Sunday, 19 July 2009
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Personal Relationship with Christ: A Heresy?
by Sharon Hodde of SheWorships
This week the Episcopal Church created yet another stir at its General Conference when the presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori denounced the idea of a personal relationship with God through Christ as heresy (that is, a contradiction with the truth of Scripture and belief of the Church). She explained,“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy –- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being.“
She later added,
“I said that this crisis has several elements related to that heretical and individualistic understanding. We’ve touched on one – how we keep the earth, meant to be a gift to all God’s creatures. The financial condition of the nations right now is another element. The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity – and that’s just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail. If we want to be faithful, we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones.“
The great irony of the Bishop’s statement is that the Episcopal Church has embodied this very individualism against which she rants, by departing from the bulk of Church tradition in their ordination of homosexuals. In doing so, the Episcopal Church has actually isolated itself from the larger community of faith, a move that some might call ecclesiologically individualistic.
But aside from that minor detail, I actually think there is something to her words. Bishop Jefferts Schori is right in critiquing the idea of “my personal Jesus”–an understanding of Jesus that not only enables one to isolate one’s self from other Christians, washing their hands of any responsibility to others, and refusing accountability from the larger Church, but it can also turn Jesus into a kind of custom order Savior who serves your particular needs–namely, not going to Hell.
In the face of such distortions, I can understand why Bishop Jefferts Schori would raise an eyebrow. The language of “personal relationship” has been used in the name of some very unscriptural practices.
However, Bishop Jefferts Schori goes awry in her identification of the problem’s source. The problem is not the language of the personal–the problem is how we’ve used it. A healthy understanding of “personal” is that God knows you intimately as a person. He “knit you together in your mother’s womb” and he knows “when you rise and when you fall.” Just read Psalm 139–it doesn’t get much more “personal” than that.
What’s more, God is not some far off entity who is only accessible through a system. If you need God, you can cry out to Him–yet another practice we see all throughout the Psalms. Yet Bishop Jefferts Schori elevates community to a level of near idolatry given how thoroughly she founds salvation upon it. If salvation is both by faith AND community alone, then we can offer little comfort to missionaries, both abroad and in the American workplace, who find themselves isolated from other Christians with whom they can fellowship.
But most importantly of all, I would like to know how Bishop Jefferts Schori would reconcile her idea of heresy with Paul’s method of conversion in Acts 16. The Philippian jailer, frightened by an earthquake that had freed the Christian prisoners, comes to Paul and asks, “What must I do to be saved.” Paul simply responds, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
When we depart from this said “formula,” we wander dangerously close to the heresy from which Martin Luther fought to free the Church 500 years ago. J.D. Greear once stated, “Salvation is by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” We must let this truth serve as a boundary for our language about “personal relationships,” but the personal aspect must remain. When we reject it, we not only stray from the model of salvation given to us in Scripture, but we lose any hope of reaching a human race that was designed to be inherently relational.
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Comments (26)
Some thoughts.
If the move of the episcopal church to ordain gay ministers is "ecclesiologically individualistic," what do we call the Protestant reformation, which in most quarters has ceased any attempt to reform the church and has settled instead for being an end unto itself - this denomination or that brethren.
I think you're spot on about understanding 'personal' as the antonym of 'impersonal,' rather than the antonym of 'corporate.'
Still, I think the point Schori makes is more or less accurate. The idea that all I need is me and Jesus, or the idea that I can pray some prayer and continue to live without accountability or vulnerability to the church is heresy. Sometimes we're very active in promoting that heresy, because we feel like we need something low-cost enough that our hearers will be willing to buy in. True faith is inherently a community thing, because it's entering into a covenant.
I think a personal relationship with Jesus and a need for the church are two separate issues. I understand how the phrasing "personal relationship" might imply false things to someone who doesn't understand it. God is obviously not our own personal genie out to grant whatever wish we desire. We were meant to serve Him. However, I agree that you can't walk away from the aspect of a personal relationship. God is a personal God... the "God of Abraham and Isaac." The whole point of salvation is entering into a personal relationship with God. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir saying all this, but the Bible is to be taken as a whole. So having a personal relationship with Christ in no way implies that we do not have a responsibility to serve others and share the gospel with others and commune with God's people. But in the end, it's all about knowing God. This past week the following verse has really been present in my mind:
John 17:3 "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."
I think we're created as individuals for community.
At the risk of being crude and narrow-minded, perhaps presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is a heretic?
“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with
9the great Western heresy –- that we can be saved as individuals, that
any of use alone can be in right relationship with God.
Romans 10:9-10
That if you
10confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
I believe community is important, but on the matter of salvation, I believe Ms. Schori is dead wrong, and I believe her statements are the heretical ones.
@THE_LORDS_FREEMAN@xanga - I agree.
So then I take it Katherine Jefferts Schori does NOT have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
Pity.
@Pickwick12@xanga - Well said!
@cornerstonechwk - You hit the nail right on the head.
While community is very important, and being accountable for big-picture issues is serious business, the Bible is very, very clear that Salvation is personal. (Acts 16:31, like the author mentioned, Romans 10:9, Mark 16:16, Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13, etc...)
It makes me sad to see such important leaders apparently bereft of the sweet, very real and personal connection with Jesus experienced by so many laypeople. If a "relationship" with Jesus becomes self-focused idolatry, well, to quote teh interweb, "Ur doin it wrong." And if a personal relationship with Jesus becomes viewed as actual heresy, well, "Ur REALLY doin it wrong!"
