GA Bible study grounds salvation in human effort An analysis by Robert P. Mills and Paula R. Kincaid The Layman Online Monday, September 24, 2001 A Bible study prepared for the Louisville General Assembly and intended for use by congregations following the assembly has changed the basis of human salvation from election by a loving God to the amount of effort individuals expend loving others. The author of Rooted and Grounded in Love: A Bible Study for the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) insists that the only criterion God will use in judging human beings is the amount of work they have done loving the "least ones." Neither loving God directly or loving God by obeying his commandments is ever mentioned. If Presbyterians use this Bible study, and if they accept author Dr. Eung Chun Park's unorthodox interpretations of Scripture, there is no reason for them to retain G-6.0106b, the fidelity/chastity ordination standard of the PCUSA's Book of Order. Although Park, an associate professor of New Testament at San Francisco Theological Seminary, never mentions the constitutional standard, from his theological perspective the assembly's call for presbyteries to delete the behavioral standard from the constitution makes perfect sense. Copies of Rooted and Grounded in Love: a Bible Study for the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), were available at the assembly for commissioners and visitors. Mercy more important than written law The first of the study's eight sessions, "Touching the untouchable: Jesus' act of love in healing," is based on Mark 1:40-45. It explores the meaning of Jesus touching the leper in spite of the "cultural and religious norms at that time and its ramifications for our ways of thinking." Park notes that Jesus touched the leper before he spoke the words of healing. "In other words, Jesus deliberately touches the leper prior to his healing, that is, while he is still a leper, an impure person who is regarded as contagious. This act is certainly against the Purity Law …" Curiously, the "Purity Law" that Park cites, Leviticus 13:45-46, does not forbid touching a person who has a leprous disease. Nevertheless, Park continues, the implications are significant. Jesus "does not simply rebuff the Purity Law … but at the same time he does not take its validity for granted just because it is written in the Book of the Torah. … For Jesus, having mercy in emulation of the mercy of God is much more important than meticulously observing written regulations." In this way, Park separates the Spirit of God, which motivated Jesus' action, from the written Word of God, a schism that proves foundational to his method throughout the study. The story in Mark 2:23-28 where the disciples "began to pluck heads of grain on a Sabbath day," and thereby broke the Sabbath Law, is used to make the same point. "Here again, what is important to Jesus is not how scrupulously one observes the written law but how one genuinely becomes merciful to others." While the first session doesn't mention the condemnation of homosexual acts in Leviticus and Romans, logically the same exegetical standards would apply: any of God's written commandments may be violated in the name of "mercy." Similarly, the study does not address the issue of adultery, let alone the story of the woman caught in adultery, whom Jesus told, "Go and sin no more." Accepted just as he is In session two, "Just the way He was: God's accepting grace," Parks explores the last three parables of Luke 15. "These parables are meant to be illustrative of what Jesus thinks God would do when sinners come to God, reflecting an essential part of Jesus' theology," Park writes. The parables, says Park, are told on behalf of the tax collectors and sinners, whom Jesus befriended. "He welcomes them and has table fellowship with them. Unlike John the Baptist in an earlier chapter (Luke 3:7-17), who sternly charged the tax collectors and sinners to repent, Jesus became their friend." In this way, Park not-so-subtly suggests that genuine friendship as incompatible with any requirement of repentance. From this perspective, Jesus could not be considered "the friend of sinners" if he also insisted that sinners repent of their sins. The effect is to put a Biblical veneer over the clichéd pro-gay argument, "If you don't accept my sexual behavior, you don't really love me." Following this rationale, Park says the focus of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is on the "father, who shows the same forgiving love toward both his sons. His love is not contingent upon their behavior. It is not even conditional on their repentance. As paradoxical as it sounds, the forgiveness and acceptance come first and then repentance is to follow. That is what unconditional love means." Park concludes the session, "This story highlights the undiscriminating love of God. God accepts sinners just as they are, even before they repent and change. God loves them regardless of who they are and what they have done. It is interesting to notice the parallel between what the father does in this passage and what Jesus did in the healing narrative in our previous session. Just as Jesus' touching of the leper precedes his healing, the forgiving love of the father precedes the repentance of his once lost son. In each case, the lost one is accepted just the way he is." While Park correctly observes that God's love for us precedes our repenting of our sins, again he implies that requiring repentance is ultimately incompatible with showing love. This conclusion is wholly at odds with nature and character of God as displayed in both the Old and New Testaments, which show that while God's love is freely bestowed and utterly unmerited, acceptance of that love is demonstrated by repenting of and refraining from behaviors God forbids. Greatest commandment: love others "The second is likewise: The greatest commandment," is the title of session three, based on Matthew 22:34-40. Park writes, "Jesus seems to say, 'To love God is the first and greatest commandment and to love people around you is the second most important one,' implying that there is a hierarchical order of importance between the two. A closer reading of the text, however, will tell us otherwise." (emphasis added) Park then looks at the Greek adjective, homoia, in Matthew 22:39, which he says is usually