Interdenondenominational

“So, you’ve heard of interdenominational. You’ve heard of nondenominational. Well, this church identifies as interdenondenominational.”

johnbcrist, ‘Church Hunters: Episode 2’ (2017)

All I was doing was explaining to my orchestra desk-partner¹ that I wouldn’t be able to make the all-day rehearsal later that month because I’d be travelling back from a friend’s wedding. That’s one of the things one encounters when one has a lot of Christian friends, I added: they display a tendency to get married at what is considered, in the mainstream of our society, an unusually young age.

“Are you a Christian?” my desk-partner asked me. Perfectly reasonably.

I freely confirmed that I was. Easy question.

“Which denomination?” she followed up. Again, perfectly reasonably: I don’t in the slightest mean to imply that that’s something she was at all wrong or insensitive or ignorant to ask me. It was, I think we’d all agree, entirely fair as a question – and yet I wasn’t at all sure how to reply. I ended up shrugging, pulling a bit of a face, and making a tsh noise, before remarking rather vaguely that I was going to an Anglican church at the moment.

 

This is not the Anglican church I currently attend, but it is the one with which the secondary school I went to is associated. It’s quite a good cathedral, as they go.

But of course, that doesn’t really mean anything. After all, Anglicanism is literally the archetypal broad church.² “I go to an Anglican church,” could mean almost anything: it could mean repeating endless archaic liturgy, kneeling for the confession, and turning east for the creed; it could mean meeting in a school hall and using a bit of PE apparatus as a communion table; it could mean taking notes on a forty-minute exegesis of some obscure minor prophet; it could mean staring at a candle in silence punctuated only by occasional Taizé chants; it could mean publicly crying on the shoulder of the nice lady who just prayed for you in tongues; it could mean discussing current social issues over coffee and cake – I could go on. “I go to an Anglican church,” doesn’t, in practical terms, say anything much about what I actually believe.

Nor are other denominational identifiers significantly more useful. The church I went to until the age of (I think) about fourteen belonged to two denominations, Methodist and United Reformed, the latter being itself an amalgamation of two further denominations, the English branches of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism (minorities of whose congregations continued independently after the merger took place in the 1970s). To this day, I have very little idea what the distinguishing features of any of these denominations are, though I can’t help but feel said features surely can’t be all that distinguishing if their bearers are so easily merged.

In short, denominational labels don’t really tell you anything. Surely there’s got to be a better way of doing things.

***

I hadn’t been particularly trying to turn the conversation into a debate about predestination; it just sort of happened somehow. Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect anything else when one goes for a spontaneous lunch with two fellow Theology students who also happen to be fellow members of the body of Christ. The one of the two I knew less well had already asked me – in an unusually, though pleasingly, straightforward manner – whether I was a Bible-believing Christian, and I had freely confirmed that I was. Easy question. But then I began attempting to articulate what I thought the contents of the Bible compelled me to believe about the sovereignty of God,³ and he asked a follow-up question as to whether I would situate myself in the Reformed tradition.

It was entirely fair as a question, and yet I wasn’t at all sure how to reply. “Um,” I eventually managed, “I guess you could say I’m heavily Reformed-influenced.” What I meant by this was, I have read some stuff by some people who call themselves Reformed and I agreed with a good proportion of it.

‘Reformed’ doesn’t refer to a denomination; it refers to a theological persuasion that can plausibly span a number of denominations. Yet exactly what the defining features of that theological persuasion are is far from readily apparent. On one level, there’s surely a sense in which any Christian tradition that traces its origins back to the Reformation can claim the title (like the United Reformed Church I mentioned above), making it little more than a synonym for ‘Protestant’. On another, if you tap ‘Reformed’ into the search box on Wikipedia, you find yourself redirected to the entry for ‘Calvinism’.⁴ On yet another, I recently saw someone in an online discussion give the minimum components of Reformed theology as Confessional, Calvinistic, and Covenantal,⁵ i.e. that in order to call oneself Reformed, one must believe in not only the gospel and the doctrines of grace⁶ but also covenant theology.⁷ Furthermore, I think it’s fair to say that in certain circles, ‘Reformed’ seems to be used to mean something close to ‘evangelical’ or ‘orthodox’: calling someone Reformed is kind of a way of approving her or him as correctly believing in the truths revealed in the scriptures. But then, of course, this leaves it liable to turn into a way of approving someone as holding the same views as oneself on certain secondary issues. For example, in another recent conversation I had, a particular subgroup of churches calling itself ‘reformed’ was mentioned; I, curious, pushed on the point as to what its defining characteristics were, only to discover that its main one was an opposition to placing women in church leadership roles.

