowledged as containing many wonderful passages, “but it is only a passing record of humanity's experience of the Holy over a period of a few thousand years, and a somewhat limited record at that, considering the vast literatures of ancient Egypt, Greece, India, and China.” In the end: “Any God whose parameters are defined by the Bible alone is too small for the yearnings and understandings of the twenty-first century heart.”

In his first chapter, Killinger recounts a lunch conversation with Jerry Falwell, Pastor of Lynchburg's Thomas Road Baptist Church. One can only imagine the fireworks which must have resulted from the encounter between Falwell and Killinger during the years they served prominent pulpits in the same city. During their lunch conversation, Falwell warned of the slippery slope toward doctrinal compromise that follows the denial of biblical authority. At the end of TEN THINGS I LEARNED WRONG FROM A CONSERVATIVE CHURCH, Killinger acknowledges that Jerry Falwell was right. “Once we were able to say out loud that the Bible is not the inerrant word of God -- that its inspiration is not really different from that of the Bhagavad-Gita or Thoreau's WALDEN or Maya Angelou's poems -- then a great number of conservative and fundamentalist idols begin to topple.” Furthermore, Killinger recounts that without an affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture, it is “a simple step to denying that Jesus is the only way to God, or that he really had to die for our sins.”

Conservative evangelicals will learn any number of important lessons by reading TEN THINGS I LEARNED WRONG FROM A CONSERVATIVE CHURCH. The ruptured relationship between John Killinger and orthodox Christianity is not a matter of misunderstanding. To the contrary, Killinger knows what he is denying and believes that conservative evangelicals are trapped in an unchanging system of doctrine based in the authority of an ancient book, and thus are completely out of step with the modern world.

As evangelical Christians, we must admit that Killinger is right in at least this one important respect. We ARE fundamentally out of step with the worldview of modernity and its rebellion against God. The only way to get in step with the spirit of this age is to abandon the truth claims of Christianity.

In this book, Killinger offers evangelicals an invaluable opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror. Theologically speaking, John Killinger has traveled light years from the theological lessons he now so proudly leaves behind. The urgent danger is that evangelicals will eventually follow the same course. The lessons Killinger UNLEARNED are -- placed in their proper biblical frame -- the very lessons the church must RELEARN in this generation.

________

This article by Dr. Mohler originally appeared on CROSSWALK.COM and was titled: "Killinger’s Ten Things I Learned Wrong From A Conservative Church"

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of "The Albert Mohler Program," a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network. Hundreds of articles by Dr. Mohler -- along with other helpful materials -- may be found at www.albertmohler.com, where you can also access the radio program. To respond to this article, write Dr. Mohler at mail@albertmohler.com.

The United States will no longer be a majority Protestant nation in years to come, due to a precipitous decline in affiliation with many Protestant churches, a new survey has found.

Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

At the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion rose from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent, and many are former Protestants, the survey's authors said.

The study was based on three decades of religious identification questions in the General Social Survey, which the opinion center conducts to measure public trends.

The United States “has been seen as white and Protestant,” said Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey. “We're not going to be majority Protestant any longer.”

Respondents were defined as Protestant if they said they were members of a Protestant denomination, such as Episcopal Church or Southern Baptist Convention. The category included members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and members of independent Protestant churches.

Among the reasons for the decline were the large number of young people and adults leaving denominations as the number of non-Protestant immigrants increased, comprising a greater share of the population. Also, a lower percentage are being raised Protestant, Smith said.

Smith said it is also possible that some former Protestants are now identifying themselves only as “Christian,” a choice on the survey.

The Roman Catholic population has remained relatively stable over the period, making up about 25 percent of the U.S. population.

People who said they belonged to other religions - including Islam, Orthodox Christianity or Eastern faiths - increased from 3 percent to 7 percent between 1993 and 2002, while the share of people who said they were Jewish remained stable at just under 2 percent.

