Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Chuck 0:00
First and foremost, I want to say that when God looks at us, God is not primarily seeing us in terms of sinfulness and guilt, and what we have done wrong and what needs to be half a man made for when God looks at us, God is looking at us as children, because we are all God's children. And this is a point that many on the Calvinist and Armenian side would disagree with, they would say that only Christians are the children of God. But I would say very strongly, no, we are all children of God. Paul says this on a number of occasions, Jesus, all throughout his teachings, refers to God as “our father” and even “your father”, even when talking to people who didn't believe in Him in any sense and rejected him, he would talk about God as being your father. So clearly, Jesus was not making this distinction between the saved and the unsaved being children of God or not, to Jesus God is the Father of all. And so I want to emphasize that and I want to frame every bit of theology in that understanding that God is treating us as any good parent would treat their children.
Seth Price 1:20
Hello amigos and amigas. I don't know Spanish, but it sounds like I do now. So there we go. Welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you're here. So January was one of the best months period, the growth of the show surpassed almost the first seven months of the show of all of last year (in total). And I want to be real clear there was a lot of growth there still continue to have exponential growth. So continue to share this with your friends. share it on social media, tell your people to listen, find an episode that speaks to you and just give it to someone else. The conversations that I think that are happening here and that I have with many of you online and I see a lot of you having with each other online are worth it. And so if you haven't yet, follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, I am creating an incubated. I don't know what the word is a newer community around Slack (update…it wasn’t good—don’t look for it), mostly because there's so many channels that I struggle sometimes to communicate with you all as emails and conversations and messages come in. So I want to try to consolidate those. And so if you're looking for a free way to engage with everything The show has, I'm going to give slack a try. That does not mean I'm turning off the other things at all really just trying to mitigate duplicating messages when I can, and perhaps you might want the same and so you'll find links to that in the show notes. And as well in the newsletter, sign up for that at the website.
Patron support again, continues to have continual upticks and thank you, every single one of you that does that. I always find it awkward to read out the names. I tried that once and it didn't feel right. So I'm not going to do that. But you know who you are. And I'm grateful for you and I appreciate you and your generosity. You're the engine, the fuel, the combustion part of the engine. That makes this show continuing to function.
So Spring is almost here. And so really quickly, everyone's going to run to Lowe's or ACE or wherever you go, maybe you grow your own. Maybe you have incubated seeds from last year, but you're going to plant new tulips you know, in the winter, they're they're going to begin breaching the ground soon. In new growth, you're going to plant your roses, you're going to mulch that you're going to cultivated and all of that work, that hard effort is going to turn in to something entirely beautiful, but we don't talk about other things that we plant. So we sow soy, and corn, but we also so WHEAT and so that acronym is intentional. And so I had a conversation with Chuck McKnight. And he is just has a new acronym for kind of an overview of something different than Calvinism or Molinism or Arminianism. And, and so instead of using the acronyms or TULIP or ROSES, or DAISY, we're going to use the acronym WHEAT as we go throughout this conversation over the next little bit. And so I'm really looking forward to your feedback on this one, let me know and let us know What you think about this conversation about the beautiful gospel?
Seth Price 4:38
Chuck McKnight, welcome to the show man. I've enjoyed reading quite a bit of your Patheos blog and then gradually and slowly became more accustomed with some of what you had to write a really love what you had to say recently about you know, Brian's Zahnd and a bunch of other things. So I just I like the way that you approach things. So I'm excited about today's conversation and, and welcome again to the show.
Chuck 4:58
Well, awesome. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited to talk with you.
Seth Price 5:01
I always like people to give me a brief overview a bit of kind of where they started spiritually or theologically, all the way up until now. Although I feel like the topic at hand we could probably talk for hours. And so as brief as you want to be, and if not, I'll hit the magic edit button. Kind of what is the story of Chuck, how did you get from where you were, and whatever that was to now?
Chuck 5:26
So I was born to missionary parents. We lived in Jamaica till I was 16 years old. And they are super fundamentalist Calvinists. So that's kind of my general theological background. After coming back to the States, I went to college, a Bob Jones University, which for those who may not be familiar with it is like the bastion of fundamentalism. It's almost as far as you can get in that direction. From there, I went to work for Answers in Genesis, which is a fairly equally fundamentalist Creation apologetic thing, that's Ken Ham, the Ark Park, all that stuff, huh? Although the ark Park, they started building after I was done there.
