How DEIA, Anti-Racism and CRT Are Becoming the New Gospel in the ELCA

Any meaningful discussion of these modern-day heresies absolutely must begin and end with scripture.  DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and now Accessibility – other letters are soon to come, I’m sure, as other intersectional groups demand recognition and victimhood status), Anti-Racism (which seems to actually be sort of reverse racism), and CRT (Critical Race Theory), which defines everything and everyone through the lens of racism. They ultimately divide the world into victims and victimizers, and if you’re deemed a victimizer, you must be destroyed at any cost. 

Although these ideologies are often dressed up in biblical/religious terms to sound Christian enough to mislead people, they actually are in direct opposition to scriptural admonitions, and in fact seek by their very nature to undermine the authority of Scripture and replace the Good News of the Gospel of God’s love poured out for us through Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross, with something truly vile and destructive. In order for these progressive idolatries (more on that term later) to be accomplished, people have to be convinced that the Bible is wrong and not to be trusted in matters of faith and life, that faith only matters if it is filtered through the DEIA, CRT and anti-racist ideologies – nothing else will be tolerated!

As background and foundation for this article, I ask that the following biblical references be kept in mind and heart. The biblical language is clear and must not be allowed to be subverted by the typical “theological word salad,” manipulative gaslighting tactics and fear mongering (“If you don’t agree with us, you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic, or whatever ad hominem attack they can think of to cower people into silence) so often used by activists and race-baiters to stifle debate and confuse those who are not well-grounded in scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.

Scripture for Consideration

Galatians 3:23-29, especially verse 28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (NRSV)

Colossians 3:5-11, especially vs. 11: “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (NRSV)

1 Corinthians 12:12-13: “¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (NRSV)

Rom 8:1-8, especially 8:1 – There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (NRSV)

The DEIA, Anti-Racism and CRT Replacement Gospel

One of the great gifts that Christianity has given to the world has been the cure for the destructive problem of “tribalism.” For the purposes of this article, I would define tribalism as the pitting of one tribe, nation, group or even gender and intersectional identity against another. When Christianity began to spread, something amazing happened: tribalism no longer defined the lives of people of faith, and that change affected their communities.  A new possibility for communal living began to emerge because people believed in, as THE defining characteristic of their lives, salvation and forgiveness through faith in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for them.  As people came to faith, the tribalism that had separated them and pitted them against one another began to fade away. The rebirth that comes through baptism and faith was incompatible with the old waring cycles of death and destruction, and light began to shine in the darkness as the Kingdom of God began to emerge. Although we begin to see changes coming in cultures and even governments because of the presence of those changed by faith, darkness, however, will always be a part of this broken and sinful world.

Despite all the happy rhetoric surrounding them, DEIA, CRT, anti-racism, and the victim-victimizer way of categorizing people actually turn people against one another, bringing back the tribalism that fell to the power of forgiveness, becoming ultimately profoundly racist and demonic.

Why? Because it skips the whole life-changing-relationship with Jesus part that CAUSED the changes and tries to go right to the end result. But since scripture and true faith are bypassed, the end result actually becomes the activists’ Utopian fantasy of a perfect world. This is where my use of the term idolatry comes in. They worship this vision and will destroy anything in the way of accomplishing it. Their goal, sadly, is a reflection of their own brokenness(as all idols are), and therefore HAS to accommodate virtually every kind of behavior forbidden by scripture (just keep adding more letters to the abbreviations!). God and scripture are, other than the occasional out-of-context reference to give some illusion of legitimacy, taken out of the equation completely. The resulting idolatry is then inside-out and backwards (I think the technical term is “bass-ackwards”) from what scripture invites us to experience. 

The Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church

Imagine the horror and embarrassment of ELCA leadership when it was discovered that after 35 years of mandated 10% quotas of people of color and people whose primary language is other than English, the ELCA actually became on average MORE Caucasian, with some figures being quoted as high as 97%!

