Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: This Book is God’s Book
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and…What?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

Sin. Rebellion. Yuck!

Here are two more yucky words for you: sinner and rebel.

Probably the least liked terms ever in the history of the Christian faith! And rightly so, because some have used them as weapons to shame and manipulate people.

I understand many of us have a difficult relationship with this word, sin. Many people have been beaten over the head with it with fire-and-brimstone sermons or neon signs. Yet it’s an important aspect of faith, because it explains so much of life.

We must have an honest conversation about this aspect of our human existence if we are to have any chance of finding or helping others find the rescue and re-creation we so desperately desire—no, desperately need.

Sin helps answer some of life’s burning questions: If God is so good, why is life so bad? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God made me good, why am I so bad?

But how do vintage Christians understand sin? More importantly, how should we understand our participation in it?

On January 3, 2013 I performed my first funeral. And it sucked. It sucked because the man I officiated for was only 34. It sucked because he died after a 14-month struggle with cancer. It sucked because he left behind a young mother and twin boys.

A seminary professor of mine used to say, “Being a Christian means embracing the fact that life sucks until Jesus comes.” So true.

And it’s OK to say so! It’s OK to say that this part of life—death—sucks. And the reason why is because death isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

Deep down we know this is true, don’t we? If it was supposed to be this way, we would mourn, but then chalk it up to something that was natural. Yet we know death is wrong, unnatural. Same for cancer, racism, gossip, and everything else in life that sucks.

Then how can we explain why so much of life is so messed up? An early Christian, Methodius, reminds us:

“After their creation, the first human beings received a commandment from God. It was from this that evil sprang, because they did not obey the command. Disobedience is the root cause of all evil.”

Disobedience. Rebellion. Sin. Strong words, I know. But true. The vintage Christian faith tells us this world is fallen, and so are we.

Vandalism of Shalom

Christian thinker Jacque Ellul called this event The Great Rupture. The vintage Christian faith calls it the Fall. It maintains that at one point everything was whole, at peace, just right. But then it all changed. Now things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be; we aren’t either.

This world is messed up. The national headlines remind us daily: unemployment, Ferguson and Baltimore, New Orleans and Nepal, a billion people without clean water, ISIS. So do the personal ones: we cheat on our taxes, gossip about our neighbor, lust after images online, curse our neighbor on the road and rage at the way they drive (hand up on that one!).

Sin is a vandalizing of shalom, an intentional ruining of God’s creation. When we act in ways we know deep down are wrong, we purposefully, deliberately, actively vandalize the way its supposed to be — and God hates it. Cornelius Plantinga puts it this way:

God hates sin not just because it violates his law but more importantly because it violates shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be…God is for shalom and therefore against.^⁠1

Shalom is the way it’s supposed to be. Like one man and one woman in marriage for life. Like contentment. Like loving our neighbors as ourselves. Like an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.

Sin is anything we do that vandalizes shalom, but it’s also the things in life that aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. Divorce. Pollution. Gossip. Nuclear Weapons. Envy. Sin sucks so much because it ruins what God intended; it’s existential vandalism.

It’s also a deliberate attempt to be like God. Genesis 3 makes this clear: when Mama Eve and Papa Adam rebelled against his command to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they were in essence grasping after God’s power, after his authority. The authority and power to decide what was right and true, what was wrong and false.

This desire is the core of sin, and it resulted in our ultimate existential plight. Death is the tragic consequence and our “wage,” as Paul puts it, for vandalizing creation and idolizing ourselves in place of God.

Every time we sin, we scream a big “Yes!” to the vandalism of shalom. We say we want “More!” of the way things aren’t supposed to be and “Less!” of the way things ought to be. We’re also saying what God originally intended is just flat out wrong. That things should be this way. That I have the right to act this way. This is how things should be, not what God intended.

When I perform or attend a funeral, I’m reminded that death isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It represents the tragic consequences of ruining God’s original intent and grasping after God’s power to define for myself what is good and evil. And it causes me to consider how I’m retracing my ancient ancestors’ footsteps.

Which reminds me of a story.

A Personal Story of Sin

Before I went to seminary I took a job with a national upscale department store in the men’s fashion department selling $150 shirts, $200 ties, and $1,800 suits. It was a great gig! In fact, it was so great and I did so well that I was headed toward management.

Somehow, this thoroughly salesmanship-handicapped individual quickly rose to number three in department sales. Because I sold so well, I developed a good relationship with the store director, which almost translated into an assistant management position.

I say “almost” because the day before I was going to be promoted I got a call from Human Resources. I thought I was going to complete some paperwork for the promotion. I was wrong. Instead, I was asked to step into a room for a little chitchat with the head of loss prevention and an internal investigator.

Let me stop here and say if you’re ever called down to a tiny room with a member of HR, loss prevention, and an internal investigator…let’s just say it’s not going to be pretty!

I stepped into the room, sat down, and the investigator began talking about the different things he investigated: Theft. Abuse. Harassment.

I sat there trying to appear as calm and cool as possible, all the while reeling inside. Then they arrived at my issue:

Commission Fraud.

In this company, sales people are paid on commission, which is based on sales minus returns. At this particular department store chain, if someone returned an item and we couldn’t determine when they bought it, we could zero-out our employee number to complete the transaction. And my new friends offered surveillance photos of me returning items, receipt in tow, while zeroing-out my employee number. They accused me of deliberately violating the commission policy.

Here’s the thing: they were right. I stole from the company by deliberately failing to honestly account for my returns. Worse yet: I lied about it to the face of the man who pushed for my promotion and was this close to convincing him it was all a mistake.

I’m glad he did the right thing and fired me; I deserved it. I vandalized shalom by sinning against God and my neighbor. I ravaged my relationship with this company and my store director. I screamed a big “Yes!” to Mama Eve’s and Papa Adam’s original rebellion by stealing and then lying about it. The same is true for us all.

Brilliant and Bad

Vintage Christians recognize what I have realized about myself: “Humans are both brilliant and bad,” as one theologian put it. We’re all Good Monsters. While we are still fundamentally statues of God, we are thoroughly broken, busted statues. Deep down we know what my story illustrates: we are crooked. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” as Paul wrote.

Until that episode, I never thought I was capable of stealing. Yet there I was, a thief in Christian clothing. It makes sense, though, because all of us are born rebels in desperate need of rescue, as the vintage Christian faith insists.

Nothing compelled me to ruin God’s creation so spectacularly, so brazenly. My background — white, middle-class, Midwest suburbanite — didn’t. The “Man” — democracy, capitalism, corporatism — didn’t.

I was the problem. I’m still the problem. So are you.

Progressive Christians say something very different, though. They teach that the problem isn’t inside me, but outside me. I’m not the problem, the bad examples and destructive stories that compel me to do bad things are.

They take their cues from a very ancient source. A heretic, actually. The British monk Pelagius, who answered a very important question that gets to the heart of our human nature and the nature of our fallen reality.

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¹ Cornelius Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), 14.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons below to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto for free!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: Did God Really Say?
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and ‘BANG,’ There It Was?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

What does it mean to be human?

Probably the oldest question known to man, one Stanford political scientist tried to answer. In Our Post-Human Future, Francis Fukuyama cautioned against altering human nature through biotechnology. The reason? “[T]here is something unique about the human race that entitles every member of the species to a higher moral status than the rest of the natural world.”^⁠1

He suggests I have a higher moral status than my family dog, Zoe, because of a biological “qualitative leap” in my distant ancestors’ development. This random-chance leap is what gives us dignity and meaning, a higher moral status above other beings. He calls this uniqueness Factor X.

