"Peripheral"

Just a quick note for those who aren't quite up on the Dutch Reformed subculture. This post, and likely the next one, is a response to an article in The Banner (thebanner.org) -- this one is in response to an article by Jacob D. Eppinga, "Peripheral." The Banner is the monthly publication of the Christian Reformed Church, which is the denomination I grew up in. It's somewhat similar to the Presbyterian denominations, since they both find their spiritual roots in the writings of John Calvin. It's just that the Presbyterians are Scottish, and we're Dutch.

In this article, Eppinga describes paper he wrote once about the debate between supralapsarianism (the view that God planned our salvation before the fall) and infralapsarianism (the view that God planned our salvation after the fall). This was quite a heated topic back in the day, and it's Eppinga's jumping off point for a discussion of what he calls the 'peripherals' -- those bits of the faith that are "not central." His conclusion is that "we must, where possible, avoid passing harsh judgments against other people." Debates about the periphery are impossible to avoid, he writes, if only because there's not always agreement about what is, in fact, peripheral. But we need to remember that, regardless of what our disagreements might be, there is certainly a center we can all agree on.

Perhaps this is just a difference of generation, but I'm not sure that intolerance regarding peripheral issues is really that large of a problem. I've had arguments about infra- vs. supralapsarianism, about Calvinism vs. Arminianism, even about Protestantism vs. Catholicism. (Still haven't had the sprinkled vs. dipped debate yet, though). But I've never gotten the impression that my opposition thought of me as less of a Christian because of it. But I've known a lot of people my age inside the church who simply don't care about these sorts of issues, and I think that can be dangerous. These issues may be peripheral, but that doesn't mean that they're not important. A lack of concern about these issues can indicate a lack of concern with the truth, and that is obviously a bad thing. For the past few centuries, people have been accusing Christians of believing in the gospel merely because it makes us feel good, not because it's true. So a lack of concern about the truth within the church serves to bolster these claims. I don't think we should burn people at the stake because they sing hymns in addition to psalms, but we should probably think about the issue to the extent the gifts God has given us. As C. S. Lewis wrote, "God is no fonder of intellectual laziness than he is of any other sort of laziness."

The Road of Virtue

Yes, I know it's been a while -- my internet access has been intermittent for the past few weeks, so I haven't had a chance to post until now. And so, of course, I'm just going to be posting a quote. It's from "Heartfire", a novel by Orson Scott Card:

Said Margaret: "But if you sample all the wickedness of the world, and commit every betrayal and every harm, then you will not be able to sample the higher joys, for you will not be healthy enough or strong enough -- or decent enough for the company of good people, which is one of the greatest joys of all."
"If they cannot forgive me my foibles, then they are not such good people, no?" Balzac smiled as if he had played the last ace in the deck.
"But they do forgive you your foibles," said Margaret. "They would welcome your company, too. But if you joined them, you would not understand what they were talking about. You would not have had the experiences that bind them together. You would be an outside, not because of any act of theirs, but because you have not passed along the road that teaches you to be one of them. You will feel like an exile from the beautiful garden, but it will be you who exiled yourself. And yet you will blame them, and call them judgemental and unforgiving, even as it is your own pain and bitter memory that condemns you, your own ignorance of virtue that makes you a stranger in the land that should have been your home."