Fifth, I believe our discernments should never become rules or laws. The moment we turn our discernments into rules or the moment we elevate them to the level of official positions, they are headed in the direction of fossilization, inflexibility, and the near impossibility of rethinking, renewing, and reforming. Instead, we need to render discernments with all the wisdom we can muster and let them remain as discernments and judgments, not rules or laws. At times churches and denominations will have to produce a “white paper” or a “statement” or even give a press release, but such official statements are needed only rarely, and probably less often than rarely.
In our discussion of examples, we will find some patterns at work in our discernment, but these are not rules we apply; rather, they are discernments. I am nervous about anyone who thinks we can find a mechanism that will guide our path. Instead, we need attentiveness to the guiding of the Spirit as we read the Bible together.
I accept the reality that churches disagree over discernments. I also accept that the process will be difficult. Even within a church where a sensitive process of discernment has been followed, there will be folks who disagree. That’s the way it is, the way the church has always read the Bible. Longing for a day of certainty and uniformity in that certainty in this life may propel us into deeper discussions and the search for greater unity, but certainty and unanimity in discernment are not the world in which we live.
What the New Testament trajectory teaches us about divorce and remarriage is the need to remain firmly committed to marriage while permitting divorce in cases where the marital covenant has been destroyed. The pattern is to discern the underlying reason for the fractured relationship and then to judge if that reason is acceptable.
2. Circumcision
God told Abraham to make the covenant between them official by circumcising every male child forever. We need to read all these verses to see how serious this circumcision issue was:
Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (Genesis 17:9–14, emphasis added)
Circumcision had been a big deal for the Jewish community for centuries. For this reason converts to Judaism were required to undergo circumcision. It was therefore natural for Jewish followers of Jesus to expect gentile converts to go all the way and go under the knife for Jesus (Acts 15:1–5). The question of whether converts should be circumcised was the pressing question that “cut like a knife” through the early churches. Think of this like a debate room with each party sitting together facing the other and a large group of undecideds surrounding both groups. Here are the options:
Pharisee-type Christians: “By all means! Circumcision is God’s command.”
Pauline Christians: “No, the times have changed!”
Undecided group: “What should we do?”
The early Christians were at a stalemate. To deal with their differences and discern how to live, they convened the first church conference in Jerusalem.
What we find in Acts 15 is the pattern of discernment. The early Christians discerned that circumcision, the (don’t forget this) ageless command to Abraham, was not necessary for gentile converts. This was an innovation. James, brother of Jesus and now leader of the church in Jerusalem, came to the conclusion that gentile converts needed only to offer a minimal respect for those commandments that had always distinguished the Jews from the surrounding nations (15:16–21). Here we find a pattern of discernment, a pattern of listening to the old, understanding the present, and discerning how to live that old way in a new day. What we find in Acts 15 is a way of conservation (a “resident-alien” like understanding of gentiles) and innovation (no need for gentiles to be circumcised).
Yet what was decided in Jerusalem wasn’t innovative and practical enough for Paul, who developed his own pattern of discernment for his churches. In fact, Paul went further than James with three innovations on the Old Testament commandment to circumcise every boy forever. First, in one of the most innovative positions Paul ever took, he said circumcision really didn’t matter: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). I don’t know how that strikes you, but it doesn’t take a professional historian to imagine how Paul’s opponents and Jewish friends would have responded. Paul’s opponents knew, or thought they knew with certainty, that Paul was disagreeing with God’s word! In terms of this book, Paul’s statement was a blue parakeet observation, and this whole book converges right here. How did Paul discern that circumcision didn’t really matter?
Second, conserving a theme in Moses and Jeremiah, Paul argued that circumcision, even in the Old Testament, was ultimately an image of the heart and not simply surgery on the body. Thus, Moses says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.” And Jeremiah 4:4 says: “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.” Paul puts it like this: “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code” (Romans 2:28–29, emphasis added).
If this didn’t confuse some of Paul’s criticizers, what about this? “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1 Corinthians 7:19). His opponents would have said, “Isn’t circumcision one of those commandments?” For Paul, circumcision was clearly a commandment of God for all time, but paradoxically it was now no longer necessary for those who were “in Christ” because real circumcision was a matter of the heart. Which means circumcision is forever, but it morphs from a physical to a spiritual act. (You’re not alone if you think Moses would have muttered and shook his head when Paul said these things.)
