I am thinking of posting links to this post on outside sites.
If you have come from one of those links, this post is about the
New Wine System (a system of Biblical doctrines) developed/discovered
by Philip Brown. I last read the
comprehensive book on the subject that he wrote, New Wine for the
End Times, about 10 years ago (when I was 25) and though it seemed
to be convincing to me at the time, I haven't been able to reassess it
from my more critical, older-self perspective. I will suggest
that it is probably at least as Biblical as Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic,
etc. doctrinal systems, possibly more so. In other words, it has at
least as good a claim as any of those to being what was originally
meant by the Biblical writers (or by God in his role as author of the
Bible), possibly more so.
Being more philosophical than scholarly, I believe in the New
Wine System more through reasoning, this taking up much of my efforts
as a writer. My project called "MSLN" attempts to
prove the existence of God (one whose nature requires/implies the New
Wine System), is more complicated, more of a work in progress. However,
I have also written up a simpler argument for the New Wine System which
presupposes that the reader believes in God (a certain kind of God that
many Christians and possibly some non-Christians would accept as the one
they believe in), in an 8 page booklet called
Simple New Wine System.
I'm not sure how Philip Brown would summarize the New Wine System
(I mention that as some degree of deference to him since the label "New
Wine System" originates with him.) I will summarize it as I understand it
as being the following two ideas: 1) we must become completely holy (repent
100%, come to have God's values and heart 100%, love God with 100% of our
beings, overcome our sinful habits in partnership with God 100%, perform
any positive acts that God requires, maybe other things like that) in order
to enter heaven (or else we must be destroyed in hell (annihilationism)),
2) there is a realistic amount of time for us to complete our part of this
process, in the Millennium/Resurrection.
To some extent
this post may be unwelcoming in the sense that I don't discuss it in
terms that would make the most sense to someone unfamiliar with my writing.
I think that writers try to be trust-producing (so that they have an
audience), but sometimes that outstrips their trustworthiness. Someday
maybe I will be so confident in the trustworthiness of what I say that
I will present what I say in a more popular way. I think I'm moving
in that direction, even with this post.
I'm trying not to get into the Bible or Christianity
too much at this point in my writing life. However,
MSL, the natural theology I do want to talk about,
shares many structural similarities with Christianity (and with
legitimism (the "L" in "MSL") could be
seen as a proto-Christianity or minimalist Christianity).
So this post is trying to talk about "evangelicalism", which is
a phenomenon in MSL, but also a phenomenon in Biblical Christianity.
So talking about "evangelicalism" is something that serves the purpose
of understanding MSL, but also shows how New Wine Christianity might
"reform" or "restore" existing Biblical Christianity, perhaps solving
some practical problems the church faces, and thus helps me explain
the appeal of MSLN to some Christians.
"Evangelicalism", here, is not about cultural affiliation with
"Evangelicals", but rather is a basic attitude, which could be
something like this:
1. People are at risk for something other than loss of
secular life. (Usually, for loss of
eternal life.)
2. The way to deal with that risk involves that we care about others'
well-being and act on that.
3. There are consequences to our inaction (or misguided action) with
respect to #1. (People being lost from eternal life, usually.)
4. We should care about those consequences and feel and act accordingly.
Does MSL commit me to evangelicalism?
Does MSL commit me to evangelicalism? I think so. One
interpretation of MSL would imply that if people don't do their part
in "anti-tempting" people so that they
turn toward God, God can do it in the Millennium. Therefore, under
that interpretation, people would not have to care for other people's
salvation. I suppose that's possible. But another possibility is
that tragedy is possible. God is not so much in control that he can
make up for all our deficiencies. This may sound impious, lacking
in regard for God. A God who is great should be powerful, right?
Who are we to not think God is great? So we must think he is powerful.
But what is the truth? Not everything that happens in this life
seems like it comes from God. Maybe it's as simple as, it's not
something God wants. (Atheists can provide strong examples of horror
and suffering. Jews have had to struggle with the Holocaust as a
religious fact, and it should concern us just as it does them.) But
if God doesn't want it, then it's possible for things to happen that
go against God's plan. My belief is that God always has a plan for
everyone's life. But people's choices (whether their own, or other
people's) send their lives down different tracks, so that God's
first-choice plan ("plan A") gets replaced with his second-place
plan ("plan B") or eventually further down the alphabet. And some
of those plans that are far from plan A have to involve horror,
lies, and suffering, and temptations to despair, delusion, and rejection
of God.