Imagine the thought processes at work: “What can we do now? How can we FORCE the ELCA to become the church that we want it to be. The ‘racist’ ELCA must be destroyed and rebuilt in our image (but see Genesis 1:21 to see whose image is important!). We’ll call it ‘decolonization’ or ‘deconstruction,’ but we’ve got to completely destroy it. But how can we make the churches go along with all of this? I know! We’ll use guilt to do it! That worked before, right? We’ll throw enough Bible-sounding word salad at them to confuse them, but we’ve got to convince the 97% that THEY are the problem, condemned by God, that they are evil, racist, misogynistic, sexist, and that they are victimizers! THIS is the new gospel. ‘No condemnation in Christ Jesus’? Hah! We’ll HEAP condemnation on them! We’ll minimize Jesus’ death on the cross and salvation through faith in him. We’ll undermine people’s confidence in scripture, the confessions and the creeds, and we’ll guilt them into submission. Then they will actually help us destroy the church! Brilliant! And we’ll promise them a million new members who look just like us! All they have to do is shut up and get out of the way.”

In order to accomplish this on any level, ALL of the institutions of the church must be changed so that DEIA is the unquestioned operating procedure (done!), and they have to infuse DEIA into all of the constitutional documents of Churchwide, synods, and especially churches. Already on the ELCA website is the result of their DEIA audit and recommended changes to all of our constitutions. Being pushed by the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church, this represents the reworking of the framework of the ELCA, from top to bottom. Once the DEIA is fully unleashed, nothing can stop it, and I don’t think most of the leadership in the ELCA fully understands what hell they’re about to experience themselves. DEIA demands complete obedience with no tolerance for conservative or dissenting voices. Even bishops will be forced to conform. 

The one thing still standing in the way of full domination for DEIA is Bound Conscience. These positions, put in place apparently to gaslight people who disagreed with changes made in 2009, are what gives legal cover to those who would disagree with DEIA, CRT and anti-racism. Oddly, from a conservative and biblical point of view, these clauses are deeply flawed. We would say with Luther, that our consciences are bound to the Word of God. Oddly, that part is never mentioned in the Bound Conscience clauses.

However, when Bound Conscience goes (and it is being actively “reconsidered” now), nothing is left to protect conservative pastors and churches who still dare to disagree, and we will be subject to legal action, discipline and punishment for being racist or any of the usual phobics, and whatever other attacks that would be launched. That, I believe, will happen as soon as DEIA is fully implemented in our constitutional documents. DEIA leaves no room for disagreement. The change will be breathtakingly swift. The United Methodists are now discovering, with the departure of huge numbers of conservative pastors and churches, what happens when the conservative brakes are released. Even progressives there are showing some concern at how quickly their founding documents and positions are being abandoned – with not much of substance being put in their place.

I expect these changes to begin to be implemented at the 2025 Churchwide Assembly. Once DEIA changes are implemented, Bound Conscience will fall. Conservative pastors and churches will no longer be welcome in the ELCA, nor will we be safe.

We all remember with horror the ways in which traditional views on such matters as human sexuality were rejected and belittled at the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering.  Here is a link to an article in the Summer 2018 issue of CORE Voice newsletter about that event, including the way in which ELCA public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber led 32,000 young people in a chant rejecting Biblically faithful views as a lie from Satan. I think it is very interesting that as of the time of my writing this article, the website for this summer’s ELCA youth gathering – taking place in July in New Orleans – does not yet include the names of the keynote speakers.  However, in the information for churches that will be sending their youth, there are more than enough reasons for congregations that take the Bible and the historic Christian faith seriously to stay far away.

Here is a link to the information that has been prepared to help youth and youth leaders get ready for the gathering. The theme for the event is “Created to Be.”  The preparatory materials are divided into five sections with two sessions each.  We have been Created to Be Brave, Authentic, Free, and Disruptive Disciples.  Each of the ten sessions starts out with a land acknowledgment, stating who were the original inhabitants of the land on which the gathering will be held, and from whom the land was stolen.  Not only is the ELCA conditioning its young people to think and feel negatively about the country in which they live, they are also displaying their blatant and pompous hypocrisy.  The ELCA is totally ignoring ways in which synods are abusing power and misusing a constitutional provision to take over the property of congregations.  Also I am not aware of any situation where a synod has returned the proceeds from the sale of the property of a closed congregation to the original inhabitants of the land.  Rather synods use this income to fund their radical-left agenda as their congregations, number of congregations, and the income from congregations continue to diminish.

