Not according to the people at the school, no. From their point of view us Papists (of which the Pope is kind of first and foremost) will not be burned at the stake because it’s kind of illegal, but we’re definitely going to Hell.
I haven’t seen anything come out yet about what Wheaton College’s specific theological policies were at the time she started working there, or what degree of variance from those policies was considered acceptable, if any (or whether her opinions may have evolved over the twelve years she has been working there). I am guessing that may come out as the story develops.
And for that matter, I’m not seeing anything in their Statement of Faith as it exists now which says anything about how Christians should treat non-Christians. I do see some bits which would potentially conflict with Dr. Hawkins’ statements about evolution, but so far that’s not what the college is complaining about.
Sure. And I think it was wrong of the college to treat her as they have. That’s my whole point.
And I acknowledge that there may well not end up being anything illegal about it; it just stinks that apparently one can’t work at Wheaton College even as a person of conscience (not even a person working in an inherently theological field) with slightly different Christian beliefs. At least not if one wants to be honest about one’s opinions.
I suspect that she will land on her feet working elsewhere, which is probably better for her in the long run. Whether that is by her own choice or the College’s choice remains to be seen.
Both examples I gave are similar in the sense that it didn’t even matter whether the employee’s role was inherently religious; because the organization where they worked was religiously affiliated, it was not required to abide by employment laws that would have applied in any other organization. The nexus between the employee’s theological position and the organization’s mission was even weaker, and yet in both cases the employer was allowed to behave in a way that would not be legal in another setting.
Seriously, are you a Christian? If so, what denomination? Because I thought that if Christians agreed on anything, it is that the God of the New Testament is the same God as in the Hebrew Bible. Yes, they think that Jews don’t understand him as well, but it’s still the same God. Certainly Jesus thought so.
ETA: Curiously, they also think that Jews, who have been studying the Hebrew Bible for thousands of years, do not interpret it correctly. But I think that even you would concede that it’s the same book (although the order of the books is typically different).
Why the extra “h”?
he is jewish.
Well then, I can understand why he thinks that Christians have distorted the God and the message of the Hebrew Bible to an amazing extent, but he is nevertheless wrong if he thinks that a significant percentage of Christians think it is not the same God.
He’s not their kind of Christian. Their “Statement of Faith,” speaks of inerrant Scripture, fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority. The Pope’s very existence as the representative of an organization that claims both Holy Tradition and Scripture are of valid weight in discerning the will of God, and claims to be able to act in the person of Christ when hearing confessions of the faithful, for example, are at odds with their view of Christianity.
This is a surprise to you? This is the first you’re hearing of a theological division in the Christian world between Protestants and Roman Catholics?
They should.
Obviously as a Roman Catholic myself, I believe that Wheaton’s faith in their version of Christian truths is flawed. But I also believe it’s their absolute right to start and run a college in which the faculty presents only their version of their faith. That right is fundamentally tied to our country’s notions of freedom of association and freedom of religious practice. The professor is of course equally free to hold and speak dissenting views – but not free to do so while remain a professor at the college.
Believe away.
But I believe a greater moral wrong would ensue if you told the college that academic freedom was a legal requirement for them to observe, and observing it required them to allow faculty to contradict their version of faith. It would be equally morally wrong to require a yeshiva to continue to employ a professor who began telling his students that Christ was the Messiah, or a Catholic seminary to retain an instructor who taught that Mary was as sinful as the rest of humanity, or a Mormon college instructor who repudiated the claim that Lehi and Zoram traveled to North America in ancient times and were the ancestors of the Lamanites and the Nephites.
I think his point is that Jews do not consider Jesus deity.
The focus of my point was not the reverence accorded to Abraham but to the creation of the covenant with the Israelites.
True, but how is that relevant to the current beliefs of Wheaton?
Nonetheless, wouldn’t you agree that Wheaton and the Pope both worship the same God? One of them is mistaken about how God acts.
In the same way, Dr. Hawkins is correct that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all worship the same God. They disagree about some of His attributes and actions, but it’s the same God. One or more of those religions is wrong about what they teach and believe. Being mistaken about something doesn’t prove that you are talking about something else.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, Bricker agrees that they worship the same God.
But the people from Wheaton do not.
I understand that, but I believe the position of Wheaton is logically invalid, for reasons mentioned.
Regards,
Shodan
Eh? Which non-ancestral hominins are you suggesting left Acheulean tools at Sterkfontein? There’s definitely H. ergaster* and H. habilis** fossils in the Sterkfontein caves (specifically Swartkrans), in addition to the Australopithecines like A. africanus (which is not that controversial as being in the direct human line, unless your surname is Leakey :D) And that’s without touching the controversial ones like Curnoe’s catchall H. gautengenis and Berger’s H. naledi. You may have heard of that last one, caused quite a stir fairly recently?
- Or H. erectus, depending on where you stand in that debate.
** See *
True. Case in point - I’ve personally known a lot more Muslim Ibrahims (at least 8) than I have Christian Abrahams (1) but the majority of my acquaintances have always been Christian, not Muslim
Well, yes, but we’re talking (with all due respect to people of faith) about differing beliefs about an invisible super-man in the sky. Logic doesn’t really come into it. I think Wheaton is being silly about this; surely even the most dogmatic religious institution should be able to tolerate some dissent, and it’s not as though she said this in class. Nonetheless, they are legally entitled to fire this professor and that’s an end of it.
Consider it an object lesson for any student who was considering Wheaton on solely academic grounds.
She made a public pronouncement about it, as a faculty member at Wheaton. Saying something in public that is theologically at odds with the official beliefs of the institution you represent is a lot worse than saying something in class.
That said, it’s still not clear to me that anything she said was actually inconsistent with evangelical Christianity, let alone “mere Christianity,” and she may not have thought so either at the time she said it.
Prior to this incident, the association I had with Wheaton college was that it’s sort of a U.S. center for studies of C.S. Lewis (and other famous British Christian authors, some of whom were Catholic): the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton
(Among other things, C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe resides there.) Which made it a bit surprising to me that they would be so insular and draconian in their reaction to statements that don’t seem particularly problematic to many Christians.
Although the other association I had with Wheaton college was the line “Suspension’s the buzz out at Wheaton,” from the classic Swirling Eddies song “Hide the Beer, The Pastor’s Here.”
C.S. Lewis attended my boarding school. There was a library window he reputedly used to sit at and brood for hours, and I once vomited at that very window after having bad fish at lunch. True story.
It is indisputable that Muslims and Jews worship the same God. Both faiths attribute the same traits to the Deity, and members of both faiths acknowledge this fact. Their only point of disagreement is on the precise list of prophets of that God.
Christians consider themselves to worship the same God as Jews do. If one accepts that premise, then, Christians also worship the same God as Muslims do.
Now, a Christian will doubtless claim that the Muslim understanding of that God’s nature is in some sense wrong or at least incomplete. But a Christian will say the exact same thing about a Jew’s understanding. To say that the Muslim understanding of God is sufficiently different to constitute being “a different god” is equivalent to saying the same thing of the Jewish god.
What this college is saying is that the god they worship is not the God of Abraham.