The “Roman's Road” presentation of salvation (from the book of Romans), usually cites the following selected verses to prove five basic points of evangelism:

1. We are all sinners (Romans 3:10,23).

2. The wages of our sins is death (Romans 6:23).

3. Jesus paid our sin debt on the cross (Romans 5:8).

4. Salvation comes by faith, that is, by confessing with our mouths

and believing in our hearts (Romans 10:9-10).

5. Call on the Lord for salvation and get saved (Romans 10:13).

Whoever established these five points as gospel keys for an unsaved person to become enlightened to salvation omitted other critical passages also from the book of Romans which are related to salvation. They are:

“To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and

immortality, he will give eternal life” (Romans 2:7).

“For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die;

but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body,

you will live” (Romans 8:13).

“You will say then, 'Branches were broken off so that I could be

grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of

unbelief and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be

afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will

not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and

sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to

you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you

also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief,

they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again”

(Romans 11:19-23).

Since these last three cited passages all cause much trouble for the “once saved always saved” crowd, do you think the person (or persons) who omitted them when formulating the “Romans Road” might have been eternal security proponents?

Furthermore, the “righteousness that comes by faith” is not mentioned at all in the “Romans Road” salvation presentation! The books of Romans, more so than any other book in the New Testament, stresses this! Paul wrote,

“What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue

righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by

faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not

attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but

as it were by works. They stumbled over the 'stumbling stone.’

As it is written: 'See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to

stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts

in him will never be put to shame.’ Brothers, my heart's desire

and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.

For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but

their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know

the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish

their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is

the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for

everyone who believes” (Romans 9:30-10:4).

Now, if that important passage would be coupled with the aforementioned Romans 2:7, 8:13 and 11:19-23, the “Romans Road” would be a MUCH better presentation of the Gospel as far as accuracy is concerned with its imputed righteousness and conditional security for the believer.

Beyond all of this, Romans 3:21-24 adds to our understanding of imputed righteousness:

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made

known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This

righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all

who BELIEVE. There is no difference, for all have sinned and

fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his

grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Please note the word “believe” in Romans 3:22. This word “believe” in the Greek is a continuous tense. Hence, Paul was saying the condition for “this righteousness from God” is a continuous belief in Christ which is also the implied meaning of the “grace” mentioned in verse 24. This is an important point -- for it refutes the false view that many eternal security proponents embrace, like R. B. Thieme who said:

“Yet BELIEVERS WHO BECOME AGNOSTICS ARE STILL SAVED; they are

still born again. YOU CAN EVEN BECOME AN ATHEIST; but if you

once accepted Christ as saviour, you cannot lose your salvation,

even though you deny God” [Apes and Peacocks or The Pursuit of

Happiness (Houston: Thieme, 1973), p. 23 as quoted in The Gospel

According To Jesus by John F. MacArthur, p. 98.] (emphasis ours)

Charles Stanley teaches the same way:

“...BELIEVERS WHO LOSE OR ABANDON THEIR FAITH WILL RETAIN THEIR

SALVATION ...” (Eternal Security: Can You Be Sure?, Oliver-

Nelson Books, 1990, p. 94.) [emphasis ours]

Eternal security (or “the perseverance of the saints”), like the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, is a false hope that is misleading many sincere people. It needs to be openly addressed and refuted as never before. If these added verses of Scripture would be presented and expanded upon in the “Romans Road” gospel presentation, the problem of the perseverance of the saints would not be as great as it is today. This is especially so if Romans 11:19-23 would also be repeated at the very end of such a gospel presentation. If all these verses corporately were Paul's gospel of grace, how do some conveniently omit the ones revealing the necessity of continuous-tense belief on Christ and a conditional security for the believer? See also 1 Corinthians 15:2.

One must ask himself, “How could all these important verses regarding the subject of salvation be omitted from the universally known 'Romans Road' gospel presentation?” Clearly, the omitted passages herein cited are just as inspired as those commonly known! Moreover, they all address the issue of salvation! How then can one warrant the omission of these key verses? Paul wanted his readers to know these truths!