While there, my view started shifting in some senses with little stuff here and there. But the first big one that got me in trouble was just considering as a possibility the idea of hell being annihilation rather than eternal conscious torment. Per the statement of faith that Answers in Genesis, I had to actually explicitly affirm eternal conscious torment in hell, or I would have to resign and after some time deciding I could not affirm that so I resigned my position there, ultimately got a job at Logos Bible software out in Washington State. So that brought my family and I out here, and it's a Christian business, but it's not a ministry. So there's no statement of faith and that gave me the freedom to kind of explore openly and honestly, where the questions led me and from there, just kind of one One Piece after another bit by bit, working through deconstruction reconstruction kind of all at the same time. Inerrancy was like the next very big piece to let go of in that process.
Seth Price 7:11
I'm curious. So you said Bob Jones, right? So I went to Liberty, so you would hear Bob Jones and Oral Roberts in Pensacola constantly used in in vernacular there, so if liberty is a 7.7 on the “rigidity scale”, where does Bob Jones rank in there?
Chuck 7:33
Well, Liberty was the “liberal college” to Bob Jones. Like for those, seriously, for those of us on campus, you know, they allowed worldly music and didn't have a restrictive dress codes, and were too ecumenical and speakers they brought on so they were too liberal for us. Pensacola was about on the same par except they were even stricter with KJV onlyism; Bob Jones only used the KJV But they allow for other translations with I believe Pensacola is a strict KJV only, but I could be wrong about
Seth Price 8:06
How many years were in between, you know, your youth and you deciding to go to Bob Jones unless I guess, I mean, there were a lot of people at liberty that were forced to go there. I guess their parents thought that it would finally, you know, cement and everything that needs to be there. So I'm assuming that that's not the case. But maybe it was but how many years? Was it from there too Answers in Genesis to where you're at now, like, how quickly is that happened?
Chuck 8:30
Fairly compactly. Back when I was going to Bob Jones, it was definitely at the the prompting of my parents that's like it's been predestined for me to go to Bob Jones since the beginning of time. But I was also on the same page with them basically, in theological terms and whatnot at that point, so I didn't have any strong objections to it. And then I actually started working with Anwers in Genesis from a job fair at Bob Jones, I got an internship and then that turned into a full time job so I'll all right back to back there.
Seth Price 9:00
(Goodness gracious) So I got your small dig there at Calvinism with the predestined to go to Bob Jones thre. So, you wrote an article and then I heard Danny Prada, who's a pastor for those listening that I've had on the show to listen to talk about other things. But he did a sermon based on, I believe, an article that you wrote, and the article that you wrote is based on other people's work, from what I understand and correct me if I'm wrong, and it's basically a new acronym or a different acronym for what the gospel and what Jesus should look like. For those that call him Christ. But before that, and that that gospel is called wheat, the acronym of WHEAT. How would you define that? So before we kind of break those five letters apart into all of the theology that comes with them, what would you say the main difference is or the main definition for the Gospel of wheat as opposed to something that a Calvinist would say, or an Arminianist would say or as I read your article Molinism is something I don't know anything about Molinism. So what would be the big key point differences?
Chuck 10:11
Yeah, so like I mentioned, this is definitely um, it's my acronym, but it's based on theology that well predates me. Really, I'm going back more than anything to the early church fathers to like Athanasius and his work on the Incarnation of the Word of God, that's one of the central texts I'm drawing from. Draw a lot from George MacDonald and recent people like Brad Jersak and Brian's Zahnd. The best term I know to describe it is the “beautiful Gospel”, which I believe Brian's Zahnd coined that term for it. Centrally, the the main point that differentiates it from the rest is looking to Jesus as the absolute, full and complete, picture of what God looks like.
Now, all Orthodox Christian theology will say that to some degree, God looks like Jesus. But what we what we mean when we say this is we go to Jesus exclusively for a picture of what God looks like. And in as much as that disagrees with portions of the Old Testament, for example, we're going to side with what Jesus says about God. So for example, when the Old Testament has God wiping out people in a flood or ordering the genocide of the Canaanites, or all these other atrocious things, we might have different ways depending on who you're talking to, of explaining that. But we're definitely going to say that does not represent God that that is not an accurate picture of God because Jesus reveals God to be perfectly loving and non violent, and all these other things. And then this is a more on the deeper theological side of that, but it definitely branches out from that core difference.