The preparatory materials are filled with examples of ways in which the ELCA is indoctrinating its young people.  For example, the “Go Deeper” section of Session 2 of Unit 5 (Disciples) makes the statement, “Many of our young people have experienced Christians who do harm, speak hatefully, and work for laws that hurt our neighbors.”  The youth are then asked, “What negative words come to mind when you think of Christians or disciples?  What harm have you seen people do in Jesus’ name?”  In contrast, in the “Go Deeper” section of Session 1 of Unit 5 the young people are asked, “Is your church a Reconciling in Christ congregation?  If so, how long did your church take to make that commitment and adopt a welcome statement?  If not, what would it mean for you if your congregation became a Reconciling in Christ congregation?”  Any pastor who does not want the congregation to become Reconciling in Christ – and/or does not want the issue to be raised within the congregation – needs to be forewarned.  Also, the implication is that people with traditional views do harm, speak hatefully, and work for laws that hurt people, while congregations that are Reconciling in Christ are accepting, loving, and wonderful. 

And how does the ELCA indoctrinate the people who work with its young people?  Information regarding the general session speakers for the ELCA’s Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza being held this month also in New Orleans is available.  Here is a link to the website for this gathering for leaders in youth ministry.

Looking at the bios for the general session speakers, you will see that the overwhelming emphasis is on LGBTQ+ ideology as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Here is information regarding three of the five general session speakers.  If you want your ministry to and with your young people to be anything other than that, you need to look elsewhere.  

• Jamie Bruesehoff is listed as an “award-winning LGBTQ+” advocate.  Jamie and her at-the-time pre-adolescent transgender child spoke at the 2018 youth gathering.  She describes her experiences raising a transgender child as “rooted in her queer identity.”  She is the author of Raising Kids beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children.
• The Rev. Carla Christopher (she/they) is co-chair of the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church and chaplain for Proclaim, which her bio describes as “an ELCA ministry that supports LGBTQIA2S+ seminarians and rostered leaders.”  She serves as Assistant to the Bishop for Justice Ministries in two ELCA synods and is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Consultant for multiple synods and faith-based organizations.
• Deacon Ross Murray is director of the Naming Project.  The website for that organization describes their goal as to “provide a safe and sacred space where youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities are named and claimed by a loving God.”  They also work to “advocate for systemic change in church and society.” 

If that is what you want your congregation’s youth ministry to be all about, more power to you.  If that is not what you want, stay far away from both gatherings and from any potential youth worker who attends or who would promote either or both gatherings. 

If there ever will be a time when that old adage will be proven true, it will be with the ELCA’s thirty-five-member Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church.

This commission was formed in response to action taken by the ELCA’s 2022 Churchwide Assembly.  The assembly directed the Church Council “to establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church” which would be “particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism” and would “present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a possible reconstituting convention.”  

Later communication from the ELCA Church Council stated that the commission should be made up of at least 25% people of color or whose primary language was other than English and 20% youth and young adults.  Keeping in mind that the membership of the typical ELCA congregation is older and white, this means that the commission will not represent the ELCA as it is but the ELCA as those who are leading and driving the process want the ELCA to be. 

The thirty-five members of the commission have been chosen and have met once (in mid-July).  Their biographical paragraphs can be found on the ELCA website under www.elca.org/future. 

As I read the bios there is no doubt in my mind that the commission is made up of people of great experience and expertise.  I have no question about their ability.  My concern is with their passions and priorities.  Reading their bios and remembering that these are the people who have been chosen to reshape the ELCA, one realizes that in a very short time the ELCA is going to be radically different from the church body that was formed in 1988. 

