When the Resident Expert Fails

Recently, my father retired after 36 years of full-time ministry, and I have been asking him a series of questions designed to get him thinking about his tenure in the United Methodist Church. One of the things that he said in the process of this discussion was that a pastor needs to realize that he or she will be looked upon as the resident expert for the congregation on issues of theology, biblical studies, and everything else that stems from them. In other words, the pastor enjoys a great privilege and responsibility—effectively explaining the Bible and telling the congregation why it matters.

Andy Stanley stirred up a hornet’s nest earlier this year with a sermon on Acts 15. In that sermon, he sought to explain the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, among other things. However, in doing so, he said some things that many people described as heretical. On October 19, Stanley published a short article in Christianity Today that revisited many of those controversial claims. So, let's look at them for just a second. Admittedly, they are not as inflammatory, but they are still really frustrating.  

Presented as a response to Robert Foster’s review of his book Irresistible, Stanley spends most of his time responding to one of three points raised by Foster, namely that the Old Testament can provide a foundation for Christian moral conduct. According to Stanley, Christian can “take cues from the New Testament writers” on how to use the Old Testament. We just shouldn't conclude that the “Old Testament law directly applies to Christians today” (emphasis mine). For example, Stanley questions if we should stone rebellious children or prohibit interracial marriage.

So, based on this, it seems that when Stanley uses the descriptor “directly” he means an exact parallel of application, as if a set of legal traditions developed in an ancient Near Eastern culture over 3500 years can simplistically be dropped into a 21^st century American context. This seems to be something of a straw-man as very few people would argue such a scenario. Nevertheless, his rationale for pushing back against Foster is stated as follows. “The old covenant has been fulfilled and ended and a new and better way of relating to God is now available to us.”

Stanley then teases out this further by discussing the three-fold division of the Old Testament law. According to Stanley, the ceremonial laws ended with the death of Jesus, and the civil laws are no longer to be enforced as they were originally given to the nation of ancient Israel. When it comes to the moral laws, they “have not changed, they have transformed into something new. They are reset upon a new and better foundation, Jesus Christ.”

I don’t like the three-fold division invoked in many circles when it comes to the Old Testament law. Indeed, such a division goes back to the Medieval Ages, at least to Thomas Aquinas, and there is evidence that some of the Early Church Fathers spoke of "divisions" or "categories" within the law. So, there is precedent for Stanley's position. 

However, such "divisions" or "categories," or whatever you want to call them, are foreign to the way the ancient Israelites would have perceived the Old Testament law. For example, if we were to discuss the Old Testament law with an ancient Israelite priest and ask them for their opinions about the civil, ceremonial, and moral laws, they would likely develop a squirrely look on their faces and say something like, "Divisions? We have Torah...just Torah." This means that such a three-fold division requires that we simplify a very complex concept in a way that may be heuristically helpful but is a foreign concept and eventually misses the mark. And I would go a step further and say it ultimately does more harm than good. 

But what is most problematic about Stanley’s comments is the subordination of the Old Testament to the New Testament. Consider this quote. “We need to stop mixing the old with the new, because God has given us something better in Jesus Christ and his new command” (emphasis mine). The reality is that any subordination of the Old Testament under the New Testament is extremely problematic as it paves the way for heretical notions. Instead, as Brent Strawn has argued, the Church needs to talk about the “bothness” of Scripture (The Old Testament is Dying [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017]. It’s both the Old and New Testaments, with no subordination--period! Stanley misses this.  

I want to give Stanley the benefit of the doubt. I really do! But he makes it really hard. He says that he’s committed to the authority of the Old Testament while also making it fairly obvious that he doesn't believe that it’s on the same level as the New Testament. For example, consider one of his closing statements from this short article. “So, while I believe there is much to learn from studying and preaching on the Old Testament, we must now take our cue from the promises fulfilled in Jesus—the new.” 

Come on!

Stanley is saying things in which some of the great heresies of Christianity are rooted! And it’s this reality that really frustrates me. As the “resident expert” for his congregation in matters of theology and the Bible, he should know the problems with how he’s articulating things. But of course, here's the irony in all this. Stanley prides himself on his ability to clearly communicate the Gospel. Unfortunately, with every statement on this issue, at least in recent memory, he’s creating a clearer path that contributes to the death of the Old Testament.