The Mosaic of Christian Belief

Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity

Roger E. Olson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780830899708
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

In The Mosaic of Christian Belief Roger E. Olson thematically traces the contours of Christian belief down through the ages, revealing a pattern of both unity and diversity. He finds a consensus of teaching that is both unitive and able to incorporate a faithful diversity when not forced into the molds of false either-or alternatives.The mosaic that emerges from Olson's work, now updated throughout and with a new chapter on the Holy Spirit, displays a mediating evangelical theology that is irenic in spirit and tone. Olson, writing with nonspecialists in mind, has masterfully sketched out the contours of the Great Tradition of the Christian faith with simplicity while avoiding oversimplification.

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Christian Belief

Unity and Diversity

Should all Christians share certain beliefs in common? Is there a necessary common ground of “mere Christianity” that defines authentic Christianity in terms of its belief content? Or may everyone claim to be equally authentically Christian and yet believe whatever his or her mind and will find acceptable? These are profound questions and many modern and postmodern people would prefer to avoid answering them. If we say that everyone who claims to be Christian must hold to certain beliefs in order to make that claim stick, so to speak, then we risk imposing a kind of uniformity that smacks of authoritarianism and seems not to respect individualities of peoples and cultures. On the other hand, if we say that each Christian may legitimately create his or her own recipe of beliefs and expect others to acknowledge him or her as Christian regardless of conformity of beliefs with historic Christian teachings, we risk emptying the term Christian of all meaning. Are all individuals and groups that claim to be Christian automatically to be recognized by others as truly Christian? Or are there certain minimal standards of belief (and perhaps behavior as well) that must mark authentic Christian existence and validate claims to Christianity?

The problems embedded in these questions are profound, and tackling them is risky business. Inevitably one will be accused of either intolerant dogmatism or vacuous relativism or both! Nevertheless, these are questions that demand answers of some kind—however tentative those answers may be. That is because we live in an age and culture in which religion tends to be polarized by shrill and inflexible fundamentalisms that allow little or no diversity of belief—and by lazy individualism and relativism that acknowledge little or no authority outside the self. The greater the perceived threat of one becomes, the more its opposite asserts itself, and the cycle becomes vicious. Is there a way out of this either-or situation of false alternatives between, on the one hand, completely shapeless, individualized Christianity with no absolute center (let alone boundaries) in which all claims to being Christian must be acknowledged and, on the other hand, dogmatic, exclusive, intolerant fundamentalist Christianity that tends to define authentic Christianity in terms of mental assent to a detailed, comprehensive system of doctrinal assertions? Here I will propose one possible approach—the way of affirming a strong central core of identifiable Christian belief drawn from Christian sources, including the consensus of Christian teaching about God, Jesus Christ and salvation down through the centuries. Before making such a proposal, however, it will be useful to examine in more detail the need for a unifying set of beliefs and what may provide them.

The Necessity of Unity and the Great Tradition That Unifies

People who think that Christianity does not need to be defined even partially in terms of common beliefs may not have thought about the issues in sufficient depth. People who think that all Christians must believe exactly alike about virtually everything also may have failed to consider the issues deeply enough. The great seventeenth-century French Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal commented, “a plurality that cannot be integrated into unity is chaos; unity unrelated to plurality is tyranny.” Another way of expressing the first half of the axiom is to point out what should be obvious: something that is compatible with anything and everything is nothing in particular. If “Christianity” is compatible with any and every truth claim, it is meaningless. It would then be indistinguishable from, say, Buddhism or atheism. Truly it would be chaotic, shapeless and devoid of identity. Christian thinkers and leaders have always recognized this and have sought to identify a core of essential Christian beliefs that all mature, capable Christians must affirm in order to be considered truly Christian.

We see this in the New Testament itself where the writer of the first epistle of John avers that anyone who says that Christ has not come in the flesh (i.e., that Jesus Christ was not truly human) is to be considered anathema (excluded). The early church of the first and second centuries was plagued by people claiming to be Christian but teaching “another gospel” known to historical theologians as Gnosticism. The Gnostics considered matter evil and denied the real incarnation and bodily resurrection of the Son of God. Their teachings about creation, Christ and salvation were so utterly contrary to what the apostles preached and the church fathers after them taught that the Christian churches of the Roman Empire developed baptismal confessions of right belief to be affirmed by all persons joining the churches. The early Christian leaders rightly recognized that a “Christianity” that included both adherents of the gospel proclaimed by the apostles such as Paul and John and Gnostics would be meaningless because it would be compatible with too much, if not everything.

