Christian Living

The First Amendment is part of what is known as the Bill of Rights, the set of ten amendments which were added to the Constitution as a means to assuage the fears of the Anti-Federalists that the proposed new government did not adequately protect individual liberty and state sovereignty. The Religion Clauses sustained a number of draft revisions before the final version was ratified: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

No shortage of controversy has ensued over the precise meaning of these dual clauses, whether the disagreement is over the original meaning of the text, the Founding Fathers’ own divergent views of the relationship between church and state, or modern SCOTUS interpretation. For the present purposes, we will (1) briefly consider some of the major ideological currents which converged at the Constitutional Convention and together informed and shaped the religion clauses; (2) trace the Court’s evolving application of the disestablishment clause, particularly from 1947 to present; (3) trace the development and perhaps retrograded application of the free exercise clause from 1879 to the present; (4) examine the 2004 Locke v Davey case as a looking glass into the current interpretive model whereby the Court has essentially embraced a standard of neutrality and federalism. 

John’s gospel is constructed around a series of signs – seven in particular – that he masterfully employs to prove that Jesus is the Eternal Word who was from the beginning with God and was God, who was now made flesh and dwelt among us. The entire flow of John’s gospel is focused on a series of narratives exhorting the reader to come to a firm conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This exhortation to believe is, subsequently, accompanied by a promise: all who come to believe in earnest that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, by believing, receive eternal life in His name. Accordingly, it would help to remember as well these words from chapter 1 where we are introduced to the major themes that John unfolds over the next 20 chapters. In 1:11-13 we read:

He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 

From these words we could distill this core idea: all who believed in His name were born of God, that is, they received eternal life in His name “as a result of” their faith. But there is another idea here that is equally fundamental to John’s purpose, to Christian theology, and to our practical understanding even today. All who believed in His name were born of God, but that is a passive reality: “they were born.” The Author of our spiritual birth is not us but Christ – the One who gives us the right to become a child of God. This much then is elementary to our Christian understanding: there is but one way to eternal life: faith in Christ the Son of God. 

But our understanding of eternal life must include the fact that such life is granted by the Son of God. It is not something we achieve; it is something we receive. It is not something we work for; it is something already accomplished for us. Jesus alone is the one who gives eternal life. As He said in John 5:21: “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will.”

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try.