Orthodox Christian Dogma Cannot Stand Alone. Only Love Can Stand

Today, as we continue to move ever closer to the ecclesial precipice from which we cannot return, I would like to make a sincere plea to all of our better angels before we determine not only Tom Oord’s future in the Church of the Nazarene but our own. The judgment that we make in this “Trial” is a claim on ourselves as well as the person we are making judgment.

Personally, I am here to speak on behalf of my friendship with Tom and to give witness to the truth that Tom embodies “the love that is God” (Bauerschmidt), more than any theologian that I know in the Academy of the Church of the Nazarene. Our friendship began during our teaching ministry at ENC. It was there that Tom earned the affectionate title from his students and colleagues as “the love doctor.” Together, Tom and I have shared with unswerving conviction, the truth that God’s love is the supreme ontological predicate and that the perfect love of God pushes out fear. More than most, Tom exemplifies the courage of love, a tireless flow of creative imagination and theological conviction. Tom has dared to wade into places where God desires to take us, but most are too afraid to go. So here we are, and here I am to help us see, and feel, and yes, to think with the same truth spoken with “the love that is God” (Bauerschmidt) that I believe Tom is fearlessly attempting to say to his cherished Church of the Nazarene.

Here is my prayer for us today. O God, may we listen attentively to the Spirit as we walk and talk together with Christ along the Emmaus Road. With minds and hearts opened wide, with a discerning faith full of the energy of God’s love that never stops growing, and with an imagination and love that echoes the perfect love of God, may we hear the voice of God whisper into our ears the far-off sounds of limitless, vulnerable love that have come up close and near to us. And with God’s voice and presence in our midst to guide us in our discernment, may we find in this holy conversation of listening, that our hearts are beginning to burn again with love from God and one another. May we hear the voice of God whispering gently into our hearts the strange, mysterious sounds of infinite vulnerable love. This is my prayer that our “hearts be strangely warmed” with the Faith of Christ that fills our heart with the energy of love. Amen.

Now, since we are not allowed to address the “alleged” doctrinal heresy upon which “Tom’s Trial” is predicated, I would like to talk briefly about the nature of the church’s faith, which is derived from the Faith of Christ and Christ’s faithfulness for the life of the world. We are here today because of how we have come to understand the Faith of the Church as expressed in our doctrines through Articles of Faith, codes of conduct, and the episcopal polity of the Church of the Nazarene. Specifically, we are here because of how the Manual Statement on “Human Sexuality” is being challenged and interpreted by Tom. And we have been told that all of this is off the table for our personal “witness” and “defense” of Tom Oord in this hearing.

I wish our circumstances were different, but since they are not, it is my sincerest desire to speak in this hearing to the very heart and soul of the faith and faithfulness of Christ that tethers all of us and holds us together in communion, friendship, and fellowship with God. I am appealing to you from a place of prayer where all the Church’s Faith is born; Christ’s “Great High Priestly Prayer” for our unity in the perfect love of God is the very heart of Christ’s Faith that forms and enlivens the Faith of the Church. May the Spirit sanctify us in this truth and prayer of Christ so that union in the perfect Triune love of God becomes the very mission of the Church and the promise of God for all things of creation.

The Faith and faithfulness of Christ comes to us wrapped in the Good News. The Gospel is the coming of God in Christ through the power of the Spirit. This means that faith, true living breathing faith comes to us as grace, as sheer gift, but never as a choice or a rational assent of the will to believe. The essence of the faith of Christ that is freely given to us begins to awaken in us when the Spirit pours the energy of God’s love into our hearts. The Good News of Christ’s faith that is poured into our hearts is that by the faithfulness of Christ alone we belong. We do not believe to belong to God, and we certainly do not believe to be loved by God. We believe because we know through Christ’s faith and faithfulness that we are known and loved by God. This is the Good News for the life of the world.

Perhaps John Wesley’s signature query on the very nature of faith can guide us as you prepare to make your final judgment of Tom in this hearing: “Is your faith filled with the energy of love?” Wesley knew, along with Ancient Christianity that the only faith that saves is simply the Faith of the One who faithfully brings the Good News to the whole world. For God so loves the whole world that God sends the Son in the power of the Spirit. Triune Love is the source of all faith that should guide this hearing regarding Tom’s trial for presumed heresy.