Also, one might wonder why Romans 3:23 would be magnified, but not Romans 3:22, the preceding verse which teaches a continuous tense belief for imputed righteousness! The same kind of omission is found in Romans 6 where verse 23 is cited but not verse 22! Why, when the omitted verse(s) also contain important information about salvation that is not contained anywhere in the commonly known Romans Road?

Beloved, be not deceived -- you must continue in the faith or you will certainly be lost (Romans 3:22), sin can bring about spiritual death (Romans 8:13) and we must persist in doing good to get eternal life (Romans 2:7). [Eternal life is also shown in the Bible to be a present-tense possession at the point of salvation, 1 Jn. 5:12.] Don't be deceived by the popular Romans Road gospel presentation that would suggest these are not so! To believe otherwise is to show yourself deceived about these extremely important facets of salvation. John wrote:

“See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.

IF IT DOES, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.

And this is what he promised us -- even eternal life.”

1 John 2:24,25

________

Note from author: Permission granted to reproduce this entirely only.

Britain's Church Mission Society, with 200 missionaries around the world, decided recently that a place that needs one the most is the town of Telford, England (population 150,000), where fewer than one in a hundred residents attends an Anglican church. Said a CMS spokesman, “These days the CMS goes to the hard places and takes on the hard cases.”

The Church of England might have a larger problem, according to a July survey by Bangor University researchers: 3 percent of its clergy doubts the existence of God, which works out to nearly 300 non-believing ministers.

________

The Guardian (London), 7/11/05] and The Times (London), 7/4/05

I was a good little Baptist boy until leaving home for college and throwing away religion because it seemed so trite. I became an agnostic, which is really the only honest position unless something else happens, which I’ll describe. You cannot prove or disprove God’s existence. You can choose not to believe, but that in itself is belief in a negative, so you wouldn’t be an agnostic, who by definition says we cannot know if there is a God or not.

A couple of years into college, I was at home for the summer. One night I happened upon a note my sister had written about some difficulties she was having. The note simply screamed to the heavens, “God, where are you?” All of a sudden, all the things I had heard as a boy, but that had been so dead to me (aren’t most religious things?) came to life. The Lord Jesus was there in my room not letting me walk away into apostasy. No, I did not see Him.... no visions, no bells and whistles, no tortilla chips. I just knew. When you think about it, how could we find God when He would have to be far above His creation in majesty and power? He has to reveal Himself by giving us faith for us to know and believe. It’s not “This is my belief system,” or “I have faith and you don’t.” It is a certainty that changes your life.

How could we begin to know an eternal, invisible, infinite, holy God? The world and the universe itself show the fingerprints of an all-powerful, incredible genius. Why is physics able to somewhat describe the laws the universe operates under? Why does calculus work? Chance? Talk all you want about evolution, but what about first cause? Where did the logic the universe operates under come from to start with? Where did it all come from? Geniuses from physicist Stephen Hawking to the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard pass that by as unknowable and leave it in the realm of philosophers and theologians.

However, all the arguments of which a few were simplistically mentioned above did nothing to convince me. It was only when God chose to reveal Himself that I knew... knew Jesus was the only way God could reveal Himself to us finite people. The Son of God became one of us and bridged the gap between God and humankind. God’s Word to us would have to be infinitely complex because He is so. His Word is His eternal Son. The Bible tells Who He is and points the way to Him, but we can no more know Him just from that book alone than we could know Abraham Lincoln by reading His writings and biographies.

This Son of God became a man... came into the world not only so we could see God in the flesh, but so He could die for the sins that block us from being able to understand.

It is certainly not a matter of intelligence. Many of you are brilliant people - far more intelligent than I am. However, all the arguments in the world will not convince someone. That is what most so-called Christian evangelicals do not seem to realize. They did not do some good thing by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord. If they believe, it is because God revealed His Son to them. He chose those who truly believe, we didn’t choose Him.