What force compels God to allow our lives to become gratuitously
bad? God is a holy God, so he can't will us to sin. He is unable
to tempt us. But temptations help produce holiness (part of being
like God is to turn against sin, ourselves -- so sin has to be presented
as a positive thing for us to really strongly do that). Who will
tempt us except evil beings? These evil beings then can refuse to
work for God in their roles as tempters unless they get concessions,
concessions such as a world that contains gratuitous evil. One of
these evils might be that God is contractually not allowed to do all
of the work he would otherwise do himself (more competently than we
would), so we have to do some of it ourselves. Of course, it's good for us
to do some of the work, for our own sakes. We anti-tempt ourselves
when we care for other people. But there are times when we are not
competent in doing our job (or not willing to do it), and there are
consequences to that, which fall outside God's desires (and thus are
tragic).
While it's always possible that God and Satan negotiate a world
where God can do all the anti-tempting necessary, so that if someone
rejects him it's 100% their decision, I don't know of any reason
from MSL that would make me say I could assume that was the case.
So there is uncertainty.
According to this post,
God must do everything he can do to save us. Any lack of salvation
is due to us, and he must provide us the ideal environment to be
saved. So how could God fail to make up for our deficiencies in
anti-tempting?
God cares about the salvation of his creatures. In order to have
his heart, we must do the same. In order to be saved, we must have
his heart. So we must care about the salvation of his creatures
to be saved. The best way to do this is through practice.
It may also be the case that the most effective way for us to
take this practice seriously is for us to be responsible in some
way for others' salvation, in a way that does not get made up by
God. After all, nobody makes up for what God does, so God's heart
has to face that level of responsibility.
There's a trade-off between the benefit to the worker (who
needs to have a reason to take the work seriously) and a risk to
the one helped (or who should have been helped, if the worker
doesn't do their job). God balances these two, and the result is that
to some extent we are responsible for the eternal well-being of
other people.
This makes sense to me, and I'm at least provisionally inclined
to believe that it simply is the case. But if I want to doubt it,
I think I still have to see it as a live possibility.
What is the best way to handle uncertainty? I can think of two
natural intuitions. One is to say something like "agnosticism about
the existence of God should lead to practical atheism" -- if you can't know
about something, assume it doesn't matter. I think this is a fairly
common one in culture. But, for people into risk management (some
businesses, government, the military,
effective altruism), certain uncertain outcomes
are worth preparing for or trying to prevent. Practically speaking,
if you have a solid-enough idea that God might exist, and of what that
would entail, you should act as though God exists (in keeping with
how likely you think God might exist), even if you are agnostic.
So which approach should we take, with respect to the possibility
that people are needed to produce the best outcome with respect to
the salvation of other people? If people aren't needed, and we
try anyway, and we do a good job, then there are no downsides.
And, if people aren't needed and we try, and do a bad job, whatever
mistakes we make will be offset by good decisions God makes in
anti-tempting them. (At least, in terms of whether people reach
heaven, our mistakes will cause no lasting harm.)
But consider the case where people are needed. If we don't
try (or don't do a good job), then there could be tragic
consequences.
So I think the natural choice for a believer of MSL is to value
evangelicalism. I would say "the natural choice is to live it", and I
think most should, but perhaps some could lack competence or
good-heartedness to the extent that they might feel it wisest to do
nothing evangelical. But, if so they would be doing so for an
evangelical cause (by getting out of the way).
What if we are uncertain whether MSL is true or not? To the
extent that we think it might not be true, we should consider
other goods besides eternal life. But to the extent that we think
it probably is true, we should be evangelicals.
What kind of evangelicalism would MSL produce?
Michael Spencer's "Wretched
Urgency" talks about evangelical (in the sense I use) church culture
that is sort of "crazy". (It's a fleshed-out example from someone who saw
that world better than I have.) I would use the term "dishonest" (people
forcing themselves to care about things they don't naturally care about).