This “factor” isn’t spiritual, religious, or theistic. It’s a genetic and biological quality that was inserted into humanity at some point during the evolutionary process from monkey to human. This, of course, reflects the scientific worldview, the Science Story. The Scripture Story explains Factor X very differently:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26)

According to vintage Christianity, Factor X is what we call the Imago Dei, or Image of God.

Like others before him, Protestant Reformer John Calvin believed we are unique because we’ve been created in the Image of God. Humanity was made to participate in “the divine wisdom, righteousness, power, holiness, and truth”^⁠2 because we were crafted after the Creator of the universe.

Vintage Christians believe we don’t have worth and dignity because we possess a certain highly evolved gene or some bio-social trait. We are valuable, we have worth and dignity, because we are Statues of God.

I Am Not a Talking Monkey!

Stop for a moment. Let that sink in. You have been created in God’s image and likeness. Your mom and brother, boss and neighbor, enemy and friend are molded in the likeness of the Creator.

Stunning. Breathtaking. No words.

The vintage Christian faith reminds me we didn’t just happen. We are not a more advanced version in a long line of other bipedal creatures.

I am not a talking monkey!

I am not a creative, productive bundle of cells and sparking neurotransmitters. No, I am an Image of God, a Statue created in God’s likeness. So are you.

But what does it mean to say that we are made in God’s image and likeness? At some level this is deeply mysterious. But Genesis 5:1–3 gives us a clue:

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

Consider the traits two parents pass along to their child. They reason, make moral choices, have a conscience, have emotions, create, communicate, and form relationships — just like Mom and Dad. Genesis 5 seems to say what makes us uniquely human in some way reflects our Creator, like a child reflects her parent.

Those tender moments between you and your spouse or times your friends really supported you are in some way like the relational dynamics of Father, Son, and Spirit.

The times of rip-roaring laughter around a table at the pub after a well-timed punchline in some way reflects the cleverness and wit of God.

How you creatively express yourself through music or clothes, writing or quilting, or any number of creative things somehow reflects the Creator himself.

Consider the rage someone feels in the face of injustice or the inner-movement of the soul after hearing a Bach concerto. We feel and experience emotion because God is emotive.

Also, consider our gender. Swiss theologian Karl Barth emphasized that human existence as male and female is not something secondary to the Image, it’s fundamental to being created in God’s likeness. There is a masculine side and a feminine side to humanity because that’s what God is like. Gender and sexuality aren’t human constructs, they reflect God himself.

Fukuyama is right: there is a Factor X that sets us apart from animals and mildew.  That factor is God, which has massive implications for our human story!

It matters for the twelve-year-old Thai girls that American businessmen use for personal pleasure.

It matters for the men and women who bake in the heat of Washington, DC summers.

It matters for the Dalits, the millions of “untouchables” who suffocate under the oppressive wet blanket of India’s caste system and are regarded as less than the roaming street cattle.

It matters for the millions of Romanian orphans who fill entire hospital wards like caged rabbits and enter a life of prostitution and organized crime because they’re illiterate, nonfunctioning societal throwaways.

Every person on the planet matters because everyone bears the image of the very Creator who crafted them from the ground on which they walk!

We are not talking monkeys. We are statues of God.

That’s what it means to be human.

The Meaning of Life

But wait…there’s more! Because hot on the heels of this question about identity is another one: What’s the meaning and purpose of life?

One extreme says this world is all there is. You’re born, you go to school, you work, you die — that’s it. The only hope we have is to do a little good, while sucking the marrow out of life along the way.

The other extreme actually comes from some Christians who say that this world isn’t our home, we’re just passing through. Our life on earth is just a temporary residence, it’s “dress rehearsal”^⁠3 for the real deal down the road in heaven.

Two extremes: One says all of this is all that matters — earth is what’s important. The other extreme says all of this just doesn’t matter — heaven is what’s important.

Both have brought incredible confusion to our crucial question.

Vintage Christianity cuts through these two extremes to say that both heaven and earth are important — both the physical and spiritual matter. Everything you do right now matters to God. Not merely as a Christian, but as a human.

Historic Christians have believed we were human beings before we were Christians. God will hold us accountable for our humanity as much as he will for our spirituality. That’s because God has given us a role to fulfill as human creatures. We’ve been created by God on purpose and with purpose to do four things:

Enjoy, guard, rule over, and work creation.

My childhood Christian tradition thought the stuff of this world was bad. Movies, dancing, and alcohol were anathema. Same for the Beatles, Harry Potter, and Disney World.

Except Scripture says that the world and everything in it is here for us to enjoy. After creating humanity, God tells Mama Eve and Papa Adam to kabash the world. God gives humanity the stuff of the earth in order to subdue it and enjoy it, which extends to lots of areas: growing juicy strawberries and pots of geraniums; harvesting clay from the ground and molding it into awesome creations; even drinking beer and wine, in moderation.

Yet this God-given prerogative doesn’t give humanity the right to abuse the earth. Because alongside this permission is the command in Genesis 2 to shamar creation. To take care of it, preserve it, guard it, keep it safe like you would your own home. Guarding and serving creation is one of humanity’s first missions on earth. And God never revokes it.

The vision we see in Genesis is the responsibility of caring for creation as a king would his kingdom. We are to radah over creation, to rule over it.

This language reflects the ancient practice of kings who erected statues of themselves around their kingdom to represent their rule. Saddam Hussein did this — until we knocked them down. Stalin followed suit in communist Russia. Many cities in modern China have images of their leader.

Like a king would leave images of themselves to sort of rule over the land, the Creator has left behind replicas of himself to rule over his land.

That’s you! God placed you on this planet to rule over this world and make sure it works as he intended it to work. To ensure shalom.

When God finished creating he said it was all very good. It was all just right — it was whole. The world was shalom. Adam and Eve were called to preserve and extend this shalom. So are we. This life is not just dress rehearsal for the next. You are an earthling. God has placed you here on purpose and with purpose to rule on his behalf — to work it on his behalf.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of our meaning and purpose is the word abad—work, till, cultivate. While some of us think that work is our punishment for rebelling against God, it’s not. We were created to work. And we work because God works.

God created this stunning garden and in the middle of it he placed humans. He told them to change things. To pick up where he left off by developing the garden and the rest of the world in distinctly human ways.

The vision we find in God’s Story is one that begins with a garden and ends with a city. From the beginning God baked progress into the DNA of creation. He didn’t intend for us to wear animal skins and draw cave paintings the rest of our lives. He meant for us to turn sand into Kindles and Apple Watches, take trees and stone and turn them into magnificent skyscrapers, spin wool into cozy sweaters.

This is the meaning of your life: to pick up where the creator left off, to co-create with God by working, tilling, cultivating this world by discovering, inventing, creating, building things — forever!

God has created you on purpose and with purpose to enjoy, guard, rule over, and work his magnificent creation.

That’s your meaning and your purpose. And it’s vital for vintage Christians to believe it and teach it.

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¹ Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 160.

² John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Elsie Anne McKee; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2009), 49.

³ Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 36.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons below to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto for free!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: Did God Really Say?
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and ‘BANG,’ There It Was?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

Genesis 1 vs. Origins of Species; Moses vs. Charles Darwin.

The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes.

Of course that last “versus” is the seminal court trial that catapulted America into one of the more divisive intellectual debates: creation vs. evolution. It’s a debate that’s affected the Church as much as the broader culture asking questions like “Where did we come from and why are we here?” and “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Progressives and fundamentalists have tended to answer this question in one of two ways: the former has tended to try and fit the Scripture Story with the Science Story, while the later has forced the Science Story to support the Scripture Story

But what if this aspect of the vintage Christian faith followed neither the contours of liberalism nor fundamentalism? What if instead how we understand creation should be something like this:

The Story of Creation

Imagine that you are an Israelite who is lounging around somewhere in the Sinai wilderness post-Exodus. It is dusk and you are sitting around a campfire with the elders of one of the tribes of Judah.

