I have had a chance, as the day unfolded, to reflect further on the so called Nashville Statement; the statement that a hundred and fifty evangelical signatories signed their names to. It seems to be their attempt to draw a line in the sand in regard to what they see as a pressing problem for the church, and in particular, their evangelical church. The problem for them, of course, is the 
progression and in-roads of the LGBTQ, homosexual gay agenda, as they see it transforming not only the body politic of culture in general, but its pressing into the church itself.
But I have a problem with it. For me, the problem has more to do with these leaders’s conception of how the church ought to operate in regard to its witness to the Gospel in relation to the world at large. As I see it, they are presuming upon an us versus them dynamic that the Gospel itself does not presume; instead, the Gospel is an equalizing reality. The Gospel as the Word of God in Jesus Christ stands as judge not just over those guys and gals out there, but as judge of the church itself; as Peter notes: “17 For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”[1] In other words, the Nashville Statement places itself in the place of God’s Word, as if its signatories are the judges; it actually and ironically displaces the Word of God with its own word over against others. If these signatories were to listen to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his admonition to the American churches, as he saw it back in the 30s, they may well not have penned such a statement. Bonhoeffer wrote:
American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of “criticism” by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God’s “criticism” touches every religion, the Christianity of the churches and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics. A symptom of this is the general adherence to natural theology. . . . But because of this, the person and work of Jesus Christ, must for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness.[2]
Do you see what Bonhoeffer is getting at, particularly when he references ‘natural theology?’ It is when churches displace her reality, founded in Jesus Christ alone, with a perception of herself as possessor of God’s absolute Word, and not just as possessor, but as dispenser, that she has presumed too much. She begins to elevate herself beyond the culture of which she is ensconced, and presumes that she has divined things, and thus has become able to pronounce things in absolute and damning ways, that in reality belongs to the Lord of the church alone; the living Word of God. Bonhoeffer’s point, is that when the church sees herself as coextensive with the Word of God itself, in an absolute way, that she actually loses her voice to bear witness to the living Word of God who not only stands in judgment of his church, but of the world at large.
Similarly, John Webster, as he comments on Barth’s critique of the liberal church in Germany is somewhat and ironically parallel with Bonhoeffer’s critique of the American church as he saw it. Here Webster, in line with Bonhoeffer points out how, in the thought of Barth, morality and ethics become too much aligned with the ‘moral and absolute self’ such that the Word of God loses its place for the Christian, and at the same time becomes coterminous with the Christian’s perception of the world at large and her pronouncements toward the world. Webster writes:
A large part of Barth’s distaste is his sense that the ethics of liberal Protestantism could not be extricated from a certain kind of cultural confidence: ‘[H]ere was … a human culture building itself up in orderly fashion in politics, economics, and science, theoretical and applied, progressing steadily along its whole front, interpreted and ennobled by art, and through its morality and religion reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.’ The ethical question, on such an account, is no longer disruptive; it has ‘an almost perfectly obvious answer’, so that, in effect, the moral life becomes too easy, a matter of the simple task of following Jesus.
Within this ethos, Barth also discerns a moral anthropology with which he is distinctly ill-at-ease. He unearths in the received Protestant moral culture a notion of moral subjectivity (ultimately Kantian in origin), according to which ‘[t]he moral personality is the author both of the conduct with which the ethical question is concerned and of the question itself. Barth’s point is not simply that such an anthropology lacks serious consideration of human corruption, but something more complex. He is beginning to unearth the way in which this picture of human subjectivity as it were projects the moral self into a neutral space, from which it can survey the ethical question ‘from the viewpoint of spectators’. This notion Barth reads as a kind of absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness’. And it is precisely this — the image of moral reason as a secure centre of value, omnicompetent in its judgements — that the ethical question interrogates. [3]
The Nashville Statement exudes this sense “of [the] absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness.” The Word of God has now been conflated with the Nashville Statement, as if a hundred and fifty signatories, backing fourteen theses on homosexuality are what God himself believes about the state of affairs in regard not just to homosexuality but other moral proclivities.