Seth Price 11:45
So if I said that to a friend of mine, that's Calvinist or shoot neighbors of mine that are Calvinists, they would just say that I am emotionally making Jesus look like the God that I want. And so what would you say to someone that gives you that rebuttal to that view, of defaulting to Jesus, which really, I just want to be clear, I don't agree with that. But I do want to make sure that I've voiced that objection.
Chuck 12:08
For sure. Yeah. And it's definitely an objection I get a lot. If I'm being frank, I might not say this to the person. But I'd say that's kind of a lazy response to it. Because you could make that same argument about anything, whatever picture of God you have, you could just say, that's a picture of God you want to have and you're projecting that. You know, it's not accurate, that that's how it's coming about.
My intention, and certainly, I have my own biases, I have my own presuppositions, I'm going to be honest about that and own those and try to work through them as best as I can. But we're doing the best we can to look at Jesus, the life of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, specifically what Jesus teaches about God and use that as our foundation for understanding any point of theology.
Seth Price 12:53
One of the things that I didn't get and most of it's probably because I haven't really gone past some of your research on it. I honestly just haven't had the time to dig into it a lot. If this is going back to some of the Church fathers some of the theology behind this, how did we get from this, if it goes back that far to where Calvin and or Arminianism started, like what would have caused that shift, that change?
Chuck 13:16
Really, the shift has mostly happened in Western Christianity in the Great Schism, when the Eastern Orthodox broke off from the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox have more or less maintained exactly the same kind of theology that I'm talking about. Some of it gets a little more culturally specific, and I'm not presenting this as an Eastern Orthodox view, but it definitely aligns way more with Eastern Orthodox then with westernized Christianity. The primary dividing point in that was probably (Saint) Augustine. He had all sorts of ideas that were heterodox at best; that went against what a lot of the earlier church fathers were teaching primary among them being his idea of original sin. This idea that not only does Adam sin affect us, but we're actually born guilty of his sin and are liable before God for the sin of Adam. That's completely foreign to the earlier church fathers. Augustine pioneered that and that would later on with satisfaction theory of the atonement would be based somewhat off of that. And then that would turn more into the penal substitutionary idea of the atonement under John Calvin and Martin Luther. And that's really where the main stronghold comes in. Basically, all of Protestantism follows, even Catholicism kind of adopted more of that Calvinist idea in some senses, and it's basically continued on from there.
Seth Price 14:41
So the concept of original sin is the, well it's honestly I think it's a lot of times the implied nature of every human born on the planet, if you grew up in the Western part of the world. And so the the beautiful gospel version of that would instead of being totally depraved, would call that “wounded children” for the W of WHEAT, correct?
Chuck 15:04
Yeah, per my acronym.
Seth Price 15:07
So flesh that out a bit when you say wounded children what is the inverse of that if I'm not born broken? Well, I guess, wounded is still a brokenness. So what are you trying to get out there?
Chuck 15:20
So yeah, I'm contrasting the T in TULIP, total depravity from Calvinist side, which total depravity kind of plays off of original sin and takes it a step further and basically saying that every action we do is marred by saying that we can't do anything in any way free of sin it just affects everything we do. So in contrast to all that, first and foremost, I want to say that when God looks at us, God is not primarily seeing us in terms of sinfulness and guilt and what we have done wrong and what needs to be half payment made for. When God looks at us, God is looking at us as children, because we are all God's children. And this is a point that many on the Calvinists and Arminian side would disagree with, they would say that only Christians are the children of God.
But I would say very strongly, no! We are all children of God. Paul says this on a number of occasions, Jesus, all throughout his teachings, refers to God as our Father and even your Father, even when talking to people who didn't believe in Him in any sense and rejected him, he would talk about God as being your Father. So clearly, Jesus was not making this distinction between the saved and the unsaved, being children of God or not. To Jesus God as a father of all and so I want to emphasize that and I want to frame every bit of theology in that understanding that God is treating us as any good parent would treat their children. Now that said, I do believe that sin has an effect on us. But it's not so much this idea of the guilt that just needs to have payment made for. Sin causes harm, it wounds us, it leads to death, and God is wanting to save us not only from the consequences of sin but from the sin itself ;so that we're not following down this path that leads to death.
