08041
January 16, 2008

Wheeler, Mouw decry ‘bumper sticker’ theology

Auburn, Fuller presidents model mutual respect despite theological disagreement

by Erin Dunigan
Presbyterian News Service

Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw (left) and Auburn Theological Seminary President Barbara Wheeler, speak to participants at “Repairers of the Breach” conference. Photo by Erin Dunigan

PASADENA, CA — “How will we draw anyone else to us if we don’t show them that there is some extraordinary power in Jesus Christ?” asked Barbara Wheeler, president of New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, at a public forum here sponsored in conjunction with Fuller Theological Seminary and hosted by Pasadena Presbyterian Church. 

The forum — entitled “Repairers of the Breach” — was the latest in a series of public dialogs that Wheeler and Fuller President Richard Mouw have shared over the past seven years, coming together to discuss their differences, but perhaps more importantly to model the ability to come together in the midst of theological disagreement.

“I hope that both sides can build enough trust to learn and to do some good things together,” Mouw said. “This mutual learning and cooperative doing requires both sides, or more accurately, all sides, since we don’t divide evenly into two, to cultivate some important sensitivities.”

The first sensitivity, according to Mouw, is the need to work at discerning in each other a genuine commitment to Jesus Christ even when we may have serious theological disagreements about very important matters. 

He used the example of Charles Hodge, early professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, champion of Calvinist orthodoxy, and a severe critic of the emerging theological liberalism associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher. Hodge was unrelenting in his criticism of Schleiermacher’s embrace of the rationalist critique that he thought had undermined the most fundamental tenents of the Christian faith.

However, Mouw noted, Hodge told of frequenting Schleiermacher’s church and noted that the “hymns were always evangelical and spiritual and filled with praise and gratitude,” wondering how one could doubt that “he is singing those praises now.”

To further illustrate the point of being able to disagree with one another yet not, by disagreeing, assert the opponent’s lack of salvation, Mouw said, “I’m passionate with my agreement on justification by faith alone but do I believe that a person can be confused about this doctrine and still be saved? Absolutely. It happened to me when I was five years old.”

Acknowledging another’s genuine commitment to Jesus Christ is not to be confused with agreement, Mouw added. “I enjoy and benefit from arguments with people with whom I disagree,” he admitted. “But let me make it clear — I do want to argue.” 

Mouw’s second sensitivity was the hope for a bolder common voice on matters on which there is or should be agreement among conservatives and liberals. 

Apologizing for his grumpiness, Mouw took issue with those with whom he disagrees. “Many of us evangelicals have taken a lot of [internal] flak,” he stated, referring to the stands that he, along with many other evangelical leaders have taken to raise issues such as global warming, reaching out to Muslim leaders, opposition to some aspects of American foreign policy, human trafficking and the use of torture. “Are my more liberal friends willing to take comparable flak from their left?”
           
The third and final sensitivity Mouw raised was a need to cultivate a sensitivity to the spectrum of views within the denomination. “We don’t fall into two evenly divided camps,” he suggested. “I hope that we can forge new alliances. We face a serious fracturing.”

However, he continued, “We should welcome the partnership of those with whom we disagree but with whom we agree on the need to stand together for our bold compassionate call for humans to come to the cross of Jesus Christ.”
           
Wheeler said she realized in preparing her remarks that the hopes she had for Mouw’s evangelical community and those she had for her more liberal community — “I prefer moderate but that’s not what the world calls me,” she admitted — were actually the same.

The first of Wheeler’s hopes related to the authority of scripture. “If each side continues to do its best then the other side has the help it needs for its problems,” said Wheeler.  “What I value and what my community needs is the evangelicals’ unshakable sense that scripture has authority, that it gives life and merit and shape and holy meaning to life. When my evangelical friends talk about scripture they usually communicate a sense of excitement.”

At the same time, Wheeler asserted her conviction that “we liberals hold on to our own conviction that neither persons nor methods can damage scripture or undermine its power.” Continuing exploration of new methods and diverse readings of scripture have greatly enriched the church’s reading of the Bible, she said.

“Our openness is an expression of faith,” said Wheeler, “and that openness is what we have to offer evangelicals. Imagine if we could combine our approaches and use each other’s example to work on our own weaknesses.”
           
Wheeler’s second hope focused on discipleship. She joked that liberals often see conservatives’ focus on individual morality as rooted in some deep psychological issue of projection and that conservatives often see liberals, in their intense focus on social righteousness, as stubbornly unwilling to be held accountable for their personal sins.

Knowing chuckles from the audience suggested that her caricatures were not completely off target. While there’s often a bit of truth in such stereotypes, Wheeler asserted that they represent a minority of people on both sides. 

“Evangelicals’ focus on the individual makes them self-disciplined and good with people,” she said, while at their best liberals excel at corporate witness. “Any healthy community needs both individual and corporate,” Wheeler insisted. 
           
But lest the audience get too cheered by her first two hopes, Wheeler cautioned that she too was going to get grumpy for her third issue —tribalism. 

“We Reformed Christians know that it is the good things — love, money, even religious ideals — that we are the most prone to turn into idols that we worship in God’s place,” she said. We’ve done that in both camps. We’ve created symbols that have to be honored and given them an ultimate power that they don’t deserve.”

Wheeler cited contrasting examples. “In my world if you don’t use inclusive language for humanity and much of the time for God, you can’t join us,” she admitted. “Among evangelicals the same is true if you reject the language of God as Father.”

Too many taboos seek to determine who is in and who is out, according to Wheeler, who suggests that this tribalism does much damage.

“We have managed to reduce the life and death question (of who Jesus Christ is in a religiously diverse world) to bumper stickers,” she said. And so anyone who dares to question these short-cut answers or discuss them in a different manner runs the risk of being labeled a heretic in the evangelical camp or a dismissed as a religious bigot in the liberal camp, Wheeler suggested.

“What gets lost, of course, is Jesus Christ himself,” she lamented. “We are so busy labeling that we no longer seem to be able to testify to each other about what really matters.”

Erin Dunigan is a free-lance writer and photographer based in southern California.