Since everyone else it seems has commented on the unfortunate and untimely death of Ms. Evans, I figured I would as well because there are important lessons to be learned from her short time on this earth. In case you are not familiar with Evans, she was an author, blogger, and provocateur who embraced something called progressive Christianity. This version of the faith is nothing new, having been invented, if you will, in the early 20th century amid the fundamentalist-modernist controversies. Those conflicts gave us “liberal Christianity,” the forerunner of the progressive Christianity of today.
The liberals of the early 20th century came to accept the Enlightenment assumptions of naturalism (whether they believed in God or not, the super-natural could not break into the “natural”), and German higher criticism, a scholarly movement that treated the Bible as just another human book. They came up with creative ways to explain away anything that smacked of the miraculous. The Bible was primarily an inspiration to moral instruction, not revelation from a holy God for the salvation of souls. This approach to the Bible and Christianity is why Princeton theologian and the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia J. Gresham Machen wrote a book in 1923 called Christianity and Liberalism. Machen’s conclusion was that even though the liberal version of Christianity utilized many of the same words, the concepts behind them were completely different; liberal Christianity was in fact a different religion altogether.
Which brings us to today, Ms. Evans, and progressive Christianity. What I’ve learned about this minority phenomenon in the much larger conservative Evangelical world, is that progressives like the liberals of old reject what is known in theology as the verbal plenary inspiration of the bible. Simplistically, it means all of it comes from God, and thus carries his absolute authority. From what I can discern about progressives, they are more nuanced in their rejection of this concept than the liberals of old, but just as adamant. The Bible is more human than divine, and thus its authority is not absolute, especially, not surprising in our cultural moment, in areas of human sexuality. A God of wrath who could send people to hell? Ditto. Such a God is inconceivable to progressive Christians. A real historical Adam and Eve? Probably a fable, but it can teach us something. And so on.
The problem with this pick-and-choose approach to God’s word is that it can’t escape being completely arbitrary. If the Bible’s inspiration is not plenary, then why should any of it be true and authoritative? Good question. If I or other human beings get to judge what in the Bible is the real deal, why this bit over that, or that over this? Good question. Personally, I see no compelling reason why I should accept any human assessment of what is and is not authoritative in the Bible. That would mean that I would have to accept the authority of that person, or group of people, as plenary. Why should I do that? Good question. Inevitably the liberal-progressive falls into the trap having-their-cake-and-eating-it-too (The proverb literally means “you cannot simultaneously retain your cake and eat it“. Once the cake is eaten, it is gone.). They want to accept that there is divine somewhere in there, but once they treat human insight as more authoritative than the text, the divine disappears. It’s either one or the other, divine or human. God obviously used humans to write it, but every word in Scripture is there because he wanted it there.
What this means for the soul of Ms. Held, and other progressive Christians, I have no idea. What I do know is that if we do not stand up for God’s word being his word, all of it, then we end up enervating Christianity, turning it into another works-based religion. And the beauty of the Bible is that it has the marks of God all over it, evidence that it is in fact not just another book written by religiously striving people, but his redemptive revelation to us in Christ.
Another thing I learned about Ms. Held is that she grew up in a conservative, fundamentalist type of home. As she grew up she increasingly found she couldn’t relate to it, and when exposed to this progressive form of Christianity embraced it. There is a certain kind of rigid, fundamentalist version of Christianity (btw, this is a human nature issue, not a Christian issue) that can in fact be off-putting to people whose personalities are not themselves rigid, who see things more in shades of gray, rather than black and white. Who have doubts and questions, not answers. Who resent having to fit into a certain lifestyle box to be a Christian. They see this type of fundamentalism as legalistic and moralistic, and often they are right. Christianity becomes more about morality, being a better person, than the gospel of God’s grace in the cross of Christ for saved sinners. Big difference. Huge difference. Infinite difference.
The lesson is that Rachel Held Evans did not have to leave the conservative version of Christianity (the true one), for the progressive version (the lie). There were and are plausible, reasonable, and rational explanations for every doubt, every frustration, but obviously nobody in her life was able to give her those explanations. Unfortunately, she ended up becoming a popular proponent of a faith that bears little resemblance to historic, orthodox Christianity.
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