As you are sitting there a boy wanders over and tugs the robe tails of one of the elders. With the random curiosity that can only come from a child the boy asks, “Mister, where did all of this come from?”

“What do mean, young Jada?” the elder replies.

“I mean, can you tell me how the birdies and bugs and my mommy and daddy came to be…how the world was made?”

With the tenderness and care that can only come with age, the elder picks up the boy, plops him on his lap and says, “Ahh, Jada that is a very good question…a very good question, indeed. Let me tell you.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…”

In the beginning God was Michelangelo in front of the unformed slab of marble before David emerged; he was Mozart before the keys of black and white on the verge of a magnificent never-before-heard-of concerto.

Like Michelangelo and Mozart, God created. God breathed all of this into existence by his word. Out of the chaos and blankness of our unformed reality, God brought into existence all that we see and hear and taste and smell and touch. Out of nothing God created all of this.

With a single word, an array of colors beamed across the blank canvas of nothingness and burst forth like a grand Forth of July celebration. Out of the array of colors God separated the light from the dark, declaring what was light day and what was dark night. God looked upon this initial handwork, sat back and declared it good. That was Day One.

Then, across the canvas of light and dark the Creator spoke into existence a vault, a sort of roof that separated water above from water below—the sky. God rolled open the great big sky and called it the heavens. Day Two, complete and good.

On Day Three, the Creator gathered together the waters beneath the heavens in order to form a space of dryness. He called the dryness land and the wetness he called seas. Then at the Creator’s word came lush green grass, seed-producing plants of every kind and magnificent trees. End of the Third Day, a good day.

Light and dark, the heavens, sky and earth. These newly formed vessels now awaited their Creator to fill them with glorious objects and beings.

Next our Creator went back to the sky and filled it with lights of every kind and two great big lights: one to rule the night and one to rule the day, the sun and moon and stars. These two great lights would help keep track of the seasons, days, and years. When he retired his brush for the day, God turned around and saw all that he painted was beautiful and good. That was Day Four.

Now that things were just right, now that our Creator had crafted the perfect environment for living things, he beckoned forth creatures from every corner of the seas and heavens. From the seas bubbled up the most magnificent sea creatures imaginable. Out of the heavens flew birds of great variety and creativity.

Then God blessed these creatures saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas and let the fowl multiply in the earth.” That was Day Five, another good day.

After his great show of creativity in the sea and sky, the Creator turned his attention to the land itself. Onto the surface of the earth came animals of every kind. He made every kind of wild animal, crawly thing, and beast that you could dream.

An array of colors and sounds collided from all earth’s corners as sea creatures, heavenly fowl, and land animals all played their part in God’s grand performance, all reflecting the majesty and glory and creativity of their Creator.

At the end of his performance God looked across the spectrum of all he had created thus far and saw it was all good.

But then a hush fell across the entire expanse of creation. An anticipation began to well up within the belly of the universe for all was not yet created. Just when Creation thought all had been formed, our Creator dipped his hand into the earth.

What was he doing? wondered Creation.

Beady little eyes from every corner watched in eager expectation. Wings flapped as they hovered over the earth in wait. The wild beasts could hardly contain themselves and stomped in anticipation for the curiosity the Creator was causing.

At just the right moment, when everything thought they would burst with excitement, it happened: God’s hand retreated from earth to reveal a being not yet seen before, yet all too familiar.

On the surface of earth laid a being that God called Human. It was in an entirely unique category of its own, yet it mirrored the Creator that brought it into existence. Out of the dust of earth, the Creator molded the Human out of the soil in his image and likeness. And bleeeew.

The Creator bent down and gave his very own breath to the Human in order to bring it to life. The Human became a living creature, whom God separated into Man and Woman.

The climax of the story had finally been achieved! The crowning achievement of God’s creative work had been accomplished in the creation of humanity.

After this crowning achievement, God stepped back and looked at all he had accomplished and decided everything was just as he intended things to be. From light to heavens and seas to earth, from plants to fowl and sea creatures to wild beasts, and at last the Image of God. Everything was just right.

After the last work of art in his wonderful world had been crafted, God decided that all he had created was very good.

The next day, the Seventh Day, God was finished. God blessed the Day and hallowed it, because he created everything he intended to create. Then God rested. On that day God set aside his brush and sculpting wheel after he crafted everything he intended to craft. This was Day Seven.

The end.

Not ‘How,’ But ‘That’

What a beautiful story!

This is how our elder Israelite and little boy Jada would have understood it: as a story telling us that the world was created and who created it.

That’s not the way many modern Christians have viewed the opening chapters to the Holy Scriptures, though. Many well-meaning Christians have used Genesis 1 and 2 to argue against evolutionism and scientific rational explanations for the origin of species.

They believe these chapters tell us how God created the universe. So they’ve built museums and written books and curriculum that hold to this step-by-step view. In fact, some have even said failing to believe in a six-day literal creation undermines the cross and salvation.

For my money, I don’t see why God would have needed six days—let alone six billion years—to create the universe. But that’s really not the point of the narrative, anyway.

Of course competing with the vintage Christian faith and the Scripture Story is what I like to call the Science Story, which progressives embrace whole hog. As one progressive put it, the creation narrative we find in Genesis 3 “unfolds as a kind of compassionate coming-of-age story.”^⁠1 Earth’s story is one of emergence, so too is humanity’s.

Now what do I mean that science is a story? Science tries to explain where we came from, why we’re screwed up, and how we find resolution to our screwed up story. It’s what we call a worldview, just as the Christian faith itself is a worldview.

Both have a view of the world.

So science begins with the assumption there is no God. It begins with the worldview of naturalism, the belief that creation is the product of time, energy, and chance. It believes that this—what we can feel, taste, see, hear, touch—is all their is and came about through certain processes and chance.

The beginning of the Science Story says that BANG—all of this just started and developed and evolved over time under the right circumstances and through a series of mistakes and successes. Accordingly, we humans are merely one kind of animal with peculiar dispositions. And the only hope we have is this life; there is no hope for life after death. One person has called this non-religion a “quasi-religion,” as it “plays some of the same roles as a religion.”^⁠2

The vintage Christian faith has understood creation very differently. This Story tells us that when God created the world it was good. It was just as he wanted it to be. Creation was whole. The world was created with care; it was created on purpose and with purpose. It was created by a loving God who was intimately involved in the process.

This part of the vintage Christian faith is a vital piece of God’s Story of Rescue because it reminds us who created all of this. The way the historic Christian faith has understood creation isn’t how the universe was created, but that it was created by a Creator.

So a vintage Christian cares more that we were created and who created us.

Especially because how we understand creation has great bearing on how we understand ourselves—which is next up in our vintage Christian manifesto of hope.

¹ McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 49.

² Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), x.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons below to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto for free!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: Did God Really Say?
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and ‘BANG,’ There It Was?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

There is a popular modern-day parable about four blind men and an elephant. The story is told from the vantage point of a king who watches as these men grapple with the reality of the massive creature. It goes like this:

One day four blind men were trapped in a room with an elephant. They started feeling our massive mammal and describing what they experienced. Don’t know why they were trapped with him and why they were feeling this elephant. That’s just how story goes.

One guy felt the tusks; he said the great beast was smooth and hard. Guy number two felt the tail; he described the elephant as thin, long, wiry. Another touched its ear and believed the animal was a soft, flexible creature. The final person rubbed his hands over its hide and came to the conclusion the elephant was hard and rough like clay.

Four different descriptions of the one elephant, coming from four different experiences. Each of these guys had a limited understanding of the elephant. Each believed they understood the elephant completely based on their own personal experience, even though that belief was based on limited exposure. Because of their ignorance of the entire truth of the elephant, each of these blind men assumed the entire elephant matched their own limited description.