Also, people who are focused heavily on conversions and not the moral life.
Isn't the moral truth that we should save people from hell, and
go about it by converting them? But why does that go against what the
New Testament seems to exemplify? Spencer makes the point that there
isn't much about preaching to the lost in the New Testament. It happens,
but the emphasis is more on morality.
The MSLN answer is: if you don't focus on morality, you could
be one of the lost. The person you have the greatest chance of reaching
to prevent eternal loss is yourself. We know ourselves the best of
anyone (although we can sometimes be self-deceived or misguided), and
we have the advantage of being able to just obey ourselves when we
tell ourselves to repent, with an act of unilateral will. In some sense
we can will that other people repent, but also, we are powerless. A
mistake that evangelicalism can make is to try to push people to the
point of repenting, using pressure and manipulation. MSL and New Wine
evangelicals should not do that, and it doesn't make as much sense for them
to do so, unlike in some non-New Wine Christianity where it does more so.
In MSLN, while the need and call for holiness is absolute, the time
period in which people can pursue holiness is greatly expanded over what
we get in secular time. So it doesn't
make as much sense to be "wretchedly" urgent. You can dilute your urgency,
not to the point that there is none, but you aren't forced into
"wretchedness" by the fact of the brevity of secular life -- instead of
saying "if this person doesn't change before the end of this life, they
will go to hell" you say "if this person doesn't change before the end
of this life, that's not the best sign but it's not certain they will go
to hell". Because your urgency is diluted, you don't have to drive
yourselves and other people as hard in response.
I grew up in a church that in my memory was
"practically non-evangelical". This is a term I made up --
"practical non-evangelicalism" (PNE) parallel to "practical atheism".
A nominal Christian may really be atheistic in how they prefer, act,
and trust ("practically atheistic"), and a nominal evangelical may
be non-evangelical in how they prefer, act, and trust. PNE can happen
when you have all the doctrinal ingredients necessary to be evangelical,
but you just don't derive evangelicalism from them. You might do this by
technically still believing in hell and lostness, but just never
preaching about it. Maybe the older half of the congregation
has memories of the "wretched days", so the Spencer-like preachers
emphasize all the things Spencer does (including spiritual maturity, and
feeling OK instead of guilty all the time), and the younger half
of the congregation, having only heard Spencer-like preachers and
not the culture Spencer-like preachers are responding to, again,
may have some technical sense that hell exists (it's mentioned in
the Bible, after all), but has no real concept that that's a real
thing, no concept that people have eternal as opposed to secular
well-being, and thus do not care about their own or other people's
eternal well-being. It has seemed to me that this sets up two
problems: 1) we love people less because less is at stake, 2) we
make secular well-being our real concern, and then as soon as the
secular world cares for this well-being better than religious
people do, religion will have no purpose and die out. #2 matters if
there's some reason why God is supposed to matter to us, and we
come to know God through people having concern for people (concern
in the name of God / religion).
Typically, I like to solve as much of my problems as I can with principles,
and avoid laws and practical wisdom. If you can found your thought
structure on good basic truths, then everything should follow
well. Get your basic truths right, if you possibly can, to save
you work in the law-writing and practical wisdom phases. I think it's
hard to avoid laws and the need for practical wisdom, though. But with
better principles, I think MSLN should do a better job than traditional
evangelicalism.
However, traditional evangelicalism isn't totally a
failure from an MSL/New Wine perspective. That is, from my
natural-theological point of view, it does some good, and probably more
good than bad, and even from Spencer's Biblical point of view, it was
successful in conveying at least some concern for morality and it did
transmit the Bible which he uses to correct "wretched evangelicalism".
The messed-up, simplistic version of something might be popular and
powerful, at least for a time. I don't think it makes sense to ignore
the special genius of "wretched evangelicalism", which is that, though
"wretchedly urgent", it actually was urgent. That's not something to
dismiss lightly, and it is not good to substitute "wretched urgency"
with a "wretched apathy".