I don't agree with everything she says, but I completely agree with the church becoming to individualistic. She might be wrong in demonizing a "personal Jesus", but it still doesn't mean that the idea of a "Personal Jesus" is completely okay.
I think Sharon Hodde once again walked the narrow line well. As many have pointed out, the idea of a 'personal relationship' with God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is not only scriptural, it is the pivotal point of history. Our redemption, our spiritual life, our adoption as sons and daughters hinge upon a 'personal relationship' with our Lord.
However ... the church today is being swept along upon the currents of an increasingly individualistic society. This is causing faith to be not simply 'personal,' but implying that all persons faith are equally valid.
I have not doubt that the false church of the future will try to stop the true church of the past. The problem is knowing which one is true. I did not become a Christin as part of a group plan. I joined a local visible church, but I was already a part of the true invisible church. It is disingenuous to say people just quote a little prepared 'prayer' and think the are a Christian. This is the 'straw man' debating technique. True Believers are part of all visible churches. It is just hard to tell who they are for sure.
We moved 20 times in 40 years and always went to church. We saw some pastors, Worship Leaders, Elders, etc leave in disgrace. I even discovered and embezzler once.
Fortunately, these discussions don't interfere with the Holy Spirit reaching lost sinners, because no one is reading or listening to these views in none but insignificant numbers.
I am 75, retired and bored, so I have time.
Blessings
frank
as an agnostic... i've never understood how a religion based so much on individual relationships with a single entity can still claim to be a one-size-fits-all belief system.
from that viewpoint, i like what she said. personal salvation seems to be a very selfish belief if it gives you license to not care about others, even other Christians.
She makes some very good points.
Hmm, well she has some very interesting points to make... even if I don't necessarily agree with her.
I am reading more social commentary than theology in her statements. Yes, Jesus dies for the sins of all, but Jesus also died for me. I am baptized into Christ. If that is a 'personal relationship', then so be it. Yet, to discount a confession that 'Jesus is Lord', if she is denouncing all verbal statements of faith, would be anti-Scriptural. Since her beliefs are colored by questionable theology anyway, then her comments are of no relevance to me.
I'd like to see the statements in context. As it stands, it does look as though she's saying "it's heretical to believe that Jesus saves you personally"-- to which the best response is what @Pickwick12@xanga and @rectangularprism@xanga said.
But I've got a nagging suspicion that what she may have meant was "It's wrong to think that your individual salvation does not need to have an effect on your interactions with society at large, including social and environmental justice." If that's the case, all she's guilty of is injudicious phrasing. I'll have to look up the whole speech when I get a chance, as I've seen these quotes in other places too.
@Pass_the_Aura@xanga - Fair enough, although her wording seems fairly specific. Please report on your findings. I am coming at this partly from some other knowledge I have of the current Episcopal church from research I did for an article I wrote in college. I interviewed respected Episcopalians who, I believe, would concur heartily with this and had other very unorthodox views.
I don't understand what this post was talking about so somebody help me please...
# 1-- you CAN have a personal relationship with God, I mean...why not?
# 2--Jesus does save you [me] personally, sooooooo what's the problem with that?
#3--What Jesus did for me he can for anyone so how "personal" is it that that the concept is so worthy of attack?
#4--If our salvation (personally) was to get saved ONLY for ourselves, then somebody explain where Evangelism comes from? Somebody explain why people have a guilty concious when they're not spreading the gospel like they should be since that's what we are charged 2 do in the Christian faith
#5--the indivudual who gets saved-gets saved; the individual who doesn't-doesn't-- BUT in the Christian faith we are charged 2 "spread the gospel" which is essentially telling OTHERS what Jesus did for YOU [the individual] so that THEY too can be saved INDIVIDUALLY thus making it un personal...and if someone you know GOES TO HELL because YOU-INDIVIDUAL didn't tell them about Jesus you will have to answer to God for why you didn't tell that person about Jesus while that person is frying in hell...
#6--what is she talking about?
@FRANK - You make excellent points! I really respect that you have such a long experience with what you're talking about. I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said she was using a "straw man" argument. Very true.
@Pickwick12@xanga -
I found the full address at this link: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78703_112035_ENG_HTM.htm
It's vapid and vague in the best tradition of liberal theology. So having read it, I can confidently state that I have very little idea what she really means by the quote in question. It's quite possible that she never bothered to think how her phrasing would resonate with evangelicals, and also possible (but not certain) that the blogosphere is taking her out of context. But then I don't entirely understand it in context, either.
Her summary statement seems to be this: "The temptation for us here will be to see one small part of God’s mission, the part that each one holds most dear, as the overarching reason for this church’s existence."
I attend an Episcopal church, so I've been following General Convention with interest.
While I disagree with+KJS' assertion that individual salvation is a heresy, the "salvation-through-prayer-formula" theology she was addressing is very problematic. Someone had claimed that the argument that some people believe in reciting a prayer to "get saved" was a strawman. I guess he'd dealt with some very different sorts of people than I have. I'm aware of many individuals who put their trust for salvation in the recitation of a prayer, and worse, some churches encourage this thinking. Simply saying a prayer is not going to "save" someone who has no intention of accepting God's grace and following God.
Some people have used this type of thinking to continue committing very serious sins. I feel there's nothing wrong with someone who wants to become a Christian praying for God to work in their lives. But, don't treat it like a "Get Out of Hell Free" card, either. It's God's grace through faith that saves us, not a prayer itself.
...I am...
Everyone must be baptised. We will all go to the same place, just levels of Heaven, you understand.
Seek Mormon missionaries in your area. Come to know Him in a dynamic way. ...Love, Sande