The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went.
He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
But he answered one of them, 'I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
Matthew 20:1-16 (NIV)
Jesus, of course, isn't speaking about "payment" as money. We're really talking, of course, about eternal rewards. The vineyard and its gracious landowner, we learn in the first verse, stands for the Kingdom of God. By thinking through such parables in the context of the idea of universal salvation, we needn't jump to the conclusion that those Christians who sympathize with the "love wins" doctrine are suggesting pluralism -- that many different paths lead to salvation. The suggestion that (may be) coming from people such as Bell isn't that those "on the outside" can be saved some way other than by Jesus Christ -- e.g. by God's blanket forgiveness that has nothing to do with Jesus' atoning death on their behalf. Instead, the suggestion is that those who are justly left "on the outside" may finally be allowed in, summoned by the Master at the final hour, and even given the same reward that those who have been working for the Kingdom their whole lives will receive.
Do we bristle against this teaching? If Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved (Acts 4:12), do we as followers of Jesus feel instictively slighted by the notion that the Master may finally let in those who we think -- on biblically and theologically solid grounds -- ought to be locked out? Is this a matter of doctrine ... or merely of pride?
wow. thanks Darren.
ReplyDeleteVery well said. I have often gone back to this passage of scripture and asked myself, "What about our flawed human nature is Jesus trying to point out here?" You nailed it on the head: pride. Sometimes we just care too much about the great sacrifices we've made to serve the King that we can't bear the thought of someone else getting in "scott-free." It's crap. All have fallen short. :) Thank God for grace...
ReplyDeleteIsn't the universalist worry a bit stronger than this parable though? What if after the day is over and the workers had all gotten their reward and went 'home', if the landowner found some others who hadn't worked at all and gave them the same reward? Isn't the universalism worry about people post-death having a chance for forgiveness and salvation, to decide for Christ on the 'other side'?
ReplyDeleteGeordie: Theologically, then, I suppose the question would be whether the final hour would stand for one's deathbed or if we're open to the possibility that God might grant another chance to come to Christ after death. (On Reformed soil, though, we mustn't place an inordinate amount of weight "chance" and choice. Christ saves.)
ReplyDeleteI'm certainly not looking for a doctrine of salvation here, and in fact I think it would be a mistake to do so. I think the parable has a lot to teach believers (especially "long-timers" who feel we have our doctrine neatly nailed down) about our attitude, and about the sovereignty of the one we claim to be our Lord.
Do you really think that certain people's reaction against universalism is 1) solely from the "gut" and 2) stems ultimately from a jealousy for one's own salvation? I mean, given that people don't usually put it in those terms, it seems to me that what you're actually doing is speculating as to the "real" reason why people are saying what they're saying about hell. Besides - the anti-Bells could easily say (and have said) the same of you: far from exalting the freedom of God's grace, you, the christocentric optimist, are actually placing yourself in the seat of judgment by indulging your desire to explain away the clear testimony of Scripture concerning the fate of non-Christians. As such, it's your attitude that needs changing - not theirs. Openness toward positions which contradict Scripture is not a Christian virtue - they'd say.
ReplyDeleteJustin: Certainly that would be the response, and a fair one at that. May it never be that I suggest that Christian theologians should pass over the convictions they receive from reading Scripture in favor of a sort of "feeling" that God wouldn't really do such a thing because God loves all His creatures. Insofar as the anti-Bells have responded against that position, they're exactly right.
ReplyDeleteThe mantra of some such universalists would no doubt be "This isn't fair!" By that they mean that it is inconsistent for God to elect some to salvation and others to damnation, especially when He purports to be "love." Theologically, that cry needs to be blown apart. But that's an occasion for teaching -- not rebuking.
The parable of the workers, however, provokes us further: Are we reacting against universalism in all its forms (including those who are not making the argument above) because we don't think such a thing is "fair?" After all, God has given us this system of doctrine (or so it is intimated), and it explains things -- it works for us. How can God then supercede the way we think He has set things up?
As for me -- I'm not desiring to explain away anything. I'm attempting to point out that, pastorally, the conversation is important enough to be allowed to take place. And theologically, the testimony of Scripture is not so monolithic as the "Farewellers" imply. Where we seek to escape the conversation and calcify our own reading of Scripture as final and inviolable, we close ourselves off to that which is supposed to be "living and active" in the church.
I can think of no other way to describe this position viz. Scripture and other believers than as "pride."
Yes - you're right, there are many varieties of universalism, and I agree with you that the christocentric variety needs to be distinguished clearly from the more generically lovey-dovey ones. But in my comment I was trying to imagine what an anti-Bell might say in response to way in which you oriented this non-dogmatized, hope-oriented, christologically-grounded universalistic openness to plain old traditional particularism. You imply that one of the virtues of this view is that it enables us to cede more ground to the divine prerogative in salvation. Those who lack this openness, by contrast, likely do so because deep down, the lavishness and sovereignty of God's grace is offensive to them.
ReplyDeleteBut as I say, the actual reason that many particularists give for their particularism is Scripture - and I would add that while the Scriptural case may indeed not be cut and dry, the tradition actually IS fairly monolithic with respect to this issue. Are you prepared to paint the majority of Christian theologians across many centuries as uncomfortable with universalism simply due to an undercurrent of spiritual pride? Again, I suspect the particularist would say that your divergence from the tradition is more the thing which invites psychological reflection, since your sensibility represents the anomaly in Christian self-consciousness.
