March 2, 2008
Coming Home: Part II—Good Baptist Boy?
Where I last left off, I had been seriously following the Lord in the Baptist church for only a few months when I dealt with a serious struggle for assurance of my salvation. Despite the Evangelical insistence on 100% assurance, I had finally come to the conclusion that I had to keep serving Christ as best I could, and trust in Him that, if I wasn’t saved, He would save me.
Over the next four years, I did this. I served the Lord in a number of ministries at church: orchestra, visitation, the high school (and afterwards, college) mid-week Bible study, etc. I was a leader in an evangelistic club my last year of high school, and was involved in the other Christian groups. When I went to college, I went to both the Baptist Student Union meetings and the Campus Crusade for Christ meetings, until finally settling in just the BSU. Based on what others said of me, it would seem I was respected in my church groups. I’ve even had it suggested to me that I should become a pastor. As those four years went on, though, I found myself moving further and further from the accepted doctrines of my church. In fact, before I graduated college, I began to be criticized for various things I said and did.
One of the most seminal events involved an argument about eschatology. Now, at first, I had read the Left Behind series, and pretty much believed the “dispensational pre-millenialism” that my church taught (Rapture, 7 year Tribulation, and so on). However, one day, as I was reading a passage in the Gospels that my church believed taught this eschatology, I realized something about Christ’s words regarding the Tribulation: it sounded like we (the Church, as I understood it) would be there! It was clear as day! In a conversation with my Sunday School teacher, he pointed out other verses that said the same thing.
Not much later, when speaking with a friend, I had related my belief in this. He was surprised and incredulous. That weekend, at a class party, he brought this up, and ignited a debate between myself and many others in the class, with them trying to convince me that my view was wrong. The importance of this event was that every one of their arguments went thus: “I was speaking with such-and-such a pastor, and he said,” or “So-and-so says, in his commentary…”. When they did use Scripture, I found the passages to either say nothing either way or to support my view. Although I now look back on this event as the first seed that would ultimately bear fruit in the realization that Sola Scriptura is impossible, at the time, I simply came away from the argument disappointed. Weren’t we supposed to “just believe the Bible?” Then why was such an apparently important part of doctrine so dependent on “human interpretation?”
Many other things also occurred to move me progressively away from the teaching and practice of my church, including disillusionment with the way evangelism was practiced, the casualness which seemed an acceptable way to approach the spiritual life, and so on. However, time and space only allow me to touch on the most important points.
One of these points was my becoming a Calvinist. I had, when I first encountered this doctrine, rejected it outright; it was unworthy of the glory of God. However, one day—again, in the first year or two of my spiritual life—as I was reading Romans, I came across a passage (I forget which it was) that changed my mind. Based on this passage, I came to see the doctrine of predestination as, in fact, glorifying God! This change in attitude was later encouraged by a couple people I met at church who were convinced Calvinists, despite the fact that it seemed that Calvinism was one traditional Baptist principle that was fiercely rejected by our pastor (and, therefore, by most of the church).
Although I reject Calvinism now, I believe it was through Calvinism that I began to be introduced to the idea of Tradition. Up until this point, I had read very little in works by “dead people.” Most every spiritual book I had read was written by modern, Evangelical authors. I listened exclusively to Christian Contemporary Music.
It was in my beginning interest in studying theology, fueled often by discussions on Calvinism, that I began to look at Church History. I began listening to voices from the past: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, and Matthew Henry, among others.
It was also during this time that I began reading A.W. Tozer, whose living mysticism was a needed balance to the often coldly-rational theology of Calvinism. It was through A.W. Tozer that I was first introduced to the idea of reading “Catholic authors” (which included the Church Fathers). Tozer drew from mystical writing of all sorts (within Christendom). He was widely read (though his reading of “Catholic” sources—which, I became very interested to learn, seemed to make up the greatest body of mystical writing in the West—did not seem to affect his commitment to “Full Gospel preaching”), and it was through him I was introduced to such authors as Brother Lawrence. In addition, his writings encouraged in me that which was looking for “something more,” something “fuller” than what I had seen.
My time as a full-blown Calvinist was somewhat short-lived, but it served it’s purpose. It opened me up to reading Christian authors outside of my own tradition. Ultimately, it was through a Reformed website that I came across the first work by a Church Father that I ever read: St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Reading this book online was, perhaps, the turning point in my journey. Though it did not cause me to throw out all my Reformed books and start bowing to icons, it was about this point in my life that the progression that had, up to now, taken almost 4 years, began to speed up. By the end of my senior year of college, I began hearing that people were criticizing me for such things as “quoting men more than Scripture,” and a few months after graduation, I visited an Orthodox Church for the first time. It would be a year after that first visit that I would return, but before we jump too far ahead, there were a few more things I had to learn to be able to even consider accepting the Church.
Written and posted by Matt on March 2, 2008, 2:24 pm.
Filed under: General Discussion
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