A while ago I called Tony Campolo a heretic. I sadly stand by that because I haven’t heard him recant or say something better and clearer. The issue then was that he was stripping God of his sovereignty in order to excuse God from the damage of Katrina.

The old adage “the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree” is generally right in both positive and negative ways. ¹The adage fails in that it fails to take into account God’s sovereignty and his grace. God intervenes or we would all be lost, each patterning ourselves after Adam. There is also a principle in the scriptures where God sometimes threatens to visit the sins of the father upon the son ²It is not an absolute principle. God is free to apply it as he will. Consider the counterexamples in Ezek 18:20, Jer 31:29-31 as promises in the New Covenant. for example in Exodus 20:5 and Leviticus 26:30.

This principle (at least) sometimes involves not the innocent children being punished for the father’s sins but the pattern of the father’s sin repeating itself in the son. I fear that may be what has happened with Tony’s son Bart. It appears that Bart has been drawn away from the authority of Scripture in revealing who God is. Bart works in inner city missions and he’s struggled with theodicy. ³Theodicy is the area of dealing with God and evil. How can evil exist and God be good? He announced this in an article titled “The Limits of God’s Grace“ in the November/December 2006 edition of the Journal of Student Ministries. ⁴The paper was hosted on the Youth Specialties website but they pulled it due in part to the negative response it generated. The editor said, “without a strong lens of understanding as to why the questions raised by the article are worth talking about, or a counter-argument by someone else, we were concerned that the article could be more damaging than helpful.” They did the right thing. Updated 7/31/07 – The original link was replaced but I googled it and found the original at a different location. To demonstrate this rejection, allow me to quote part of his paper and include in square brackets some of the scriptures he’s rejecting. (Also, I “tamed” the text a bit by removing some of the specifics of the evil and generalized it.) Know that Campolo has a very concrete, very disturbing and very evil event in mind.

Perhaps, as many believe, the truth is that God created and predestined some people for salvation and others for damnation, according to God’s will. [Romans 9, Ephesians 1, Jude 4] Perhaps such caprice only seems unloving to us because we don’t understand. [Job 42:1-9] Perhaps, as many believe, all who die without confessing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior go to Hell to suffer forever. [John 8:21-24, 14:6, 2 Thessalonians 1:9] Most important of all, perhaps God’s sovereignty is such that although God could indeed prevent [bad things from happening], God is no less just or merciful when they [do], and [the victims] and we who love them should uncritically give God our thanks and praise in any case. [Job 13:15, 1 Peter 4:19 ⁵This verse is significant. Here, those who suffer are called to entrust their souls to God. If he is not in control then what good would it do to entrust our souls to him when we suffer? He can’t do anything about it. But if he is sovereign, then entrusting our souls to him is the best and wisest thing we can do.]

My response is simple: I refuse to believe any of that. For me to do otherwise would be to despair.

Indeed, Campolo is blunt in his statement about the relationship between his conception of God and revelation: “First of all, while I certainly believe my most cherished ideas about God are supported by the Bible (what Christian says otherwise?), I must admit they did not originate there.” So where does the Bible stand in reference to his conception of God? “I required no Bible to determine it, and honestly I will either interpret away or ignore altogether any Bible verse that suggest otherwise.”

At least Bart is honest in announcing where his concept of God comes from: experience. So what has his experience taught him a real God, one he can worship, should be like:

Please, don’t get me wrong. I am well aware that I don’t get to decide who God is. What I do get to decide, however, is to whom I pledge my allegiance. I am a free agent, after all, and I have standards for my God, the first of which is this: I will not worship any God who is not at least as compassionate as I am. (Emphasis mine)

Bart has set his ideal and his timetable for compassion as the standard by which God must measure up. Not only must God be at least as compassionate as Bart is, but apparently he must do so in the amount of time Bart has alloted him.

So in this configuration who is sovereign here? That’s right, Bart is. Consider:

You can figure out the rest. I don’t hate God because I don’t believe God is fully in control of this world yet.

I don’t hate God because I believe God is always doing the best God can within the limits of human freedom, which even God cannot escape.

I don’t hate God because, although I suppose God knows everything that can be known at any given point in time, I don’t suppose God knows or controls everything that is going to happen. (Emphasis mine)

Since Scripture cannot be appealed to with Campolo, at least not in this area, we’ll have to use reason. However, once you cast off God’s self-revelation the kinds of things listed above seem reasonable. But that’s exactly the problem; human reason is not in tact. The doctrine of total depravity is not that man does all the evil he can all the time, it means that man is corrupted by sin in all his faculties. There isn’t one part of man that is not affected by the fall; body, soul, mind, will, emotions, reason. All of them are corrupted by sin. So when we cast off revelation, we are not left with pure, naked reason to guide us. We’re left with a compass with a bent needle and an misaligned magnet. Bart is using this to guide him to a true doctrine of God and it can’t. That faulty compass must be corrected by revelation. This leaves us in a pretty horrible situation since Bart won’t allow Scripture to correct his compass.

Why does any of this matter? Why should I get so excited about this? Because “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.” (2Pt 1:3-4) The doctrine of God is not important just so that we don’t commit idolatry, it reaches much further. Without a proper understanding of who God is we cannot advance in our Christian growth!

I’ve been reading in blog comments things such as “he’s just being honest about his struggle” and “he’s out there working with the poor and you’re not so shut up till you get out and see what he’s seen.” First, it doesn’t sound like a struggle. It sounds like a done deal. “I refuse to believe any of that” is a far cry from “I’m struggling to understand how it fits together.” And second of all, all the good works in the world are as spider webs if he rejects the One, True and Living God. You see, even if I am not engaged in feeding the hungry (to my shame) my righteousness surpasses his because I am clothed in Christ and he is not. Also, seeing evil does not excuse what he’s done. Consider Job, Job experience evil first hand and he never said things like Campolo has said. He was righteous.

Part of the “knowledge of Him” that Peter puts forth as our only hope for life and godliness requires that we wrestle with theodicy. A better, more Biblical engagement with theodicy can be heard here. After the tsunami in 2005 NPR interviewed John Piper to get a Christian perspective. They only used about 3 seconds in the show but Desiring God presented most of the interview. It made me cry when I first heard it.

Since we believe in a sovereign God who can and does change human hearts, who has revealed who he truly is, who loves the fallen world and redeems people out of it, we need to pray for Bart, Tony and those who think like them. God can change their hearts and inclinations and correct their view of Him.

Sovereign Lord, please have mercy on this father and son. Grant them repentance and faith in the True and Living God as You have revealed Yourself in Your scripture, not in their vain understandings. Amen.

[HT: Justin Taylor]

UPDATE: The Journal of Student Ministries has since pulled down the link to Campolo’s article. I still have a hard copy of it in my office. Also, Campolo has, tragically but not surprisingly, come out as an agnostic humanist.