God is so far above me. I could have never known Him if He had not had undeserving mercy on me that night. I would have walked away into eternal night. Therefore, I encourage you to seek Him. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. If there is the remotest chance that hell is real, do you want to risk your eternal destiny? However, if you do choose to earnestly seek Him, be aware that it is because He is seeking you. I hope He does. He is God. He does what He chooses to do. If you choose not to seek Him and find Him, then sadly, He passed you by.

He is no respecter of persons. I did not deserve to see, so I do not say He might pass you by because of anything better in me. I had sinned so much I was blind. Why He chose me, I cannot say. It was His free choice. He loved one who did not deserve it. I would not trade the eternal life He bestowed upon me for all the wealth, health, and power in the world. I will be dead in a few short years and will have to give an account to Him if He is real. What would all trivialities of life matter then? I have nothing to give Him. The only good thing I can offer Him is His own crucified and resurrected Christ Who died for me -- His own Son Who is forever with Him.

Adoniram Judson was taught the Christian faith from an early age. In fact, his mother taught him to read when he was only three years old so that he could read a chapter out of the Bible as a surprise for his father, a minister. When, however, at age sixteen he went to college at Brown University, he found his faith severely challenged. He became friends with another student named Jacob Eames. Eames was a deist, and his arguments and influence proved so persuasive that Judson had no faith left by the time he graduated from Brown, valedictorian at the age of nineteen.

I can imagine the deep grief his devout parents felt when, on his twentieth birthday, he divulged to them his apostasy. He joined a traveling theater group until he grew weary of it, and one night, tired and hopeless, found himself in need of lodging in a small village. He took a room at an inn, but he found his sleep disturbed by a man in apparent agony in the next room. The groans of the traveler on the other side of the wall, apparently in the throws of death, turned his thoughts toward his own death, a prospect that made him uncomfortable.

The next morning, before he set off, he inquired about the sick man and was told that he had died in the night. Judson asked who the man was, and the innkeeper replied that he was a young student named Jacob Eames.(1)

The knowledge that his good friend’s life had so quickly been cut short nearly paralyzed Judson with fear. His own unwitting presence at Eames’s death smacked of the Christian doctrine of providence. He reopened all of the theological questions that Eames’s persuasiveness had closed. After several months of spiritual and intellectual wrestling, Judson surrendered his life to God, freely and finally.

If you are familiar with the story of the rest of Adoniram Judson’s life, you know that he became one of the first foreign missionaries sent out from America. He spent the rest of his life laboring to bring the Gospel to Burma (now Myanmar). It was not an easy task; Judson lost two wives and seven children and lived as a stranger in a strange land. But his was a fruitful work. When he died, he had seen 8,000 people come to faith. Today there are thousands of Baptist congregations in Myanmar that survive as his legacy.

When Adoniram Judson’s parents sat with breaking hearts on their son’s twentieth birthday, how little they must have imagined that his testimony would bring thousands to faith and inspire countless missionaries. They must have prayed for him, that God would bring their prodigal son home, little knowing that the one who had destroyed his faith would be the instrument God used to restore it.

When Luke recounts Jesus’s parable of the persistent widow, he tells us that the message of the story is that we “should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1). If there is someone you have long been praying for, I hope that Judson’s story will induce you to continue. There is no one beyond the reach of the “Hound of Heaven” and God can use any person or circumstance He chooses to show sinners their need of Him. If you find yourself staring at what looks like a hopeless case, lift your eyes from the one who is resisting up to the God who made them. Call out on their behalf to the one who raised Lazarus from the dead, who brought Adoniram Judson to his knees, who softened your own hard heart.

________

1. Story told by John Piper in the sermon “How Few There Are Who Die So Hard!” at www.desiringgod.org.

________

Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

=================

Version used in a sermon by David Holwick on 7/12/15:

Adoniram Judson was taught the Christian faith from an early age, which is not surprising because he was a preacher’s kid. In fact, his mother taught him to read when he was only three years old so that he could read a chapter out of the Bible as a surprise for his dad. Adoniram was so smart he went to Brown University at age 16. But he found his faith severely challenged there; even in the late 1700s colleges were known for being anti-God. He became friends with another student named Jacob Eames. Eames was a deist, and his arguments and influence were so persuasive that Judson had no faith left by the time he graduated as valedictorian at age 19.

