David Scaer: “All Theology is Christology”

In yesterday’s review of David Scaer’s memoirs, I deliberately omitted a significant event from Dr. Scaer’s career. One of Scaer’s colleagues at the seminary accused Dr. Scaer of heresy, objecting that the public statement by Doctor Scaer that “all theology is Christology” denied the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The faculty of the seminary met, considered Scaer’s statement and the charge against him, allowed him to explain the meaning of statement, and cleared Scaer of any heretical statements or beliefs.

An unfortunate legacy of the “battle for the Bible”—in which professors, students, and congregations left the Missouri Synod in protest over the synod’s defense of Biblical inerrancy—was that some professors and students acted as if they had a continuing responsibility to oversee one another, to maintain the purity of the teaching in the synod’s schools, and to drive out any individual who was guilty of teaching false doctrine. Christians should prefer truth to error, of course. When one Christian is in error, his or her fellow Christians should gently correct that Christian, using the Word of God as the standard by which all teachings are judged. A Christian who stubbornly refuses correction and holds to false teachings that contradict the Bible should not be allowed to teach others. But the pursuit and defense of truth must always be done with love for God and love for our neighbors. When the apparatus for correcting error is used as a weapon for personal attacks, the entire Church suffers.

David Scaer earned his doctorate in theology; his colleague had an honorary doctorate from a school in Brazil. David Scaer was a full professor at the seminary and served as academic dean; his colleague was adjunct faculty whose professional career offered the appearance of expertise in Christian stewardship. The walk-out of 1974 left many positions to be filled in the seminary faculties, and not all those called to teach were qualified for their roles. Scaer deals with the event evenhandedly in his memoirs. Students on campus at the time were aware that this colleague envied Scaer’s standing with the students. Because this colleague was unequipped to debate Dr. Scaer in theology (and because this colleague was totally lacking in humor and could not comprehend Scaer’s use of humor) he chose instead to file charges of heresy against Scaer. Under the circumstances, the charges had to be treated seriously.

“All theology is Christology.” Scaer did not intend to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, that the one God is three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead, Scaer was teaching that the Father and the Holy Spirit are known in this world only through Christ. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Anyone who insists that God can be known as Father without acknowledgement of Jesus as the Son of God and the world’s Savior is contradicting the Bible. Likewise, the Holy Spirit bears witness to Jesus as God’s Son and humanity’s Savior. Anyone who claims to be led by the Spirit of God but denies Jesus Christ is being led by another spirit and not by the Holy Spirit.

All theology is Christology. People in this world know the Father and the Spirit only through their knowledge of Jesus Christ and through their faith in Him. No teaching about God the Father and God the Holy Spirit can be understood apart from knowledge of God through Christ. Without Jesus, people in this world have no accurate or reliable information about God.

The effort of Dr. Scaer’s colleague to label Scaer a heretic was one symptom of the malaise that existed on the seminary campus in those years. I mentioned yesterday the student joke about hidden microphones in the salt and pepper shakers of the cafeteria. That bit of humor addressed a grim reality. Students took notes in class, not to learn from their professors, but to report to others what the professors were saying. Casual conversations in dormitory lounges were reported to the Dean of Students. Church issues that extended beyond denominational lines became battle grounds on campus, as labels such as “Pietism,” “Church Growth,” and “Contemporary Worship” could darken the reputation of anyone involved with the school. Seminary President Robert Preus was not personally to blame for the poisonous climate; if anything, he deliberately brought in teachers of varying points of view. Sometimes those teachers became Preus’ most strident opposition. Some of the Church’s most promising thinkers and theologians may have fallen through the cracks at the seminary precisely because of these kinds of confrontations.

Reading Dr. Scaer’s memoirs has brought back many memories, and for that I am not thankful. But I do appreciate Scaer’s instruction, his emphasis on clear thinking and academic excellence in pursuit of serving the Truth and the Church that belongs to Jesus Christ. Spiritual battles are not all cut and dried, with a clear right side and a clear wrong side. They are generally more complicated than that. But when Christ is held at the center, his Light still prevails, and the darkness cannot overcome it. J.










Is it me or is it him?











In other words, this time it’s him. J.


A fascinating conversation took place yesterday on the blog “See, there’s this thing called biology…” by InsanityBytes. (You can read it here.) In summary, IB wrote a splendid essay about the perspective of God, knowing all things, allowing his people to make bad choices and to suffer the consequences of those choices. She described God’s steadfast love, his patience with sinners in a sinful world, and his willingness to remain with us even when we are doing wrong over and over again. In response, a commenter raised the image of two horrific sins and, essentially, asked how a good and all-powerful God can watch such things happen and not intervene to prevent them.