The same situation exists today as it always has existed in some form. Today Gnosticism appears under the guise of “esoteric Christianity.” Some individuals and groups that embrace and promote Gnostic ideas still claim to be Christian. Examples may include the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), and other New Thought groups and churches that make a strong distinction between Jesus and Christ and deny any real, unique ontological incarnation of God in the man Jesus. Some churches that claim to be authentically Christian promote belief in reincarnation and in practices such as trance channeling and other psychic experiences and teach a view of God that is essentially pantheistic (i.e., an essential identity between God and the world). Many such self-identified Christian groups appeal to a hidden meaning of Scripture to support their beliefs, and one even publishes a “metaphysical Bible dictionary” that is more or less necessary in order to understand Scripture’s allegorically expressed “deeper truths.” The early church fathers after the apostles had to distinguish between those truth claims that were legitimately Christian and those that were not, and in order to do this they could not merely repeat words of apostles in the circulating gospels and epistles. The Gnostics and other promoters of alternative visions of Christianity appealed to the same writings and to a supposed secret, unwritten tradition of additional teachings handed down to them from the apostles. In the face of such pluralism of conflicting truth claims and messages about authentic Christianity, the leaders of Christian churches and Christian thinkers of the second and third centuries simply had to develop doctrines. This was the beginning of what I am calling variously the Great Tradition, the consensual tradition and the interpretive consensus of Christianity.

The core of beliefs insisted upon by the majority of the early church fathers (as distinct from some of the peripheral notions that individual church fathers developed and promoted as their own) was taken up again by the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century and has become over two millennia something like the tradition of historic precedents laid down by US Supreme Court decisions over two centuries. Neither one is infallible; both are open to reconsideration and possible revision in light of their respective original and ultimate authoritative sources (divine revelation itself in the case of Christianity and the US Constitution in the case of the US Supreme Court). And yet, both are highly regarded as secondary authorities whose guidance is to be sought by every new generation of Christians and by each new high court of the United States. To a certain extent, then, the core of apostolic and post-apostolic teachings that form the common consensus of the teaching of Christianity defines what it means to be authentically Christian in terms of beliefs. Without that unifying core of ideas, anyone and everyone who claimed the label Christian and appealed to Jesus Christ and the Bible would have to be accepted as truly and equally Christian. But history has proven that to be impossible. Jehovah’s Witnesses appeal to the Bible (or at least their version and interpretation of it) to deny and reject the deity of Jesus Christ and the triunity of God. Christian Scientists and Mormons appeal to the Bible and Jesus Christ (as well as their own additional sources) to promote their own distinctive denials of God’s transcendence (wholly and holy otherness). Unless we are willing to empty the category Christian of all recognizable meaning, we will have to embrace the importance of beliefs no matter how intolerant or exclusive that may seem.

On the other hand, those who overemphasize the importance of beliefs for defining authentic Christianity sometimes explicitly or implicitly reject all diversity and plurality. This is one of the hallmarks of religious fundamentalism. While fundamentalism has various possible meanings, one generally agreed-upon characteristic is militantly enforced doctrinal uniformity. To be sure, the same problem appears among Christians who do not call themselves fundamentalists. It is not so much the word as the phenomenon with which we are here concerned. What if each and every major landmark decision of the US Supreme Court were treated as equally authoritative with the Constitution itself? What if no diversity of interpretation of the Constitution were allowed and citizenship were defined as necessarily including full agreement without mental reservation with every Supreme Court decision?