The the Eastern Orthodox would, instead of original sin, they call it ancestral sin, which is basically saying that yes, Adam sin has affected us all, we've inherited the effects of that sin simply by picking up on our parents, imitating the sins that they they modeled for us and them, their parents and on and on all the way back. There's definitely a way in which sin comes down through the generations and affects all of us and causes everyone harm. And I'm not in any way the denying the severity of sin. It's a very real problem. But we need to make sure we're approaching it from the correct angle, which is a sickness that we need to be healed from.
Seth Price 17:51
I'm reminded of one of the very first people that I interviewed Robin Parry, talking about salvation as an act of cosmic hospital. And that's really a bad metaphor. It's been over a year since I talked with him. And he was arguing for universal salvation, are you arguing for that or, no with that view of woundedness?
Chuck 18:16
Yes and no. The overall paradigm of WHEAT is certainly a hopeful Universalist. I wouldn't say that it necessarily demands universalism. And, you know, we'll get into that somewhat more with the later points. But I certainly believe that God desires the salvation of all, I also believe in free will, and the possibility of humans rejecting God and resisting His love. I am uncertain whether or not that would be something possible to continue rejecting for eternity or, potentially to the point where you basically opt out of humanity and opt out of everything and just cease to exist. I'm very hopeful that that won't happen that way once the truth is revealed, and people see God for who God really is, there will be no reason to reject him anymore. But I can't say with certainty given free will.
Seth Price 19:08
That's entirely fair. And I honestly think I agree with you people ask me all the time my views on eschatology and my answers usually, I'm not overly concerned with that because I have very little control over it. But here's what I hope happens and I'm still not 100% certain that that's what I should invest a pile of my time into. Although who knows that could change next year, I find sure what I need to invest time into changes.
Moving on to the H in the acronym. You call it “human solidarity”. And those two words for some reason don't jive in my head. They almost seem oxymoronic, because solidarity to me is a bunch of people acting together in harmony, and in unison, which doesn't often happen unless it's forced because of trauma or fear. And so how do you take humans solidarity, what does that actually look like?
Chuck 20:04
Sure.
So there are two main aspects of that. One is this idea that all of humanity shares in a single human nature. And that, in some sense, what happens to any one of us happens to all of us. So that's not so much like an active choice to all act the same, but just acknowledging that we're all in this together. And the next part would be on God's side, on Jesus’ side, the truth that Jesus stands in solidarity with all of us. That God became a human, not just to come die on a cross and satiate justice, but to declare, I'm in this with you. My fate is your fate. Your fate is my fate. We're wrapped up in this together.
Jesus took his divine nature and united with our human nature, so that he could bring our human nature to the divine. And again, this is something that the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches a lot more strongly than the Western church and Athanasius is really big on this stuff here. Irenaeus before him famously said that the Word of God
became what we are so that we can become even what he is.
So it's it's this idea that Jesus is standing in solidarity with us. And that because we are united with Him as all of human nature, that's, that's where our hope is and that's where our salvation lies.
Seth Price 21:57
This is what you were alluding to earlier and this is the part of WHEAT that I most understand the best. That's a very bad sentence, but I don't care. I'm gonna let…I'm gonna let it stay the way it is. The one thing that I feel like growing up as a four point-19 point Calvinist is total depravity, not total depravity. It's just what's the word I'm looking for? I can't think of it the inverse of exhausted reconciliation, the basically that
Chuck 22:28
Limited atonement?
Seth Price 22:30
Yeah, there it is limited atonement. Just I couldn't come up with the L. Every view is basically a reworded metaphor of penal substitutionary atonement. And I can remember when I spoke with Brad Jersak and I remember bringing up this article, and I don't know that he was aware of it at the time, or maybe he wasn't aware of the acronym. And I read it out to him. And he's like, yeah, I can definitely get on board with that. And so I asked him what, what purpose that we had for atonement. And I remember him saying, well, you're framing it wrong. And I really like the way on what you say about exhaustive reconciliation. I really like the way that you break out the purpose of atonement and what that is actually atoning, specifically in rebuttal to penal substitution, and you alluded to it earlier. So if penal substitution is a legally binding contract of “I did A and now Christ must pay Y” what is exhaustive reconciliation in contrast to that?
Chuck 23:20
So is that exhaustive reconciliation.
First of all, I'm rejecting entirely that legal paradigm of needing payment for sins in order for God to forgive us, that really goes against the heart of the idea of what forgiveness is in the first place. You know, forgiveness is a release from debt. If God has to pay the debt before he can forgive us, that's ultimately not forgiveness at all. God simply forgives and that's that.