Of course we enlightened ones know that an elephant isn’t only tusks. It isn’t only a long, wiry tale. It isn’t just big flappy ears. And it isn’t only this massive hard, rough body. No it’s made up of all of these things described by the blind men.

So what’s the point of this story? The moral of the parable is this:

Each religion is like these blind men and our elephant is like some divine reality. Many insist now days, including progressive Christians, that each religion has only a partial knowledge of the divine reality, only a limited experience and exposure to God—just like the four blind men.

From an enlightened point of view we see that all religions are merely parts of the one divine whole. They all describe the same elephant, just in different ways.

This is a very popular way of talking about God and religion, of describing God. Another way of putting it is that God is at the top of a great mountain, and this mountain has many sides each with separate paths that winding their way to the top. Each path is different, looks different, takes a number of different twists and turns. But eventually they all reach the top where God sits. Every religion is a legitimate path to the top, which means everyone will eventually reach God regardless of belief.

Now this sounds nice doesn’t it. I mean we’re modern, sophisticated, enlightened people. How dare we claim that one truth is the only truth. How dare we claim that one God is the only one true God.

And yet, from the very beginning, Christians have declared:

“I believe in God (not little ‘g’ god; not gods with a pluralized ’s’—God) the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”

These ancient words are the starting place for vintage Christians stretching back well before those opening lines to the Apostles’ Creed were penned.

As in Hebrew ancient.

There Is Only One True God

The people of the only one true God, the children of Israel, recited daily a line-in-the-sand proclamation known as the Shema. It went like this:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5)

Yahweh is our God. And Yahweh is the one God. Not the Egyptian gods Isis or Thoth. Not Baal of the Canaanites. Not Artemis of the Greeks. Yahweh.

This belief in only one true God continued with Jesus, who equated himself with the God the Father. In fact, he equated himself with the great “I Am”—Yahweh, the only one true God of Israel.

And of course Jesus’ followers recognized he was God and worshipped him as such. As Paul declared in his first letter to the Church of Corinth:

We know that ‘An idol is nothing at all in the world’ and that ‘There is no God but one.’ For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (1 Corinthians 8:4–6)

Citing the Shema, Paul equated Jesus Christ with the only one true God of Israel. Biblical scholar N. T. Wright calls this Christological Monotheism — the belief that the one God of the universe is Jesus. When Paul visited the multi-god city of Athens, he acknowledged their spiritual interests, but then declared those gods false and called its worshipers ignorant.

Vintage Christians do the same in our own multi-faith world.  We join Paul and the rest of the historic Christian voices in gently, but honestly, proclaiming “an idol is nothing at all in the world” and “there is no God but one.”

The Buddha is nothing at all in the world. Same for Krishna and Allah, as much as Zeus and Artemis.

There is no God but Father, Son, and Spirit—co-equal in power, majesty, and glory. Revealed in three persons and possessing one essence. And he is both the Author of our Story and an Actor within it.

As Author he alone is King. He alone is high and lifted up. He alone is holy—a characteristic given to nothing and no one else.

He is distinct and separate from all other things. The only one true God is outside and above creation. God is not part of Creation, he is distinct from it, separate from it. He is not some sort of energy or spark or force that’s part of the universe, as progressive Christians insist.

Except that’s exactly how modern progressive Christians view God. As one person said, “I understand God to be the energy, the glue, the force, the life, the power, and the source of all we know to be the depth, fulness, and vitality of life from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and everything in between.”^⁠1

Elsewhere he quoted a common refrain by saying, “God is love. Love is the ground of our being.” And he said the gospel is “about who God is and what it means to live in constant conscious contact with God, to be connected to the ground of your being.”^⁠2

On the surface this seems innocent. Yet such “ground of our being” language directly reflects the existential theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich’s word for “God” was “ground of being” or “ground of our being.” For Tillich that which gives meaning to life, that is of ultimate concern in life actually is God.

He consistently refered to God as an idea, an existential idea in which God is the foundation (ground) of meaning and existence (being); “God” is that which is meaningful and gives our being and existence meaning. As Tillich says, “The word ‘God’ points to ultimate reality.”^⁠3 In other words, God is a symbol for that which is ultimately meaningful in existence. He isn’t actually a being; he’s a symbolic word for meaningful living.

Unlike progressive Christianity, vintage Christians believe God is an actual Being, the Creator of the universe, who is high and lifted up. Who is separate and distinct from Creation, from us. He is the Author of our Story.

But he is also an Actor within it. He is both above and outside our Story (transcendent) and intimately involved with our human Story (immanent).

Unlike most religious concepts of the gods that are distant and removed from the world, we do not worship a distant God. He isn’t removed from what happens in life on earth. No, we worship a personal God who is involved with the world.

God breaks into our world, he is part of it by being part of the Story of his people.  God doesn’t reveal himself through history and Scripture as a God come to destroy us. No, he shows up time and time again as the God come to rescue us!

At the start of Israel’s story God showed up in a burning bush while Moses was tending his flocks on a mountain side. Why? Because he heard the cries of oppression from his people. And he came to do something about it. To rescue them.

And then several hundred years after this story God showed up again in a small insignificant city while shepherds were tending their flocks outside of Bethlehem. Why? Because he heard the cries of oppression from his people. And he came to do something about it. As the Gospel of John says, that God became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. He became one of us!

God walked around on this earth. God experienced everything that life has to offer. He experienced our pain. Our fears. Our hardship and struggle. He understands this life because he lived this life.

What kind of God does that? Chooses to become an actor? Yet this is who God is. He came to take away our guilt, to pay the price for our sins. To rescue us!

Is this the god of Islam?

Is this the god of Buddhism?

Is this the multi-gods of Hinduism?

No, it isn’t. And it’s time the Church of Jesus Christ stands up in our multi-faith, modern polytheistic world and says so.

It’s time for vintage Christians to declare the wonders and promises of the only one true God.

——————-

¹ Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God (New York: HarperOne, 2013), 18. [emphasis mine]

² Rob Bell, The Love Wins Companion (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 190.

³ Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 94.

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: Did God Really Say?
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and…What?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

Recently, a former progressive megachurch pastor said this about the Bible in relation to the ongoing gay marriage discussion:

I think culture is already there [with gay marriage] and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense.^⁠1

Really? The Church is least relevant when it quotes scripture? Quoting the Bible is our worst defense?

This chapter isn’t about gay marriage. Instead, it’s about this idea:

Christians are most relevant when they quote the Bible because its words are God’s words. And those words have the power to rescue people from sin and death and put this broken, busted world back together again.

Fundamental to the vintage Christian faith is the assumption that God has revealed. That he has purposefully engaged in this grand act of divine self-disclosure. Both generally and specifically.

The word stems from the Latin one revelare, meaning “unveil, uncover, to lay bare.” Christians have always believed that in this ridiculously vulnerable, purposefully loving act of divine self-disclosure, God chose to unveil himself to us. To uncover and lay himself bare before humanity. He invites us to explore him and his intentions for how we are to live with others and himself. He’s done so through creation, through his mighty deeds, through a book, and ultimately through a person—Jesus Christ.

Starting with revelation might seem like an odd ground zero for a Christian manifesto. One would think you’d begin such a public declaration with the Beginning and the End of the whole thing—God. That’s typically how theology books start such a conversation, anyway.

Indeed that’s true. And yet given the starting place, or lack thereof, of progressive Christianity, vintage Christians need to rediscover and reestablish the historic Christian belief that there has been a revelation in the first place: that God has chosen to unveil himself to us. To uncover himself. To lay himself bare before humanity. God has spoken; he has revealed himself to us.

