This is the second part, where Jamie sits down with Dr Rhyne Putman (associate professor of theology and culture here at NOBTS and Leavell College). They discuss how to navigate disagreements within the church. Dr Putman's new book, When Doctrine Divides the People of God, is available now: https://www.amazon.com/When-Doctrine-Divides-People-God/dp/1433567873/
Jamie Dew: Welcome back everybody, to The Towel & Basin podcast. Jamie Dew again, flying solo without Joe in the room. But I do have in the room with me, Rhyne Putman, who's a theology professor here, and this is part two of our discussions about theological disagreement. Welcome back. Good to have you back.
Rhyne Putman: Hey, glad to be here.
Jamie: What was the title of the book again, that's just released?
Rhyne: The title of the book is When Doctrine Divides the People of God: An Evangelical Approach to Theological Diversity.
Jamie: Perfect.
Rhyne: Available from Crossway.
Jamie: Available at Crossway now, so pick that book up if you are interested in this. The part one, we talked about why we divide and there are, it's not just as simple as, "Hey, read the Bible," we all land on the same page. There are a variety of factors that cause these theological disagreements, and I thought that the discussion there was super helpful for folks to see that this is really not a simple business at all.
So all right, be that as it may, we do have theological disagreements. We have them broadly in the evangelical world, to say nothing of disagreements with other perspectives. We have them in the Southern Baptist world. Theological disagreements are here to stay. So the question now in part two, is all right, what do we do about that? How do we navigate through the theological disagreements that we've got?
Rhyne: Sure, sure. So I take a couple of different questions and raise these questions and then just work through these questions. There's probably a couple of different ways that we can answer these questions, but these are how I answer these questions.
The first question was when should we change our minds about doctrine? The second question being, when should doctrine divide us? Is there an appropriate-
Jamie: Is there a time to do that?
Rhyne: ... time for doctrine to divide us? And then third, how then should we disagree? That's an ethics of disagreement, an ethical question.
Jamie: All right. So walk through those questions and the types of things that you'd want us to consider, step-by-step, as we go through those questions. The first one, when should we change our minds?
Rhyne: Yeah. So, it was fun to reflect on if you look at different theologians throughout history, they didn't have, the best theologians anyway, they didn't always have static opinions.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne: In fact, Augustine wrote a book-
Jamie: Absolutely.
Rhyne: ... called Retractions, toward the end of his life, where he just ... I mean, there's some things that he said, "In retrospect, I wish I would have done it this way or I would have seen it more clearly."
Jamie: We've recently seen Wayne Grudem do this.
Rhyne: Yeah, yeah.
Jamie: He changed his perspective on something.
Rhyne: Wayne Grudem has changed his position on an aspect of divorce. And so I mean, that happens I think when people are being intellectually honest.
Jamie: Sure.
Rhyne: I don't want to make up my mind about all my theological opinions by the time I'm 25, and just say for the rest of my life, "It's going to be set this way."
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne: I want to be always reforming.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne: And always conforming to the biblical text.
Jamie: And yet there is ... Just a pause right here. There is a tendency for us to, when read past thinkers, to assume a static-ness to their thought. We say, "Oh, well, Augustine's view was ... Aquinas' view was ..." But to your point, the truth is for just like us, for all these great giants, their thought was constantly evolving over time.
Rhyne: Right. Right. So my question, when should we change our minds, is there an appropriate time or a place for us to change our minds? There's been this burgeoning new sub-discipline in epistemology. Of course, Dr. Dew wrote the book on epistemology.
Jamie: A very basic one.
Rhyne: The book.
Jamie: No, it's not the book.
Rhyne: Well, it's certainly one of the books. But epistemology is basically the study of how we know what we know, and why we believe what we believe. Epistemology of disagreement is an area that focuses on the question, we have two reasonably intelligent people, both well-educated, why is it that reasonably intelligent, well-educated people, come to such drastically different conclusions? That's a complex set of questions, but a lot of it boils down to how much time has a person spent studying a particular topic, what evidences does a person have access to?
Jamie: Or value.
Rhyne : Or value. You know what I mean? So there's a number of different things that factor into that particular question. I think it's worth noting that not every disagreement that we think is a disagreement is a genuine disagreement. There's some things that are just semantical differences between us.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : But there are some genuine disagreements that are prompted by basically not spending enough time focusing in on an issue or thinking about an issue or reflecting on an issue.
But then you have the big problem, in epistemology of disagreement, and that is peer disagreement. What do you do when you have people who, for all appearances, seem to have the same amount of education, seem to have the same evidence before them, seem to display the same epistemic virtues, that is that they-
Jamie: Humility.
Rhyne : The humility, teachableness.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : They all display those same characteristics. What happens when you have two people who are like that, who are peers, in certain ways, come to a disagreement? I look across the board, we mentioned in the last episode the debate over Calvinism and Arminianism, there are New Testament scholars who I greatly respect, who write a commentary on Romans, and I know they've spent their entire career studying Paul-
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : ... and they see that this Calvinistic reading of Paul as the most faithful reading. And then on the other side of the spectrum, equally faithful, equally gifted, equally intelligent, scholars who see an Arminian framework or something in between when they're reading Paul.
