Christianity in the West faces a theological crisis.
This crisis represents nothing less than the integrity of the Gospel in Western Christianity. The crisis is this: the separation between Christian doctrine and Christian ethics.
In recent months we have seen this error surface in both Protestant evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism.
This fall, popular Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley organized a conference and sermons in defense of the conference, which demonstrated the plausibility of “gay Christianity.”
To put it in its simplest form, Stanley claimed that even though his church’s official teaching had not changed and the Bible did indeed condemn homosexual behavior, it was simply unrealistic to place the burden on homosexuals insurmountable sexual chastity. Thus, Stanley suggests, the Church should refrain from imposing demands on individuals that our libidinous culture understands are simply impossible to obey.
And just this week, Pope Francis shocked no one by pushing his drift toward moderation and compromise even further by giving official Vatican approval to give priestly blessings to people in same-sex relationships. Being half too smart, Pope Francis technically confirms the teaching of the Roman Catholic Magisterium on marriage, but differentiating the blessing of persons from the blessing of the relationship itself. It’s a distinction without a difference for anyone with the intellectual honesty to say it out loud.
In both cases, with Stanley and Francis, the “pastoral accommodations” for “irregular unions” are based on clear biblical teaching. Biblical authority gives way to individual autonomy. Sexual purity gives way to the lust of the flesh. To put this in the terms of an ethics professor, it is about separating biblical doctrine (what we believe) from biblical ethics (how we act). Such a division is a false dichotomy of which biblical and historical Christianity ignores the existence.
Protestants and Roman Catholics everywhere should understand the significant departure from biblical and historical Christianity that the approaches of Andy Stanley and Pope Francis represent. Pastoral accommodation at the expense of biblical clarity and biblical ethics in order to appease sinful desires – all in the name of false compassion – is unloving and schismatic.
But we should understand this rupture on an even deeper level. The two episodes involving Stanley and Francis constitute not only a separation between doctrine and ethics, but also a denial of the very power of the Gospel at its root. We should be clear-headed about this. No Christian obeys perfectly. I am a sinner. You are a sinner. But the Gospel presents the condition of the sinner in the past tense: “And such were some of you. But you have been washed, you have been sanctified, you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). The message sent by the pope and by Stanley treats Christian discipleship as unrealistic and unattainable or as a burden and an obstacle to human flourishing. This is a biblical and pastoral error of the highest order.
In one of the first classes of my ethics class, I give a short lecture on the relationship between the gospel and ethics. I do this because I don’t want my students leaving my ethics class to be left with mere “answers” to all the pressing cultural crises their future ministries will face. I want them to understand that the intelligibility of the Gospel is at stake when it comes to ethics – not only our obedience, but the very source from which that obedience comes – the Spirit of God . I go to Titus to make my point: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, leading us to renounce ungodliness and the passions of the world, and to live a self-controlled life, right and godly in this present age, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for a people zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11-14).
For the apostle Paul and for each of us today, our obedience – or our “ethics,” if you want to use that term – adorns the doctrine we believe to be true (Titus 2:10). The Bible views ethical obedience as the logical consequence of having the gospel rooted in our lives. Our discipleship, obedience, and daily devotion to Christ are intended to bear witness to what Christ has done for us and in us today. We are called to obedience, and we receive the power of that obedience, because of the gospel.
The problem with the recent initiatives of Pope Francis and Andy Stanley is not that such an approach is “inclusive” or “compassionate”, it’s that it actually ends up abandoning what both are supposed to stand for : the Gospel of Jesus Christ. . When religious leaders sanction sin, they supplant the need for a redeemer, then leave us dead in our transgressions.
These are the battlefields of the new liberalism, which calls for revising Christian doctrine to appease the spirit of the times. What is new is simply the form that this liberalism takes: the disastrous separation of doctrine and ethics.
