1. The world was created in 144 hours, evolution didn’t happen, and if you don’t believe that, you are stepping in deep spiritual doo-doo.

2. The world is billions of years old, evolution did happen, and if you don’t agree you must be ignorant, foolish or intellectually dishonest.

Although these two positions seem like polar opposites, their proponents did agree on one thing: the Bible and Science are at odds. If you believe one, you must discredit the other.

By the late 80’s and 90’s, I began to notice a third camp of young people who said, “It doesn’t really matter.” Perhaps they truly believed that the debate was not central to their Christian faith. (If it were, why isn’t it mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed? Why were many church fathers, including St. Augustine, willing to allow that the days in Genesis 1 might be longer than 24 hours?) Or perhaps they were just tired of anything that smelled like the conservative-versus-liberal battles that for too long had dominated politics, culture and theology, and they simply wanted to call for a time-out.

I myself joined that third camp. I didn’t want to take sides. If someone were to lock me in a bathroom and refuse to let me out until I voiced an opinion, this is what I probably would have said: “I believe that the universe and the earth are very old. I think that the creation events described in Genesis chapter 1 did not take place within six 24-hour periods. But I do not necessarily believe all the claims of evolutionary biology; theories of macroevolution are problematic, both from scientific and biblical standpoints.” However, I never needed to say that, because no one ever locked me in the bathroom.

Plenty of good people are hanging around this third camp. People who are popular and highly regarded in the evangelical world. For example, Tim Keller seems to be here. He is willing to allow that the world is very old, and he leaves the door open for some limited, theistic evolution. But his bottom line is that he really doesn’t know much about the creation process and would rather not adopt a strong stance. For this, he has received some mild criticism, especially from the young-earth creationism (YEC) crowd. But he is a without a doubt a very thoughtful, winsome, influential and devout Christian, and everyone whose opinion I respect also respects him.

More recently, I sense the emergence of a fourth camp of evangelicals who, with those in Camp 3, agree that the creation-versus-evolution thing is not one of the central issues of the Christian faith. But they have become more vocal in their opposition to YEC. They openly endorse theistic evolution and are even willing to drop the belief in Adam and Eve as historical individuals. (They do believe that humankind is in a fallen state and needs redemption; they just aren’t sure how it got to be that way.)

Members of this fourth camp include Francis Collins, Peter Enns (whom I blogged about last year) and the rest of the Biologos Foundation, along with many readers of Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog.

For these people, the argument is not really about creation versus evolution. They frame it within a larger question of how we approach and understand the Bible. These people are sincere, devout Christians who really want to take the scripture seriously and uphold its authority as the word of God. At the same time, they want to take full account of scientific evidence (e.g., the fossil record) and reconcile it with scripture in an intellectually  honest way.

These people believe that the initial chapters of Genesis teach genuine spiritual truth, but they should not be read in the same way that one would read a modern science or history textbook; to do so would actually be a misuse of the Scripture, because these chapters are part of an ancient literary genre addressed to ancient readers who make very different scientific and cultural assumptions than we do today.

By adopting this stance, members of Camp 4 have picked a fight with large segments of the evangelical world which still describe the Bible as the “inerrant and infallible” word of God, and regard any erosion of these in- words as a dangerous trend that would undermine the foundations of historic Christianity. In response, the Camp 4 people would say that the creedal statements using the in- words were a 20th century overreaction to the spread of liberal theology which began to deny the historicity of the gospel accounts and even cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They maintain that it is possible to drop the in- words while still maintaining a high view of the Bible and upholding all the key tenets of the Christian creeds.

For the record, I am not yet ready to pull up my stakes and move my tent all the way over to Camp 4. But I do like and admire these guys. I have met Pete Enns and, as far as I can tell, he is the real deal, a man of solid Christian faith. And Francis Collins seems like a jolly good fellow as well. I admire their intellectual prowess and willingness to raise the tough questions that many in Camp 3 seem afraid to voice. Perhaps I can pitch my tent somewhere in between. Maybe I can hang out at Camp 3.14159.

What about you? Do you identify yourself with any of these camps? Does it even matter to you? If you count yourself as a believer in Christ and a member of one of these camps, what do you really think of Christians who pitch their tents elsewhere?

