Mainstream Western church leaders do teach there is a difference between Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology. For the most part, the latter is actually more of biblical doctrine in their minds. That is, they see it as revealed assertions around which they must structure their rational system. The discussion goes off track for them when you start talking about revelation as not doctrine, but the revelation of a Person. Sure, they can accept the words, but not the implications.
This is the biggest problem we deal with when comparing between the various teachings of churches against the teachings of the Bible. The Bible casts itself as the covenant documents of an eastern potentate. In the ancient societies of the Bible, everything was a matter of the personal connection you had with God. You can’t reason your way to faith, because faith isn’t what’s in your head, but in your heart. The heart-mind is all about persons and personal relationships, not mere sentiment. This isn’t fanatical loyalty to a sports team or military unit; it’s loyalty to your own Father.
I’ve noted before that the biblical teaching of predestination is one thing, but it does not justify the Doctrine of Election. There’s nothing wrong with believing in Election if that’s how you organize your thinking, and it informs how you act, but you must keep in mind that this is your own response to faith. It’s not a universal doctrine by which we judge others and their teachings. The Doctrine of Election is a rational structure built around the biblical revelation of predestination. And the biblical use of the term is quite different from how it’s used in Systematic Theology.
A related mainstream teaching is Federal Headship. Again, it’s just an attempt at rational explanation of something in the Bible. And what’s in the Bible is a matter of personal connection, not objective rational structure. The doctrine of Federal Headship is basically the idea that some ancestor can make a moral choice that is binding on you. Thus, Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden affects all of his progeny — in essence, the whole human race — by some cosmic law that God enforces. This teaching depersonalizes our connection to Adam and to God. Worse, it misses the point.
The story of the Fall was never meant to portray a baldly literal historical event, but was offered as an indicator of our fallen nature, and tells us something about how Satan works. The story is cast in the context of God as an eastern potentate, and Adam and Eve part of His household retinue. They were gardeners, managing God’s private park according to His instructions. He came to visit them in the park every day, and they communed over how God wanted things to go in His private garden. But though they possessed something of God’s nature, they lacked the fortitude to carry out His wishes on one critical issue: They could be manipulated to trust their own capabilities instead of trusting revelation (communion) from God. In essence, they sought to become their own gods.
It’s not that Adam made a choice to bind us all under the Fall, but that Adam acted according to the same weakness that we all have. Granted, the language in Romans 5:12ff in most English translations makes it sound like a legal inheritance, but the Greek scholars translating the New Testament into English are dominated by a Western viewpoint. The issue is not a matter of legal precedent because God doesn’t work like that. We inherit a sinful nature by our DNA.
There’s no place for questions of God’s fairness in saddling every child of Adam with the same legal judgment as against Adam. This is what we are, and you have no business questioning how God made you. We are part divine and part fallen; made to commune with God and naturally unable to do so consistently. God didn’t put on us a sentence of death; that’s ours by nature. It’s what we choose by virtue of our inherent tendency to seek our own way in God’s Creation. The solution is to surrender that throne and restore the communion with God. He calls to us and puts it all within reach.
And Jesus kept wording things in terms of embracing Him, not just His teaching. This is all about a personal encounter, getting to know a Someone, not a something. It’s not a question of plumbing the depths of reason about the problem and all its parameters. It is a question of restoring a wayward child of God, of restoring the natural affection between the two. And it’s not humanity, but you and I individually coming back into proper filial loyalty to (faith in) God.
Even my effort to explain this is broken. What I’m really trying to do is un-explain, to break down the false explanation we’ve all be given by virtue of our birth in an English-speaking culture. Then I’m hoping to indicate to your mind something your heart will recognize already.