What we want is excellence. How do we achieve that? An athlete has
to train hard, and even risk injury, in order to be excellent. But,
they have to have good technique in order to be excellent. I think
that traditional evangelicalism lends itself to bad technique. But
being too concerned with health leads to lack of effort. I think MSLN
brings better technique in that morality (holiness, spiritual maturity)
is part of the goal. You can singlemindedly pursue the goal of salvation
of the lost and still attend to morality. That takes care of one of the
failure modes of traditional evangelicalism, that "consequentialism"
(evangelicalism) "tempts us to sacrifice deontology/virtue ethics"
(tempts us to sin, fail to be good, fail to expect goodness from others).
It's possible to associate "spiritual maturity" with healthy living
(with secular well-being), such that healthiness (especially mental
health) is an inherent part of spiritual maturity. I think it is more
dangerous to overemphasize health than to overemphasize effort (because
if health is your idol you might not get punished for it like you probably
will with effort). But health is a valid concern, and does play into the
longevity of a religious movement (if everyone burns out, the movement
loses ability to expend effort in the long run). I don't know
if I've written about this on this blog, but my belief is that
legitimism implies that, since the good is the
best thing, we should put the good first, and be willing to sacrifice
everything to the good. (Legitimacy is the good, God is the good, and
both MSL's "Father" and "Son" persons of Legitimacy (the good) risk their
existences in order to conform to Legitimacy. God is
self-obedient.) This implies that
willingness to pursue "the cross" (risking yourself for the sake of the
good) is essential to salvation. We can't let health get in the way of
that, and MSLN calls for the cross more clearly than non-New Wine
Christianity. But, you pursue the cross attempting not to destroy
yourself but to be effective, and effectiveness calls for a concern
for health. I don't think MSLN clears up this on the level of
principle, occasioning law and/or practical wisdom to make sense of
this. (Maybe Jesus' example of only dying on one cross and avoiding
all the others is helpful.) (Also "Give to health what is health's and
to God what is God's" as in this story)
What MSLN does do is say that if you're pushing too hard, in your
pursuit of working for your salvation or others' salvation, and you
are starting to burn out, you can say "Well, there's time in the
Millennium, so I don't have to make this effect happen now, so I can
take a break". But if you're becoming too apathetic, you can say "Wait,
there's something real at stake, I need to go to work. Who can say if
my work won't help someone escape hell?" MSLN's ideas about how reality
is set up allow us to move away from either extreme position of "there is no
work to be done for God, only to attend to secular well-being, if that"
and "the work for God is so urgent that we need to pursue it dishonestly,
insanely, etc.". MSLN is in the middle, motivating work for God without
too often leading to "wretched urgency".
--
Perhaps, to sum up so far, the problem with evangelicalisms are that
they can be unhealthy, dishonest, immoral, "wretched", and thus be
counterproductive.
A traditional evangelical could keep their "heaven or
hell when you die" perspective and say "while it looks as though there is
an intense, burning urgency to help people find God, what actually works
to achieve that is to not think about that or in those terms, otherwise
you become unhealthy, dishonest, immoral, 'wretched', etc.". In other
words, things are "not what they say on the tin". You might naively think
that you should care about other people and feel the feelings, think the
thoughts, etc., that go along with their objective state, and then act on
those feelings/thoughts. But actually, you shouldn't care about other
people, nor feel those feelings, think those thoughts. Actually,
to "really" care about other people is like not caring. Caring is
"not what it says on the tin".
When I admired traditional evangelicalism's possession of urgency
earlier (even if it might be "wretched"), part of what I thought was
good was the way that urgency gets us to actually do things. The doing
of things follows from objective reality. Just to see someone as
lost gives you a power and direction to do something. Their lostness
is a moral truth. How will you respond to that truth? If you don't
respond to moral truth, what kind of person are you? Probably someone
lacking in moral sensitivity -- having a heart unlike God's.
Perhaps in some grim world the best we can do is live the paradox.
Maybe the paradox lurks in non-New Wine evangelicalism (at least all
the non-"wretched" varieties), and the best we can do is be paradoxical.
With MSLN, you don't need to distance yourself from the objective
fact of someone else's lostness in order to relate to it in a healthy,
honest, moral, non-"wretched" way. So then the "MSLian" or New Wine
Christian can better maintain their connection to the fact of lostness.