‘Reformed’ may only be one example, but from the sprawling mess of possibilities behind this one little word, I feel able to conclude that, although cross-denominational theological labels might tell you a bit more than mere denominational ones, they still don’t do an altogether satisfactory job. Surely there’s still got to be a better way of doing things.

***

I hadn’t thought my opinion was a particularly controversial one, but, judging from my friend’s evident surprise at my expressing it, it turns out that it’s not necessarily normal amongst committed Christians to believe that the events described in the book of Joshua actually happened in history. He said something about the apparent moral problem raised if the Israelites really did, on God’s orders, slaughter all those people in order to acquire the land they had been inhabiting; I replied with something about our human unwillingness to recognise the severity of punishment our sin justly deserves, and God’s right to execute said punishment by whichever means he chooses (making it all the more flabbergasting, incidentally, that, for those of us born again in Christ, he chose to execute it on his beloved, sinless Son in our stead). He countered with something to the effect that surely, then, by my reckoning, God could command us his Church to carry out a comparable slaughter of huge numbers of people, say, tomorrow, if it took his fancy – was I somehow OK with that? I responded with something along the lines that we the Church are under a different covenant to Israel, so that our inheritance is not of this world and will not be obtained by worldly force.

The conversation concluded about there, but another friend who’d evidently overheard it – and presumably discerned something vaguely theologically interesting in my responses – promptly caught my attention and asked me whether I’d mind informing her of the theological persuasion to which I subscribed.

Here we were, then. Fair enough if I was reluctant to affirm or deny the adherence of my theological views to somebody else’s contrived labels, denominational or otherwise – those ambiguous, polysemous identifiers that could easily mean something different to my ears than to someone else’s; those heavily loaded terms that could constitute the difference between being accepted as orthodox by another believer, or suspected as otherwise – fair enough, surely, if I didn’t want to be assessed according to those fickle categories. But what I had here wasn’t that sort of yes-or-no question; it was an open-ended one with room to show working and everything. It was the ideal chance to express my core theological views in whichever terms I myself felt were most suitable.

And what did I do with this golden opportunity? Well, if I recall rightly, I ended up shrugging, pulling a bit of a face, and making a tsh noise, before saying something to the effect that I didn’t really know. I just try to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that.

I hasten to add that I’m not by any means trying to portray myself as terribly noble and pious and uncorrupted compared to all those dreadful people who actually appreciate the ease and efficiency of discussing their theological views using such pre-coined terms as are designed to make such discussions easier and more efficient. I’m not by any means trying to suggest that people who find it helpful to describe themselves using terms like ‘Anglican’ or ‘Reformed’ or whatever aren’t trying to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that; on the contrary, an awful lot of them are probably making a far better job of it than I am. I’m not by any means trying to initiate some new movement modelling authentic, untainted, Bible-believing Christianity, because, let’s be real here, all that would really achieve would be to add one more denomination – or denomination-esque group⁸ – to the seething mass already in existence. (Not to mention that if I were in charge, it’d be a pretty terrible one.)

Indeed, it can be really useful to know and utilise a repertoire of technical terminology to describe and distinguish particular theological positions. Labels save time and streamline logic – assuming, that is, that everyone present is on the same page as to what those labels are being used to denote. The reason I shrink from them isn’t because I think I’m somehow above them; it’s because of my concern that what other people think I mean when I use them isn’t necessarily going to be the same as what I actually mean. How can I honestly state that a particular term does or doesn’t apply to me if I’m not clear on exactly what it is understood to refer to?

