A couple of days ago Nick Norelli posted one of those questions which stirred some quite strong discussion, but which left me wondering whether we lived on different planets.
Is it worth your time to talk to apostates? I’m finding it hard to see how it’s worth mine.
I’ve joined in the conversation in his now very long comment thread, but wanted to pull together some thoughts here, as much for the sake of clarifying my own ideas as anything else.
I understand – I think – what Nick’s saying. I just can’t imagine why he would want to think in this way. Actually. let me clarify that. Nick makes a comment that he asked this question originally in relation to a contumacious commenter.I fully agree there are commenters one should not waste any time on, the trolls, the insane and the just plain awkward. Anyone should feel free to invite them to go away and do the anatomically impossible. Or delete them as any cyber-warrior might do. Or simply ignore them.
But that said, in the end I simply don’t accept the (fairly long-standing) Protestant tradition that labels someone apostate in a way which settles not only their present relationship with the church, but also their eternal destiny to damnation, and says that there’s simply no point praying for, or arguing with, or having anything to do with such a person.
It’s possible to trade texts, of course, as on so many subjects. Nick essentially bases his argument on Hebrews 6:4-6 (an idea repeated later in chapter 10).
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.
I countered with James 5:19-20
My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins
There are tensions (to say the least) between different writers of the New Testament, and I think that here we have something verging on outright disagreement. Hebrews is clearly written to stiffen the sinews of a group the writer is worried about. In particular he is worried that they will fail under the threat of some unspecified suffering and persecution. One can understand why his rhetoric is as it is.
It seems to me, however, beyond the trading of incompatible texts that there are larger questions. In my view (and I am heavily influenced by Sanders), in the gospels the “sinners’ to whom Jesus goes are precisely those who have spurned the covenant and decline to repent through the gracious provision of sacrifice laid down in Torah. That is, they are more like Nick’s “apostates” than they are like anything else.
It seems further to me that it is very dangerous to start defining a group with whom I do not have to bother – a little like asking “Who is my neighbour?”
Again it seems to me that the Catholic Church settled this question at the time of the Donatist controversy, when It decided to grant the opportunity of repentance and reconciliation to those who had turned their back on Christ, sacrificed to idols, and handed over the sacred writings.
But enough theological argument. Let me tell you my story.
I think my childhood faith was very real. I think I prayed honestly, and knew Jesus as a friend. God was there. I knew my Bible stories. I was baptised and confirmed. In my teenage years I turned my back on this. I didn’t want to have any part of it. I was too grown up and sophisticated for all of that stuff. By most definitions, it seems to me, I was probably apostate.
At university a friend – a Roman Catholic friend – tried to talk to me about God. He sensed from my reaction that any such conversation was quite pointless. (I know, because he told me this subsequently.) There’s nothing wrong with not talking to people about God. Sometimes it’s a very good idea. Rather than give up on me, he began to pray for me (I didn’t know this at the time, and he never said until afterwards), and continued to act as a friend as well as fellow student. In the meantime, various evangelical types had goes at converting me. I quite enjoyed this, since I knew more than enough about Bible and creed to confuse and confound them.
Then there came a completely unexpected, sudden and overwhelming experience of the reality of God and his love and forgiveness. Oddly, I knew the first person I had to tell about this was the Roman Catholic friend who had entirely stopped talking to me about his faith. He had, if you like, fulfilled James’ injunction. I wonder what would have happened to me if he had been a Calvinist who had decided I was “apostate”. So thank God he was a Catholic. Oh, and I fulfilled my “conversion” by seeking out a priest and making my first adult confession.
And that is why I will always choose James over Hebrews here, not just because I think the whole thrust of Scripture is the active mercy of God, nor because Jesus went to the unrepentant sinner. I will choose James over Hebrews, because someone else followed James’ advice, and God reclaimed me.
{ 14 comments }
Doug,
I don’t have much to add but thanks.