Of course I agree that this is a conversation is worth having - and that "farewell" is a lame response which has little value for the church. Nevertheless, I think too-hastily attributing spiritual sickness to those with whom we disagree is an equally powerful conversation stopper.
Of course you're right about the tradition being fairly monolithic in its approach to this question. Just to clarify a fairly small point: My suggestion is not that being a particularist = being prideful and closed to the Holy Spirit. Rather, I think that being closed to the conversation -- as conversation entails an openness to the other -- is an expression of pride and closed-mindedness. After all, we don't engage one another in theological discourse in the church because we are (necessarily) undecided about what we believe, but because "iron sharpens iron."
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, it seems to me that Barth's position is far more tenable: Scripture points in this direction and in that, and while we may be absolute in the belief that only Christ reconciles us to God, we cannot be certain of the relative populations of heaven and hell. Where the sovereignty of an unimaginably gracious God has to have the last word, this much is simply not given for us to know with certainty.
Okay, well if that's the case (a case with which I fully agree), then I don't see what the parable has to do with your point, since the first workers aren't criticized for a lack of open-mindedness, but for holding the very concrete position that the owner is not sovereign over the management of his field (something which, by the way, could also be interpreted as a chastisement against Jewish discomfort with Gentile inclusion - a very specific issue to which any inferred "logic of grace" would have to be accountable for its shape). In other words, the point of the parable is to criticize an attitude which stems from an errant theological point - one which, incidentally, both particularists and universalists would happily reject.
ReplyDeleteJust to lay my cards on the table, I'm actually on your side here. I think that the judgment passages don't so much narrate future events as reveal the dynamic of Christ's victory (in this sense, we've already heard the last word, and it's this: that Jesus is Victor, to quote the great theologian Jon Coutts - who may have picked it up from somewhere else). Insofar as this is true, I agree with you that it would be overly speculative to say dogmatically that hell either will or will not be populated (although the term "populated" itself implies a bunch of stuff about hell that I'm uncomfortable with).
So yeah - I'm down for cheerful open-mindedness (you might even say that my entire thesis is predicated on the idea that listening to the heterodox might actually help the church).
OK, points all taken. I'm not offering a definitive reading of the parable. More of a "Huh ... that attitude sounds familiar."
ReplyDeleteSee, the Bible can be topical. ;)
This statement in your previous comment is important: "You imply that one of the virtues of this view is that it enables us to cede more ground to the divine prerogative in salvation. Those who lack this openness, by contrast, likely do so because deep down, the lavishness and sovereignty of God's grace is offensive to them."
What I want to suggest -- and this was the thinly-veiled thought behind last week's Semper Reformanda post -- is that the workers of the vineyard who object to the master's sovereign right to pay latecomers an equal wage stand for those who are so self-assured of their doctrinal convictions that they are not open to a fresh hearing of Scripture. Not simply that the heterodox can be helpful to the church, but that orthodoxy itself -- and the values of the Reformed tradition, in particular -- requires such openness. Otherwise we are not those who hear and who speak the Word of God, but those who protect and defend ossified doctrine.
Okay, so if you're formalising the whole discussion, that's a different sort of thing (incidentally, the "openness" in my quote above referred not simply to "openness" as a general virtue, but to a certain posture toward future events prescribed and defended on the grounds of a peculiar understanding of christology). Anyway, I think openness is cool, orthodox, and Reformed (although apparently not also young and restless) - so as long as you reserve some openness for the possibility that those old, ossified doctrines might actually present the occasion for a fresher hearing of God's Word than the modern alternatives (which would be a very Barthian approach to the tradition, don't you think?).
ReplyDeleteI could go on with this (my animosity toward you is boundless, as you know) - but perhaps I'll just leave it at that. I see no reason why any further disputes couldn't be settled just as well with arm wrestling.
Absolutely -- which is why I've been trying to pose my critiqe in terms of "the conversation." The doctrine of particularism as it was expressed in the third century, or the twelfth century, or the seventeenth century may be spot-on. Contemporary readings are often not only wrong but ridiculous, and being "fresher" doesn't make them closer to the Holy Spirit.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, that conviction of the truth of our long-held doctrinal articulations doesn't give the church justification for stopping up its ears. If theology is second-order discourse, such is true of all doctrines.
I'm all for examining truth and asking what Scripture says about it. However, that is just it, is Bell really asking what Scripture says with a deep conviction that Scripture is the final authority? Only he can answer this. I have only read 'Velvet Elvis'. I have to say that kind of integrity didn't strike me there. Lots of questions were asked (designed it appeared to slacken or remove springs of the trampoline); they were often subtly framed to undermine traditional views without Bell committing himself. MacLaren was the same. It is irresponsible for a leader to do this. A leader should speak what he knows plainly and without ambiguity. What he doesn't know he should remain silent on until he has convictions that he can put up a fair job of substantiating.
ReplyDeleteI take Jesus parable to be teaching that in the final analysis all is of grace. But the parable says nothing about how we receive grace. I think it is weak to use such a text to make a case for being soft on universalism.