What concerns me most is the culture, in the evangelical church, that fosters the idea that such statements are healthy and good. In what way do such statements bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to the living Word of God? It ends up reducing the church to an organization of people who appear to be oriented around a cluster of ethical principles and mores instead of an organic reality who finds her sustenance in and from Christ. Whether or not homosexuality is contrariwise to the ethics of the Kingdom[4], the church herself should be more concerned with her own blights and inadequacies. The church should evidence humility before God wherein she is constantly crying out to him for his mercy and grace, such that this posture, before the world, bears witness to the reality of God in Christ. The church should avoid placing herself in positions where she appears to believe that she has become the absolute mouthpiece for God, in regard to perceived moral inequities, and instead submit to the personal reality of God herself. It is this repentant posture before God and the world wherein the power of God will be most on display. It is up to God in Christ to bring transformation into the lives of people; he alone justifies and sanctifies, the church does not!
Who do we think we are? Jesus is LORD, not the church!
[1] I Peter 4.17, NIV.
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Protestantism without Reformation,” in No Rusty Swords, ed. Edwin H. Robertson (London: Fontana Library, 1970), 88-113 cited by George Hunsinger,Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 71-2.
[3] John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 35-6.
[4] Which personally I believe it is.
*Artwork of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Mark Summers.
A helpful reflection. I think Bonhoeffer provides a much better way of approaching the whole thing: http://danielblanche.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ethics.html
It’s not that such statements can’t be made – in fact, I’d say that confessing the gospel requires them – but we have to begin by putting ourselves in the guilty column. I think if we did that clearly we’d be more inclined to make our statements about the gospel (and the command which comes from it) rather than the command (and only secondarily the gospel which gives the command life and power and beauty).
Having said that, I’m still chewing over Nashville. My initial reaction is a lot of ‘yes, but…’
Daniel, I actually, though, as I just noted in my post, don’t believe such statements are helpful; in fact they place us (i.e. the church) outside of the “guilty column;” indeed this is the point of my post. I agree the indicative must always precede the imperative, but that doesn’t change the fact that statement’s like Nashville’s evince an attitude that believes it is superior and indeed elevated to a level that it has no right to maintain. Can we, as Christians assert that certain things are immoral? Yes. But statements like Nashville put off too much of an us against them appearance; I do in fact think that it makes the church look like it’s not about a person and relationship, but instead about a legalistic keeping of law codes. Indeed, we know as Christians, or we should, that this is not the case. Bonhoeffer, Barth, et al knew this, and the church at large should know this. The Nashville Statement does not reflect this knowledge about herself; indeed it only looks like a reiteration of the moral majority that I grew up with; it looks like the absolutizing of the moral self—which ironically is not moral at all.
I see no ‘yes, but’ here. The ‘world’ knows over and over again what the church is against, but it actually does not not know who it is for. And I think things like the NS only help to contribute to the idea that the Gospel is about a set of juridical and forensic don’ts rather than about the personal reality of God in Jesus Christ. It is not a helpful statement.
Yeah, don’t think we’re hugely disagreeing. My ‘yes, but…’ was directed at the ethics contained in the statement – I agree with it, but I’m not sure this is the best way to say it, out of the framework of the gospel and relationship with God through Christ. The Barthian in me wants to ask: could this have been said in a way which sounded more like Barmen? i.e. which called the church back to its foundation in ‘the one Word of God which we have to trust and obey’, Jesus Christ, and which confessed the church’s failure to address the issue of human sexuality in obedience and faithfulness to that Word.
One interesting thing is that I’m hearing a lot more negativity from the US and more positive sounds over here in the UK. Weird considering it’s a US drafted statement, but I wonder if it resonates differently over here.
Daniel, yes, I was thinking about integrating more of the Barmen Declaration into this; I think that’s definitely a tact to take (and of course is present in Bonhoeffer’s thinking in general). I think it is a matter of obedience to the Word of God, indeed, but that brings this back full circle really. It’s not the world who is going to obey the Word of God, but the church; or she should. It is as we submit to the Lordly command of our God’s voice, in explicit ways, that such statements can be made to the world. As we evidence our love for God, as he first loved us, through obedience to his Word ourselves. But really, the point I’m attempting to drive home, as the title of my post should hopefully illustrate, is the problem with a church culture that constantly thinks she is over and beyond the Word of God herself. I maintain that the Nashville Statement, once again, illustrates how the church culture here in the evangelical church believes that she has moral high ground to stand on. Can the church say No? Not really. She can only echo God’s no to sin in Christ, which we know reverses and becomes his yes to the world in the evangel. In other words, I believe things like the NS leads from behind, and from a place it shouldn’t; it should speak from God’s yes (even w/ the understanding that this yes at the same time includes his no, but only after not before the yes), from Jesus Christ. And it should do so by ‘bearing witness’ to this reality in her own life as the church centripetally; and this centripetal illocution will then have a centrifugal perlocutionary function as it bears witness to the power of God, the Gospel reaching out from Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world.