-JAK
Doug: Two things: First, I appreciate your pointing out that my intention was with regard to specific troll commenters on other blogs. I clearly did not make that clear in the body of my post, but I allowed the conversation to go the way it went because I wanted to work out just how far I’d push my thoughts on this. I figured that if it’s not worth my time to go back and forth with an apostate in the comments to a blog because (s)he will ultimately never repent, then why would it be worth my time to engage them in casual conversation that will ultimately lead to the same place? In reality I have carried on conversations with apostates (one whom I mentioned in the comments to my post, a former brother in Christ) before, and the chances are I would again.
Second, I think we’re at an impasse because we have different understandings of exactly what apostasy is and apostates are. Your testimony is not unlike my own. I was baptized as an infant and confirmed as a young man. I prayed sincerely (I think) as a young child but shortly after my confirmation I left the RCC to live in willful sin (drug addiction, fornication, thievery, etc.) I was working in a restaurant where a newly born again evangelical man preached the Gospel to me. My response to him was, ‘there is no God, we’re all our own god, and don’t waste your time talking to me.’ A few years later a good friend of mine was saved in a Pentecostal church and he began to preach the gospel to me and my reaction was not quite the same, it was more along the lines of me saying, ‘well that’s good for you, but it’s not for me.’ But throughout the next year-and-half or so, God started to reveal himself to me in undeniable ways. It wasn’t long until I found myself in that same Pentecostal church confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Our situations are not entirely different but were we differ is that I’d say that neither of us were apostates. In my view we were at best backsliders but at worst our faith wasn’t genuine to begin with. My apologies for the length of this comment, and thank you for this post.
Nick, thank you. I find it interesting how much (inherited traditions of) theology shapes our understanding of our experience.
As you say, we differ in our understanding of our own situation. I think we were both “apostate”. In fact, possibly officially according to RC theology, we still are
I would always want to assume that if someone appears “apostate” (I’m not happy with the classification) they may be on a journey towards God, and rejecting a hopelessly dogmatic, excluding, unjust, unloving, hypocritical and smugly judgemental God that some Christians have chosen to (and I use the term advisedly) idolize.
What’s the difference between an apostate and a backslider? One eventually repents. So at the present moment, I again maintain, it is impossible to know who is apostate. Warnings and statements about apostasy in Scripture are not license to judge anyone as already apostate — they are warnings to the believer not to leave the faith, and warnings to the believer to go after the backslider lest he become apostate.
I personally don’t think either term is useful, and trying to categorise people into one or the other even less so. I want to say to the writer to the Hebrews a) that (s)he got carried away with their own rhetoric and b) “For humans it is impossible, but nothing is impossible for God”. Now, who said that, I wonder?
I think the writer of Hebrews definitely got carried away, Doug. I think there’s enough contradictory elsewhere, as you point out, to support that conclusion.
I like your interpretation overall, especially, the “writer of Hebrews got carried away” part. It is a problem when doctrine gets so tightly wound that black and white interpretations like that get accepted. People have enough natural tendency towards divisiveness already, they don’t need further encouragement from the bible.
Doug, I am agreeing with you, completely. I meant to have posted my comment over at Nick’s, sorry!
Of course I don’t think the writer of Hebrews got carried away, and I certainly don’t think there’s anything to contradict it (keep in mind that I’m not arguing for inerrancy, just that I see nothing to suggest that apostasy isn’t a reality or that it can be returned from).
Nick, I just think you’re inventing (or rather joining those who have invented) a theological category of apostate (=impossible to repent) on the basis of a very limited amount of rhetoric, and in the face of the overall thrust of scripture, the historic decisions of the Church, and the plain evidence of human experience.
You also (if you’ve seen Alan Lenzi’s post) make Christianity look like a repulsively smug, mean-minded and mean-hearted faith. That’s not only Alan’s opinion, but mine as well.
One of my other favorite texts on the topic:
“And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.” Jude 22-23
Everyone gets mercy here.
I agree with Alan completely.
As, I hope you noted, did I
sorry Doug! I agreed with everything you said on Nick’s blog, and here. I agreed with Alan especially that the attitude of people like Nick is “Drivel. Idiocy. Evil!”, and “the kind of stupidity that creates opportunities for religious violence and persecutions”.
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