translated "like it." One possible connotation of the Greek, which Park idiosyncratically finds "highly plausible in this verse," is that it may be interpreted to mean "equal in rank" or "equal in importance." "In that sense the theological meaning of verse 39a is that the commandment to love other people is equal to the commandment to love God," Park opines. Following his novel exegesis, he concludes, "the answer given by Jesus amounts to declaring that one loves God by loving others." Among other questionable interpretive practices, here Park evidences the modern liberal tendency to replace the transcendent with the immanent. While he does not say so explicitly, his implication is that human beings cannot express affection for and devotion to God directly. From this unstated assumption, Park proceeds to adopt a work's righteousness approach, where loving others is the only means of earning God's eternal favor. In discussing verse 40, "on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets," Park writes, "In Biblical interpretation it would mean that the two commandments are the ultimate end as well as the hermeneutical key to the entire Bible. All Biblical materials are there to serve the two ultimate goals of loving God and loving others. And, no Biblical interpretation is valid that undermines either of the two." Park says that the attitude of Jesus toward the Torah in the gospels should be viewed from this angle. By looking at the stories of Jesus touching the leper, and the disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath, from the angle of this session, Park says "what Jesus does in these cases is to fulfill the ultimate goal of the Torah, that is, loving God and loving others, even though it may mean having to break individual commandments of the Torah if they run contrary to those greatest commandments." However, this conclusion violates Park's own rule of Biblical interpretation. He clearly sets aside the written Word of God when it conflicts with what he describes as "the two ultimate goals of loving God and loving others." And yet, where did Park derive these two ultimate goals? From the written Word of God! Indeed, the very examples Park cites comes to us in written form, from the very Bible which Park says we may disobey in order to fulfill God's intent. But if we learn God's intent from reading Scripture, yet may, indeed must, disobey the written word as occasion demands, what criteria do we use for deciding which portions of Scripture to disobey and when? The answer, again never said out loud, is that we must leave such decisions in the hands of professors such as Park. This is hardly a new suggestion. Both John and Paul dealt with similar attitudes in the churches they oversaw. This notion of a superior belief, one reached apart from Scripture, was known as "Gnosticism." And it remains a potent force within the PCUSA today. The new commandment "The new commandment: In the Johannine community" is Park's topic in session four. Although he never identifies the members of this community (were they a single congregation, a cluster of churches, a small band of disciples?) Park is critical of the community because it "seems to believe that they have a special knowledge of the truth especially about Jesus as the preexisting logos, who is the only begotten son of God." As evidence Park cites John 1:1-3; 1:18 and 3:16. Because of what he terms "this uniquely 'high Christology,'" Park alleges that "the insiders of the Johannine community would have a sense of superiority vis-à-vis other branches of early Christianity, let alone the world." Park goes on to posit that such passages of Scripture "engendered, at least for some, an extreme interpretation of the nature of Christ that acknowledges only the divinity of Jesus and denying his humanity." This in turn caused a split in the community, led by "those usually called the 'sessionists'" (sic). "It is tragic," Park writes, "that the distinct Johannine community was split into two due to a theological difference and that reconciliation between the two groups was never even attempted." Here again is the undertone that theology is the enemy of Christian unity. The subtext is that if Christians would simply accept every possible interpretation of Jesus' life and work, we would all be just one big, happy family. That those unwilling to accept that every belief about Jesus as equally valid would find themselves excluded from Park's community is a fact Park leaves unaddressed. Superior knowledge did more harm than good Park's gnostic approach to Scripture in session three is particularly noteworthy in light of session five, "Knowledge or love: Problem of idol meat in Corinth," which presents what Park calls a "concrete example of a problem caused by those who claimed superior theological knowledge … later we notice that this superior knowledge did more harm than good." The session is based on I Cor. 8:1-13, where Paul deals with the issue of whether believers in Corinth should eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. "What matters most to Paul," writes Park, "is not discerning the correct theological knowledge, but how they could build up a Christian community in which all members love and respect each other in spite of their differences of opinion." He says that "No one is able to claim any real knowledge about God or God's will. Therefore, we should never judge others according to our putative knowledge about God's will, as if we really knew it." This stunning statement comes halfway through a series of studies based on Park's assertion that it is God's will for us to love other people. "The ultimate criterion for true Christian life is not the correctness of the cognitive knowledge one possesses, whether it is creedal, dogmatic, theological, or of whatever kind, but how one lives one's life in loving relationship with others before God." It is worth noting the contradiction that Park's "ultimate criterion" is an expression of our "cognitive knowledge" of God's will, which he says we cannot really know. Moreover, by his own criterion, the cognitive knowledge that we earn God's favor by loving others is precisely the type of theological affirmation that Park claims to be divisive to the body of Christ. Yet he proceeds undeterred. Love determines one's salvation Session six, "The only thing that counts: Faith