Introduction
Our next installment in my series on mere Christianity comes from Eric Reitan. Dr. Reitan is Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University and author of The Triumph of Love: Same-Sex Marriage and the Christian Love Ethic and Is God A Delusion?: A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers. He is also coauthor of God’s Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism. I interview Dr. Reitan on the topic of universalism here. You can visit Dr. Reitan online at his blog, “The Piety that Lies Between.”
Eric Reitan on Mere Christianity
“Luther said, ‘So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: “I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”‘ The assurance of God’s grace, received in faith on account of Christ, is the heart of the Christian message. The rest–how does Christ’s work atone for sin? How many will, in the end, subjectively open themselves to this unconditional grace?–is theology, and important. But mere Christianity is the act of trusting in the grace of God extended through and displayed in Christ’s work.”
Reflections
This is an eloquent and admirably focused statement, one that expresses well a Lutheran emphasis on the sinner justified before God. Interestingly, Reitan says not simply that the heart of the Christian message is God’s grace in Christ for the wayward sinner. Rather, he says that the heart of the Christian message is the assurance of God’s grace in Christ for the wayward sinner. In other words, the heart of the Christian message encompasses not just God’s saving act in Christ but also faith in that act.
Reitan recognizes that there is much else that one might say encompassing such topics as the nature of the atonement and the ratio of saved-to-lost, but these are secondary matters which we can refer to as theology. Presumably, additional doctrines such as the triune interpretation of the divine are likewise viewed as second-tier doctrines beyond the core of mere Christianity. Reitan’s mere Christianity does refer both to God and Jesus Christ, but it does not specify the nature of the relationship between these two beings/persons. Thus, it would seem that the ontological relationship between the Father and Son (including, for example, the account given in orthodox trinitarian doctrine), is left to the theological sphere that goes beyond mere Christianity.
Reitan’s account raises an interesting question about the status of groups that (i) self-identify as Christian; and which (ii) retain an account of “God’s grace, received in faith on account of Christ”; but which (iii) have historically been rejected as unChristian by the wider Christian tradition. Consider, for example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. On the one hand, the LDS appears to retain a minimal account of salvation by way of faith in Christ. At the same time, the LDS includes a litany of doctrines that are considered highly unorthodox relative to the wider Christian tradition (consider, for example, the claim that human beings can become gods in their own right).
So here’s the question: does Reitan’s definition of mere Christianity imply that groups such as the LDS church qualify as merely Christian? And if so, does that constitute an objection to the view?