And then just this idea of reconciling the world to Christ to God. God has never turned away from us, but we have turned away from God. And God is doing everything that God can to show us what he's really like and Jesus shows us what God is really like and ultimately is bringing us back to him. We need to be reconciled to God and to each other for all the harm we caused each other. And that ultimate reconciliation is what everything is pointing toward.
Seth Price 24:19
I have to think you've talked about this with your friends and family, and specifically your parents. And unless they've changed their mind, it sounds like they're still Five point Calvinist correct?
Chuck 24:29
Yeah, yeah. They're very, very strong in that stuff.
Seth Price 24:31
I would think that this view of atonement, because it's really the whole reason for Easter is the big sticking point. And so what Scripturally do you stand on as you engage in a dialogue with people that are, entrenched is the wrong word, that are invested in the viewpoint that they've grown up knowing it's true?
Chuck 24:54
Well, I guess it depends on which Scripture they're going to use as their proof text first. Depending on where they're going to provide their support, I'll have a different answer for why I don't think that's accurate.
Seth Price 25:10
Let me rephrase the question then. So what is the best Scripture to support exhaustive reconciliation?
Chuck 25:15
So we've got like 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
or Colossians 1:19-20.
19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
…then like Act 3:21, that Jesus
must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration…
And that word, by the way, is word, this concept that is often used theologically to represent universalism; anyway
…until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.
Is that enough for now, do you want a couple more?
Seth Price 26:18
No, no, that's good. So that Greek word so earlier you said
Chuck 26:25
I'm probably butchering the pronunciation. I don't professionally know Greek.
Seth Price 26:30
I tried a long time ago to try to pronounce words correctly. And I find I struggle with the English language and so I'm not gonna judge you at all Chuck on that. It's fine. I think I would call it I'm not gonna try. I'm not I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it at all.
How do you then use that Greek word, which you say a lot of people use this view for universalism, for all for universal salvation. There's a big difference, I think between those two, and then you'd said earlier, you're hopeful that that's the case. So how do you personally manage that? I'm hopeful that this is the case and then you have texts like this that seem to show that and I do want to be clear that I hold an annihilation of this view or conditional immortality view. Similar to Edward Fudge, I mirror a lot of what of what he espoused. So how can you take these two texts that seem to seem to imply you know, God doesn't want anyone to perish? Which I think is 2 Peter, I can't remember where in 2 Peter and, and basically God's God so he's gonna get what he wants.
Chuck 27:31
2 Peter 3:9.
Seth Price 27:33
That sounds right. I'm gonna take your word for it. That's Yeah, that's from…that's from memory from a while I spent a long time going into all of that Hell is one of the first things that broke apart for me when I started to break apart the dogma that I believed in as opposed to the Jesus that I believed in so how do you how do you reconcile personally that a Apocatastasis? There, I said, I was not going try it and I did anyway, with what it sounds like earlier, you lean more towards hoping that that's true but not quite knowing.
Chuck 28:06
So on the one hand, I want to go back to this idea of inerrancy that I do not hold to. I don't believe that just because an author of Scripture wrote something down, it is absolute truth from God. I think there's an awful lot of human sensibilities that (is) mixed in with divine truth in the Bible and Jesus is kind of our focal point and our guide to sort out those things. Now that said, there are some possibility for elements of that in these especially apocalyptic texts, where we're talking about things that haven't even happened yet. But what I want to do is take all of these texts, because there definitely are some that lean more toward annihilationism, there are some that lean, potentially a little bit toward eternal conscious torment, although I think those are more bad interpretations. And then there are lots that lean very strongly toward universal reconciliation. And rather than trying to force an agreement between all of them, I kind of want to hold them all in tension, and view them as sincere warnings that we ought to pay attention to, while at the same time remaining absolutely firm on the character of God, and what God actually wants to happen.
So, you know, I mentioned earlier, I can't be certain, on the human side, that every human will ultimately accept reconciliation with God, I can be absolutely certain that that is what God wants, and that God will do everything within God's power to bring that about. Exactly how that's going to resolve, I can't say.
