Theology Thursday: Where Scripture speaks...

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's topic:
Part four in a series on MCC's Restoration Movement faith tradition.

Pastor Brady's thoughts:
Today we’re continuing on in our series looking at the influential mottos of the Restoration Movement, the faith tradition that led to the planting of MCC and from which we’ve developed most of our doctrinal beliefs and church practices. 

We’ve already covered “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love.” and “We are Christians only, but not the only Christians.” 

Today’s guiding motto: “Where Scripture speaks, we speak. Where Scripture is silent, we are silent.”

I mentioned before that the Restoration Movement is a movement (an idea, really) - not a denomination - concerned with the unification of the faithful, and that this requires defining “essential” beliefs narrowly and focusing on restoring the church to its “primitive” roots in the New Testament. Out of this desire for unity (a desire we believe was a precious priority especially for Jesus and Paul) comes an emphasis to mold the ministry philosophy of the church from the direct commands and the indirect positive example of the church groups presented to us starting in Acts and moving forward in the decades following Pentecost. 

In short, our goal is a unified church because we believe God’s desire is for a unified family, and the most feasible way to promote unity is to believe and practice what the Bible says, and to not believe and practice what the Bible doesn’t say. 

We try hard to be firm and consistent on the things the scripture commands, and we try hard not to add expectations for Christian living or church membership the scripture doesn’t. Scripture is our guide, our north star. We try to embrace and live out what the Bible directly teaches and what it models for the people of God; no more, no less. 

Just like our earlier mottos, this doesn’t mean there aren’t good and valuable things we can appropriate from other traditions that may aid in personal discipleship or foster helping the congregation as a whole turn its eyes toward Jesus, but that those things should not become a required aspect of life in the church or a test of fellowship. 

Piousness - properly understood as the pursuit of spiritual seriousness and virtue in heart, mind, deed, and relationships - is a good and desirable thing. Many of us may find that a variety of spiritual disciplines or even just smaller, personal rituals serve to contribute to our walk with the Lord, and that’s all great. 

We may wear cross necklaces as a reminder that we are sinners saved by grace, and that our status as such should affect how we go about our days, the kinds of decisions we make, how we treat people, etc. 

Or we may abstain from alcohol, or listen only to faith-based music, or take an annual spiritual retreat to practice solitude and meditate in prayer and on God’s Word. 

We may wear suits and ties when we preach because it elicits the feeling that what’s about to take place is important; after all, we’re speaking on behalf of God, and a suit and tie may help the speaker and the audience alike rise to the level of the moment. Or we may dress casually, because as far as we know Jesus dressed liked the people he was preaching to, and didn’t change into something more formal before he delivered the Parable of the Prodigal Son or anything else.  

Here’s another example: if you want to practice musical worship without instruments because you believe unaccompanied voices singing in unison enhances the church’s encounter with God, that’s perfectly fine, but don’t then take the step into claiming it is more faithful or the only faithful expression of musical worship. Doing so takes something good and makes it another source of division, rather than unity.

If we are doing these extra things because they enhance our spiritual maturity, that is to be welcomed. But if extra-biblical expressions of faith like these or any number of others become a requirement for inclusion in our church, then we are building walls where God does not. 

A necessary piece of this philosophy is our insistence on the ultimate authority of Scripture. Because we believe that Scripture is the only infallible authority over our doctrine and our behavior, we seek to avoid crafting a worship environment where purely human inventions are perceived to carry similar weight.  

For example, I don’t intend to perform child dedications at MCC going forward. I understand the intention behind them (and believe that intention is good!), but this is not something the New Testament churches practiced, and I believe they can confuse the congregation about what is happening in that event and how it relates to the actual ordinances (baptism and communion). 

When we elevate things - such as child dedications - that are not part of the New Testament’s witness for the Christian gatherings right up alongside things that are - such as communion and baptism - we make it more difficult to distinguish what God expects from our worship and our obedience. 

The church and church leadership does have some level of spiritual authority to execute the ministry of the church, as we believe we are called and empowered by the Spirit to do so. But we are not infallible; we are sinful, mistake-prone, and limited in our knowledge and abilities. Our ability to interpret the scripture accurately is likewise limited, which is another reason not to pile on a bunch of stuff that’s not even in there. Yet, our scriptural interpretative ability is sufficient for understanding and living out what God most wants us to know: how to be justified (saved by the blood of the Son into a reconciled relationship with the Father) and sanctified (guided by the Spirit on the path of continued and increasing holiness). 

As we are limited, our limiting of mandated church beliefs and practices to only what is mandated and modeled in the New Testament is a recognition that we don’t know better than God does, so we shouldn’t be adding or subtracting from what he inspired his biblical writers to instruct and portray. 

Thus, we try to align our worship - our preaching, teaching, and behavioral expectations for ourselves and our church siblings - with Scripture, and we try to avoid coming up with a bunch of rules and expectations that aren’t in there. 

Various denominations and traditions have many valuable spiritual emphases or aesthetic features that serve to encourage and deepen faithfulness, but while those types of extra-biblical approaches or adornment may perhaps contribute to discipleship they should not be a prerequisite for salvation or church membership.

Where Scripture speaks, we speak. Where Scripture is silent, we are silent. 

P.S.
This doesn’t mean Christians/the church can only teach what the Bible explicitly says; that’s a misunderstanding of this motto. On any number of issues - abortion, slavery, racism generally, immigration or tax or gun policy, justifications for war, and plenty of others - Christians must consider the whole narrative of Scripture and use the principles derived from it through wisdom (also considering historical and cultural context, etc.) in order to form a position. This is appropriate for Restoration Movement Christians and everyone else. In fact, discerning what the Bible implies is a necessary factor for faithfulness for all believers. When we say we are “silent when the Bible is silent,” we don’t just mean the literal words on the page, but the meanings those words carry for our lives and our world.

TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.