And third, Paul went one step further in an innovative direction: baptism fulfills and replaces circumcision. Notice these words from Colossians 2:11–12: “In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” We might argue, then, that for Paul circumcision was eternal because it morphed into baptism.4
We who are Christians today no longer circumcise for reasons of the covenant because what was at one time expressed as a universal, eternal commandment was understood by early Christians—in a pattern of Spirit-led discernment and innovation—to be an external rite that would eventually find its fulfillment in the Christian rite of baptism. By the time Paul was done with this Old Testament commandment, the knives of circumcision were, to play with his terms, tossed into the water. So should we practice circumcision? No. Why not? Because we believe circumcision was a temporary entrance requirement that found fulfillment in baptism. And we believe this because we believe the Spirit who told Abraham to circumcise also told the early Christians that the day of circumcision had come to an end. The pattern of discernment can be called theological development. In other words, “That theology was then, but this theology is now.”
I wish examples like this were all so clear. They’re n
ot.
3. The Style of Christian Women
Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
This text, from 1 Peter 3:1–6, contains three basic commands to women in first-century Asia Minor who had unbelieving husbands. They should:
• submit to their non-Christian husbands in order to convert them;
• avoid elaborate hairstyles and gold jewelry or fine clothing; and
• address their husbands with the word “lord.”
Even if some conservative Christians today want to emphasize wives submitting to their husbands no matter how countercultural it may seem, they don’t usually insist on Peter’s commands about elaborate hair and nice clothing and fine jewelry, and they don’t, so far as I know, insist on wives calling their husbands “lord.”
Why do we not follow these explicit words of the apostle Peter? The only answer I can give is that over time the church has worked out a pattern of discernment that comes to this: women (and men I might add) should dress modestly. Even this pattern is not entirely accurate; for some the pattern of discernment is more radical. For them Peter’s words are simply passé, outmoded. “That was then, but this is now. Peter’s words are ‘then.’ ” Many Christian women dress in the most fashionable clothing, pay considerable fees for coiffure, and have no qualms about expensive jewelry. Furthermore, they wear such things to church on Sunday morning where everyone can see them and where, by and large, no one puts up a fuss. I will avoid any sense of judgment on this matter except to say that men too are often dressed to the nines. Some who aren’t pay big dough for their underdressed style.
What I am curious about is the pattern of discernment we now use. Let’s say that we think Peter’s intent is to encourage Christian women to be modest. My question, then, is this: How do we discern that his intent can be reduced to the principle of modesty instead of timeless commands? This pattern of discernment might be called the deeper principle. This approach knows that the principle is trans-cultural, but the specific expressions of that principle are not.
Let’s press on.
4. Sun-Centered or Earth-Centered Cosmology
The Bible assumes that the earth was the center of the universe, but we now know, in spite of the strife it caused Galileo and the backpedaling required of the church since his days, that the sun is at the center of the solar system. Our cosmology is heliocentric (sun-centered) whereas the Bible’s is geocentric (earth-centered). Frequently the Bible speaks of the earth’s foundation. The earth, the biblical authors say, sits atop a stable foundation with pillars: “He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble” (Job 9:6; see 38:4–7; Proverbs 8:27–29). As if assuming the earth is flat, the biblical authors speak of its four corners. So, for example, the seer of Revelation says: “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree” (Revelation 7:1).
In the biblical perception of the world, we have a principle at work we must admit: God spoke in those days in those ways, and one of those ways was a three-deckered universe of below the earth, the earth, and the heavens (e.g., Philippians 2:9–10). I suspect that’s how they thought the world was really constructed.
How do we deal with a geocentric, flat-earth, three-layered universe? Science, which now factors into our patterns of discernment, rules for most of us, and we revise our view of what the Bible is actually saying. We have discerned that the Bible is actually using “phenomenological” language—language that expresses what the ancients observed, heard, and felt. Their language, then, is metaphorical. Are we bound to think that because the Bible implies the earth is flat and rests on pillars with a foundation that the earth is flat and sits on pillars? Some do, but most of us adjust and take the Bible with us into our modern scientific world.