Seth Price 29:40
I read a book recently, Faith in the Shadows. I'm not sure if you've read that book or heard of that book from Austin Fischer. And he has a chapter in there on hell and he breaks down a bunch of different chapters, or not a bunch of different chapters, a bunch of different views on Hell very succinctly. And there's a part where he's like, yeah, so if everybody gets in and so he pretends he's like in your what if Hitler shows up at Heaven. And, you know, he's really upset that, you know, he's greeted in heaven by Jews, he really just breaks the whole metaphor apart and basically argues that, you know, hell for a person wired as Hitler wanted to be wired, would be a hell, like he would not want to be there. And he would be like, Well, can I just opt out I would rather not exist anymore. But I can't be here with you because I'm not going to bow to some lamb. I conquer continents, I don't bow to lambs. Which I really like that metaphor. I've used it often in conversation. The one part of Calvinism that I always loved probably because of Jesus is is the “I” in the tool of the irresistible grace because that's always rang the most gospel(ly) to me growing up of the love of God is so wooing that I have to come to it. There's something in that that's beautiful, but you argue for something called absolute grace. And so I like to phrase a question a different way, what do you have against irresistible Grace?
Chuck 30:58
Consent is what Primarily comes down to. I don't believe that God controls in a unilateral sense whereby he overrides freewill or forces anyone to do anything. God is perfectly loving and perfect love does not violate consent, it does not demand action or twist our arms to make things happen. So I believe that God is perfectly gracious. That his grace is continually poured out on everyone all the time, without restraint that God is always doing the most good possible at a given moment for everyone. And certainly extending that invitation to everyone at every moment. But I don't believe that God will override freewill or violate consent or force us to do something that isn't our choice to do.
Seth Price 31:54
Well see the way I've always been, maybe this is because I didn't listen enough in Sunday school, but the way I always viewed irresistible grace was the God's love for humanity is like the “siren song”. And as long as you don't tie yourself to the mast, you'll always turn the boat that direction to use a bad analogy and metaphor of the Odyssey; of it not being a force thing, but a, you can't help but not turn towards me. And maybe I'm wrong with that. Maybe I'm butchering the intent of irresistible grace. But that's always the way, and I can always remember holding it that way, although I will say it liberated didn't really have to talk a lot about Calvinism, because everybody was Calvinist for the most part, so it made it easy to not have to discuss it. Would you take issue at all with that view of irresistible Grace, or am I just using those words and redefining what it intends?
Chuck 32:45
I think it depends on the Calvinists you talk to there are certainly those who would have that kind of view. But the overarching idea in Calvinism is that whatever the means, ultimately, it is impossible to resist if you're among the elect, if God's called you. Somewhere along the lines that has to come into play with freewill. And if you're not actually choosing for yourself, that means an overriding of well, and that's what I'm going to object to.
I hope, I sincerely hope that everyone in the end will make that freewill choice to be reconciled to God. Because why would you not make that choice once you understand who God really is? I feel like pretty much anyone I talked to who doesn't believe in God or doesn't want to follow God it's because they have this picture of God that is horrible in many ways.
I know very few….well, I don't want to speak for atheists too much because I don't want to presume upon them, but most of the atheists I meet put it this way, are atheists of the Calvinistic God? Does that makes sense? Like when I talk to them the picture of god they're rejecting I reject as well.
Seth Price 33:57
I wholeheartedly agree. Some of the favorite people that I've been gauged with on this show are atheists. And as we email back and forth, sometimes phone call back and forth, I come to realize that what you say is 100% true. That the God that they say they can't believe in I also no longer believe in. And honestly in a different world had I not been engaged, honestly had it not been for the internet and the ability for me to find other resources that weren't necessarily in my stream, I probably would have been an atheist. I'm fully comfortable saying that, although part of that is terrifyingly blunt. The fact that I can admit so openly that may have happened.
Earlier at the very beginning, you talked about the importance of the the Beautiful Gospel as a view of the incarnation of the Word of God. And when we say incarnation, especially as recording this, you know, we're here just a few months. I mean, we're out we're a week away from Christmas and by the time this releases, we will probably be close to Lent, so we will hear and think and pray on and talk about a lot, the incarnation of the Word of God and what it means from Christmas to Easter. How does that, you know, if we're all wounded children, we're all human, we're all impacted by sin, you know, we're all going to be reconciled and God's grace is what God's grace is. So what does the Incarnation hold for us? What's a better view of incarnation as opposed to the way that a Calvinist or an Arminianist would hold the Incarnation?