They can trust the category of "objective truth" more. They can
derive strength from the truth in a way that a paradox-minded person
can't. They can be more passionate, and thus will probably be more
fruitful than they would have been as "paradoxical traditional
evangelicals" or "practical non-evangelicals".
This assumes that MSLN (a set of ideas) is well-implemented by
the people who adopt it. And like anything, it might not be
well-implemented if its adherents do a bad-enough job. But
MSLN itself isn't starting them off at as much of a disadvantage
as the other views do.
Can MSL evangelicalism be trusted by traditional evangelicals?
This post is written at least in part so that non-New Wine
evangelicals might consider New Wine evangelicalism. One question
such people might have is "We think that what matters is that
people make a decision for Jesus -- that they are converted. Could
the New Wine System be a scam that gets us to no longer emphasize
that thing, which we have always thought mattered? What if we
mistakenly believe the New Wine System, although it is false,
and fail to do work we should have done, and people go to hell
who otherwise would not have?"
I do think that being concerned about intellectual scams is
valid, and that a change in the beliefs that affect what you
consider highest is one to make carefully and aware of the risk.
A New Wine person like myself, considering traditional evangelicalism's
arguments if they were presented to me, might feel like they are a
scam, to get me to give up my concern over holiness's role in salvation.
Traditional evangelicalism at its worst produces shallow believers who
think they are 100% OK in the eyes of God (effectively -- they know
"they are sinners" but don't think being a sinner is really a bad
thing since they are guaranteed to go to heaven). In this regime
of moral shallowness, people can harden on little sins that they
like, and in some areas become deaf to the voice of Jesus. So traditional
evangelicalism, when it succeeds at what it thinks is sufficient to
save people, could bias some people toward choosing hell, if in fact
New Wine evangelicalism is correct. Both evangelicalisms are potential
scams, depending on your perspective.
How can you choose between two potential scams? (Especially when,
in this area, all the alternatives are potential scams, things that
if you adopt them might cause you to take focus off of what really
matters.)
How much are New Wine and traditional evangelicalism in tension,
practically speaking? Maybe in practice they achieve the same ends,
more or less.
Conversion matters to a New Wine person because
it enables people to point themselves in a better direction with
respect to God. It's part of holiness as I understand it. Can you
reach God without a conscious trusting relationship to him? No.
Likewise traditional evangelicals (despite "wretchedness") still
teach holiness.
It's true that MSL doesn't require a person to trust in Jesus by that
name. In some languages, Jesus is known as "Yeshua" or "Isa", not "Jesus",
so it's not the string of letters that is essential to the name of Jesus,
but rather some minimal set of traits in the person associated with that
name, that makes the name really the name of Jesus. MSL does require trust in
Legitimacy/the good/God in multiple persons, does
require that that God take on the form of a limited personal being such as we
are and die, and I think (although I'd have to check), most of what Jesus
teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (one exception being his call to keep
the Law) are implied by MSL. I think if you want to implement the idea
of a good God, and a good God in human form, according to MSL's view of
God and goodness, you might well recreate many or most of the sets of
traits of Jesus, when looking at the person of Legitimacy who takes on
limited form, such that it makes sense to give that person the name
of Jesus. However, not having spelled out all of the essential traits
of Jesus, nor of all the implications of MSL, I can't say that MSL
preaches Jesus, exactly. If it doesn't, it gets people relatively
close to trust in Jesus, but that might not be close enough for the
comfort of some traditional evangelicals.
(If the name "Jesus" or something etymologically similar is one of
the minimal essential traits that identify Jesus, then MSLians could
easily use that name to refer to the person of Legitimacy that
resembles the Biblical Jesus. I've used "the Son" before in MSL
contexts, which might also be adequate. I suppose this is only a
fair thing to do if we can identify the other minimal essential
traits of the Biblical Jesus as well as the full MSL conception of its
"Son", and the two line up sufficiently that they refer to the same
being.)
However, New Wine Christianity (as opposed to the MSL natural theology)
holds Jesus as high as any other kind of Christianity. Evangelical
Christians do not need to convert to MSL, but rather to New Wine
Christianity, if they find the ideas held in common between MSL and
the New Wine System convincing.