This conversation is a version of a classic theological debate: If God is almighty, good, and loving, then why does he permit evil? Some people conclude that God is not almighty and cannot stop evil from happening, while others conclude that God is not good or loving. Still others use the existence of evil as proof that God does not even exist. One reasonable answer offered by believers is that the existence of evil is actually proof of the existence of God. If some things are right and other things are wrong, then there must be a source of ethics and morality. That source cannot be individual opinion or an agreement by the majority of people, because individual opinions and majority opinions can still be wrong. The Source of ethics and morality must be intelligent and personal, because ethics and morality do not exist apart from intelligence and personality.

Of course some believers pay no attention to reason when they speak about God, and also some unbelievers pay no attention to reason when they speak about God. Each side sometimes uses rhetoric and emotion to defend its position while refusing to consider the evidence for the opposite position. When one side attempts to use reason, the other side often ignores those reasonable statements, determined only to win the argument. Perhaps a Socratic conversation would do more to illustrate what I am describing. In the following dialogue, J is a reasonable Christian defending the propositions that God exists and that he is almighty, good and loving. K is a reasonable unbeliever who doubts the existence of God because of the existence of evil.

J: So you do not believe in God? Tell me about this God you reject, this God in whom you do not believe.

K: I cannot believe in a God who watches as terrible things happen and who does nothing to stop them from happening. I reject a God who has the power to do anything he wants, because that God permits suffering and tragedy and offers no hope to the victims. I refuse to honor a God who watches evil happen every day and never lifts a finger to stop it.

J: I see. I respect you for rejecting such a God. In fact, I don’t believe in that God either.

K: I thought you were a Christian.

J: I am a Christian. I worship and trust in a God who is holy, a God who hates evil, a God who provides for his people…

K: But your God still allows bad things to happen. Either he is not as powerful as you believe, or he is not as good as you believe.

J: How can you know whether or not God limits the power of evil? Who can count the number of times that God has restrained evil, saying, “This far you can go, and no farther”? Not only has God given his Law to the world, he has also threatened judgment on all who do evil.

K: You cannot prove to me that God has limited or prevented evil even once.

J: And you cannot prove to me that God is not constantly limiting evil and preventing greater wickedness than he has allowed. Therefore, we have to set aside the statement that God is doing nothing about evil, since it can be neither proven nor disproven.

K: Still, the fact that evil happens at all casts doubt on the existence of God.

J: Tell me what you would do about evil if you were an almighty God.

K: I would keep it from happening. It’s as simple as that.

J: Would you prevent every sin? Would you stop not only horrific crimes but also petty lies, dishonesty, and general rudeness as well?

K: If I were almighty, I would stop every kind of evil. If I could make a perfect world, then I would make sure it remains perfect.

J: And how would you stop people from doing bad things? When a person first tried to do something that was bad, would you snatch that person out of the world? Or would you impose your will on that person so that he or she was unable to do the bad thing that he or she had planned?

K: Well, snatching the bad people before they do bad things is tempting…

J: In that case, the world would be empty of people, because all of us do bad things every day. You and I would no longer be here to have this conversation.

K: And now you are going to say that making people unable to do bad things is unloving, right?

J: Yes, imposing your will on another intelligent being is unloving. How could anyone be good if no one had any knowledge of evil? When God gives rules, he also gives the ability to break those rules. Otherwise, the rules would have no purpose.

K: I believe it was Leibnitz who said that this is the best of all possible worlds, because if God took away our freedom to do wrong, the world would be less good than it is now. But I can conceive of many ways the world could be better than it is. That must make me wiser than your God.

J: Not necessarily. But we assumed a God who is not only almighty and good, but also loving. If you have ever loved anyone, you know that love makes you vulnerable. When you love, you do not try to control the one you love. Because you love, you give freedom to the one you love. That one can love you back, and can show his or her love in many different ways, or that one can choose not to show you love.

K: So love makes me weak? Perhaps we should become Buddhists and not allow ourselves to love anything or anyone.

J: Love does not make you, or God, weak. But it does make you, and God, vulnerable. Whenever you grant freedom to the one you love, you risk disappointment. But the disappointment of loving and not being loved in return is less than the sorrow of having no one able to love you at all.

K: So in love God permits people to do any bad thing they choose to do?

J: We have already discussed the possibility that God limits evil in the world.

K: Well, if I were an almighty God, I would at least limit evil far more often than your God limits evil.

J: Again, what would you do to the evildoer? Would you just pluck him or her out of the world?

K: If the evil was bad enough, yes I would. At the very least, I would take away all the murderers, those who torture others, the rapists…

J: How will you decide, then, which rules you will enforce and which bad deeds you will allow?

K: Any action that harms another living being will not be tolerated. The bad deeds that have no victims could be allowed.

J: Does that include careless mistakes that harm another living being, or only premeditated evil? And what of the neglect to do good? If one person starves and thousands are guilty of not giving that person food, will you remove all the thousands?

