Interview 40: How Much Does Truth Matter? (Chuck Whitlock)

Restitutio

How much does truth matter to you? In particular, how should we think about Christians who hold very different views on key subjects? For example, I’m a biblical unitarian, someone who believes that we should take Jesus literally when he called his Father “the only true God.” Of course I believe Jesus is God’s only begotten son, the anointed Messiah who died for our sins, but I don’t affirm the fourth century doctrine of the Trinity. Some Christians would call me a heretic beyond the pale of fellowship or even salvation (even if I do believe the gospel message with all my heart). Others would say I’m deceived but would have no problem working together in various areas. Chuck Whitlock, a bible student, husband, and father of five has been wrestling with precisely these questions over the last 5 or so years. Having grown up in strong evangelical denominations his whole life, he had to rethink his relationship with mainstream Christianity when he began changing several of his key beliefs. In this interview, we discuss various ways to think about this issue, based on Whitlock’s paper (see below). He steaks out a balanced position between writing everyone off who disagrees with him and accepting everyone as brothers and sisters without regard for their beliefs.

—— Links ——

• Read Chuck Whitlock’s entire paper below
• Email him at [e-mail]
• Check out his blacksmith forges
• For Dale Tuggy’s presentation on John Locke’s minimalist definition of Christians based on the simple confession that Jesus is Messiah, see Heretic! Four Approaches to Dropping H-Bombs
• For more on biblical unitarianism, check out these podcasts, especially Podcast 44: The Immutable Shema as well as christianmonotheism.com
• More info about KingdomFest (Sep 7-9, 2018)
• Intro music: Jazzy Frenchy by bensound.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Does Truth Matter?

Truth matters!

… but how much?

Introduction:

There is a significant distance between the Biblical Unitarian faith and ‘orthodoxy’ in its various forms.

If you haven’t come to this conclusion, just try to advance the idea that Jesus is not God and see what kind of reception this gets:) Even less divisive topics, such as resurrection or the gospel of the kingdom, meet with great opposition.

The apparent incompatibility between Biblical Unitarianism and ‘orthodoxy’ causes one to wonder what it means that other Christians don’t seem to be interested in the truths we’ve discovered.

Both parties reference the same book and so there is something very familiar in ‘orthodoxy’.

A little scholarship shows us how ‘orthodoxy’ represents the Hellenization of the original Jewish Christian faith. Most of the terms and characters are retained but the meanings are either co-opted or obscured such that, today, in very real terms, they have a different Jesus, a different God, and a different Gospel.

How much does that matter?

What does it mean?

Who is saved?:

I recognize that this bumps into the impossible question of who is truly saved. That s