Similarly, there is an electrified third rail in discussions about Christian unity.  Being the naïve/pompous/foolish person that I am, I will now climb down onto the subway tracks, bend over, reach out, and grab this third rail with both hands.

What is this third rail? It is the centuries-old split between Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church.

What I writing comes largely from personal experience. I was born into a Catholic family, baptized as an infant, and lived as a semi-devout Catholic for 18 years. As a college freshman I was evangelized by zealous Christians from a ministry that is technically non-denominational but clearly evangelical Protestant. In my newly found faith, I reacted against Catholicism and began to view it as an aberrant expression of pure, biblically sound Christianity. Over the years, as I grew into a position of ministry leadership, I carefully avoided discussing faith-related issues with family members who are still practicing Catholics. I never really questioned whether my anti-Catholic stance was justified, and it is only recently, the last five years or so, that my thinking has begun to change. Please understand that I have no inclination to return to the Catholic church. God has called and brought me to another place.  But as I have read, thought and prayed about these things, my views on many issues relevant to the Protestant/Catholic divide have been shifting considerably.

The ministry in which I serve has no official position on Catholicism, and over the years I have heard individual members express a variety of opinions. The founder of my ministry spoke publicly with admiration of the late Pope John Paul II. Recently, someone in my ministry (another former Catholic) exclaimed to me, “Catholics are Christians too!” Others have characterized the Catholic church as a cult and portrayed Catholics as enemies of the gospel.  But on most occasions when Catholicism is mentioned in conversation (which doesn’t happen very often), the usual response is a brief, unnatural silence, followed by an awkward attempt to change the subject.   During that pregnant pause, the words that I imagine, the words that I sense are being thought but not spoken, are polite, cautious, and negative.

When an evangelical expresses a negative view of Catholicism, what does he really mean?  That term, Catholicism, can mean so many different things in different contexts that to even speak of it as one thing, a single entity, that can be grasped and summarized and assessed as good, mediocre, or bad is almost absurd.  It is like trying to render a summary judgment about mathematics or China or health care.  But in many cases, the evangelical expressing the negative opinion is probably thinking more specifically along these lines.

“Catholics teach a false gospel of salvation by works.” There is a kernel of truth in that statement, but the kernel is rather small. If you begin to do any serious, evenhanded reading of modern discussions on this subject, you will see that it represents a gross oversimplification and caricature of Catholic soteriology. Catholics and Protestants do speak of salvation and justification using very different terms and concepts. But there is huge variation among Protestants as well (e.g., Calvinism versus Arminianism), and there are vast areas of consensus across these traditions. Thoughtful Catholics and Protestants should agree that we are saved neither by works nor by faith but by Jesus Christ. Faithful Catholics and Protestants should agree that the Bible is the inspired word of God and believe Romans 1:17, “The righteous will live by faith,” along with James 2:20, “Faith without deeds is useless.”  Aren’t there plenty of Protestants who talk about justification “by grace alone, through faith alone” but are, in fact, teaching and practicing all kinds of legalism?  Focusing on “what we must do” more than “what God has done” is the standard fallback position that all Christians, regardless of our denominations, are inclined to slip into whenever we lose sight of the living Savior. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an evangelical say that Catholics teach “salvation by works,” I would be a rich man. And I am quite sure that, in the vast majority of those occasions, the person voicing that opinion could not accurately describe what the RCC actually teaches about salvation today. Instructive and healthy criticism requires knowledge and understanding of the position being criticized.

“Catholics don’t have a personal relationship with God.”  Before saying this, please get to know at least one sincere and devout Catholic. Pick up a book by Henri Nouwen. Or read one of the pieces on this blog written by Natalie Plumb. Enough said.

“Catholics practice idolatry because they worship Mary and pray to saints, statues and paintings.”  Really, there is very little truth to this. Catholic tradition holds elaborate and complex views of Mary (e.g., her so-called Immaculate Conception) and her relationship to Jesus that most Protestants find problematic.  Prayer to saints is part of their understanding of the doctrine ”communion of saints” expressed in the Apostles’ Creed, a doctrine which Protestants largely ignore.  But Catholics do not worship Mary or the saints. They accept the Ten Commandments and understand that worship is reserved for God alone.