I have friends, Aussie and Kiwi friends, who are quite negative towards the NS. I suppose much of our experience, in regard to reaction, has to do with the circles we expose ourselves to.
But I agree, I don’t think we’re actually really disagreeing. Thanks for your feedback.
And maybe the reason why it’s more negative over here, in the US, is because so many of us have lived under such ‘statements’ our whole Christian lives (if we’ve been in the church any period of time, which I have been my whole life, the evangelical church in N America). Honestly, and personally, I’m totally exhausted by such things like the NS represent. They don’t produce any fruit, and like I noted, the world already knows what the evangelical church is against; and then some. When I’m at work, when folks find out I’m a Christian, some of the first things they say to me evidence how they misunderstand what is involved in the Gospel; it’s always a perception that what it means to be a Christian entails an inherent legalism. There’s a reason for that. Things like the NS come from a church culture that has given off this kind of vibe to the culture within which we live. It’s not helpful, and certainly does not bear witness to the personal reality of the Gospel who is Jesus Christ.
Pingback: What Kind of Church Culture Can Produce a Declaration like the Nashville Statement? Bearing Witness to Ourselves Rather than to Jesus Christ — The Evangelical Calvinist | Talmidimblogging
It’s been interesting to note the kinds of disagreements with the NS that have come out. Whereas yours, as far as I can tell, is a disagreement in principle with Declarations As Such, there are also thoughtful critiques of the actual substance of the Statement, like Daniel’s comments above and Matthew Anderson’s at Mere Orthodoxy. Then there’s the “could you have timed the dissemination any poorer?” critiques, which are somewhat fair, I suppose.
I’m typically inclined towards the wisdom of Bonhoeffer’s social/practical theology, in which most attention is paid to how the world reads the church’s action and statements.
Joshua, mine is more a critique of the church culture and attitude behind such statements. It’s not that I think statements are bad in themselves, but the theology that leads to certain types of statements which comes from a certain culture is what I’m attempting to draw attention to. It’s really a critique of Fundamentalism I think; this perception of the church that still sees itself in a manichean like battle with the world trying to meet it on its own terms. It’s a loosing battle. Our answer is more powerful than simply saying what’s wrong with the world, our answer for is the power of God and proclaiming the good news. That’s what “wins” this battle; when people in the church and outside encounter Jesus Christ. He alone can transform hearts and minds. Can we say when things are immoral? Sure, yes. But the wisdom of this statement is completely off, and again only reinforces for people that the church must be about a bunch of legalisms. So yes, you’re right in noticing that aspect of my critique.
Like, of course, I think the Barmen Declaration is was excellent.
NS is not perfect…but couldn’t some of the same arguments that are used to criticize it be used to criticize Barmen? I think some critics are ignoring the preamble which seems to me to be very powerfully stating a Christ centered biblically faithful response to the sexual ideology of our age which has attacked, and indeed overwhelmed, most if not all of the so-called mainline denominations. This same ideology is now obviously attacking so-called evangelical denominations in the name of tolerance ,inclusivity and grace. Is this not just another form of cheap grace?… grace without repentance…grace without obedience? Can’t Barmen and NS stand together?
I don’t see how they’re parallel. The BD repudiates natural theology; the NS works directly from it by collapsing the church into the Word of God.
I am not an American. I am in an evangelical Presbyterian congregation…so I undoubtedly hear both NS and BD differently than you do. I hear NS challenging the church to be faithful to the Word of God. T.F. Torrance held a high doctrine of the church.