On his 20th birthday he told his parents that he had abandoned the Christian faith. I can imagine the torment his godly parents felt. Adoniram joined a traveling theater group until he lost interest in it. One night, tired and hopeless, found himself in a small village and got a room in the local inn. He found it hard to sleep because a man in the next room kept moaning all night. The man sounded like he was deathly ill and Adoniram got to thinking about his own death. It made him very uncomfortable.

The next morning, before he left, he asked about the sick man. They told him that the man had died in the night. Adoniram asked who he was, and the innkeeper replied that he was a young student named Jacob Eames.

The knowledge that his good friend’s life had so quickly been cut short paralyzed Adoniram with fear. How did his friend come to die right next to him? It was like a divine setup. He started thinking about all those spiritual questions that Eames’s persuasiveness had closed. After several months of spiritual and intellectual wrestling, Adoniram Judson finally surrendered his life to God.

If you are familiar with the story of the rest of Adoniram’s life, you know that he became one of the first foreign missionaries sent out from America. He spent the rest of his life laboring to bring the Gospel to Burma. It was not easy; Judson lost two wives and seven children and lived as a stranger in a strange land. When he died, he had seen 8,000 people come to faith. Today there are thousands of Baptist congregations in Burma that survive as his legacy.

According to a comprehensive national survey released this week by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College, those identifying with no religious tradition, or as atheists or agnostics, account for 15 percent of the population, up from about 8 percent in 1990. “No religion” Americans are the only religious demographic that’s growing in every single state.

And in northeastern states like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, the “no religion” group has surged even more dramatically, shooting up 300 percent in the last 20 years and now accounting for a quarter or more of the population.

With as many Americans identifying as “no religion” as there are mainline Christians, Jews, and Mormons in the United States combined, the Trinity College survey has helped create a portrait of an exploding secular tradition that reveals commonalities beyond lack of belief.

The Trinity College report, called the American Religious Identification Survey, finds that 60 percent of the nonreligious are men. They tend to be young, accounting for one in every three American adults under age 35. According to Trinity College Professor Barry Kosmin, a large chunk have baby boomer parents who came of age in the 1960s and wound up rejecting religion.

And Kosmin says that many of the 750,000 additional American adults who each year identify as having “no religion” are reacting to what he calls the “triumphalism and judgementalism of the Christian right.”

A full quarter of those identifying as “no religion” in the Trinity College report are former Catholics, many of whom were turned off by the church sex abuse scandals of the past decade. That helps explain why the Northeast now rivals the Mountain states and the Pacific Northwest — whose frontier beginnings established rugged individualist traditions that resisted organized religions — as the most secular parts of the country. “Despite the population growth, New England has lost 1 million Catholics” in the last decade, says Kosmin. “The trend in the Catholic Church has been obscured by the large number of people from Latin America who’ve filled the pews as the Irish Americans left them.”

Other religious traditions feeding the “no religion” boom are Judaism and Asian religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. While people who leave mainline Protestant churches often find new spiritual homes in evangelical or nondenominational megachurches, the Trinity survey shows that former Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus are much more likely to abandon religion altogether. Nearly half of “no religion” Americans come from Irish, Jewish, or Asian backgrounds.

Only a small minority of the nonreligious call themselves atheists or agnostics, but just 21 percent believe in a personal God, compared with 70 percent of all Americans. “They’re the inverse of the rest of the American population,” says Kosmin. “Three in four Americans want a religious funeral, but in this group, three in four don’t.”

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ “ says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity ... does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.

• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or “born again,” was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups’ populations.

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says that most national telephone surveys such as ARIS undercount Muslims, and that he is conducting a study of mosques’ membership sponsored by the Hartford (Conn.) Institute for Religious Research.