being worked out through love," is based on Gal. 5:6. Here Park applies his flawed practices of Biblical interpretation and theological method to the Biblical doctrine of salvation. To establish his conclusion that salvation is not God's gift but the product of human effort, Park backtracks to Gal. 2:16, saying of the verse, "First, what Paul denies here as a means of justification is not work per se but the 'works of the law,' which refers to observing the commandments of the Torah. … That is, Paul has no intention to imply that 'work' in and of itself is necessarily incompatible with 'faith' as the basis of justification in his soteriology." Park then goes on to discuss the Greek word pistis, which he says can mean "faith" in the sense of "belief" or "conviction," or it can mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity." So, in Park's opinion, when Paul said that salvation is by pistis alone, what he meant was "Faith/faithfulness which is being constantly worked out through love. … Therefore if salvation is by faith/faithfulness alone, it is again love that really determines one's status vis-à-vis salvation." The session concludes by stating, "For Paul, as well as for Hillel and Jesus, those who love others fulfill the Torah and they are justified because their works of love will authenticate their faith-faithfulness before God. Love matters in Paul's theology of justification." Nothing could be farther from Paul's understanding of God's grace than Park's assertion that human beings ultimately are justified before God because of their works. Here again Park is in conflict with his own previous assertions. Whereas in session two he asserted that God's love for us precedes (indeed eliminates the need for) any action on our part, notably repentance, now he insists that ultimately God's love for us is contingent upon our love for others. Only criterion for judgment: love others In session seven, "Truly I tell you … The only thing that matters," Park claims "Love for others is singled out as the only criterion for judgment." The session is based on Matthew 25:31-46, known as the Parable of the Last Judgment. Park says it is remarkable that in this scene of final judgment "there is no individual question-and-answer session for anybody. This issue of one's religious allegiance is not even mentioned. No test is given for individuals regarding their dogmatic correctness. The judge does not count the numbers of the commandments that individuals have observed and those that they have transgressed …" In this particular passage, Park claims that those Jesus calls "righteous," are not called that on the grounds of observing the entire Torah, or even by believing in Jesus. "They are called 'righteous' because they loved and served the 'least' ones." Here Park advocates religious pluralism, the belief that all religious beliefs are equally valid. In plucking this parable out of its gospel context, Park conveniently ignores the consistent teaching of the New Testament that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone, and that faith is itself God's gift. Insisting that we earn our salvation by our own good works, Park writes, "the ultimate criterion for the entry into the kingdom of God is made almost deceptively simple. It is whether or not one has loved and served the 'least' ones in their needs and sufferings." Park's definition of the "least ones:" is those who are "literally at the margins of the society, who are regarded as least significant." Park says that anyone can love others without being "consciously religious. Maybe love is genuine when it is not imposed as a religious dogma." Building on session six, this session further emphasizes Park's assessment that the life and work of Jesus have no bearing on human salvation. Again, all that matters is the work that we have done in our own strength, a work that Park gnostically divines as love for those he classifies as the "least ones." Abandon theology to maintain unity In the concluding session, Park makes his case for Christian unity: "for us, it may mean, among other things, giving up some of our strong theological positions in deference to others, if it serves to maintain the unity of the church." One can only wonder if, in deference to others and to maintain unity, Park would be willing to give up his "strong theological position" that everyone else needs to abandon their own strong theological positions in favor of his. If not, such stubborn refusal would seem to uncut the moral authority of his new commandment. Finally, Park concludes, "The commandment to love others is lifted up by Jesus as the greatest commandment that summarizes all the other commandments in the Bible and supercedes them all. It is in that sense that the last parable of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew declares that the only thing that will matter at the last judgment is whether or not one has loved and served the least ones." Once again, Park contradicts his earlier assertions. While he previously claimed that the commandments to love God and neighbor were "equal in rank," now he abandons that conclusion in favor of a simple reversal of their order. It is a fitting summary to a series of studies that reverses much of God's self-revelation. Not a Bible study but a case study Park's study comprises a mass of contradictions in both method and content. He insists that we can not know God or his will and that it is God's will for us to love the least ones. He dismisses obedience to God's commandments as insignificant yet insists that we obey God's command to love our neighbors as ourselves. Although he says that God loves us without requiring us to repent, he also insists that if we do not show love for our neighbors God will exclude us from his kingdom, hardly a loving act. Rooted and Grounded in Love should be read by all Presbyterians, not as a Bible study but as a case study. Much like 1993's infamous ReImagining conference, this single work, by someone now training the next generation of PCUSA pastors, provides a convenient summary of many of modern liberalism's most egregious excesses. A careful analysis of this study will help Presbyterians get to the root of many of the problems now facing the PCUSA. It will also show just how far we are from finding any common ground.

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