“Jesus Christ is himself the true vine which includes the branches, and because he is the truth his word cleanses the church, purges the branches and sanctifies the church through the truth. This word found in the holy scriptures, is the norm for the church’s teaching and life. It is the critical criterion because it is the creative norm. Any church that fails to conform to the truth of the apostolic scriptures, which refuses to be reformed and cleansed and purged by the word of truth mediated through the apostles, thereby declares that it is not the one holy catholic church.”
Atonement,p.399
PS Thank you very sincerely for this very challenging website!
To me, the Nashville Statement is a baby step in the right direction and the long overdue clear statement of faith to the one and only enduring marriage between Christ, the bridegroom and raised-from-the-dead man, and his bride, the congregation of believers and woman, who is his helpmeet and can only follow and submit to him. At best, our marriages in this age end with death and can only point to, signify and witness to the enduring marriage union and covenant between Christ and his congregation, which is a man/woman relationship. For a long time it has been necessary for Christ’s bride-to-be to confess and witness to her espousal to her raised-from-the-dead Lord Jesus Christ. The implications derived from this marriage relationship are far-reaching and all-encompassing and provide the starting point for any discussion regarding marriage. So, let’s allow the Nashville Statement to be the genesis of further confession and proclamation of the enduring marriage between Christ and his congregation.
Don
I too am in an evangelical Presbyterian church (PCUSA – a conservative church trying to maintain a witness to Christ in a morass of hyper-liberalism as evinced in the broader PCUSA). I don’t really think nationality, in regard to how this is seen, has that much to do with it, per se. The hard distinction I’m drawing between the NS and BD is in regard to natural theology; it is the theological and ecclesial cultures that disparately produced such “declarations” that I would underscore in the context of my post and this discussion. There is a disparate understanding between those who produced the NS and the BD in regard to a theology of the Word (i.e. think of Barth’s theory of revelation and threefold form of the Word [and he of course is the primary drafter of the BD] versus the innerantist position on Scripture that funds the theology of the NS signatories [and there is a deeper Fundamentalist culture that stands behind something like the modern development of inerrancy etc.]). So I don’t think it’s as simply as you’re making it in that regard.
And thanks for the good word on the blog site.
Mark
I would simply respond that statements like this are unnecessary precisely because the culture that funds such statements have already made it know ad nauseam what it thinks about gay marriage etc. I don’t really think this was a necessary move at all in light of that reality. Beyond that, there is another “evangelical agenda” driving this, and it is related to the deep rooted complementarian perspective that the signatories affirm; and this is where this issue becomes rooted in a discussion about Christian orthodoxy. I’m not sure if you followed the online debate in regard to eternal functional subordinationism that took place last summer; i.e. the one critiquing Grudem, Ware et al in regard to their belief that the Son is eternally obedient and thus subordinate to the Father in an ontological in se sense. They attempt to draw corollary between that ostensible reality and the relationship between male and female in our culture (so the complementarianism). All of this really does go deeper down, both theologically and culturally, than one might, at first blush, begin to imagine.
So in other words Mark I see more going on here than just the statement. There are deeper theological-anthropological commitments underlying all of this—i.e. in regard to the theological climate that produces things like the NS—that need to be further interrogated. But with that said, I see the NS as just reiterating the Fundamentalist way of us versus them, and that type of dualist way of thinking. But the cross of Christ, indeed the vicarious humanity of Christ, will not allow us to approach the other that way. At best, I would contend, what we can and should do, is bear witness to the Gospel reality of Jesus Christ. We can do that as the church, as I began to argue in this post, as we illustrate what a repentant people coram Deo looks like. This is what will change and challenge culture out there. The NS is just more of the same; the same stuff I was born and bred into as the son of a Conservative Baptist pastor (I’m now 43 yrs old). My deepest inclinations, when it comes to morality etc. are indeed trad and imbibes the historic spirit of the orthodox church of Jesus Christ. BUT, I’ve come to believe that things like the NS are not the best way to go about being ambassadors for Christ in a lost and dying world. The world needs to know the reality of God as they see the church repentantly loving God and one another; and allow that bleed over to challenge and even contradict the ways of the world—even it that appears foolish and weak.
Pingback: No More Social Commentary for the Evangelical Calvinist: Farewell ‘The Nashville Statement’ | The Evangelical Calvinist
Pingback: The Vancouver Statement as an Alternative to The Nashville Statement | The Evangelical Calvinist