My appeal to this committee is really quite simple. Has the “zeitgeist”—the spirit of this age—captured our hearts and imaginations, our hope of “future glory already begun,” so that we have forgotten that the essence of our faith is the energy of God’s love that tethers us and enlivens us in the deepest of friendship and fellowship with God and one another. We do not belong to each other because we believe in the Creeds and the Articles of Faith. We believe that we belong to each other and God because the love of God has bound us together forever. Let this ‘rule of faith’ be our guide today.

Because the heart and soul of faith is love, surely, we can understand that love will grow and expand and deepen and widen as we exercise our trust, our faith, and our love for one another. “Orthodox Christian Dogma,” as it is confessed in our Creeds and ascribed in our Nazarene Articles of Faith, is not a confession of absolute fixed Truth that can stand alone, because the substance of our Faith is Love. Only Love can stand. “Love alone is credible,” says Balthasar.

In the liturgical confession of the Creeds, the Church only intends to declare that the love of God has encapsulated the Church’s Faith. When our dogmas are used to ‘exclude’ those within the sweep of Triune Love, they presume that Orthodox Christian Dogma can stand alone in the name of Truth. To make Truth stand without Love is “a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” Such a misstep confuses Christ’s living faith that is filled with the energy of love with a closed and finished doctrine that carries the final authority of a finished creed, a fixed code of conduct, or even an overbearing episcopal polity. All these are warning signs that our faith has grown dim and hollow, void of love.

It is “a fallacy of misplaced concreteness” to make Orthodox Christian Dogma a self-contained truth. Our doctrines and dogma could never stand alone as expressions of faith, because unless they are continuously animated and enlivened by the energy of God’s love, they are just dead and empty notions or formulas of faith that function more or less as a substitute for faith in God. The dead faith of the living drives our presumptions of what is true and full of love.

God cannot be contained in our particular doctrines, and most definitely not in our attempt to transform our statement on human sexuality into a doctrine that purports to be the living faith and faithfulness of Christ, just as the infinitely vulnerable love of God could never be “contained” in Scripture, or in a creed, or even in a denomination like the Church of the Nazarene. As faith and love continue to evolve, we must also remain open and humble as we think about this issue, that we have forged into a doctrine that is unchangeable and unalterable for all of eternity.

Rev. Bond, over 35+ years ago, the Church was barely on the other side of the fallout from the “Spirit-Baptism” debate in the Church of the Nazarene. Back then, as the Church was splintering and taking sides between the Holiness Movement and John Wesley, the doctrine of entire sanctification had become a heavy casualty of that debate. There was much to address and even “correct” in the words and perspectives of that doctrine if it was to live on in the Faith of the Church. Consequently, Rev. Bond, your father, at the behest of the BGS put together a committee to discuss, study, pray, research and rewrite the Church’s “distinctive” doctrine on entire sanctification as contained in Article X. I was honored to be invited by your father to serve on that committee.

We worked together for 25+ years to produce a “white paper” that was accepted by the BGS for the Church to affirm at the General Assembly. After three failed attempts, the work from that committee has yet to pass with the faithful “Amen” of the Church. Now, if we follow the false notion that Orthodox Christian Dogma and doctrine can stand alone by the language and formulaic expressions of truth that the Church of the Nazarene claims, then all of those who offered something different from the Manual, including the BGS who approved the revisions of the white paper, then we are standing outside the presumed orthodoxy of the Church of the Nazarene.

Thankfully, the Ancient Church has understood that true and living faith is hardwired for the love of God and neighbor and all things of creation. This requires conversation and space for convictions to be heard and immersed in the warm contagion of fellowship and the unity of the Church catholic. In Christ’s living breathing Body—the Church, faith has never developed evenly or uniformly, and it most definitely does not occur everywhere in the world at the same time or in the same manner.  If time is the opportunity that God gives for the Church to grow in faith and love, then the Church must undoubtedly make that a given as well. Otherwise, the episcopacy of the Church devolves into an ecclesiastical dictatorship.

I remember Dr. Clarence Kinzler, a former district superintendent in California who also served on that committee, telling us that the Church of the Nazarene needed theologians and their scholarship and creative minds to offer their gifts in service to the Church. He assured us that we had plenty of room to work and explore and create faithful ways of faithfulness in our doctrines. Clarence said that as long as we did not have a moral lapse, the Church had plenty of generous space to tolerate and work with our new ways of thinking and exploring faith and faithfulness in growing conversations that listen to one another from the depths of love.