At the end of the day, adelphoi, we’re all trying to read the Bible, interpret what it says correctly, and then believe that. We all belong to one body, are indwelt by one Spirit, were called to one hope, acknowledge one Lord, hold to one faith, recognise one baptism, worship one God and Father of all.⁹ It may certainly be helpful to use (carefully defined) technical theological terminology when we’re having technical theological discussions, but the primary identity we need to recognise in each other is never one of belonging to this or that Christian subgroup, whether that be a positive or a negative thing in our thinking. On the contrary, the primary identity we need to recognise in each other is always one of belonging to Christ.

Footnotes

¹ Yeah, I play violin in my university symphony orchestra, https://www.exeterguild.org/societies/symphonyorchestra/, but please don’t be impressed; they only audition front-desk strings, so I can lurk at the back missing half the notes and still get my name on the concert programme.

² According to Wikipedia, the term was coined to describe “those Anglicans tolerant of multiple forms of conformity to ecclesiastical authority”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_church.

³ Which I most recently expressed in blog format in ‘Freedestination Revisited’, under ‘2016’ then ‘December’ in the box on the right.

⁴ See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism.

⁵ This was in reply to a comment made on a poll created by The Dirty Christian, https://www.facebook.com/pg/thedirtyxian/posts/?ref=page_internal. If you’re at all tempted to argue that what some randomer says on the Internet can hardly be taken as an official definition, I counter that my point pertains precisely to differing usages of these kinds of terms amongst all the kinds of people who use them, rather than to lack of precision in any particular definition of an official nature.

⁶ A.k.a. TULIP: https://www.gotquestions.org/doctrines-of-grace.html. Which I affirm.

⁷ Namely this jazz: https://www.gotquestions.org/covenant-theology.html. Which I don’t.

⁸ Like ‘independent evangelical’ or ‘interdenominational’ or ‘nondenominational’. On which note, the video I quoted at the start of the post is hilarious and well worth a few minutes of your time, but it’s the second of two parts, so you should start with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT70cA-7qMk.

⁹ I here allude to the beginning of Ephesians 4: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+4&version=ESVUK.

Plan B

“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Confession time: I didn’t see any of the Star Wars films until I was eighteen years old.

 

Check out this absolutely gorgeous stained-glass rendering of A New Hope by the very talented GeneralBloodrain at newgrounds.com.

At that point, a friend of mine, who was exactly as outraged by my sorry ignorance as I anticipate some of you are upon having read that last sentence, took it upon herself to fit me for participation in human civilisation by sitting me down in front of episodes four, five, and six. And I enjoyed them, I did, but there nevertheless remained in me a firm sense that even if I were to watch them twenty times over, even if I were to familiarise myself with every detail of their lore, even if I were to reach a point where I understood even the obscurest meme relating to their content, they could never be truly mine. Other people had grown up with them where I hadn’t, and that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a fan, but it did mean I couldn’t claim a heart-and-soul stake in them, the way I can in Harry Potter and relaunched Doctor Who and Disney and W.I.T.C.H. and so forth. I could never own Star Wars the way other people could.

And then came The Force Awakens, and everything changed.

These new instalments of the franchise – these can be mine now. I can be on tenterhooks viewing them for the first time together with the rest of the world,¹ instead of knowing all the big spoilers before I witness them. I can be part of the conversation as it unfolds, instead of only retrospectively realising the context of oft-repeated references. I haven’t missed the party; I just arrived a little late, and there’s plenty more fun to be had before the end of the night.

On which note, please do go and see The Last Jedi before you read the rest of this post. In fact, the analogy I draw from it is so stunningly obvious anyway that you probably won’t have to bother with the latter, and it’s such a phenomenally good film that I would feel morally compromised if you were to exploit my weekly ramblings to spoil it for yourself. Well. Maybe that’s a bit strong. But still. Off you pop. Go on.

All right, now that we can speak freely, can I kick off by saying, how cool is Vice Admiral Holdo? And I don’t just mean the snazzy purple hair, either. Holdo stepped up to lead in the middle of a gargantuan crisis; devised a very clever plan and stuck to it; was calm and collected and determinedly, steadily hopeful even as the already-desperate situation deteriorated; successfully put down a mutiny; willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice herself for the sake of saving her comrades; and even right at the end conceived of and executed one more brilliant plan to protect them. (The Resistance cruiser smashing through the First Order’s flagship at lightspeed was definitely one of my favourite moments, against, it has to be said, some stiff competition.)