This is a very capable group.  It includes –

• Two synodical bishops
• One seminary president
• Three ELCA college and seminary professors

Members of the commission have held such positions as –

• President of the ELCA Latino Ministries Association
• Assistant general secretary for international affairs and human rights for Lutheran World Federation
• Top leaders of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
• Chair of the Lutheran Campus Ministry Network
• A person who has been chair, vice chair, and secretary of the board of trustees for Portico Benefit Services
• Executive Director of South Carolina Lutheran Retreat Centers 
• Member of the board of trustees and treasurer for Lutheran Outdoor Ministries
• President and chief executive officer of Mosaic (a social ministry agency which serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and other diverse needs)   

Thirteen of these people have held positions within their synods or have served on the ELCA Church Council. 

I was glad when I read comments from two of them.

• One said that “he hopes the perspectives he brings from his law practice and his work on synod and churchwide constitution committees will help him spot obstacles and identify solutions in our governing documents.”   
• Another one (one of the co-chairs) described himself as having “a penchant for good governance and organizational structure.”

But beyond that, reading the bios I became more and more deeply concerned.  I see this group as creating a new church body whose primary focus will be not on fulfilling the Great Commission but on social justice, LGBTQ+ and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion activism, and where men will continue to play a diminishing role. 

For all of the talk about the equal participation of women in the church, the ELCA Church Council and this commission are obviously not concerned about the equal participation of men in the church.  The commission is made up of twenty-one women and only fourteen men.  Women outnumber men by 50%.  And there are nearly three times as many women of color on the commission as men of color.  Of the eleven people of color (eleven out of thirty-five or nearly one-third of the commission), eight are women and only three are men.

Three of the members of the commission are assistants to synodical bishops.  But in each case their focus is on social justice issues and anti-racism, not on any of the other functions and ministries of a congregation.  As an example, one of the members is assistant to a bishop for communications and development, but in his bio paragraph he celebrates the fact that he “has successfully centered social justice and advocacy in all aspects of communication and community engagement.”

Seven out of thirty-five (20% of the commission) hold positions of leadership within LGBTQ+ activist organizations and/or mention that they are in a same-sex married relationship.  Please note:  This is not saying that only 20% of them are in favor of LGBTQ+ issues.  Rather it is saying that 20% of them see their being an LGBTQ+ activist as among their most prominent qualifications for being on the commission.  These people include –

• A Proclaim chaplain with Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries 
• Someone who has consulted with numerous synods supporting LGBTQIA+ cultural competency
• An ordained deacon at a Reconciled in Christ congregation
• The convenor of a synodical Reconciled in Christ ministry 
• The director for Pride in her company’s LGBTQIA+ Business Resource Group 
• Someone who has served as director of community relations for a non-profit corporation that serves the support and advocacy needs of transgender service members
• A board member and former co-chair of ReconcilingWorks 
• Someone who since the age of six has “stubbornly refused to conform to society’s expectations” and whose self-description is a “genderqueer lesbian” who “seeks to bridge binaries and transgress borders”

Equally alarming is the fact that seven out of thirty-five (again 20% of the commission) hold positions of diversity, equity, and inclusion activism in their place of employment and/or leadership.  Again this is not saying that only 20% of them make decisions and take actions based upon the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Rather it is saying that a full 20% of them see their holding positions of diversity, equity, and inclusion activism in their places of employment and/or leadership as among their most prominent qualifications for being on the commission.  These people include –

• A senior diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant in local government
• The chief diversity officer for a religious health organization who has received two certificates in diversity, equity, and inclusion
• A former diversity/cultural competency consultant in the non-profit sector 
• The convenor for a synodical resolution on authentic diversity and inclusion 
• Someone with over thirty years’ experience facilitating and training for intercultural equity leadership and organizational change 
• Someone who conducted discussions about race and diversity at the 2015 and 2018 ELCA youth gatherings 
• A person who is vice president of diversity and inclusion at one college after being director of diversity and inclusion at another college  

This final person shows the great extent of her passion for and experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion as she writes that she has “facilitated several workshops on privilege and identity, creating inclusive learning environments, and the basics of diversity and inclusion.”  In addition she has “served as a keynote speaker on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and has “completed a year-long fellowship with the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.”

