For several years I have been threatening to write a book on stupid Christian clichés. What is a Christian cliché? It is usually a slogan or motto that sounds good and is easy to remember. Unfortunately, they are usually half-truths that contain some biblical or theological error. One of my favorites to hate is “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” Sounds good, but this is actually a perfect slogan for the heresy called antinomianism—a big word meaning against law. Antinomians were around in the first century and the Apostles had to counter their false teaching in a number of the books of the New Testament. Basically they believed that as long as a person “believed” in Jesus it didn’t make any difference how they lived. Paul writes about antinomian false teaching in Romans 6:1-2 (NIV) What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? [2] By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? The cliché “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” captures the sense of the heresy of antinomianism.

Another one of my hated clichés is “God can never love you any more or any less then He does right now.” This is another feel-good slogan that salves our souls and makes us believe that no matter how bad we are God still loves us totally and unconditionally. Of course, this cliché completely ignores the witness of Scripture which clearly notes that people can be “objects of (God’s) wrath” (Eph. 2:3). I don’t know about you, but I don’t think being an object of God’s wrath is exactly the same as being the apple of God’s eye.

How can a God who is unchanging love some people and things more than others? Good question. Thomas Aquinas explores this question in Summa Contra Gentiles:

“Every divine act then is of one and the same intensity; but love may be said to admit of 'greater and less' in two ways, either in point of the good that we will to another, in which way we are said to love him more to whom we wish greater good; or again in point of the intensity of the act, in which way we are said to love him more to whom we wish, not indeed a greater good, but an equal good more fervently and effectually. In the former way then there is nothing to object to in the saying that God loves one more than another, inasmuch as He wishes him a greater good: but, understood of the second way, the saying is not tenable.” SCG I, 91, 3

What I think Thomas is saying is that God, who is unchanging, still has a will and He can willfully choose to give more of His love in the form of “good” to certain of His creatures. God, however, does not give greater good to creatures arbitrarily. God gives to His creatures justly. Therefore, it would not be a “just” thing for God to give unconditional love and good to those of His creatures who reject Him, despise Him or ignore Him. If He did, He would be unjust toward those who love Him and honor Him. The Bible expresses this in a slightly different way in Galatians 6:7 (KJV) Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. I think Paul was saying, don’t deceive your self, God is no fool, and He gives to each person what they deserve--so much for Kumbayah, sloppy-agape Christianity.

I get Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolkit web magazine. Rick, who started Saddleback Church in Southern California, is the pastor to the common man and has written and propagated the idea of the Purpose-Driven Life throughout the world. He is a great pastor and a wonderful individual. I have personally benefited from spending time with him. He has an incredible gift from God for reaching the irreligious person in our postmodern culture.

One of the things that Rick has done very well is to de-mystify a lot of religious teaching and make it accessible to the average person. I love this. However, Rick, like the rest of us, lives within a certain cultural context. His context is the evangelical world. Therefore, when Rick teaches on such things as spiritual growth, though he does it in a very clear, reasonable and lucid way, his teaching still reflects Evangelicalism—in all its strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, one of the greatest weaknesses of Evangelicalism is its anti-historical approach to sanctification or personal spiritual growth. Evangelicalism generally draws upon the limited resources available to it stretching back only 450 years to the Reformation. It, for all intents and purposes, assumes that nothing of value comes out of the Western Church for 1,500 years before Luther and Calvin and that the whole Eastern Orthodox tradition going back to the first century is non-existent. Consequently, when Rick teaches on spiritual growth, as he recently did in an article titled De-mystify Spiritual Growth he presents it as something achievable like physical health based upon exercising certain habits. Here is part of what he wrote:

“Anyone can become physically fit if he or she will regularly do certain exercises and practice good health habits. Likewise, spiritual fitness is no mystery. It is simply a matter of learning certain spiritual exercises and being disciplined to do them until they become habits. Character is shaped by the habits we develop.”

The spiritual habits Rick is referring to are centered on the five aspects of the Purpose-Driven life which are fellowship, spiritual maturity, service, evangelism, and worship. These habits include a daily quiet time, study of God’s Word, tithing and service. None of this is wrong or bad, it just ignores what the church established during the apostolic era, developed through Augustine and fully cultivated in Thomas Aquinas’ magisterial writings. What I am referring to are the Cardinal and Theological Virtues. Here is what Augustine said:

“Now the spiritual life is perfected by the virtues, since it is ‘by them’ that ‘we lead a good life,’” as Augustine states (De Lib. Arb. ii, 17, 19) and “Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. ii, 19) that ‘virtue is that by which we live righteously.’”

The fact is Augustine and Christians for over 1500 years believed that the only way that one could become mature as a Christian was to develop habits of virtue—specifically, growing in the Cardinal (Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude) and Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Love). However, ask any modern Christian to identify the Cardinal Virtues and what you are likely to get is a blank stare. As Professor James G. Williams wonderfully notes:

“Thomistic reflections on vice, virtue and the moral life are without parallel; tragically, the insights of the good doctor rarely make their way into evangelical thought and life.”