So epistemology disagreement helps us think through when would be the time to change your mind, or when should we hold steadfast in our particular position, or when should we just reserve judgment and just wait until we have more answers? And so that's what that particular sub-discipline does for us. I don't have definitive answers from, or for, epistemology of disagreement. I just think that these are helpful questions to think through, especially when we're looking at the disparity of our interpretations of the biblical text.
Jamie: So that helps us think through the when we should change our minds. I mean, it seems to me, when we're convinced by evidence, when we're convinced by good argument, when we've exercised intellectual humility and listening and things like that. Those would be helpful guides as we think about that.
Rhyne : Sure.
Jamie: So what about the next one? How should we ... When should we divide? Are there hills to die on? What are those hills? How do we think through?
Rhyne : Yeah, of course, I remember when I was in middle school, my youth minister got up and preached the sermon from John 17. And of course it was Jesus praying that we would be one.
Jamie: Unity, yeah.
Rhyne : Unity. He got up and he made this comment, and it was well-intended, but like a lot of well-intended comments that made in the pulpit, it was just, it was nonsense. He said that denominations are the invention of the devil, focus on doctrine is a way that the enemy uses to divide us in a way that ... And just really negative outlook on doctrine and theology.
Jamie: Right, right.
Rhyne : And I think that's the sort of response that a lot of people have. What really matters, is that we should just love Jesus and then love one another. When people ask that question of me or tell me that, I pose a counter-question, "Well, who do people say that Jesus is?" It's a question that Jesus himself asked, and there's real differences in the way that people see and understand Jesus. So I think it is important that we make a case for truth. It is important that we make a case for fidelity to the biblical text, even if that does mean that we have some disagreements.
But on the flip side of things, I think that there are some people who basically see any and all theological disagreements as false doctrine or heresy. So what I wanted to do here, was number one, define false doctrine, biblically. False doctrine, biblically, is not disagreement over minor matters. The disadvantage that we have on this side of canonization, is if they had a theological disagreement in the first century, they could go to an apostle and settle it.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : You know?
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : We don't have that particular advantage. We don't have, as Protestants, as Evangelicals, we don't have councils, magisterium, that gives us this inerrant interpretation of the biblical texts. We're just wrestling through it as best we can with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So not every theological disagreement is a false doctrine, and I want to just very clearly make that case. But on the other hand, doctrine does matter.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : And so trying to strike that balance. There have been a lot of helpful ways that people have addressed these things over the years. One person who's greatly influenced the way I think through these things is Dr. Mohler in his Theological Triage. That's certainly not the only way that you could deal with this. We have to have some way of doing doctrinal taxonomy.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : We have to have some way of distinguishing between major and minor doctrines. Not that one's unimportant and the other one's important, but rather there's different levels of importance. We have to have a way of distinguishing between, what you said, the hills on which to die, and those things which we can kind of agree to disagree.
Jamie: Sure.
Rhyne : What I propose here is there's basically three tests that we apply. First and foremost, what I call a hermeneutical test, which is whatever's clearest in the biblical text, whatever is a direct statement of scripture or a clear implication of scripture, those are things that we make first tier matters of importance. So the Deity of Jesus, the Deity of the Holy Spirit, we're saved by grace through faith. I mean, those things are clear in the biblical texts, so they rise to a level of first tier importance.
Jamie: Sure.
Rhyne : Along the same lines, I think that the doctrine of the Trinity, while not explicitly stated in the scripture, is strongly implied in scripture. And I have another book elsewhere where I kind of trace how we go from these implications of scripture to explicitly formulating them as doctrine. But those things I think are pretty clear when we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity.
But then things that are less clear, we debate over Romans 9, we debate over Revelation 20. We have those debates. We have those, again, those different interpretive paradigms that we're taking to a text. And so we want to say that something like that might be moved to a secondary or tertiary status. It's not that it's unimportant that Jesus is coming back. I would raise that to a first tier issue.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : We have to affirm Jesus is coming back.
Jamie: But it's the details related to-
Rhyne : It's the details.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : The same thing's true when it comes to things like election. We all believe that we're predestined. We all believe that we're elected. The Bible plainly states that. The disagreement is the mechanism, the way in which God does that. And so that's the hermeneutical test.
The second is the gospel test. What do you proclaim when you proclaim the gospel? The question I ask students is, "What expectation do you place on a gospel conversation?" When you have a conversation with a student down the road at the University of New Orleans or Tulane, here in the city, and you have a gospel, what things do you expect them to believe in order to become a Christian? I think the Bible draws those lines for us. They might disagree with us on the age of the earth. They might disagree with us on some of those things right now. We can have that conversation. We can have those conversations sooner or later down the road in discipleship, but what is essential to the gospel?