This seems almost basic, I know, but for progressives it isn’t. They are confused about the starting place of the Christian faith, that God really did say a whole lot of things to us about himself, his Story, and us and our story.

According to one progressive Christian, we shouldn’t read, interpret, and apply the Bible like some do as a constitution, as if it was an absolute authority on everything in life. Which is why he can’t bring himself to say the Bible is inspired by God and is the sole textual point of God’s divine self-disclosure, only that it has “a unique role in the life of the community of faith, resourcing, challenging, and guiding the community of faith in ways that no other texts can.”^⁠2

Instead of a document that bears authority, this progressive Christian voices how many progressives view the Bible: as a community library. For him “the Bible is a library filled with diverse voices making diverse claims in an ongoing conversation.”^⁠3 He goes on:

 This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed…[Revelation] happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements.^⁠4

Progressive Christianity believes revelation is about human conversation about God, rather than God revealing himself to humanity. God isn’t the one who is saying something to us about himself through the Bible. Instead, it’s people who are trying to say something about God through our on-going conversations, stretching back six millennia.

You see, for progressive Christianity meaning doesn’t reside in the Bible, because God himself isn’t speaking through it. Instead, people decide by way of siding and opposing what the Bible says, or perhaps more accurately, should say in light of our twenty-first-century God-conversations.

While progressive Christian theology has held this sort of view for five generations, it does so in opposition to the historic Christian faith.

Natural and Special Revelation

Vintage Christianity maintains God has revealed himself in two ways: naturally and specially.

Psalm 19 reminds us of the starting point in God’s revelation: creation. All of Creation pours forth speech about the glory and works of God, the Psalmist writes. This is God’s self-disclosure to everyone generally, through natural revelation.

We’ve all witnessed this, right? Whether hiking a mountain, kayaking down a river, sailing on the open seas, or watching a sun set. We’ve encountered this speech about God in creation and just knew there was a God, a Creator who painted all this!

In Romans 1, the apostle Paul tells us that every single person on the planet is without excuse before a holy God because he has revealed himself generally. God has not hidden himself away. He has revealed himself to everybody.

One of the primary portals God gifted us to know him and encounter him is a book filled with letters and poems, histories and laws. It’s a little thing we call the Bible.

For millennia the church has believed that God himself is speaking to humanity through this book so that we can be a real, genuine knowers of God and the life he intends for us. Because the Bible’s words are God’s words, we also believe that everything in it is trustworthy, authoritative for issues of faith and life, true, and without error in all that it affirms.

It’s a basic belief that God is speaking to humanity through the Bible so that we can be a real, genuine knower of God and his commands. Unlike progressives, who insist the words of the Bible aren’t really the words of God, vintage Christians insist this book is God’s book; its words are his Word. Therefore, it has authority over every ounce of life. It is relevant to conversations about faith, life, and everything in between precisely because it is a vessel through which God exercises his own authority.

God himself is the author of this mysterious book. All Scripture is God-breathed; it isn’t human-breathed conversation about God. This book, this Story has been breathed by God using regular people in their time and place to speak to us in our time and place. This book has authority because God has authority. And he influenced the writers in such a way that they told to us everything that God wanted to tell humanity about his Story and our own story.

In response to our former progressive pastor’s words, a friend wrote on my Facebook wall, “A God who is eternally self-existent and has no beginning or end, and with whom there is no past or present, is more relevant than any of us — and always will be.”

He’s so right!

God revealed and spoke us these words, therefore we can know how to be rescued, what it means to be rescued, and also how to how to live as we were intended to live. Because not only does this book contain the power of rescue itself through faith in Jesus Christ, it also contains the power of re-creation—it is useful for putting us back together again. It also has authority over every ounce of life.

I love how N.T. Wright defines the authority of Scripture:

…the phrase “authority of Scripture” can make Christian sense only if it is a shorthand for “the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through scripture.”^⁠5

If God is the author of every ounce of life, then it makes sense that he has authority over it. And if he has authority over our life, doesn’t it make sense to listen to what he has to say about how to live it?

When my 2003 Ford focus started coughing and heaving a year ago going up hills and idling at stoplights, where did I turn? The author of my car, the one who has authority over how it’s supposed to function: Ford. They were incredibly relevant to a conversation about how my car was supposed to function.

God and the words he’s spoken to humanity are just as relevant. Scripture has authority and is relevant in every conversation about how life is to be lived, because the God who has authority is the author of that life!

While it may be a bit circular to use the Bible to explain the Bible, Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3:10-17 about the Bible’s value in conversations about life are instructive. He explains that through an act of love, God breathed this book into existence, and in it contains the power to rescue people from sin and death and is useful for putting us back together again in four crucial ways:

1. The Bible teaches us. It teaches us about God, ourselves, our world. It teaches us about our faith in Christ and what God demands from us.
2. It tells us what’s wrong in our lives. It tells us how we treat people, calls out the things we do when no one’s looking, and addresses how we treat God and respond to him.
3. Scripture tells us what’s right. After we’re made aware of the ways we’ve rebelled, we find in this book the path to help us recover.
4. It shapes us into the person God intended. It shapes us into the husband or wife God intended when he created us. It shapes us into the employee or business owner he intended when he created us.

A Vintage Christian believes God revealed therefore I can know how God intended me to live with myself, with creation, with other people, and with God.  He has said somethings to me—lots of things—through his book! All so that we can know this God who has revealed himself to us. The Word of God is made up of God’s words, not merely human words. And through this literary vessel God exercises his authority over the life he himself breathed into existence.

And that’s precisely the reason Christians and Christian leaders are most relevant when quoting these letters from 2,000-plus years ago.

God Revealed Therefore I Can Know

A Swiss church leader by the name of Karl Barth once said, “God encounters man in such a way that man can know him. He encounters him in such a way that in this encounter he still remains God, but also raises man up to be a real, genuine knower of himself.”^⁠6

God has chosen to make himself known so that we can understand him, so that we can know God. We can say things about God because he has told us things about himself.

Vintage Christians begin with the assumption that God has spoken for the specific purpose of rescuing and putting us and our broken world back together. God has chosen to make himself known so that we can understand him, so that we can really know God. We can say things about God because he has told us things about him.

Deuteronomy 29:29 speaks about this very thing: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

God revealed, therefore we can know! He has spoken to us through creation and Scripture. But what’s amazing about the Christian faith is that God didn’t stop there—with nature and a book. God went further by speaking to us through a Person. Jesus.

The final, ultimate form of God’s revelation is Jesus. He has spoken to us through Christ’s life, through his teachings, through his death and resurrection. Christ is the exact representation of God. He is the perfect imprint of God. In other words, Jesus is God.

Not Muhammed. Not the Buddha. Not Krishna.

Jesus.

Vintage Christians insist knowing God begins and ends with knowing Christ. Looking to Jesus. Sitting with him. Learning from him.

Get to know Jesus. Because he is the final, ultimate revelation of God. Through Jesus, God has ultimately spoken.

———————

¹ Chumley, Cheryl. Ex-megachurch Pastor to Oprah: U.S. Church ‘moments’ from Embracing Gay Marriage. February 18, 2015. Accessed August 3, 2015.

² Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 83

³ Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (New York: Jericho Books, 2012), 204.

⁴ McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 83, 91–92.

⁵ N.T. Wright, The Last Word (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 23.

⁶ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II,1: The Doctrine of God: Edited by G.W. Bromley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by T.H. Parker, W.B. Johnson, Harold Knight, and J.L.M. Haire (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 32.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons below to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto for free!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: This Book is God’s Book
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and…What?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: We Really Are that Screwed-Up
9—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
10—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
11—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
12—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
13—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
14—Hell: For Real and Forever?
15—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
16—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

OK, so maybe you have a good handle on the Christian faith; that you know. But the vintage Christian faith? What on earth is that?