To say the least, modern and ancient Christians represent very different views of how one becomes a mature Christian. The question would be who is right. A lot is at stake. For my money, I side with the ancient and medieval church. I agree with them, the only way to grow to maturity in Christ is through the virtues. A personal quiet time is good, reading the Bible is good, tithing is good and service is good. However, unless one develops prudence to direct temperance and fortitude in order to gain self-mastery over one’s passions, there will be no spiritual maturity. Simply put, Rick Warren’s approach to spiritual growth may seem like a de-mystified way to get at spiritual growth, but it actually remains a very mystifying process. How actually does reading the Bible make someone a better person? How does having a personal quiet time help a guy stop surfing the web for pornography? I assume I am to believe that these activities magically make a person better. Unfortunately, I have never experienced this. On the other hand, understanding and developing in the Theological and Cardinal Virtues has produced positive results in my life. It is very de-mystifying.

James G. Williams, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Syracuse University writes:
“Thomistic (Thomas Aquinas) reflections on vice, virtue and the moral life are without parallel; tragically, the insights of the good doctor rarely make their way into evangelical thought and life. Frequently overlooked by most Protestants is the fact that the great scholastics were motivated to clarify the meaning of fides quaerens intellectum.
It is scarcely any wonder then that late–twentieth–century evangelical Protestants are rarely found among ethicists, moral philosophers, or policy analysts.”

Ah, Professor Williams, I am afraid, is very correct. Evangelical Christians are both uninformed about the towering achievements of Thomas and woefully unprepared to effectively debate about and combat the downward slide of American ethical thought. The thing to be aware of is that these two facts are interrelated. In other words, because evangelicals know virtually nothing about Aquinas’ moral writings, we have no solid footing from which to debate secularists. All evangelicals are left with is our default position which is to declare, “Well, the Bible says…” However, few, if any secularists accept the Bible as a document worthy of moral consent. Aquinas, on the other hand, practically invented the whole field of natural law for Western Civilization. He not only was a master of Scriptural interpretation, but he reasoned out every conceivable moral dilemma using arguments grounded on common sense. Again, unfortunately, many evangelicals are adverse to the use of common sense, fearing that somehow this discredits God. They seem to ignore such passages as:

Romans 2:14-17 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)
Romans 1:18-20 18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Natural law appeals to the common knowledge of God and His just requirements that can be discovered by reason from nature and from man’s own inner witness of conscience. It is time for evangelicals to awaken to this rich and wonderful body of Christian moral teaching.

Almost everyone I know has heard of Thomas Aquinas. They know that he was some medieval monk or priest that developed a few proofs for the existence of God. They may also know that those proofs are taught in Bible Colleges and seminaries and that modern science and physics have shown his proofs to be silly and are to be thrown on the ash heap of history.

Most of this, of course, is nonsense. Thomas only devoted a little over two pages of text to his proofs for God’s existence. That is 2-3 pages out of, literally, thousands of pages of text holding highly compact arguments for a huge array of questions and insights. Additionally, Thomas' arguments for God are still on the philosophical cutting edge, largely because they synthesize hundreds of years of theological reflection going back to Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. For instance, Aristotle made a very simple statement that I have yet to see anyone, with intellectual honesty, gainsay. He merely suggested that "that which does not exist cannot be the cause of anything." This statement poses a grave difficulty for atheists since it is the basis for a uniform and stable universe that can be empirically studied and observed. The problem, then, is how can someone both embrace Aristotle's axiom and yet hold to a spontaneous (miraculous?) eruption of a universe out of ABSOLUTE nothingness. Usually, what we hear about are phantom universes and parallel universes, etc. This strikes me as having as much reasonable credibility as the when little Johnny's mom discovers a bunch of cookies missing and Johnny has crumbs all over his face. That is when Johnny says, "But, mommy, there must have been a ghost who came and stole the cookies." Sure, that makes sense.

However, my real reason for writing about this subject is to get at Thomas' most interesting proof for the existence of God. He actually writes about this many times and in great detail. It is what I call the "buyer's remorse proof" of God's existence. Time and again, Thomas notes that humans are never satisfied with what they attain, there never seems to be any permanent sense of happiness. The contemporary verbiage for this is buyer's remorse. For instance, someone will spend months reading about, dreaming about, and planning the purchase of some big ticket item. First, comes the day of the purchase and then comes the day after the purchase. It is the day after when buyer's remorse often sets in. It is the nagging feeling that no matter how wonderful the object, it is not quite as good as we imagined or anticipated. At that point we can even wonder if it was actually worth all the effort and expense to purchase the object.

Thomas explains (as does Aristotle) that nothing in nature exists without a purpose, and that the sense of buyer's remorse is that it was implanted in our nature because we have both the capacity for and the intellectual need for the infinite--which is God. Nothing but infinite good can satisfy our thirst for more. Thomas saw this natural longing for the infinite as tangible proof for an infinite "end" which is God and a final state for mankind, which is happiness.

At a practical level, I have found this argument to not only be one of the most interesting proofs for the existence of God, but to be a proof that very often leads seekers on a journey to discover Him.

I am writing a book on the classic Christian virtues and how evangelical Christianity has lost touch with a whole wonderful history of moral teaching. In our quest for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we have failed to avail ourselves of a rich tradition in both early and medieval Christianity. This tradition expressly sought to assist the average believer live his or her life in a manner that would bring about ultimate happiness. Unfortunately, in the evangelical quest to be faithful to the Scripture, we have often allowed ourselves to be fragmented into a sort of "every man did what was right in his own eyes" approach to interpreting Scripture.

This blog is dedicated to mining the rich veins of theological tradition for insight and truth that will assist the "regular" Joe or Jane live a fulfilling and God-honoring life. This, by the way, is not so much a "Purpose-Driven" approach, but, rather a purpose-chosen approach. More on that later.