Meanwhile, some Jewish surveys that report larger numbers of Jews also include “cultural” Jews — those who connect to Judiasm through its traditions, but not necessarily through actively practicing the religion.

Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, pagan or “Spiritualist,” which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans’ five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans’ gravestones.

RELIGION AS A HOBBY

Since the first ARIS study was released, other major national surveys have offered snapshots of the USA’s faith.

The Baylor University Religion Surveys in 2006 and 2008, each based on 35,000 interviews, were distinguished by a look at how people described and understood God. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released its Religious Landscape Survey last year, also based on 35,000 interviews, mapping Americans’ beliefs state by state. It found that 41% of people had switched their religion at some point in life.

The initial ARIS report in 1990 set the table for those surveys.

It was based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Kosmin concluded from the 1990 data that many saw God as a “personal hobby,” and that the USA is “a greenhouse for spiritual sprouts.”

Today, he says, “religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many.”

Kosmin is now director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; ARIS co-researcher Ariela Keysar is associate director.

The ARIS research also led in quantifying and planting a label on the “Nones” — people who said “None” when asked the survey’s basic question: “What is your religious identity?”

The survey itself may have contributed to a higher rate of reporting as sociologists began analyzing the newly identified Nones. “The Nones may have felt more free to step forward, less looked upon as outcasts” after the ARIS results were published, Keysar says.

Oregon once led the nation in Nones (18% in 1990), but in 2008 the leader, with 34%, was Vermont, where Nones significantly outnumber every other group.

Meabh Fitzpatrick, 49, of Rutland, Vt., says she is upfront about becoming an atheist 10 years ago because “it’s important for us to be counted. I’m a taxpayer and a law-abiding citizen and an ethical person, and I don’t think people assume this about atheists.”

Not all Nones have made such a philosophical choice; most just unhook from religious ties.

Diane Mueller, 43, of Austin, who grew up Methodist, says she’s simply “totally disengaged from the church and the Bible, too.” Sunday mornings for her family mean playing in a park, not praying in a pew.

Ex-Catholic Dylan Rossi, 21, a philosophy student in Boston and a Massachusetts native, is part of the sharp fall in the state’s percentage of Catholics — from 54% to 39% in his lifetime.

Rossi says he’s typical among his friends: “If religion comes up, everyone at the table will start mocking it. I don’t know anyone religious and hardly anyone ‘spiritual.’”

SOCIAL MOBILITY A FACTOR

Anger and dismay over the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which erupted in Boston in 2002, may be reflected in declining rates of Catholics across New England. But the total percentage of Catholics in the USA declined only slightly from 1990 to 2008, from 26.2% to 25.1%. Analysts say immigration and other demographic shifts account for most of the changes.

“It’s not that everyone in New England lost their Catholic faith since 1990. It’s not the same people in New England,” says sociologist Mary Gautier, senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, the research arm of the Catholic Church in America.

Membership in New England’s Catholic churches is shrinking as older Catholics have died or moved to sunnier climates. Young adults are choosing non-Catholic partners, having civil weddings and skipping baptism for their babies. And those moving in to areas served by the churches are young adults who often find their communities of work and friendship online, not in parish halls.

“I sometimes wish I had a sky hook to take people from dying parishes up North and plunk them down in the parishes around Austin or Atlanta — and bring their beautiful buildings with them,” Gautier says.

Bishop Gregory Aymond would be happy to have those resources in Austin. He’s spiritually delighted and financially challenged as his Texas diocese has doubled in numbers with retirees, Mexican immigrants, students at five major universities and Californians moving in for high-tech jobs.

“And demographers expect it to double again in the next 10 to 12 years,” he says.

In Mount Pleasant, S.C., a suburb of Charleston, “everyone from Ohio is here,” says Msgr. James Carter, pastor of Christ Our King Catholic Church. The church has grown so big so fast that it has spun off another parish and a mission church, and it plans outdoor split-shift services for Easter to accommodate about 2,500 families.