Most of us also believe that what we thought the Bible was saying is not, in fact, what it was saying. That is, at times we have innovative interpretations because we have learned to listen well to science. The pattern of discernment here is simply growth in knowledge, scientific and otherwise. It need only to be mentioned that some think the same scientific development can be applied, say, to Genesis 1 and 2, while others want to stop short of such an implication. Some of us are willing to give it more freedom than others.5
5. The Death Penalty
Here we walk on thinner ice into a more-debated issue. Some Christians, knowing full well what the Old Testament says and knowing that Romans 13 might be sanctioning death sentences, believe that Christians should not support capital punishment. They believe a better way is possible for our world. For such persons, prosecution and life in prison is enough. Who knows, they ask, if this person might be reconciled to God, restored by grace, and made anew?
There are all kinds of texts and issues that come into play. Here are just a few: the Old Testament sanctioned capital punishment for the witch (Exodus 22:18), the idolater (22:20), the blasphemer (Leviticus 24:16), the rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18–21), adultery (22:22), and the one who broke Sabbath (Numbers 15:32–36). The breadth of behaviors that led to capital sentence has been innovatively shrunk in our world.
There are, however, some other tendencies and trends in the Bible. Cain was not put to death for murdering his brother (Genesis 4). There were cities of refuge where someone guilty of unintentional murder was both protected from blood revenge but yet somehow confined (Exodus 21:12–14; Numbers 35:10–13, 22–32; Deuteronomy 4:41–43; 19:1–13). Importantly, the guilty person in a city of refuge (analogous to our prisons) was released when the reigning high priest died (Numbers 35:25). Jesus didn’t demand capital punishment for the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).6 Even more important, Jesus may well have undercut the foundation for capital punishment when he demanded that his followers turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38–39).
Humans have done centuries of thinking about deterrence—does capital punishment actually deter crime? Protection—doesn’t a criminal’s death make for a safer society? Life—does or doesn’t capital punishment demonstrate the value of life? Money—isn’t it cheaper to put some to death than pay for confinement for life? Statistics—does not capital punishment weigh more heavily for the African-American and the poor than for the wealthy who can afford lawyers? And problems—we know some on death row have been proven innocent. Doesn’t that force us to rethink the whole system? I could go on.
The fundamental argument against capital punishment goes something like this: “That was then, but this is now.” Christians are split on this one. Jesus’s teachings unleashed a new system of grace and forgiveness. In addition, society has developed in law, in enforcement, and in restoration to such a degree that capital punishment is no longer needed. The pattern of discernment for those who oppose capital punishment combines social progress, historical development, legal development, and theological development that climaxes in Jesus’s own teachings. That development continues into our own day.
6. Tongues
Our sixth example is speaking in tongues, more often now called by its Greek term glossolalia. Here are the simple facts: the early Christians spoke in tongues (Acts 2), Paul spoke in tongues frequently (1 Corinthians 14:18), and Christians throughout the church have spoken in tongues. But—and here’s the importan
t point—since most Christians don’t speak in tongues, because in the history of the church most haven’t spoken in tongues, and because speaking in tongues was often isolated into small pockets of Christians, a pattern of discernment arose that “tongues aren’t for today, they were a sign gift of the first century.” And the pattern of “that was then, but this is now” was fine until the Pentecostal movement in the early 1900s, the charismatic movement of the 1960s, and the Vineyard movement of the 1970s and 1980s. At that time the “pattern” was discerned as a “no longer not for us” pattern. In other words, “that was then, but this is now” became a “that was then, and it is also now” pattern. The innovation was a form of conservation: speaking in tongues recovers the early church’s way of life.
What we have here is a variation in contexts. Some think glossolalia was a manifestation of God’s Spirit at the birth of the church but is no longer a pattern for the church. Others find a normative pattern of discernment: glossolalia is a permanent gift of the Spirit to the church. As a seminary student I routinely rode to school with a fellow seminarian who was Assembly of God. Often we chatted about charismatic gifts, and I will never forget what he said when I asked why I didn’t speak in tongues but he did—and that everyone around him did and no one around me did. His answer: “Those who grow up with it are more likely to speak in tongues.” Evidence backs him up, whether we like it or not. Those who grow up with tongues are more likely to speak in tongues. Variations in context, then, reveal to us that our own context shapes in part not only our interpretations but also our practices.
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