But of course, I didn’t feel that way about her all the way through the film. I’m usually pretty easily led by ostensible character portrayals, and this was no exception: as Poe grew increasingly suspicious of Holdo’s intentions, so did I. Just like him, I turned my nose up at her weak, unspectacular way of doing things. I didn’t trust her to do what was best for the people for whom she was responsible. I mentally cheered on the mutiny that sought to depose her. I pinned my hopes on Plan B – Finn and Rose’s attempt to disable the First Order’s lightspeed tracker.

I ended up feeling rather sheepish.

But the worst of it was, Plan B didn’t just fail to work: it also punched a serious hole through Plan A. If Finn and Rose hadn’t hired an unscrupulous codebreaker and entered the First Order’s flagship, said unscrupulous codebreaker would have had no opportunity to betray the details of Plan A to the enemy. The First Order would never have scanned for smaller ships, never have shot any of them down, never have followed them to the abandoned base on Crait. Granted, it would have been a shorter and less thrilling film, but, you know, working from within the world of the story, a lot of lives would have been saved. A lot of lives.

It wasn’t that Poe, Finn, and Rose disagreed with Holdo about the desirable end-goal: both parties were trying to protect the Resistance from being destroyed by the First Order. It was that they looked at the situation in front of them and couldn’t see how what Holdo appeared to be doing (and not doing) stood any chance of achieving that end-goal. They wanted what she wanted, but they didn’t trust her to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. They didn’t trust that Plan A would work, so they decided to try a Plan B.

Or, to use other terms, they didn’t trust that Isaac would come, so they decided to produce an Ishmael.

When God told Abram that he would have as many descendants as he could see stars in the sky, Abram believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. But then time passed – nearly ten years of it, if I’ve understood the chronology rightly – and it’s easy to see how Abram and Sarai started to think that Plan A wasn’t going to work. God hadn’t indicated any further details as to how he was going to achieve the end-goal – “maintain current course” – and they were surely running out of time. They wanted what God wanted, but they didn’t trust him to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. Sarai told Abram to sleep with her servant Hagar, and Ishmael was born.²

 

A whole lot of stars. This was taken in Arizona, apparently.

But Sarai and Abram’s Plan B wasn’t going to work, any more than Finn and Rose’s did: Ishmael was a child of flesh not promise, and on that account, though God blessed him, he wouldn’t – couldn’t – fulfil his promises through him.³ After all that, they ended up reverting to Plan A anyway. It turned out, funnily enough, that God did actually know what he was doing, even though Abram and Sarai hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as they would have liked.

Vice Admiral Holdo, as it turned out, knew what she was doing, but Poe hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as he would have liked, so he and his friends devised a Plan B. But more than that, he orchestrated a mutiny. He was on board with his leader’s end-goal, but he didn’t trust her methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods.

Or, to use other terms, he pulled a Jeroboam. (Yep, double whammy of Biblical analogies today.)

When God told Jeroboam that he and his line would (on condition of obedience) be established as king of the ten northern tribes of Israel, Jeroboam believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. And he duly took over the kingdom. But he didn’t trust that God’s way of doing things would achieve the security of his throne; he worried that if his people went back to Jerusalem, in the now-rival kingdom of Judah, to worship, as God had commanded them,⁴ they would end up transferring their allegiance from him to Judah’s king, Rehoboam. And so he flouted God’s instructions – those which God had told him he must follow in order to achieve the security of his throne – and built sites of worship within his own land.⁵ Golden calves, to be specific, which should ring a rather depressing bell.⁶ He was on board with his leader’s end-goal – that he and his descendants would rule Israel – but he didn’t trust his methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods. He orchestrated a mutiny against the ruler not just of one spaceship but of the whole wide universe.