Good question! Here’s a hint:

“I am dedicated to unoriginality.” So said historical theologian Thomas Oden in his magnum opus Classical Christianity. He goes on:

“The only promise I intend to make, however inadequately carried out, is that of unoriginality. I plan to present nothing new or original in these pages…My aim is to present classical Christian teaching of God on its own terms, undiluted by modern posturing.”^⁠1

I would echo Oden, though I would also add “undiluted by progressive posturing.” Because as I mentioned before, it’s time we look backwards in our faith in order to move forward. To regress, by rediscovering and retrieving what the Church has believed.

I love the way Google defines this adjective, vintage: “denoting something of high quality, especially something from the past or characteristic of the best period of a person’s work.”

That!

Vintage Christianity is the highest (or near there) quality of the Christian faith, because it reaches back into the past and is characterized by some of the best periods of the Bride of Christ’s work.

Before we can start drawing our line in the sand by getting to the heart of and unpacking the vintage faith let’s define our term, shall we?

Since everyone seems to be doing listicles these days, here are ten things you need to know about vintage Christianity:

1. It’s Unoriginal

As you may have already discerned, the vintage Christian faith is a euphemism for the historic Christian faith — as in orthodox Christianity, a wholly unoriginal idea if there ever was one! It looks backwards to go forward. It informs our modern understanding of the Church’s beliefs and practices.

Historic Christian orthodoxy is rooted in the Rule of Faith, which takes us all the way back to the beginning, to the beliefs and practices of our ancient ancestors: the apostles and their successors.

Oden got it right. Christians should follow his dedication to unoriginality.

2. It’s Consensual

In his commitment to unoriginality, Oden explained that his mission was to communicate “as clearly as I can that core of consensual belief that has been shared for two millennia of Christian teaching.”^⁠2

While some would have us believe otherwise, there is a consensual core of beliefs and practices that has marked the Church for two millennia. Yes, there have been disagreements. Yes, there have been shades of meaning to those beliefs. Yet a core has been gratefully celebrated and shared as received teaching by Christians across the varied languages, locations, and cultures through time.

For two millennia there has been a general consensus that we were created on purpose and with purpose by the one God of the universe; that every person on the planet is born a rebel in desperate need of rescue; that people find rescue in the life, death, and resurrection of the God-Man Jesus alone; and that every person on the planet will be judged inside or outside of Christ, receiving a just reward.

3. It’s Creedal

You could call vintage Christianity Nicene Christianity, because it is rooted in the creeds from the Nicene councils. Historic Christianity would say a Christian must agree with Nicene Christianity in order to be part of the Church.

This may sound odd to some. Isn’t Christianity rooted in the Bible? Isn’t that our only rule for faith and life? Well, yes and no! Because the Bible has always been interpreted, through the guidance of the Communion of Saints and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The result early on was a bedrock foundation that’s kept the Church secure for generations. Our faith is built on the foundation of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, using the bricks of Scripture, with Christ as the cornerstone.

Here’s a reminder of this foundation:

Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

and born of the virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried;

he descended to hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended to heaven

and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Nicene Creed

We believe in one God,

the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

begotten from the Father before all ages,

God from God,

Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made;

of the same essence as the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven;

he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,

and was made human.

He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered and was buried.

The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.

He ascended to heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again with glory

to judge the living and the dead.

His kingdom will never end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord, the giver of life.

He proceeds from the Father and the Son,

and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

He spoke through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,

and to life in the world to come. Amen.

4. It’s Enduring

Over the span of nearly 2,000 years the Christian faith has remained relatively consistent. And that’s mainly due to the fact the above creeds have endured as a sure, steady foundation.

“Yeah, but what about the Reformation?” you protest! What about it?

The magical thing about the Reformation was that the reformers didn’t seek to progress the Christian faith forward into a new version of the Christian faith—like modern progressive Christians are now. Instead they went backwards, to the teachings of the earliest apostles and forebears of the faith, to the original source documents of the faith (i.e. the Holy Scriptures) and their original language.

Christians have been doing the same every since. That’s why the Christian faith has endured.

5. It’s Trinitarian

If you pay attention to the foundation of the vintage Christian faith—the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds—you’ll notice something interesting: Both are structured “trinitarianly.”

What I mean by this is that the Trinity—a belief in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—provide the “scaffolding” upon which the fundamentals of the Christian faith are built.

Just look at the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God…Jesus Christ…the Holy Spirit.” Same for the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God…And in one Lord Jesus Christ…We believe in the Holy Spirit.”

Every aspect of the vintage Christian faith follows this formula, too. Creation is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. Salvation is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.

Which means that basic to vintage Christianity is a belief in one Father-Son-Spirit God, who is three persons and one essence. That’s one reason why Mormonism can’t be considered Christian.

6. It’s Exclusive

If that last statement made you bristle—that Mormonism isn’t Christian—then you don’t understand vintage Christianity. Historic Christian orthodoxy is by nature exclusive. It says this is Christian, and this isn’t.

Our postmodern condition has lulled us into believing that we can’t pass judgment on the moral worth of other ideas. And the lingering modernism from the Enlightenment continues to con us into believing we can only look at history as a disinterested observer, and never speak prophetically into the realm of historical doctrine.

Vintage Christianity, however, says otherwise. For instance, it insists that there is one God; that Jesus literally rose from the grave in full, physical glory; and that there is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Any alternative belief is both a foreign faith and false reality.

Oden put it well: “I do not have the gift of softening the sting of the Christian message.”^⁠3 That message separates real, true beliefs from fake, false ones.

7. It’s Doctrinal

Over the past several years there has been a shift from right believing to right living. With today’s emphasis on orthopraxy (right living) at the expense of orthodoxy (right beliefs) it bears stating that Christianity is inherently doctrinal.

Doctrine—the basic beliefs about God, the Bible, creation, humanity, sin, salvation, sanctification, and the end of the Story—separates Christianity from all the other world religions.

It also separates real versions of the Christian faith from false ones, like progressive Christianity. Which is why it’s crucial to recapture a real understanding of what has always been central to how the Church has believed. Here is what the historic creeds explicitly and implicitly affirm, and what all Christians are in turn called to believe:

• The Trinity, the one Father-Son-Spirit God
• God as Creator, who is distinct from creation
• Jesus’ lordship and deity
• Jesus’ physical, virgin incarnation as a real man
• Jesus’ substitutionary death
• Jesus’ literal, physical, bodily resurrection from the dead
• Jesus’ ascension and exaltation into heaven
• Individual culpability, forgiveness, and judgment of sin
• Jesus’ return as Judge of all
• The Holy Spirit is co-worshiped with Father and Son, giver of life, and author of revelation
• Eternal, resurrected life in the world to come.

8. It’s Sacramental

A key mark of historic Christian orthodoxy and catholic Christianity (that’s a small “o” on orthodoxy and small “c” on catholic—we’re talking vintage, here) is that it is sacramental.^⁠4

You probably know about the sacraments—as in baptism, communion, etc… But defining our faith as sacramental? Huh? When we recall the definition of a sacrament it makes perfect sense:

“a religious ceremony or act of the Church that is regarded as an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual divine grace.”

For generations the vintage Christian faith has recognized the sacraments as a means of grace. For example, look at what Irenaeus had to say about baptism in his fight against the gnostics, a false sect of early Christianity:

“We shall show in its fitting-place, that this class of men have been instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a renunciation of the whole [Christian] faith.” (Against Heresies 1.21.1)

For Irenaeus, a denial of baptism was a denial of the Christian faith itself. That’s because it denied a visible outward sign of God’s inward grace; it was a denial of grace itself.