Following the principle that “once you know the makeup, you know the outcome,” it should be painfully obvious and clear what this group is going to come up with for the shape and mission of a fully reconstituted Lutheran church.  We will keep you posted.

Editor’s Note: The conclusion of this article will be published in a second post on or about September 18, 2020.

Critical Theory—in particular, Critical Race Theory—has recently captured the Church’s attention, and in some corners of the Lord’s vineyard it seems, more significantly, Her imagination.  (For those unfamiliar with Critical Theory, this article will serve as a necessarily incomplete introduction.)  Springing from the same philosophers and theorists (Foucault, Derrida, etc.) who brought us postmodernism, Critical Theory seems to be suddenly taking the whole Western world by storm.

This is an illusion.  Though all but Liberal Arts majors would likely be unfamiliar with the Frankfurt School or even the phrase “Critical Theory,” everyone who has received an undergraduate education in the last thirty years has been familiarized with (and in many cases, indoctrinated into) its basic terminology and the categories of meaning by which it makes sense of the world.  For instance, for every one of my acquaintance at my own undergraduate alma mater of Penn State, the obligatory “professional writing” requirement for non-English majors was used by the professors as an opportunity to force-feed undergraduates Critical Theory.  As an example, a business writing class for music majors taught participants to write personal reflections on books like Stone Butch Blues, a lesbian coming of age story, instead of memos, letters to parents, and departmental requisitions.  Even if you think the exposure salutary, it demonstrates the tactics of Critical Theory, which, as its exponents readily affirm, “contains an activist dimension. It tries to not only understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform it for the better.”[1]

Solid introductions to Critical Theory by both its proponents and opponents are now widely available, and I encourage the reader to consult at least one of each to familiarize themselves with its outlines; otherwise, as commentator Phil Blair demonstrated in his response to a recent Christianity Today article, we may find ourselves employing it unbeknownst to ourselves.

Heresy

Though articles abound that are critical of Critical Theory (hereafter referred to as CT) from a Christian perspective, as mine is, I hope to explore the topic from an at least slightly different perspective; I propose that while CT may properly diagnose some elements of our cultural ills, it necessarily misaddresses these maladies because it is in fact a secularized Christian heresy.

The Critic Is Often Right About What Is Wrong, But He Is Nearly Always Wrong About What Would Be Right.

I want to start by acknowledging what CT—and progressive ideologies more generally—often get right.  One of the functions of the people in a society that are typically deemed “liberal,” “left,” or “progressive” is to point out injustices when they accumulate.  Any meritocracy (where achievement or talent is rewarded with social and/or economic upward mobility) periodically and predictably accumulates inequity and unfairness at its margins.  At a biological level, talent and giftedness are inborn traits that often run in families.  Sociologically, families pass on habits and knowledge that maximize (or minimize) inherent capacities for greater achievement and reward.  The greatest patrimony that a family passes on in a meritocracy is not their wealth—though that certainly has undeniable advantages—but rather their knowledge and skills in accessing or leveraging the power structures of the meritocracy.

This does not mean that a meritocracy is inherently immoral. (What would we want, a system where lack of talent, industry, and skill is rewarded?) But it does mean that for all the good it may produce, it is a system that can put real people at a real disadvantage in accessing the social and economic rewards deemed legitimate by the value system at its foundation; it is a system that needs a watchdog that calls for course corrections when the process whereby “the rising tide that lifts all boats” creates eddies and riptides that prevent people from weighing anchor and setting sail.

In his book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt contends that in the same way all the complex flavors of the world’s cuisines are composed of the tongue’s four basic tasting capacities—sweet, sour, salty, and bitter—the great diversity of moralities to which people ascribe are woven from the five basic “cognitive modules” with which we define and evaluate morality and justice.  Defined in terms of their antipodes, these modules are care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.  Haidt names this Moral Foundations Theory.