Chuck 35:33
Yeah. So just a quick point of clarification, when I mentioned incarnation earlier, I was actually referencing the the work on the Incarnation of the Word of God, by Athanasius. It is a fantastic, easy, accessible, short book from an early church father, absolutely recommend everyone read that if you haven't yet. It's really easily and accessible. You can find it free online, as well.
Seth Price 35:55
It is free? That's even better.
Chuck 35:56
Yeah, yeah. You can find a number of different translations of it free online. So when the average Calvinist, Armenian, regular Western Christian, talks about the incarnation, more often than not, at least the impression you get is that it's basically just about the baby Jesus. And it sort of is just the launching point when Jesus came here, and then that really is just the first stepping stone to get up to the cross where the real action happens. You know, it all revolves around this death to make the payment for sin, so that God's wrath can be satisfied and all this stuff and specific importance of the Incarnation gets set aside.
Whereas I would say, you know, going back to some of the stuff we talked about earlier, the Incarnation is about Jesus divine nature being united with our human nature, and thus our human nature being united with the divine nature. It's this merger together, this declaration that God is standing with us, and that our fate will be God's Fate, and God's victory will be our victory. So there’s an awful lot more going into that act of incarnation itself. Really, I would personally point to the incarnation as the defining moment of salvation history far more so than the the cross and the resurrection, as important as those are as well it was that moment of joining the divine nature and the human nature that is what ultimately secured us at our salvation.
Seth Price 37:29
As a Christian, or as someone that follows Christ when does that process of I think the the fancy word for that this is a Greek word that I can do is theosis; or, I guess a Southern Baptist might call that sanctification. Actually, I'm not certain if theosis and sanctification are the same thing. But so when…
Chuck 37:47
…sanctification is like theosis “light” it's like the Protestant version of theosis.
Seth Price 37:53
…it's distilled. It's the but it's the Budweiser of a theosis.
Chuck 37:57
Yeah. Protestants are too worried about saying that we become “gods” and confusing that with Mormonism to go the full theosis route typically, which of course, that's not what theosis is about in the Mormon sense, but the concept is the same. It's this idea of walking with God and becoming transformed more and more into God's image.
Seth Price 38:16
Why do you think Protestantism is so afraid of that?
Chuck 38:20
You know, it's hard to say. I think part of it is just an element that, for whatever reason has been lost. It just doesn't happen to be talked about much. But that's changing to some extent, I've heard more talk about it in recent days than prior (days). And I think that's a really good thing Protestantism could use to reclaim that a bit. And I believe like Martin Luther actually talked a bit about it, too. It just didn't really stick for whatever reason, and I definitely think like I mentioned, the Mormon idea of us all becoming “Gods” has overshadowed the Orthodox idea of us partaking in the divine nature, to the point where when you start talking about theosis, the average Protestant just gets scared that you're talking about Mormonism and can't really hear it at that point.
Seth Price 39:04
Yeah. When would that start?
So there's that process of theosis start the moment that I'm born, does that process of theosis start the moment that I “accept” Jesus? When would you'd argue that that I think on your on your writings, you call it transformative love is where you talk a lot about theosis? The T part of WHEAT. But when does that process actually begin? And I guess, does it ever, I can't see that it ever really ends?
Chuck 39:30
It's a great question.
On the beginning side, one that I can't say I've really thought about much off the top of my head, I'm going to say probably when you're born. Yeah. Because I do think God is seeking to influence us and work in our lives from birth. So yeah, probably there's an element there. I know my young kids have more theological insight than I do in many cases. So yeah, probably when you're born, but certainly in a more intentional way, when you make a commitment to follow up Jesus.
That said, I also don't want to make it sound like it's just like a specifically Christian thing. I do believe that those in other religions who are following the way of love that Jesus exemplified even without knowing his name, can still be disciples of Jesus and partake in that process of theosis; this side of eternity even. But yes, it certainly continues on the next side of eternity. I don't really know if there's going to be a point where it's like, yes, we are fully Christlike or if that's kind of a infinite thing, where we become more and more Christlike for all of eternity. I guess I kind of lean towards that because God is infinite and becoming like God seems like an infinite process to me, but no hard answers there.
Seth Price 40:39
The more that I wrestle with what in my life needs to change to better be a representation of Christ? It's always something and it's usually a bunch of tiny, little bitty things, that make small little ripples that that end up being a huge river. You know, years from now you look back and you're like, oh, man, that was like 27 different things there over the course of a decade, and you're now a different human in an entirely different place, so.