9. It’s One-for-All

In a world where the Church is divided between Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—and further splintered within those three branches of the Church—one is probably not an adjective many today would use to describe Christianity.

And yet there is a oneness to the vintage Christian faith, a unity of beliefs that we’ve been heralding from the beginning. In Against Heresies Irenaeus explained this aspect best:

“Although the church is dispersed throughout the world, even to the ends of the earth, it has received this common faith from the Apostles and their disciples . . . The church believes these doctrines as if it had only one soul and one heart, and it proclaims them and hands them on in perfect harmony, as if it spoke with only one voice.”

10. It’s Once-for-All

Finally, the vintage Christian faith is a once-for-all faith. God himself said as much through his servant Jude: “. . . contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” (Jude 3)

Scripture itself defined the faith we’ve given ourselves to as “once for all.” The Church isn’t called to improve upon or progress this faith—as if it was deficient to begin with and needed help to move it along.

No! She is called to preserve it, contend for it, struggle for (and with) it.

One More Thing…

These ten aspects mark the vintage Christian faith. Perhaps we could add an eleventh: it is incredibly relevant.

What I love about vintage Christianity, and why it still matters, is that it still speaks to our questions, longings, problems—offering a fix along the way. We think that the newest, latest, present ideas about God and faith in him deserve to trump tradition, trump the historic Christian faith—what some call a tyranny of the present.^⁠5

And yet our ancient ancestors were asking the same questions we’re asking now. They entertained the same doubts we have about faith and life. And they discovered several answers that matter now as much as then.

They are ready to share them. If we listen.

Are you ready?

————————-

¹ Thomas Oden, Classical Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 1992), xv.

² Oden, Classical Christianity, xv.

³ Oden, Classical Christianity, xv.

⁴ I want to thank Jeff Damec for cluing me into this aspect of vintage Christianity.

⁵ This language was offered by Timothy George in Reading Scripture with the Reformers (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011), 23.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons below to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto for free!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: This Book is God’s Book
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and…What?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be
9—Sin: A Tale of Two Sinners
10—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
11—Rescue: Our Victorious Obedient Substitute
12—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
13—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
14—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
15—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
16—Hell: For Real and Forever?
17—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
18—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

What a funny word, manifesto. What a provocative word.

Some of you may be familiar with it only because it’s often associated a particular political movement known as communism. Its major proponent, Karl Marx, penned a small booklet on February 21, 1848 publicly declaring his political views about how society and economies should be ordered. He called this little booklet The Communist Manifesto. Its reverberations are felt to this day, 167 years later.

Wikipedia describes a manifesto this way:

a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus and/or promotes a new idea with prescriptive notions for carrying out changes the author believes should be made. It often is political or artistic in nature, but may present an individual’s life stance.

So there you have it. A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of intentions, motives, and views of the one manifesting.

The word itself comes from the Latin manifestus, a mashup of two other Latin words: manus, meaning “hand,” fendo, meaning “hit, thrust.” Literally, “thrust with the hand!” A manifesto is a hand-thrusting act publicly, verbally declaring ones intentions, motives, and views. Violent, I know. But that’s the nature of such documents.

A manifesto thrusts ideas into the public square by an individual. It manhandles people by the collar, shouting “Look here! Do you know what we’re doing? We’ve got to deal with this!” It’s an individual’s hand-thrusting life-stance into the apathetic, bleary-eyed faces of people who need to wake up and smell the smoldering, decaying rot of life and then  do something about it!

It’s the line in the sand, the rabbit hole, the red pill, the call to adventure beckoning people out of the old grey-scale world into a bright new magical one of full-on, high-definition color.

It’s the Ninety-Five Theses publicly nailed to the cathedral door of Wittenberg in 1517.

It’s the parchment with fifty-six ink-stained signatures declaring independence from King George III that one particular July 4th.

It’s the dream speech on that sticky August summer day before 250,000 civil rights activists on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963.

It’s the hand-thrusting collection of ones and zeros slapping the Church of Jesus Christ from her necrotic slumber beckoning her to rediscover and retrieve the historic Christian faith for our modern day, and resist progressive Christianity in the process.

That’s what this is.

Resist Progressive Christianity

Writing a manifesto responding to an entire wing of Christianity might seem odd. Downright non-Christian, even.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to judge fellow brothers and sisters?” I can hear the chorus responding. Yet responding to others inside the Church is something Christians have been doing for generations, from the very beginning of the Church’s existence.

Paul did it to Peter after he cozied up to the Judaizers. Irenaeus responded to Gnostic Christians who were defiling the gospel through cultural accommodation. Athanasius battled Arius for Jesus’ identity. Augustine slapped Pelagius and his views of human nature, sin, and salvation down.

Then a thousand years later a number of European Christian leaders sought to reform the Church by bringing her back to the basics: salvation by grace through faith alone; Scripture alone as the rule for faith and life; justification through Christ alone; all for the glory of God alone.

In every hand-thrusting instance, the goal was to help Christians rediscover and retrieve what had always been central to the Christian faith. What had always been fundamental to our rescue and re-creation through the Son of God’s life, death, and resurrection.

We need the same movement today, because progressive Christians are reimagining the Christian faith to such an extent that it is no longer even Christian:

The Bible is no longer God’s Word to us about his Story and our story; it’s a community library filled with human conversations about God and stories about our experiences with the Divine.

God is being reimagined to be a force within the world, Star Wars style—an energy and essence we tap into that symbolizes the universal human ideal of love.

Sin has been transformed into systemic social forces that compel people to do bad things; we no longer sin because we’re sinners in desperate need of God’s rescue.

Jesus is a sort of Gandhi on steroids who merely models for us the best way to be human and gives us the best glimpse into the character of God—rather than being the only one true God.

The cross is merely the highest expression of the universal human ideal of love; the resurrection is a symbol for the life, example, and work of Jesus that lived on in and through his disciples.

The Church is one more faith community among a number of options.

Judgement and hell are dismissed as medieval fear mongering, figments of fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist imaginations.

And I think it’s time to stand up and say, “Look here! Do you know what we’re doing? We’ve got to deal with this!”

So that’s what this is. This is my manifesto. My call to adventure. My line in the sand. My rabbit hole. It’s not a defense, but a declaration.

It’s my red pill inviting people to resist progressive Christianity and reclaim the fundamentals of the faith. To lay down their progressive arms and go backwards in order to move forward in their Christian faith by rediscovering and retrieving the fundamentals of that faith.

A Vintage Christian Manifesto of Hope

And yet…

As hand-thrusting of a gesture as this public declaration is, it’s a hopeful one. Because this is also a call for renewal. It’s a call for the Church to renew her role as guardian and steward of the once-for-all faith entrusted to her by King Jesus himself. A faith that insists:

God’s Word is his word to us, and is our final authority on faith, life, and everything in between.

God is the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

All of this was created on purpose and with purpose. We were created on purpose and with purpose, and crafted after our creator as his representatives on earth; we’re not talking monkeys!

Every one of us is born rebells who openly grasp after the power to decide what is right and wrong; everyone of us bears individual culpability for rebelling against God and vandalizing shalom.

Jesus is the only one true God, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

The cross was the point at which God objectively dealt with our sins; it was the object upon which the Son of God crawled to pay our price in our place.

Jesus was actually, physically, bodily raised to new life by the Father, proving sin and death were defeated; he ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father.

One day Christ will come again to judge every single person on the planet, either in him or not in him.

This is what the Church needs to rediscover and retrieve for our world, because this is what she’s believed. In turn I hope such rediscovery and retrieval will lead to renewal of mission, of purpose, of calling as the chosen people of God—as the royal priesthood, holy nation, and special possession of God who’ve been bought and paid for by the blood of King Jesus, to faithfully declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

And I believe—no I publicly declare such a renewal will come only when we rediscover and retrieve. When we go regressive rather than progressive.

