An Analysis
Confronting Achtemeierianism
By Carmen Fowler, The Layman, November 20, 2009
This analysis will attempt to unmask the issues raised in Dr. Mark Achtemeier’s address entitled And Grace will Lead Me Home to the Covenant Network at its 2009 Gathering, Nov. 5 in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Over the past several years, Achtemeier claims to have had a kind of progressive conversion experience, something he calls a journey. By his logic, the Dubuque Theological Seminary professor suggests that God has led him away from the plain meaning of the Scriptures and away from the historic Confessional understanding of the Lordship of Christ wherein the lives of believers are brought into conformity with God’s pleasing and perfect will as defined by the Word of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
His arguments are winsomely expressed but fatally flawed. What Achtemeier articulates is a new gospel, one that those who embrace a historically “Christian” faith will not recognize. What he creates is something I will call “Achtemeierianism.”
A different gospel
Through his “encounters with gay and lesbian believers,” Achtemeier proffers a new definition of sin based on human feelings, not the Bible.
In his own words, “What absolutely did not compute for them … was trying to view their lifelong commitment to a partner under the category of sins and failings.” Quoting a gay friend, Achtemeier says, “I just can’t make sense of it…far from feeling sinful, this feels like the one area of my life that brings out the very best in me.” Achtemeier remembers “feeling a bit shaken” as his friend’s testimony resonated with his own feelings about his marriage. (emphasis added)
So, what’s the problem? The entire argument is based on human feelings, which is a terrible barometer of the truth. The primary tests of orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not the transitory feelings of the individual, but the Word of God interpreted through the Spirit-led consensus of the faithful, which has stood the test of time. Achtemeierianism would have us rely upon our own feelings, wants, desires and hopes to order our world.
Just because we can’t make sense of something that God has declared is sinful does not mean that we have the right to simply set it aside. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways. We would never have needed the Law, let alone the prophets and judges, and certainly not Jesus, if human feelings always led us to do that which is holy in God’s sight.
Reformed theology is clear: We are depraved, totally. There is no part of our lives that is unmarred or undefiled by sin. To say that we have no sin is to deceive ourselves and to unmask the reality that the truth is not in us. But, if we confess our sins (not as we define sin, but as God defines sin), then God, who is faithful and just, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
There’s a sequence revealed there: confession, forgiveness, transformation.
The breakdown for Achtemeier came when, realizing his misunderstanding of the nature of sexual sin, he did not return to the Scriptures to seek to better understand the will of God and then bring that Truth to bear in the lives of his friends. Instead, he devoted himself to finding a way to twist the Scriptures into conformity with their proclivities.
Achtemeierianism offers a definition of sin contrary to that which is defined by the Bible or the historic Confessions of the Church. This is sin as defined by the post-modern human intellect. A definition that says, “As long as what is done is right in our own eyes, then it is right.” When it “feels” wrong to you, then it is sin. But if it feels right to you, here and now, it is not sin. So, people are only called to repent of those things that they personally regard as sinful, not those things that God’s Word exposes as inconsistent with His perfect and eternal will.
Here’s the problem: If we only need to repent of those thoughts, words and deeds that we regard as sinful, as long as we are always acting in ways that are true to ourselves, then logically, sin ceases to exist. No one is in a position to label anything that another person does or fails to do as “sinful,” because the accused can simply appeal to their own sincerely held belief that God made them this way and it feels right to them. Then without appeal to any higher authority (like the Bible), sin is no more.
Wow! That would have been a much simpler solution than sending Jesus to the Cross. God could have simply said that sin isn’t sin. That everything that feels good and right to people is holy, and the whole mess would have been set right.
Unless of course, God is really real and really holy and really just and really serious. First commandment issues arise here and idolatry begs to be addressed.
Now, to be fair, the defenders of Achtemeierianism are going to cry “foul” on this point. They are going to argue that this reaches beyond what he said. Of course it does. But it is the logical progression of the ideas presented in his remarks.
A different word
Although Achtemeier claims to possess a “strong commitment to the authority of Scripture,” the hermeneutic of Achtemeierianism is unrecognizable as Christian.
In the section of the address under subtitle “The Bible and our Experience,” Achtemeier acknowledges the alarm raised within his conscience. An alarm he tragically misunderstood and ultimately ignored.
When we hear our conscience declare, “What I’m reading doesn’t jibe with my experience,” the faithful response is not to twist the Scriptures into conformity with the world, but to allow our minds to be transformed by the Word that we might then be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.
The Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the miracles of Jesus, the Resurrection, all of these revealed truths “contradict our experience” – just like walking on water. But that does not mean we arbitrarily set aside those essential points of Christian theology in order to craft a religion that makes “more powerful sense of our experience.” Indeed, Dr. John H. Leith was right, the Gospel does make coherent sense of people’s lives as those lives are brought into conformity with the Gospel – not the other way around.
A different god
The god who appears throughout Achtemeier’s testimony is an unknown god. This is not the God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is not the God who is perfectly holy and just, perfectly merciful and gracious, perfectly perfect. What is presented is a god who is confused, appears to have changed his mind and leads people into manners of life that are inconsistent with the revealed will of the God of the Bible. In fact, if Achtemeier is right, God has been deceiving His own people for thousands of years through the Bible itself.
Blaming God for what Achtemeier now views as error is an affront to the holiness of God. When Achtemeier claims that it was God who “has indeed led me” to what he labels as God’s “other plans,” he is suggesting that God perverted His own
design.
