{"id":5981,"date":"2016-01-19T12:53:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T18:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5981"},"modified":"2016-03-09T10:47:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T16:47:23","slug":"wheaton-college-wondering-about-doctrinal-statements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5981","title":{"rendered":"WHEATON COLLEGE: WONDERING ABOUT DOCTRINAL STATEMENTS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In early December of last year I had the good fortune to speak at Wheaton College.\u00a0 The invitation to do so came from my friend, Vince Bacote.\u00a0 Vince teaches there and heads up the Center for Applied Ethics.\u00a0 It was one of those ideal teaching trips: terrific students, wonderful time catching up with Vince, great accommodations, and ample down time to explore what the area has to offer.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>About a week after I got back home the brouhaha broke over the Facebook comments posted by Professor Larycia Hawkins of Wheaton College, especially these: \u201cI stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Like all who teach at Wheaton College, Professor Hawkins signed the statement of faith.\u00a0 Here is Wheaton\u2019s statement of faith with respect to monotheism:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three\u00a0 persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life; and we believe that God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing by His spoken word, and for His own glory.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The issue at hand is what implications flow from that statement of faith.\u00a0 In what way(s), if any, is the Christian God the <i>same<\/i> as the Muslim God?\u00a0 Much ink has been spilled parsing the word \u201csame.\u201d\u00a0 For the record, I side with the reflections Scot offered here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2015\/12\/16\/the-same-god-12\/\">http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2015\/12\/16\/the-same-god-12\/<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This debate got me thinking afresh about doctrinal statements.\u00a0\u00a0 I taught for four years at a classical, Christian school.\u00a0 In their statement of faith mention was made that the Holy Spirit is integral to salvation.\u00a0 As the school expanded new teachers signed the statement of faith, but had no idea what the decidedly Calvinist drafters <i>meant<\/i> by it.\u00a0\u00a0 The drafters of the statement believed the Holy Spirit could not be resisted, <i>a particular doctrinal implication<\/i> they thought was crystal clear from what they had written.\u00a0 To say the least, others disagreed!\u00a0 Which brings me back to Wheaton College.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Perhaps it would be wise to unpack a few significant implications which are understood by the drafters to inhere in church and school doctrinal statements.\u00a0 It would not have to be terribly long.\u00a0 Further clarification in adding a few \u201cWhat we mean by this is\u2026\u201d seems like it would prevent some of the controversies we now see being played out at Wheaton College.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Since it seems likely that Wheaton\u2019s current challenges will not be unique among Christian institutions, others may also need to consider adding a few lines of clarification to their doctrinal statements.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In early December of last year I had the good fortune to speak at Wheaton College.\u00a0 The invitation to do so came from my friend, Vince Bacote.\u00a0 Vince teaches there and heads up the Center for Applied Ethics.\u00a0 It was one of those ideal teaching trips: terrific students, wonderful time catching up with Vince, great [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,122,73,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-controversy","category-islam","category-theology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5981"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6079,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981\/revisions\/6079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}