This is a call to remember the hope for which have and to which we’ve been called, in Christ. It’s my manifesto of hope for my generation wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant to their modern world, and if progressive Christianity is inventible and the only viable option. It isn’t. Even remotely.

I invite you to explore what is:

The fundamentals of the vintage Christian faith.

Join me in exploring what it means to resist progressive Christianity and reclaim the vintage Christian faith. Next post we’ll outline 9 things you should know about vintage Christianity.

BTW This is part of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. The end result will be a FREE ebook available for your reading—and sharing—pleasure. Join the movement: go vintage this year!

Post Series

0—Progressive: Let’s Get Vintage!
1—Manifesto: Resist Progressive Christianity, Reclaim the Fundamentals
2—Vintage Faith: 10 Things to Know About Vintage Christianity
3—The Bible: This Book is God’s Book
4—God and gods: The Mars Hill Effect
5—Creation: God Spoke and…What?
6—Humanity: We’re Not Talking Monkeys
7—Homosexuality: An Honest Chat About Its Reality & Revelation
8—Sin: Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be
9—Sin: A Tale of Two Sinners
10—Jesus: Gandhi on Steroids or God Made Flesh?
11—Rescue: Our Victorious Obedient Substitute
12—Cross: A Love Note or Butcher’s Block?
13—Resurrection: Better Than a Zombie
14—Church: No Church No Christ, Know Church Know Christ
15—Universalism: Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
16—Hell: For Real and Forever?
17—Heaven: A Place on Earth?
18—The End: Go Backwards to Go Forwards

Progressive. What a fascinating word.

It is both an adjective and a noun. It describes what something is; it is also a something. Something can be described as progressive; something can be progressive.

At its root is, of course, the word progress, a verb that describes what something is doing. And at the root of this verb are two latin words: pro– and gradi.

Pro– is what we call a prefix, a modifier slapped on the front of a word to amend it, in our case the word gradi. Pro– means “forward” which modifies the latin gradi meaning “to walk.”

Thus, progress is “the act of walking forward.” It’s “the act of moving and advancing forward.”

But we need one more tiny lesson from grade school grammar to make our fascinating word complete. And that’s the suffix —ive.

You’ll remember from days of yore that adjectives and nouns are derived from this ending. Attaching this modifier to the end of a word makes it so that its root word “has the nature of” something.

So progress–ive has the nature of progress. It’s something that’s characterized by the act of walking forward, characterized by advancement.

It can also be a person or an organization—a noun—that does the walking forward, that embodies the advancement. That is advanced.

In the nineteenth century “progressive” took on a decidedly sociopolitical flavor. This fascinating adjective started to mean “characterized by striving for change and innovation,” or “favoring reform” in a social and political sense.

Shortly thereafter it became a noun—oddly enough, originally in Christianity. It was used for people and movements within the Church who favored social and political change in the name of…you guessed it: progress.

In the name of walking forward, in the name of forward movement, in the name of advancement.

Fast forward another century and the word took another interesting turn. Because toward the end of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries the word became largely in vogue as a replacement for another word: liberal.

You see this word had become a dirty word, a scary word. So liberals—both political and religious—needed a better word. A better brand. So they turned to our fascinating word.

Progressive.

Who Wouldn’t Want to Be Progressive?

There’s this line from one of the greatest television dramas ever, The West Wing, (I proudly admit I am that much of a nerd). It perfectly illustrates this point.

In the final season the Democrat candidate running for president, Matthew Santos, and the Republican one, Arnold Vinick, square off in this epic showdown-of-a-debate.

At one point Santos exclaims that Republicans have tried to turn “liberal” into a bad word. But Matt won’t take it anymore: “When you try to hurl the word ‘liberal’ at my feet, as if it were dirty, something to run away from, something that I should be ashamed of, it won’t work.”

He vows, “I will pick it up and wear it as a badge of honor!”

Good for Matt—or, perhaps, I should say good for Aaron Sorkin, the ventriloquist behind the puppet.

But let’s face it, while Santos might parade around in a liberal sash, others haven’t and won’t follow suite. Because a progressive t-shirt is much more attractive, which makes total sense.

I mean who wouldn’t want to be progressive? Who wouldn’t want to be forward thinking, forward leaning, forward walking? Isn’t that why the 2012 Obama campaign proudly and prominently featured the word “Forward”?

Who wouldn’t want to be about forwardness? About innovation and change—whether social, political, or religious?

But here’s the thing: Is that what the Church needs? To leave behind the past and walk forward into something else? To change, to innovate?

To be progressive? To be characterized by progress?

What If Progress Isn’t at What the Church Needs?

Over the past decade a number of people within Christianity have sought to do just that. They’ve sought to change the Christian faith,

to reimagine the Christian faith.

They insist we need a new kind of Christian because we need a new kind of Christianity. After all, this is a new day. It’s a new century filled with new questions that demands new answers, that demands new ways of answering old questions.

In other words, we need to progress. We need to be progressive. We need a Progressive Christianity.

And yet…

What if this isn’t at all what we need? What if instead of going forward we need to go backwards?

What if instead of transforming the Church into a new state we need to go back again to a former state?

What if instead of reimagining we need to rediscover?

What if instead of innovating we need to reach back and retrieve?

What if instead the Church doesn’t need to progress, but to regress? What if instead the world doesn’t need progressive Christians, but instead vintage Christians?

We Are Losing Plot to The Church’s Story

There’s a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a lost book. A very important lost book, actually. This very important lost book was the foundation to Israel’s life with God.

And it lay missing. Forgotten and forsaken. For two generations. Like some old photo album stuffed away in Grandma’s musty old attic.

While this very important lost book lay missing, several kings ascended the throne who introduced pagan worship practices into the life of Israel. The people forsook their one true love Yahweh, the God of Israel, for fake gods and fake stories.

Israel lost the plot to her story as much as she lost a very important book.

It wasn’t until the reign of a child king that Israel found what she had lost. During the reign of King Josiah Israel recovered the plot to her story. Literally.

One day our very important lost book was discovered during temple renovations by one of the priests. And it wasn’t until it was recovered that Israel rediscovered the plot to her story and returned to the one true God.

In many ways the same is happening in the Church. We have lost the plot to our own story as much as Israel. All because we are forgetting and forsaking the Church’s Story. Forgetting and forsaking what the Church has always believed. Forgetting and forsaking the once-for-all-faith entrusted to God’s Holy People by Jesus Christ himself. Back there. Embedded deep within history.

Which means we need to go back again.

Not Your Mama’s Fundamentalism

A number of us over the past few years have recognized the need to do just that, to regress by rediscovering and retrieving the fundamentals of the vintage Christian faith.

You could call us neo-fundamentalists, and I thought of using that word, but that’s not quite right. Not only because it’s fraught with baggage that distracts what many of us are actually trying to do. But because this ain’t your mama’s fundamentalism!

We believe you can hold on to the fundamentals without becoming a fundamentalist. And many of us aim to do just that. To look backwards in order to go forward in the Christian faith. To return to a former state of being by believing how the Church has always believed, by being how the the Church has always been.

We are not progressive on purpose. Instead we are proudly vintage. Regressive, even. We are proud vintage Christians. And here’s why.

This is our manifesto.

A vintage Christian manifesto of hope.

PS—Are you a proud vintage Christian? If so please use the buttons to share this with your friends. It will go along way in getting the word out there are plenty of Christians who are not progressive on purpose!

BTW This is the first of a series of posts sketching a vision for vintage Christianity. Join the movement, go vintage and get the entire manifesto ebook right now for free!