K: Once again you are painting me into the corner where the world is empty because every person has done something that harmed another living being in some way.

J: If we include careless mistakes and neglect to do good, everyone in the world is indeed guilty. But even seemingly petty bad deeds, such as shoplifting a piece of candy or telling a small lie, could be considered harmful to other living beings.

K: Maybe the best thing, then, would be to change the world so that no person can harm another living being. Whenever one person does something that is wrong, that person suffers, but no one else suffers for that bad deed.

J: That is an interesting thought. Consider a world where no one can hurt anyone else. Consider the perfect justice of everyone suffering exactly as he or she deserves, receiving the penalty for his or her bad deeds.

K: That world sounds better than this world.

J: Of course if one person could never hurt another person, then no one could ever help another person.

K: I don’t see how that follows.

J: If my deliberate cruelty, or my carelessness, or my failure to do good things could hurt no one but me, and no one else could be the victim of what I did, then no one would have any problems that he or she did not deserve.

K: Of course.

J: So no one would starve unless he or she deserved to starve, and no one would suffer unless he or she deserved to suffer.

K: Still true.

J: Then how can I do anything to help the hungry if they deserve to be hungry? How can I act to reduce suffering if all those who suffer deserve their suffering?

K: But we would still be able to help the people who deserve our help.

J: But that would be no one. Every single person would be getting exactly what he or she deserves—no more and no less.

K: Justice does tend to work that way.

J: Instead of creating a world of perfect justice, the almighty God created a world where people can hurt each other, but where people can also help each other and do good things for each other. People can be evil, but people also can be good.

K:  But God is not good if he allows people to hurt each other and does nothing to stop them. I know you said maybe he sometimes stops evil, but far too often he does not stop it from happening. Bad people get away with bad deeds all the time.

J: God has promised a Judgment Day when everyone will receive what he or she deserves. God has an eternal prison for those who break his rules and do not care about the harm they have done.

K: That Day has not happened yet, and believing that it will happen has not stopped people from doing bad things today. And your God just sits on his hands and watches, waiting for that Day while people suffer every single day without deserving to suffer.

J: You do agree, though, that it is better to live in a world where people can do good things even if that does make it possible for people to suffer?

K: I suppose so. I don’t see how that gets your God off the hook, though.

J: Suppose that, instead of sitting on his hands, God decides to come down and get involved in this world of suffering. Suppose that he even decides to find out how it feels to suffer.

K: I don’t see how that would make any difference.

J: That’s because you are not thinking about the way that people can help each other in this world. Because God became a victim of evil, he is able to rescue the victims of evil. Because he suffered, he is able to help those who are suffering.

K: I don’t see any evidence that such a thing has happened.

J: Surely at some point you have heard about Jesus giving his life on the cross.

K: I thought that was done to forgive sins. I don’t see any rescue happening on that cross. It helps the criminals but not the victims of the crimes.

J: Jesus suffered and died to take the penalty for every sin, every bad deed, even every careless deed and every sinful inaction. Being God, he was able to pay once for all the bad deeds of history. Now, because Jesus took that penalty, no one deserves to suffer. Every person has been rescued from receiving what he or she deserves, and instead every person can receive the rewards that Jesus earned by obeying all the rules.

K: If that is supposed to bring an end to suffering, why are people still suffering?

J: We have not yet reached the Day when the final results of what Jesus accomplished are revealed. From that Day on, this world will be perfect, and no one will suffer. But now God is patiently waiting for that Day.

K: And why is he waiting?

J: He is waiting for more people to find out what Jesus did for them and take the benefits of his sacrifice. He is waiting for more believers to enter his kingdom and be set free from all suffering. In a sense, he is waiting for you.

K: Waiting for me to do what?

J: Waiting for you to acknowledge his victory over evil and to trust his promises. Waiting for you to stop resisting his kindness and to start celebrating your place in his victory.

K: And God lets other people suffer while he waits for me?

J: It’s a bit more complicated than that. He calls on his people in this world to resist evil, to stop doing bad things and to oppose those who do bad deeds. The actions of his people to make the world better are part of God’s victory over evil. Sharing the good news of his promises is also part of his victory.

K: Well, God is going to have to wait a little longer. I still cannot accept the evil he allows to happen in this world.

J: I hope you are right that it will be only “a little longer.” God has not only tolerated the bad deeds of other people. He has tolerated every bad deed you have ever done as well. Jesus paid to redeem you, and God wants to include you in his victory. He knows that you hate evil, and he hates evil too. But he is willing to tolerate the existence of evil, defeated as it is, for a little longer so he can increase the joy of his eternal victory celebration with more redeemed sinners gathered into the fold.


Soren Kierkegaard