Yet they still might be concerned about the existence of MSL. Could
MSL be leading people astray, to 99% of what it takes to be saved (having
an understanding of the limited person of God that almost amounts to the
Jesus that is the way, truth, and life), but stop them before going 100%
(really believing in Jesus)? From one perspective, we could say "well,
among all the not-100% versions of the truth that are out there, this
one is better than most". But I'm sensitive to concerns about coming up
with something that is 99% right and therefore highly trust-producing but
which is fatal by not going the full distance. I think (I hope I've said
this before and say it later by way of emphasis) that MSL naturally calls
us to say "we don't know everything that we might need to know about God
and we're listening to hear the answer". An MSLian certainly should
listen to a traditional evangelical talk about Jesus, and I think naturally
would welcome hearing about their ideas and considering adopting them.
Why not become a Christian, at least in some minimal sense? Hopefully that
(if put into practice as much as it should be) would reduce the danger of
MSLians not hearing the truth about Jesus that traditional evangelicals
possess. I don't think the world (in this life, at least) is ever
completely safe, nor is any state of affairs not at all apt for concern.
The traditional evangelical must consider the danger that they are wrong
and MSL is right, just as the MSLian should consider the danger that they
are wrong and traditional evangelicalism is right.
What if the New Wine System causes us to not be as concerned with
converting non-believers, given that they can be converted in the
next life (according to the New Wine System), and we miss opportunities
to convert them in this life which is all we get for this task (according
to traditional evangelicalism)? This is a fair concern, and I can
see a real risk here. One way to resolve the tension is epistemic.
If the truth says the danger is "here" and not "there", then that
settles what to do. (Though I'm trying to talk about risk management
in this section, ultimately you should believe what's true rather than
focusing on trying to be safe.) I think the New Wine System is favored
by the truth, but the reader should make up their own mind.
It may be the case that the New Wine System is more effective
at producing conversions than traditional evangelicalism. Traditional
evangelical conversionism is something I would expect to produce
a strong feeling at one point in life which may or may not lead to
a lifelong commitment. It's a good way to increase a church's size
in the short run. But what kind of people become leaders in a church?
What if churches were full of people who were leaders, who were
examples of people
living like there's something other than human flourishing that matters
or in some other way were deeply and genuinely living like God exists,
and who were deeply and genuinely concerned about their neighbors' spiritual
lives (that they aim toward the person of God consciously, and that they
come into tune with God morally even if they sometimes do that unconscious
of the person of God). The New Wine System might be expected to increase
congregants' seriousness as Christians at the same time as it decreased
(but not to zero) their emphasis on having to convert people in this life.
Possibly more people would become the kind of people who could convert
others, by increasing their own trustworthiness through the pursuit of
holiness, and by taking their faith seriously enough to love and reach out
to the people who don't have it, even if their individual urgency to
convert decreased. It could be the case that the New Wine System would
perform well from a conversionist point of view (although that
remains to be seen).
Another perspective is that the church universal is an ecosystem.
Traditional evangelicals are effective at conversionism, but they
sometimes are "wretched". People who are converted by traditional
evangelicalism but don't do well in traditional evangelical churches
leave -- perhaps they leave Christianity entirely. Or perhaps they
go to a PNE, liberal/mainline, progressive, Catholic,
or Orthodox church (maybe even fundamentalism would sound better
than traditional evangelicalism to some). Each of these variants of
Christianity provide homes that people might like to stay in -- they
are not all in line with the truth (they couldn't all be since they
differ from each other doctrinally), but they serve a purpose.
The existence of New Wine doctrine allows PNE, and
possibly also liberal/mainline and progressive Christianity to move
in a more evangelical direction -- and thus as a byproduct produce
more conversions. The New Wine System is more congruent with
PNE (and maybe some liberal/mainline and progressive)
Christian cultures, would be more fitting for the kind of people
attending there.
From this, a committed traditional evangelical might look
on the New Wine System as being among a number of doctrines that are
not completely valid, but not the worst of them. And possibly also
as a less-risky thing to consider believing and recommending to
others.
Some editing issues explain the redundancy of the following
paragraph:
That goes for New Wine Christianity. But MSL might sound risky,
still, if it does not insist on the name of Jesus. I think that
the exact same belief can move one person closer to the truth, and
another person further.