And then third, the question of what can we do practice-wise within the local church? We are going to ... We're obviously ... If we have different interpretations on baptism, whether or not baptism is for believers or whether it's the entryway into the covenant for babies.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : We can love each other, we can recognize each other as brothers or sisters in Christ, and still say, "Because I have convictions about what the biblical text says here, we really can't do local church together. We can collaborate on mission. We can see ourselves as great commissioned people who are linked arm-in-arm to work together, particular things, particular ministry efforts, but we can't do, we can't have fellowship at a local church level over those things."
So those are the three things I would say go into when doctrines should divide us, being able to come up with some sort of taxonomy to separate between what's most important, which you have to believe in order to be a Christian, what's of secondary importance, you have to believe this in order to be a Baptist or Presbyterian or whatever, and then a level of third importance or things that even in a local church we can agree to disagree about.
Jamie: So then at the end of the day, some of those disagreements are always going to be there, we will live with them forever. So the reality will be that me and you, or you and someone else, or this group and that group, are just going to see some things differently.
So then now, the million dollar question is how do you do that? How do you do that in a way that, as a watching world, lost world, observes what we do there? How do you do that in a way that's honoring to Christ?
Rhyne : Well, what I do in the book is I practice something that we call theology of retrieval. That is, I try to look at church history and let church history try to help give us some answers into the practice. Because again, the New Testament, we don't really have disagreements over the meaning of scripture, we have disagreements of a different level, but they're not disagreeing over the meaning of biblical texts per se. So what we have to do is we have to kind of look beyond what happened in the first century.
One of the most interesting examples in Protestant Evangelical history, is the disagreement between George Whitefield and John Wesley, both of whom were founders of the Methodist movement in 18th century England, and they went very divergent paths. Even though they were best friends, they went very divergent paths theologically because Whitefield became increasingly more Calvinistic, and Wesley became increasingly more Arminian in his interpretation of scripture. Actually, I think he went beyond what Armenias himself did, in a lot of ways, in terms of his own theological positions.
So what happened, one of the unfortunate things that happened in their relationship, is their public disagreement became very nasty and hostile. I mean, imagine if there were blogs back then, they would have been blogging about each other, doing podcasts and doing videos.
Jamie: Tweeting.
Rhyne : Tweeting at each other. I mean, there would have been-
Jamie: 140 characters shots at each other all day long.
Rhyne : There would have been a lot of that sort of thing.
Jamie: It would have been awesome. No.
Rhyne : But back then, there were some pretty nasty things that they said and did to each other in different forms of media.
Jamie: Sure.
Rhyne : And what God did in their lives, is God helped them realize, "Hey, you guys aren't going to agree on these issues on this side of heaven, but that doesn't mean you can't treat each other in brotherly ways." The story ended very sweetly. They were reconciled because they had godly friends who stepped in and helped them reconcile, that helped them recognize, "Hey, we might disagree about these third tier issues, but we don't disagree about the gospel. We don't disagree about what's most important." And actually, it was Wesley who preached Whitefield's funeral. The phrase that we so commonly use every day, people use in our culture, "agree to disagree," the first time that shows up in English is at that funeral message.
So the takeaway that I want to encourage people to do is to, again, disagree in a way that you recognize the inherent value of another person made in God's image, disagree in such a way that you recognize the world is watching, your public witness is at stake in how you disagree.
Jamie: Right.
Rhyne : And what I really, really, really push people to do, is try to have one-on-one conversations if possible-
Jamie: Sure.
Rhyne : ... with your interlocutors. Don't always assume the worst, read charitably. So that's a big thing, we need to read charitably. And if at all possible, take opportunities to pray with the people that you disagree with. I get that from Timothy George. I just thought that was a very helpful thing. When you start to pray with the person with whom you disagree, I mean, it certainly changes your outlook or your perspective on them.
I just think that there's a more Christian way for Christians to disagree about doctrine. At the end of the day, that's really where this is all going. How do we preserve Christian witness in the way that we disagree with each other? I think that's what Jesus was getting at in John 17.
Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Super helpful. I mean, the disagreements are here, intellectually, at least. They may always be vigorous-
Rhyne : Until the Lord returns and we're all proven right or wrong.
Jamie: Yeah. But I would encourage just our listeners to hear what Rhyne has said today. Civility is dead in our ecosystem right now. And golly, Pete, I have a hard time seeing that this honors Christ the way it often is done today.
Rhyne : Sure.
Jamie: So appreciate your time and appreciate your thought on this. And again, the name of the book is?
Rhyne : When Doctrine Divides the People of God: An Evangelical Approach to Theological Diversity.
Jamie: Yeah man, hey, congratulations on that for ... If you've never written a book, it is like giving birth to a yak. It is long and difficult and painful and-
Rhyne : How would you know that? Just curious.
Jamie: I'm using my sanctified imagination and envisioning pain. But it's a long process. Most people think that you write a book and you turn it in, you're done. Nope. You're actually only about halfway done at that point-
Rhyne : Right.
Jamie: ... because there's a lot of other work that's got to be done. So congratulations, well done.
Rhyne : Thank you, sir.
Jamie: Grateful for you.
Hey, everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again.
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