Your Doctrine is Too Small
Theology - Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, July 08, 2010
J.B. Phillips famously wrote the book Your God is Too Small, and I would like to do a little riff off of that. Your doctrine is too small.
What is that supposed to mean? Often particular Christian doctrines are set forth in a way that contains enough of the truth to annoy unreasonable people and not enough of the truth to answer the concerns and objections of reasonable people. Let's take three examples -- the sovereignty of God, the necessity of the new birth, and the potency of the Incarnation. In each case, when the doctrine is stated in its small version, the reaction is to fix the problem by reeling it in, by making it smaller.
When Jonathan Edwards was struggling with the doctrine of God's sovereignty, he found the solution where it ought to be. Learn to see God's sovereignty as "bigger than that." If the sovereign God is simply an omnipotent Zeus, contained together with us inside the universe that is, and he goes around making people do whatever he wants, then the freewillers are right -- he is just a bully. Not only are the freewillers right, they are often courageously right.
But the problem here is that he is seen as a bully because he is seen as too small, and it is no solution to make him smaller. A Calvinist (who has made this mistake) agrees that God is like this, but argues a theology of prudence. "Look, go along with the bully, wouldja?" The Arminian resists this, but does it by preferring to see the bully as a kinder, gentler Zeus. The end result of this business is a wimp subbed in for the bully. But the triune God of Scripture is the Creator of all that is, and there is a Creator/creature divide. To attribute exhaustive sovereignty to any entity on this side of that divide (apart from the humility of the Incarnation) is to ask for, and find, monstrosities in your theology. But the solution is not to be found by dragging the whole thing down to a religion just above tree top level. God dwells in the highest heavens. He does what He pleases, and what He pleases is righteous, holy, and good.
While evangelicals have rightly seen the need to be born again, this too can be seen in a way that is far too small. If the old nature/new nature question is seen as a toggle switch somewhere down in your heart, and at some time in your life you have to pray a prayer that makes God flip that switch, and if you don't do that you are going to go to Hell, this truncated vision is going to lead to extreme sectarianism. Evangelicals will become star-bellied sneetches, and this one isolated experience is the point of their distinction. Lack of regeneration is seen as the switch in this position, and you have to have it in the "on" position. Now when people see the spiritual pride that often arises from this kind of thing, the temptation is to back away from the evangelical position -- well, maybe being born again is not all that it is cracked up to be. Regeneration is seen as too small, and the reaction is to make it smaller. The movement is from a message preached by a narrow hot-gospeler to a broad latitudinarianism that walks away from the little bit of truth that was there.
But when a man is born again, all of him is. Regeneration commences at the point of conversion, and this principle of new life then grows and spreads everywhere. Regeneration is not a little toggle switch, but is rather the main power breaker. And after it is flipped, there are still five thousand other switches to find and adjust before this new life spacecraft is ready to fly again. And that is what is happening -- we are readying a spacecraft to fly to the heavens. We are not changing a light bulb in the barn. Don't see regeneration as a little thing -- there is no way to do that and maintain the necessity of it without that position degenerating into a doctrine that insists that God has no sense of proportion whatever.
And, then, the Incarnation. When the eternal Word of God became a man, He thereby honored the material world, and did so in a very permanent way. This has always been embarrassing to the Hellenistic mind -- this has been seen as a doctrine that maintains that God abandoned His spiritual dignity. No, this actually is the divine glory. But once the doctrine is stated, if it is limited to the body of Jesus, it remains too small. Incarnational heresies take something that is true as far as it goes, but is still too small, and then try to whittle away at it, making it smaller.
The orthodox should not try to hold the line by holding the line, but rather should move on to the other outlandish ramifications of this truth. If Christ is the groom, and the Church is His bride, His body, what does this mean? We have not understood the Incarnation unless we have come to understand that at some point in the proceedings, the incarnational power that God has placed in the world runs amok. And when it runs amok, this has ramifications for beer, sex, mowing the lawn, planting hedges, gravy, beekeeping, driving on the freeway, and diet soda. And no, those ramifications do not mean pantheism.
Just as grace does not mean antinomianism, but will always provoke charges of antinomianism, so also an understanding of the incarnation as God's reckless grace to the whole universe will provoke charges of some heresy or other. And perhaps some will veer off into those heresies, but it cannot be unorthodox to say that our orthodoxy has been too small, and that we need a whole lot more of it.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" (1 Cor. 2:9).
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