It's possible for MSL to move people from atheism and non-Christian
spirituality toward theism, and while MSL does not force people to
accept the Bible logically, it does recommend the Bible to some
extent, I think. (I haven't done all the thinking that I feel I
should on this subject, but on the surface, because MSL sounds
like a proto-Christianity or minimalist Christianity, it makes
Christian scriptures seem like they might be from God. And, as I
said before, an MSLian should have the sense that they may not know
enough about God.) Depending on how things turn out, this could
lead non-Christians to become Christians who otherwise wouldn't have,
although the risk remains that some people would think that the name
of Jesus wasn't necessary for salvation, given that an intermediate
step in becoming a Christian did not insist on that.
Maybe practically speaking, we should seek to prefer, act, and
trust according to both MSL and traditional evangelicalism (should both
aim for complete holiness and seek to convert and be converted).
If those were the only two versions of the purported truth out there,
I think it would be easy for me to try to satisfy both personally,
and emphasize both in my behavior to other people. I feel like
MSL "has nothing against" conversion, and traditional evangelicalism
"has nothing against" holiness. I personally find MSL and the Bible
the only options I'm interested in obeying, and so that doesn't seem
like a huge leap to me, and perhaps the reader is in the same situation.
Then, neither belief system is practically speaking risky from the
other's perspective.
But, if I'm trying to be openminded, I consider
the possibility of views like Islam, or "Christianity+" religions like
Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. Do I have to satisfy Muslim doctrine?
I think MSL rules out Islam's insistence on its version of the oneness
of God (this is not my official opinion, but seems like a safe guess
about the Islam I've heard of). I can't satisfy both Islam and
Christianity at the same time. But could I satisfy Catholic or Mormon
Christianity along with the Christianity of the 66 book canon I grew up with?
I don't know. What if there was some little sect of Christianity, 200
members strong, in some obscure part of the world, that taught that
salvation requires a certain kind of faith in God, the real faith that
died out in the first century, a specific kind of faith that they
know about, and this is the only way to avoid hell? So I have to
have their kind of faith? What if it conflicts with MSL and traditional
evangelical faith? Can I know that such a sect does not exist and
that they are not right? Sure, they are small and thus I might claim
are insignificant, but the church was small in the first century.
Is it easy to know the truth, and know that you know the truth,
sufficient to prefer, act, and trust so that you are saved? Maybe not.
If not, and God exists, and God loves you, and God wants to achieve what
satisfies his desires, wouldn't he provide you a way to come to know whatever
truth is needed for salvation, whether in this life or a later one?
This is essentially an argument against traditional evangelicalism and
for something like MSL. This doesn't mean that it doesn't matter what
we believe in this life, but that the significance of, what kind of beliefs
we believe in this life, is diluted by the provision of God for an
afterlife where hopefully the epistemic environment for our trusting of
God is more favorable. (If it's useful in saving us, I think we will
be given clarity someday.)
Are traditional evangelicals more afraid of hell than they believe
that God exists, loves us, and wants to achieve what satisfies his desires?
If so, then it makes sense to be suspicious of MSL and the New Wine
System. Otherwise, no.
What about "dark evangelicalism"?
This section is somewhat of a footnote or note to myself, not as
well-thought-out, and weirder.
Someone could object that maybe
God is not ultimately in control enough of the process of salvation,
such that he can't guarantee a clearing-up of salvation doctrine later.
This does not sound like traditional evangelicalism, whose God is
simply omnipotent. But one could imagine a dark evangelicalism, where
people need to hear about God in this life to be saved, and God is
powerless to give them a second chance.
God really loves, and God doesn't want any of us to be lost. He doesn't
create any of us to go to hell. God would not create us if he knew
that there was a chance any of us were bound for hell at the
time of creation, which would be the case if he didn't provide a way for
us to be saved (like an afterlife where we could hear the truth
adequately). We might end up going to hell, through the mishaps of life
and our turning away from him, but to not provide something like the
Millennium would be an unforced
error on his part.