It seems curious to me that on the one hand, a person could charge God with error and yet on the other hand have arrived at an intellectual certainty that precludes the possibility that his newfound friends are living in slavery to sin. In this new Achtemeierianism theology, God may err, but human beings, who hold sincerely held beliefs, do not.
A different faith
In “The Reformation Critique,” Achtemeier appeals to the Reformation argument against the mandatory celibacy of clergy to justify his position. Calvin, with Paul, advocated marriage over burning with lust. But, as a professor of theology at a Presbyterian Church (USA) seminary, Achtemeier would have to concede that to say that Calvin would in any way approve of homosexual expression is more than a small leap.
Think of it this way: If you want the things that money affords, you can either get a job or you can steal someone else’s money. No one would reasonably argue that if one’s particular sinful proclivity was toward greed, we should steal as a means to fulfill our need. Suggesting that one take a forbidden route to get to a desired state certainly reaches beyond what the Reformers were advocating. If one wants to find a justification for the normalization of homosexuality in the historic Reformed tradition, one will have to look beyond the appeal made by Achtemeier.
As ordained officers in the PCUSA we take a vow of commitment to “fulfill our office in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and to be continually guided by our confessions.” An examination of the confessions on the subject of sin, sanctification, marriage and the qualifications for church leadership would be instructive here. At every point, however, Achtemeier would have to admit that the historic teachings of the church do not support his newly defined faith.
A different truth
Because human beings are prone to confusion and susceptible to deceit and trickery, God has given us His Word and His Spirit that we might know the Truth and be led into all Truth. The Spirit of God always and in all ways leads men and women to a knowledge of God that is consistent with God’s Word, not contrary to it. The Scriptures do not lead us into error and the Spirit does not lead us into ways of life that are revealed by God to be sinful.
A person must be converted to this way of seeing and thinking and living. It does not come naturally. Indeed our thoughts are not God’s thoughts and our ways are not God’s ways. Our lives have to be brought incrementally into conformity to the revealed will of God, into conformity with Christ, from one degree of glory to another, that we might be holy, even as God is holy. So, conversion is unto holiness – always and in all ways.
Any so-called conversion, journey, experience or testimony that leads a person away from holiness is not authentically Christian.
Not all conversions are equal. People can be illuminated by truth and people can be led into the darkness of lies. People can come to think that they are God and people can come to the saving knowledge that they are not God. People can be duped and people can be charmed. Our desire to be popular and liked, celebrated and applauded is intoxicating. Our flesh is weak and our feelings are unreliable.
Achtemeier found charming examples of homosexuals in committed monogamous relationships, and he advocates that they should be allowed to marry and be welcomed into positions of ordained church leadership. I am confident that without looking very far, we could also find quite extraordinary and charming examples of bisexual people. In order to fulfill their personal desires, their proclivity requires two partners, one male and one female. If marriage is to be extended to committed homosexuals, why not committed bisexual triads? And if threesomes for the sake of committed bisexuals, why not any number of groupings for heterosexual polygamists?
If your retort is that the Bible doesn’t allow for that, you’re pinched by the reality that the Bible does not allow for same-sex committed partnerships and we find ourselves at the beginning of the conversation.
More than picking at nits
Language is important because it has meaning and so there are a few words, phrases and statements in Achtemeier’s address that call for particular attention.
When Achtemeier says in reference to his recent faith journey that “because of this experience I have learned never to make confident predictions about any situation in which God is involved,” he is forgetting that God has revealed much in His eternal Word that foretells the future filled with hope God has planned for us. Jesus has told us a great deal about the Kingdom of God.
Daniel, Ezekiel and John have shared visions of that which is ahead. As believers, there are things that we can confidently predict based on God’s revelation. Although in purely physical terms I can confidently predict that if the sun does not rise tomorrow, neither will we; I can also confidently predict, precisely because God is involved, that those who believe in Jesus will indeed rise tomorrow, no matter what.
Achtemeier also makes use of the language of “exclusion” where he once would have used the language of “holiness.” Casting orthodox believers in pejorative terms will not change the reality, but it is surely an attempt to change the perception of reality. It is like calling someone “intolerant” instead of dealing with the reality that even to do so is an act of intolerance.
Finally, when Dr. Achtemeier acknowledges that he “was accustomed to thinking of homosexuality as a kind of destructive behavior” like alcoholism, he misses the addiction to sin itself. What is exposed in us is our slavery or addiction to a reductionism of real life, an illusion of fulfillment that is actually empty, a false ethic that is contrary to the revealed will of God.
The first message in the face of such sin is that of grace – not the requirement that the sinner stop the sin, but to declare that for the sinner, Christ has died. The call to the one whose sin is illuminated by the righteousness of Christ is then led by the Spirit to repent of sin, turning from the bondage of the will to the freedom of life in Christ: A real, full and abundant life in which all things are made new, including, over time, the desires of the human heart.
We all know the basics of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, in reliance upon the Bible alone. We also know the basics of sanctification – that incremental transformation whereby the sinner’s redeemed life is brought into conformity with God’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us. We do not expect non-Christians to act like Christians, but over time, we should be able to expect that the followers of Jesus would act more and more like him. And Jesus did not whitewash over sin, He bled to death over it. He called people out of sin and into righteousness, even to perfection and holiness. He was the light that pierced the darkness and exposed the evil in our hearts. [1]
Tragically, Achtemeierianism would have us exchange that truth for the lies of our times.