And now, several decades later, we seem to be treating the Manual Statement on “Human Sexuality” as some sort of settled and finished doctrine because it ‘seems’ to be absolutely and conclusively settled in Scripture. It is not! And to make matters worse, we presume to think that a handful of the Church’s overseers of Faith can determine the matter as a closed and settled doctrine. They cannot! This is not how faith works in the Body of Christ. True and living faith grows, develops, and changes unevenly and certainly not uniformly. And remember, doctrine is nothing more than the language of faith. Living faith grows from the ground up, where the people of God live; faith does not originate from the top where the overseers of faith rule. “What is the end/purpose of the episcopal order, but to watch over one another in love,” asks John Wesley. 

When the episcopal order does not wait for or make room for the “Amen” from the members of Christ’s Body, then the episcopacy is no longer serving Christ but its own institutional and denominational goals. Just as there is no coercion in the nature of God, there must be no coercive or dictatorial control of the faith of the people of God. This is what I think is happening right now in our church: we are not listening in love to hear the Spirit’s deepest sighs and groans that are coming from those in the LGBTQIA+ community. We have stopped listening because we are certain that our Manual Statement on “Human Sexuality” is biblically correct and therefore the matter is closed. I am convinced that this way of thinking comes from a place of fear and gatekeeping rather than from a place of generous hospitality and love.

From my deepest theological convictions of faith and love, I do not believe that this matter is anywhere near settled and finished! We have not taken time to let the love of God guide us and help us to listen to those whose lives and sexual orientations fall along a broad spectrum of non-binary. If we will use this means of grace that Wesley called “holy conversation,” we might be surprised by the wooing love of God that draws us closer and deeper into the household of God’s beloved Kin-dom.

What I am calling for is a declared moratorium for 10 to 20 years on these trials that are working from the assumption that this is settled doctrine and finished truth that stands alone and is shored up with all the scaffolding of the Church’s authority and power to push out of the Church those who do not “fit” inside our closed and gated ways of seeing what we presume is finished doctrine and final truth on the matter. We continue to produce ‘white papers’ at the behest of the BGS on salient doctrines that need revision or correction, but we refuse to even entertain honest and transparent conversation around the issues of sexual identity and sexual equality. Clearly, this signals a fear of what we do not understand. Fear is not faith! Why not let the faith that is so full of God’s love push out our fears? Instead, what we have is a fear that pushes out anyone who does not agree with the totalitarian control of the Church’s authoritative rule.

Look, we have had a long practice of listening and learning and conversing about our doctrines in the Church of the Nazarene. We have changed our doctrines over time, and we have even added doctrines to our Articles of Faith. Why are we afraid to have an open and transparent conversation in love about the sexual equality and identity of the LGBTQIA+ people?

When the episcopal overseers of the Church’s Faith say “No” to this long overdue conversation, they assume total agency for the Church. I am inclined to believe that this is an unintended overreach of power and authority, but despite the best of intentions, it is a total failure to understand the nature of the Church’s Faith. When the overseers of the Church’s faith remove the agency of faith and love from the people of God, they snuff out the true and living faith that is filled with the energy of God’s love. Of course, we know that this really cannot happen. The “candle of the Lord” can never be blown out in any of God’s beloved. The Spirit makes good on that promise. The power of the love that is God is the power of resurrection. For the sake of the unity that Jesus has prayed and called the Church into, we must have this conversation now, before there is a “breach of love” that pulls the Church apart.

Finally, in closing, I would like to share what a good friend and colleague who has the ear of the BGS has often said to me: “Why don’t these people just leave if they cannot agree with the doctrines and teachings of the Church of the Nazarene?” You all may be asking yourselves the same question. Now, while I have often found that question offensive and difficult to answer, I have been able to come to a simple and sincere answer as to why we don’t leave. My answer has been born in prayer.

We don’t leave you because, as Valarie Kaur has often said, “You are a part of me that I do not yet fully know.” To be specific, we all share a deeper friendship with God and one another in the koinonia of the Church that is much deeper and more lovely than the differences of our constantly changing convictions of faith that threaten to divide and separate us. We do not leave you because we still love you! With the infinitely vulnerable love that is God, we need to see each other, feel each other, and know each other in love if we are to grow with the faith that is filled with the energy of love that is God. May it be!

And now, in this season of Advent, may the fireflies of our imagination light up the sky to prepare the WAY of Christ’s coming. May we learn to see in the dark by the deep knowing from the Spirit’s inbreathing that we are never alone. We are forever tethered to one another, no exceptions! May our deepest knowing enlarge our faith and fill it with the energy of God’s love so we can see and hope, and dance and, yes, wait in the dark for the coming of New Creation that has already begun and is just over the horizon. May it be. Amen!

K. Steve McCormick