So now the "dark evangelical" has to claim that God is not fully
or sufficiently loving. But this contradicts the Bible. The Bible
says (1 John 4:8) that "God is love". If God was not fully loving,
love itself would not be fully loving. Or, if "God is love" is a
figure of speech for "God is loving", the love that we have comes
from God (1 John 4:7), so we can't exceed God in being loving. And
I would assume we can't exceed God in practical wisdom. (Although maybe a
"dark evangelical" would contest that? I think creating the world
would require a lot more practical wisdom than living one human life.)
So if a human can figure out that it doesn't make sense to make an unforced
error that prevents people from going to heaven, and doesn't do it out
of love, God would also be able to figure that out, and wouldn't do it.
So the Bible does not give support to the idea that God is insufficiently
loving to avoid "dark evangelicalism".
A traditional evangelical (we will say) believes in "sola
scriptura" and so would reject the dark position for being unbiblical.
But an "MSLian" might take the dark evangelical position seriously.
Is there evidence for dark evangelicalism?
Possibly some can be found in MSLN itself, at least in the first
two arguments (the Metaphysical
Organism (M) and simantism) (S).
The idea that God has to be fully loving is developed in
legitimism (L), where love is a form of
value, everything that exists is at least temporarily legitimate,
Legitimacy has to value what is deserving, everything that is
legitimate is deserving, and so everything that is not illegitimate
(something like "sinful") is something that Legitimacy must
value/love/will-to-exist-forever. But if a student of MSLN does not
accept L but only M or MS (S implies M), would they have any reason to think
that God is loving, sufficient that he would have to be competent
in choosing whether to create us?
The Metaphysical Organism, and by extension the Speaker, is a being
of perfect empathy. They feel exactly what we feel. While I don't
know how to measure how much unbearable pain there is in our world, I
think there is a lot of it, probably unrelenting for thousands (or
perhaps millions?) of years. The Metaphysical Organism/Speaker would
likely understand this long duration, unrelentingness -- perhaps
understand after a few weeks of the load of pain, and then think "is
it worth going on?" If they decided to, it would be an action of love,
tested over the years by the constant or near-constant barrage of
qualia of unbearability. They would show their value for creation by
the pain they were willing to bear for us. So the pain and
tragedy of creation gives us a reason to think they love us enough to
not create if things were going to be really hopeless.
Under M or MS, why would the MO/Speaker need us to accept
Jesus as our savior? I don't know of a reason off the top of my head.
Why would they require any particular thing for salvation? I can
understand them not being able to keep us around if we insist on doing
unbearable things or being unbearable to them. But otherwise, why would
we have to do any particular thing, like make a decision for Jesus? In
MSL, it makes some sense because part of being legitimate is to
trust/follow Legitimacy and if Jesus is who he says he is, he is
part of Legitimacy. Accepting someone like Jesus is part of MSL.
But it's not as clearly a part of M or MS.
A reason why the Speaker could be known to love us is because
he created the simantic word of
"love", and so understands it deeply himself. Thus, if we can
apprehend it and participate in it, we know what he knows. If
we know that love is greater than its competitors, he knows that,
and will see love as we do, so that he will only create if there
is a chance for each of us to be saved. (He know sadism (for instance)
as well, but perhaps if you understand love and sadism perfectly, you
will always automatically choose love as the best, and sadism as
not measuring up.)
--
People think they have experiences of God. Probably they do
sometimes, if it's sufficiently possible that God exists. Is God
loving? I think for most people (maybe even in different
religions?) he is. God is supposed to be trustworthy, and somehow
he tells us he is. Not everyone experiences him this way
necessarily, but I would guess it's the majority view and maybe
that should count for some kind of evidence.
Maybe we could view religious experience as experience with spirits
(some of whom claim to be God, or working for God), as opposed to with
God. If the spirits are trustworthy (we know from relating to them),
maybe if they tell us that God is loving, we should believe them?
--
If something claims our practical attention (our trust and/or
obedience), if the credence we can give it is below a certain amount,
it's as likely as so many other conflicting things that it's not worth
worrying about. Can dark evangelicalism rise above that threshold?
It's an open question. Can it be deemed likely enough, and also recommend
a clear-enough course of action, that we can trust and/or obey it?