The rule of his mutiny, like that of Poe’s, didn’t last very long.⁷ Indeed, Jeroboam’s Plan B – his golden calves – punched a serious hole through Plan A, namely that God would establish his rule. He was on board with God’s end-goal, but what he did to try to achieve it actually dashed any hope of its being achieved, not dissimilarly to how Finn and Rose’s attempt to save the Resistance actually ended up causing the deaths of large numbers of them. Banking on Plan B didn’t just fail to work, as it nothing had happened: it actually did far more harm than good. In Jeroboam’s case, the people of the northern kingdom persisted in his idolatry until they were conquered and exiled by the Assyrians.⁸ Mutinies against leaders who do, as it turns out, know what they’re doing, don’t solve problems so much as cause them.

Still, much as I’m a huge fan of Vice Admiral Holdo, she is, at the end of the day, just another fallible mortal being. As it turned out, she did know what she was doing, but we couldn’t know that for sure the way we can with God. Nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight, and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable: if God has put forward a Plan A, then no Plan B is ever going to be an even slightly decent alternative. On the contrary, it will do far more harm than good.

One variety of Plan B which I think we’re often tempted to bank on in the current cultural climate relates to the issue of how we go about convincing people that following Jesus is a really good idea. We’re on board with God’s end-goal – that the Church with a capital C will increase in number – but we look at the situation in front of us and can’t see how what God appears to be doing (and not doing) stands any chance of achieving that end-goal. Plan A – preach the gospel, no fancy trimmings – doesn’t seem to be doing the job. And so we tone down or dress up the gospel in such fashion as we think might render it more winsome; we obsess over peripheral details of the delivery of the message instead of core components of the substance; we try to bring about God’s promises by means of Ishmaels and golden calves, not trusting his methods but directly contradicting them, and consequently doing far more harm than good.⁹

All the same, the very reason we have to trust God’s Plan A – nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable – is the same reason we can rest in the certainty that all our Plan Bs (or Plans B?) and all our mutinies cannot scupper his ultimate Plan A to make a people for himself. In Holdo’s case, even though her plan was a good one, she, lacking perfect wisdom and righteousness, nevertheless couldn’t prevent the deaths of many of her comrades when factors she hadn’t anticipated came into play. That isn’t a problem God has. The ultimate Plan A stands firm in eternity, just as we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him before the foundation of the world, just as the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.¹⁰ Indeed, however we may be guilty of miscommunicating the fact, it remains true that, from eternity past, Jesus willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving us from every atom of our guilt, despite all the Plan Bs and mutinies by which we have made ourselves guilty. Holdo’s sacrifice of herself was one part of her Plan A; Jesus’ of himself is the very heart of God’s ultimate Plan A.

And with a Plan A like that, why would we ever want a Plan B?

Footnotes

¹ I saw The Last Jedi earlier this week in Grantham, taking advantage of the five-quid flat ticket price offered by the Reel cinema there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays: https://reelcinemas.co.uk/grantham/now/. I love the Reel because it’s small and cute and inexpensive and that’s basically everything I want in a cinema.

² See Genesis 15-16 for the details: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+15&version=ESVUK.

³ I’m looking at Genesis 17, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+17&version=ESVUK, and the end of Galatians 4, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gal+4&version=ESVUK.

⁴ In Deuteronomy 12, to be precise: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+12&version=ESVUK.

⁵ You can find the story in 1 Kings 11-12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+11&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Namely this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=ESVUK.

⁷ He himself was permitted a twenty-two-year reign, but in recompense for his wrongdoing, his heir Nadab was usurped and his family line annihilated: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+15&version=ESVUK.

⁸ As the scriptures make explicit: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+17&version=ESVUK.

⁹ Here’s a truly hilarious Lutheran Satire sketch along similar lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP8tTXKzObc.

¹⁰ I here allude to Ephesians 1:4 and Revelation 13:8. The clause translated ‘before the foundation of the world’ in the Revelation verse comes at the end of the sentence, so there has been some disagreement about whether to attach it to ‘the Lamb who was slain’ or to ‘whose name has not been written in the book of life’; the ESV plumps explicitly for the latter, but the former seems to me to have a stronger case as far as syntactical arguments go, simply by virtue of proximity. Maybe the ESV committee’s decision was made with reference to the Ephesians verse. Those among you who read Greek might like to take a look for yourselves: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV|version=SBLG|reference=Rev.13.8&options=GVUVNH&display=INTERLEAVED. In any case, God’s ultimate Plan A has clearly been a certainty from eternity past.