“Catholics blindly follow the Pope.” I agree, to an extent. Catholic teachings about St. Peter and papal succession are extrabiblical and hard for Protestants (and plenty of Catholics as well) to swallow. Before casting stones, however, it would be wise to heed the words of the great evangelical preacher Dr. John Stott, who said about evangelicals, “There are too many gurus and too many autocrats who lay down the law in the local church in defiance of the teaching of Jesus… There are too many who behave as though they believe, not in the priesthood of all believers, but in the papacy of all pastors.”

“Catholics have wrong views about the sacraments. They practice infant baptism, which is unbiblical and invalid. And they superstitiously think that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, which no sensible Protestant would ever believe.”  Anyone who says this reveals ignorance of church history and Protestantism. Every major leader of the Protestant Reformation including Luther, Calvin and  Zwingli, upheld and practiced paedobaptism. Luther and Calvin believed and taught the “real presence” of Christ in Communion, albeit in different ways. The vast majority of Protestant churches today will accept a baptism practiced in any church, including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, as valid as long as the baptism is Trinitarian, “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:19.

“The Reformation happened for good reasons, and we shouldn’t go back.” I agree. The Protestant Reformation was a reaction against severe doctrinal problems and abuses in the medieval church. Catholics do not want to return to those problematic medieval beliefs and practices either. What happened in the 16^th century is unchangeable, and it no longer accurately frames the doctrinal, cultural and practical issues that separate Protestants and Catholics today.

Please do not call me an apologist for the Roman Catholic church. If you have actually paid attention to my words, you will know that there are some Catholic positions that I do not agree with and many more that I simply do not understand. But I also do not agree with or understand many things that are taught and practiced in various Protestant churches either. And there are plenty things about my own church that I do not like.  Church membership, denominational positions and historical events from centuries past do not control and define the character or faith of real flesh-and-blood people today. God cares about people, all of them, far more than he cares about institutions and labels.

Back when I was a young teenager, I stumbled across a column published in a conservative Catholic newspaper that my mother used to read. It was about hymns that were being sung at Catholic Mass. The author objected to How Great Thou Art because that hymn was written by a Protestant and was therefore suspect and impure. Even at that young age, I found his statement so appalling that I remember it to this day.  But just a few years later, I began to think and speak of Catholicism and Catholics in precisely the same way. Having strong Protestant convictions is fine. But do those convictions require me to scrupulously avoid all things that vaguely appear to be Catholic because there are Catholics who presently do them?

Through interacting with today’s college students (the so-called postmoderns), I have been deeply impressed by their relational maturity.  They love to engage in thoughtful, evenhanded, openminded, give-and-take discussion.  They are not afraid to touch the third rail.  They long to break down barriers and find common ground with people who are different from them. They instinctively understand that unity does not require uniformity. And they have no interest in perpetuating theological divisions, culture wars and us-versus-them mentalities of generations past.  Do you want to impress young people, gain their respect and open their hearts to Christ? Then demonstrate a healthy spirit of criticism toward yourself and your own tradition. Reach out and communicate in a loving, Christlike way with those who are different from you. Show them that you are open to learning and revising your own opinions as God shows you new things. Do you want to offend young people and close their hearts? Then promote caricature, stereotype, and ignorance by continually praising your own group, church or culture while glibly criticizing those on the outside. And then brace yourself for others to treat you likewise. What goes around, comes around.

These days, Christians don’t seem to talk much about hell. This doctrine, more than any other, just seems too offensive to the modern pluralistic mindset. 

Skeptics and non-believers treat this as an inconsistency: “How can a loving God send people to hell?” I have to admit: the standard Christian apologetic responses to this question don’t resonate with me.  Yet followers of Jesus should not discount teachings about hell, because those teachings came from him.

The Christian website Out of Ur has begun a series on hell.  Each week, they are posting a short video clip of a noteworthy Christian leader speaking about the subject.  Thus far, they have posted a 3-minute clip by N.T. Wright and a 5-minute clip by John Piper. I respect both of these guys, but their perspectives seem very different.

At the Seed meeting next Monday, James Tuttle will lead a discussion about hell. We plan to meet on the Life Sciences bridge at 7 pm.  Anyone is welcome to join. Out-of-town readers who want to contribute their own questions or comments can do so via this blog.  Hope to see you there.

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