Chuck. So it's a question I haven't asked in a while but I'm curious because I like I like the way that your mind works. What do you think would be the biggest thing that if anyone was listening, that they could change tomorrow, that would be both hard but also generative to better the world that we live in and around? And I don't necessarily mean that for the church. I just mean that for humanity, like what would be, as a Christian or as a non Christian, one thing that we could intentionally do to make the world a better and more generative place?
Chuck 41:39
Hmm, that's a really good question. It's feels like an awfully broad question. Is it okay, if I go totally outside of the stuff we're talking about right now?
Seth Price 41:49
Absolutely. You could literally say root for the Browns for all that I care and it would be totally fine. Don’t say that though…
Chuck 41:56
I'm going to say especially in today's geopolitical climate, and especially for straight white Christian males like myself, the most important thing we can do is to start truly listening to the marginalized and the oppressed, and stop speaking over them and telling them how they should be experiencing things. (But) really listen to them and follow through on their advice for how to help them and how to make this world a better place for everyone.
Seth Price 42:29
Listen with intention and then be man enough or woman enough to actually do what they asked for when I asked you what you need for help.
Chuck 42:36
Yeah, don't assume that, again, I'm talking mainly about people of privilege. Don't assume that we need to come in as the saviors with our ideas and decide how how the marginalized should seek justice.
Seth Price 42:53
I like that a lot.
Chuck, where can people get more of you? I know that you have a book that you're writing specifically on this topic for people that want to blow it up. And I do want to be clear, I have pages and pages and pages of questions. But to go over five very high level, broad theological topics, in under an hour is more difficult than I intended.
Chuck 43:18
Well hey, send me those pages of questions, and that'll help refine my process for writing the book.
Seth Price 43:23
Okay, I can.
Chuck 43:26
Yeah, awesome. And I'm co-authoring that, by the way, with my friend Keith Giles. He's helping me flesh out into a full length book.
Seth Price 43:35
Keith is great, I've had the privilege to talk with him twice. I love his stuff. And, I really like the fact that he doesn't often argue with people. I don't honestly know how he constrains himself. oftentimes.
Chuck 43:47
He is an incredibly gracious soul. I don't know many people who have his level of patience.
Seth Price 43:52
I certainly don't. I just turn everything off and go to sleep. So well Chuck where can people engage with you interact with you and get more of you?
Chuck 44:03
So definitely the Patheos blog, Hippie Heretic. If you go to hippieheretic.com, that'll take you there. And then on social media, I'm most active on Facebook, you can just search my name Chuck McKnight. And as long as you look like a real person, I'll generally accept friend requests and start a conversation.
Seth Price 44:19
(laughter) What are the qualifications for looking like a real person?
Chuck 44:24
(laughts) As long as you look, well, you get plenty of spammy things that are fairly apparent. They're either a sex ad or someone trying to scam you out of money over in some other country. But if you have a real profile picture and content that lets me know you're a real human, that's somewhere in the realm of conversation that I am I'm happy to add pretty much anyone and start talking
Seth Price 44:50
So I just never heard it said like that. Prove it. So you should just have like a, I know when you make a Facebook group, you can add questions and you should just add that for a friend request, I wish there was a way…are you an actual human? Check the box.
Chuck 45:05
I mean, it's I feel like it's usually pretty obvious when you see someone's profile if they're legit or not.
Seth Price 45:13
I agree. Well Chuck thank you again for coming on.
Chuck 45:17
Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me on.
Seth Price 45:41
This whole conversation would take like 10 hours to actually do well. There are a few resources that I would recommend. One would be prior guests of the show Danny Prada. He did a sermon like over a year ago or possibly, he did a sermon a while back maybe last summer on this topic. It's as brief as this conversation but takes it in a different direction, more from a pastoral mindset preached to a congregation. And so I would encourage you to listen to that. There'll be a link to that in the show notes as well as you'll see a link to the beginning of some of Chuck's writing that we referenced often on throughout this entire conversation, go and read those wrestle with it. There are many many links to other books and topics and conversations and resources dealing with the beautiful gospel as it's been coined in those articles and so do that. The music today was used with permission from Alice Paisano you'll find links to her music in the show notes, links to her website also there and as well as the tracks feature today will be on the Spotify playlist called Can I Say This At Church.