There are those dogmatic Christians who seem to overdefine Christianity such that being authentically Christian includes (for them) firm adherence to a detailed set of extrabiblical beliefs, some of which are quite alien even to the Great Tradition itself. For example, some conservative Christian groups insist that belief in a “premillennial return of Christ” (that Jesus Christ will return to earth to rule and reign for one thousand years at the end of history) is an essential Christian belief for all Christians. While it is true that Revelation 20 may provide support for premillennialism and some early church fathers and Reformers were premillennial, an objective view of the whole of Scripture and the entire sweep of Christian history does not support the claim that this is part of the core of essential Christian teachings that make up the consensual tradition of the church universal. Individual Christian churches and groups may make such specific beliefs part of their own doctrinal statements, but within the wider and larger historical Christian tradition itself, diversity on this and many other matters has been the norm.

All of this is simply to say that for Christianity beliefs matter but not all beliefs matter equally. The Great Tradition of the Christian church’s unified teachings stretching from the second century into the twentieth century (but especially formulated in the crucial stages of the first few centuries and the sixteenth century when the reformations took place) helps us determine which beliefs matter the most and which are secondary or even further removed from the heart of Christian faith itself. Without knowledge and recognition of that consensual tradition, each generation of Christians is left to reinvent extremely complex solutions to old problems by itself. Knowing the Great Tradition simply provides another guidance mechanism for interpreting and applying divine revelation to questions and issues that arise, and it helps distinguish counterfeit forms of Christianity such as the cults from groups and movements that differ from each other in secondary ways but equally affirm the core of apostolic Christian ideas.

What is the Great Tradition? Where is it found? What does it include? Unfortunately there are no absolute answers to these questions. The Great Tradition is a relatively nebulous phenomenon. Eastern Orthodox Christians will present it in one way; Roman Catholics will present it in another way; various Protestant groups will describe it in their own ways. Most of these, however, can at least agree that it is to be found in the common ideas expressed as essential beliefs handed down from the apostles themselves to the early church fathers. Eastern Orthodox theologians may add “as these came to be expressed in the decrees of the first seven ecumenical councils.” Roman Catholic theologians may add “as they have been received and authoritatively interpreted by the hierarchy of the church in fellowship with the bishop of Rome.” Most Protestants will want to say “as they were rediscovered and taught by the Reformers of the sixteenth century.” The early Christian writer Vincent of Lérins (died around 450) proposed a rule of thumb for identifying the Great Tradition that has come to be known as the “Vincentian Canon”: What has been believed by everyone (Christians) everywhere at all times. Whether such universality of belief has ever existed is debatable, but if we substitute for “everyone” “most Christian leaders and teachers,” we may find in Vincent’s canon a useable criterion.

In recent decades some Christian theologians have explored the consensual tradition in dialogues between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and various Protestant theologians and discovered significant common ground. Methodist theologian Thomas Oden has pulled together from the early church fathers and Reformers a great deal of material that he believes forms such a Great Tradition and based on that published a three-volume system of Christian theology titled simply Systematic Theology.1 Protestant theologians look to the Protestant Reformers’ retrieval of the patristic doctrinal consensus of the first three or four centuries of Christianity. Luther, for example, held to both sola scriptura (Scripture alone as the ultimate source and norm for faith and practice) and the relative authority of the first four ecumenical (universal) councils of the undivided church (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon). Calvin generally agreed with this. The more radical Reformers, the Anabaptists, respected and often quoted from the early church fathers, although their retrieval and regard for the councils and creeds of the early church were more qualified.2 The great Anglican lay theologian and apologist C. S. Lewis attempted to describe and recommend his own version of Christianity’s essential consensus of belief in Mere Christianity, which originated as a series of radio addresses broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation during World War II. Many other Christian authors have set forth their own statements of this consensual tradition and recommended it as a guide for Christian stability in modern and postmodern times.

Appeal to “Scripture alone!” and declarations such as “Ain’t nobody but Jesus going to tell me what to believe!” sound good when presented in a context of rigid, either-or, reactionary fundamentalism that rules out all individual freedom of thought and attempts to enforce secondary doctrines as essential Christian beliefs. But in the wider context of secular and pagan culture in which not only boundaries but the very core of Christianity is threatened by all kinds of cults and ideologies and alternative gospels—many parading as Christian or compatible with Christianity—these simplistic appeals to Scripture alone and individualistic soul liberty are inadequate. Christians need an interpretive tradition and communities that value it as second only to Scripture itself in order to define what “authentic Christianity” believes. Although there will always be disagreement even among scholars about exactly what is included in that Great Tradition, it is apparent that most Christian theologians of all major branches of Christianity—including evangelical Protestants of many denominational backgrounds—agree that it includes those basic assumptions and declarations agreed on by most if not all of the church fathers of the second through the fourth centuries (and perhaps into the fifth century, ending with the great Council of Chalcedon’s definition concerning the person of Christ).