One need not agree with Haidt’s thesis about the origins of these cognitive modules to see their utility as an interpretive grid.  In analyzing the political application of the theory, Haidt, who identifies himself as a liberal, discovered that those who measured as the most “liberal” registered highly in the care/harm and fairness/cheating categories but little to not at all in the other three.  Though caring and fairness were also the dominant categories for those who registered as the most “conservative,” people with these political leanings showed a near convergence with the other three concerns of loyalty, authority, and sanctity:

What this means is that if it seems that the proponents of Critical Theory are “tone deaf” to some of the moral concerns expressed by other, more “conservative” people, it is because they are.  For the “liberal” adherent of CT, the mere presence of inequity is all the proof needed that injustice is occurring.  Questions of whether people have demonstrated the social virtues of developing skills (that is, demonstrating loyalty to the system’s values) are largely not considered, or if they are, the need to do so is defined as part of the oppression inherent in “the system.”  Likewise, the need to “pay one’s dues,” which recognizes the system’s authority, is construed as more evidence of injustice rather than a period of necessary apprenticeship during which there is predicted inequity between those who have acquired the sought-after skills and resources and those currently acquiring them.  Finally, the need to exhibit sustained effort with or without immediate reward—the most sanctified value in a meritocracy—is despised most of all as the mechanism of systemic injustice because, although such effort generally yields overall improvement in the socio-economic position of a given class of people, there is no guarantee in any particular instance that the effort so exerted will result necessarily in equity.  The moral concerns of three of the five moral cognitive modules are not only temporarily bracketed to focus analysis on the issue of fairness, for the “liberal,” they quite literally do not register as things worthy of assessment and for the critical theorist, they are merely attempts to obfuscate the real issue, which is measurable equity.

Moreover, the proponent of Critical Theory does not need to provide measurable criteria whereby to evaluate the claims of their analysis.  The existence of the inequity natural to and predicted by a system that rewards merit is the prima facie evidence that revolution is needed.  Whether the proposed system could actually create the desired equity and whether that equity would be balanced with other moral concerns  (everyone living in social and/or economic squalor is, after all, a type of equality) need not be seriously contemplated, because the only value in view is equity, which is defined as fairness that provides the necessary care for everybody.

This is how these critics can be right about what is wrong (that is, in Critical Race Theory, the form of CT most affecting the life of the Church at present, racial inequities), but so wrong about what would put these wrongs right; their theories are not based upon a morality with a complex enough palate, capable of fine enough distinctions.

Eschatology and Anthropology

This is also in part why Critical Theory is a comprehensive worldview; in merely noting inequity, it believes that it has accounted for all the most significant moral variables—the only ones that count.  It must then flatten all human experience into the narrow interpretive grid it deems the only valid one.

Four Fundamental Questions

The late Ravi Zacharias helpfully delineated at least four fundamental questions of human life to which any worldview must propose an answer: human origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.  Because of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” the issue of origins has dominated the intellectual landscape of the Western Church for the last 100 or so years.  First, it dominated the popular imagination as “yet another case” of backward religionists resisting reason’s inevitable march of progress in accord with the Enlightenment’s self-narration.  (Yes, this was first. Scopes deliberately implicated himself so that a trial would need to be held and Darrow deliberately had the trial played out by a sympathetic urbane media in the court of public opinion as part of his legal strategy.)  The attempts to condemn Intelligent Design as veiled religious dogma are the intellectual descendants of that controversy.  Secondly, it precipitated a growing crisis within the Church between Fundamentalists and Modernists, who believed a dating of the age of the earth to greater than 7,000 years was congruent with orthodox Biblical interpretation.  The inheritors of that dispute are the Young Earth versus Old Earth Creationist debates of today.[2] 

“Your theology can never be better than your anthropology,” was one of the favorite axioms my Prophets professor in seminary passed on to us from his mentor.  Of course, being self-consciously orthodox, I thought that axiom got it exactly backward; our theology—specifically our Christology and soteriology—necessarily defines our understanding of human nature, so our anthropology can never be better than our theology.