South Carolina also exemplifies the Protestant faiths’ shrinking share of the national religion “pie.” The state has more Catholics (10%, up from 6% in 1990) and the percentage of Nones has more than tripled, from 3% to 10%. The share of Protestants is 73%, down from 88% in 1990.

Like Gautier, the Rev. Kendall Harmon, theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, blames social mobility.

“Mobility means your ideas are more challenged and your family and childhood traditions have less influence, particularly if you are not strongly rooted in them. I see kids today who have no vocabulary of faith, and neither do many of their parents.”

Harmon recalls, “A couple came into my office once with a yellow pad of their teenage son’s questions. One of them was: ‘What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?’ “

Kosmin and Keysar also found a “piety gap” in how Americans understand God: While 69% say they believe in a personal God, the Judeo-Christian understanding of the Almighty, an additional 30% made no such connection.

The piety gap defines the primary sides in the culture wars, Kosmin says.

“It’s about gay marriage and abortion and stem cells and the family. If a personal God says, ‘Thou shalt not’ or ‘Thou shalt’ see these a certain way, you’d take it very seriously. Meanwhile, three in 10 people aren’t listening to that God,” he says.

“There’s more clarity at the two extremes and the mishmash is in the middle,” Keysar adds.

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, sees in the numbers “an emergence of a soft evangelicalism — E-lite — that owes a lot to evangelical styles of worship and basic approach to church.

“But E-lite is more a matter of aesthetic and style and a considerable softening of the edges in doctrine, politics and social values,” Silk says.

Additional narrowly focused surveys, with closer looks at Catholics, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and African-American Christians, will be released later this year by Trinity’s Program on Public Values, which sponsored ARIS, Silk says.

Some believers might be alarmed by the ARIS findings, but Tom Haynes isn’t. Haynes, 46, a Houston entrepreneur, is the brother of Diane Mueller, the Austin mom who claims no religion. Same Methodist upbringing. Totally different spiritual choices.

Haynes, like 69% of Americans, said in the ARIS survey that he believes there is “definitely a personal God.” He calls himself a deeply committed “follower of Christ,” rather than aligning with a specific denomination. He attends a non-denominational community church where he likes the rock music, but Bible study is the focus of his faith.

“We just look to Jesus,” he says. “That’s why I don’t pay attention to surveys. Christianity is moving totally under the radar. It’s the work of God. It can’t be measured. It happens inside of people’s souls.”

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RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT IN THE USA

How Americans describe their religious identity, 1990 — 2008:

Religious tradition

2008 estimate

(in millions)

Estimated %

of population

1990

Estimated %

of population

2008

Change

___________________________________________________________________

Catholic 57.2 26.2% 25.1% -1.1%

Baptist 36.1 19.3% 15.8% -3.5%

No religion 34.2 8.2% 15.0% 6.8%

Christian, generic 32.4 14.8% 14.2% -0.6%

Mainline Protestant 29.4 18.7% 12.9% -5.8%

Don't Know/Refused 11.8 2.3% 5.2% 2.9%

Pentecostal/Charismatic 8.0 3.2% 3.5% 0.3%

Protestant denominations 7.1 2.6% 3.1% 0.5%

Mormon/latter-day Saints 3.2 1.4% 1.4% 0.0%

Wiccan, other religions 2.8 0.8% 1.2% 0.4%

Jewish 2.7 1.8% 1.2% -0.6%

Eastern religions 2.0 0.4% 0.9% 0.5%

Muslim 1.4 0.3% 0.6% 0.3%

___________________________________________________________________

Note: “Catholic” includes Roman, Greek and Eastern Rite Catholics. Christian generic includes non-denominational, unspecified Christian and Protestant, evangelical/born-again. Protestant denominations includes Churches of Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventist.

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Source: American Religious Identification Survey 2008, based on 54,000 interviews in 2008, margin of error +/- 0.5 percentage points.