For most Protestants it will also include the rediscovery of the doctrines of grace by the major Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century (Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Bucer, Thomas Cranmer, Menno Simons). The latter may or may not be found in the early church fathers. Many of the Reformers believed “justification by grace through faith alone” (sola gratia et fides) could be found implicit in Augustine’s later writings. In any case, the Reformers and their faithful heirs among the post-Reformation Protestant theologians and Reformers respected the early church consensus of teaching while wishing to add the dimension of salvation as a sheer gift of grace received by faith alone, which may have been muted somewhat in the writings of the church fathers.

Here the Christian consensus or Great Tradition will be treated as a minimal set of core beliefs generally agreed upon by all or most of the church fathers plus the sixteenth-century Reformers. I believe that it existed as well in the medieval Catholic and Orthodox churches even though it was overlaid with numerous nonessential human traditions derived more from speculation and popular piety than from divine revelation or the apostolic witness. For example, I regard the basic contours of the doctrine of the Trinity—the eternal substantial equality of three distinct persons revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as part of the Christian consensual tradition, while I do not regard the medieval conclusions drawn about the precise relations of the three persons in the eternal triune life as part of that Great Tradition. The Eastern churches rejected the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son (filioque) while the Western (Catholic and most Protestant) churches adopted that idea as part of the Nicene faith in the Trinity. Neither view is necessary for the Great Tradition, and both are judged to be speculative.

The same could be said about specific branches of Christianity’s distinctive beliefs about icons (Eastern Orthodoxy especially holds them in reverence), Mary (the Roman Catholic Church has developed a detailed set of beliefs about her), sacraments (Protestants have always been divided over the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper), and the end times (evangelical Protestants have disagreed much about the details of Christ’s return and earthly reign). Neither monergism (belief that God is exhaustively all-determining and the sole final cause of every event including human decisions and actions) nor synergism (belief that humans have free will and must freely cooperate with God for God’s perfect will to be done—especially in individual salvation) is essential to the Great Tradition. The Christian consensus is divided over so-called predestination as well as over free human participation in salvation. Erasmus and Luther—who argued vehemently over those issues—are both judged here to be players in and contributors to the Great Tradition. Unfortunately, their disagreement over that issue overshadowed their much greater agreement about the Trinity and deity of Christ, salvation as a gift of grace and not of works, and God’s final and ultimate sovereign triumph over the flesh, the world and the devil.

As nebulous and amorphous as the Great Tradition of Christian belief may seem at this point—until we fill it in with greater detail in each chapter—it is not an empty concept any more than is the concept of court precedents in US constitutional law and judicial process. In the year 2000 the US Supreme Court handed down a series of seemingly contradictory rulings about the implications of the Constitution for matters such as student-led prayer in public-school settings, late-term abortions, public funding for parochial schools’ equipment used for special-needs students and so on. Many journalists and even scholars were left scratching their heads. But others pointed out that the Supreme Court was not seeking perfect consistency between all of its rulings but rather general consistency with precedent rulings on the same subjects. Of course, the nine justices would declare that their rulings are drawn from the Constitution of the United States, but if pressed they (and certainly the law professors who have to explain them and their decisions) would admit that in many cases they cannot simply “go by the Constitution alone.” The Constitution does not address many of the pressing questions that come before them. So they draw on constitutional principles in part, at least, as these are found in a pattern of court rulings between the constitution and today. Some experts have dubbed this a penumbra (like an aura) of the Constitution. For example, separation of church and state and especially the so-called wall of separation between them are not explicitly declared in the Constitution, but they have become part of the penumbra of the Constitution. While that bare interpretive tradition of precedents does not settle every matter, it provides guidance. To be sure, individual precedents and the whole interpretive tradition or penumbra may be wrong in some cases. Supreme Courts are free to say so, but they rarely do and then only when they believe the clear me...