Unfortunately, the Western Church’s obsession with origins has led to a relative neglect of the way our understanding of who Jesus is and what salvation fully entails informs our understanding of what human beings are (our meaning), how we should live (our morality), and our purpose or telos (our destiny).  The preaching of Jesus predominantly as life coach, social activist, friend of sinners, prophetic preacher, social reformer or even atoning sacrifice for sinners, has led to the neglect of the consistent preaching of Jesus as the God-Man or Theanthropos, a new species in God’s economy of salvation.[3]  “God became man that man might become [like] God,” exulted Irenaeus of Lyons in his second century classic Against Heresies, going on to declare as the soteriological significance of that teaching that “the glory of God is a [hu]man fully alive.”

Great Tradition Christianity proclaims that the ultimate destiny of redeemed humanity is not merely to avoid hell (Jesus as the cosmic get-out-of-jail-free card) or to emulate Jesus as the finest example of a fully self-realized or perfectly moral human person, but rather to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).  Through our Sacramental union with Jesus, who was fully God and fully human, by faith in His promises, we are drawn into the perichoretic inner life of the Godhead, the most Holy Trinity.  As the Theanthropos, Jesus is the “firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29), not the only-born to be admired and worshipped, but whose life remains fundamentally distant from our own.

This teaching about the implications of salvation through Christ for our destiny as human beings thoroughly conditions and shapes all other elements of our theology.  In other words, remembering the fullness of our destiny as human beings in Christ has far more impact on our understanding of what is the meaning of human life and the morality by which it is to be lived than our understanding of our origins.

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[1] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. (New York: New York University Press, 2017), page 8.

[2] If you speak the first article of the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed without crossing your fingers, you are a creationist of one stripe or the other; it is important that non-fundamentalist Christians be absolutely clear on this point and think through the consequences of that position as distinct from a functional Deism.

[3] Justification by grace through faith—forensic justification—may indeed be the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls as Martin Luther declared, but it was never meant to be preached denuded of the very Christology that makes it so powerful and poignant.

“The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool; Holy is He.” (Psalm 99:4-5)

 

The Lord is not as we are able to imagine. His justice is perfect and the world, which is not just, cannot fathom a perfect and just God. Holy is He; so holy that we are unable to begin to fathom His holiness and goodness. Yet, though He is beyond our ability to grasp, He has made Himself known through His Son that we may come to Him and be in His presence. He has provided the way for us to walk with Him.

Lord, Your way is too good for me. You are too great for me to stand in Your presence and yet You have invited me to walk in the light of Your grace to be with You in eternity. Far above my ability to comprehend, You have done these things. Lead me, O Lord, by Your Spirit to walk now and always in the light of Your countenance that I may be in Your presence forever.

Lord Jesus, God in the flesh, many do not understand Your presence in this world. They do not know that You are He of whom the prophets foretold. Even Your presence in this world is more than I am able to understand. Guide me in humility to walk with You wherever You lead that I may abide in You and You in me all the days of my life. Lead me, Lord Jesus, by Your grace. Amen.

“Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns; indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and all it contains; let the field exult, and all that is in it.” (Psalm 96:10-12a)

 

The Lord is just, and sees all that happens. A bird does not fall from the sky that He does not know about. The earth knows His voice and listens when He commands. Creation exalts the Lord, for He is the One who made it. Join with the rest of creation and praise the name of the Lord with your life and your being. Be one who acknowledges the Lord in all things.

O Lord, how often I do not praise You or think upon the goodness that You have given me. Guide my heart to see more clearly the truth of all that You have done. Lift my countenance to give You praise at all times and in all circumstances. Guide me, O Lord, in Your goodness to see the beauty of Your work and the promise of Your mercy and grace that I may be forever Yours.

Lord Jesus, You have paved the way that I may walk now and forever in Your presence. Lift me up this day to walk humbly in the Father’s presence knowing that I am always before You. Teach me the way You would have me go. Lead me into the righteousness You give that I may humbly become the child of God that is promised through the grace You have purchased. Amen.