What do these three have in common?

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the practical effects of our theology this year. It seems like every time I turn around, I'm finding some new area of my own thinking to challenge. Certainly my readings in the world of the emerging church has contributed to this, but it's more than that. I feel like I'm finally seeing the fusion of academic theology and Christian practice in a way I really haven't before.

That leads me to today's topic: What do these three groups have in common?

Signs and wonder Pentecostals
Baptismal regeneration advocates
'God controls the womb' advocates


I suppose I should first define these three groups a bit more closely.

By "signs and wonder Pentecostals", I mean those folk that believe in modern-day resurrections, slaying in the Spirit, holy laughter, super Apostles and the like.

By "baptismal regeneration advocates", I mean those folk (whether Disciples of Christ or otherwise) that believe a person must be water baptized in order to be regenerated (ie, 'saved').

By "God controls the womb advocates", I mean those folk that believe God directly intervenes to control each and every pregnancy that occurs on the planet, and that one should therefore avoid birth control and have as many children as humanly possible.

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Okay, so what do these three groups have in common?

Doesn't seem like much, eh? Honestly, these three groups of folk are virtually never in the same company. They tend to represent very different streams of Christian thought. You might find someone that embodies two of these positions, but probably not someone that believes them all.

So have you guessed yet? The common thread between these three (and plenty of other) positions is ...

failure to properly understand narrative Scriptures.

What do I mean by that, you ask? I mean that the Bible must be taken in the way in which it was intended. When the Bible is written as teaching material, you take it "literally" as teaching material. When it is written as inspirational material, you take it "literally" as inspirational material. When it's prophetic, you take it "literally" as prophetic.

And when it's narrative, you take it "literally" as narrative.

Specifically, here's what I mean:

Signs and wonder folk take narrative accounts in the book of Acts and attempt to make the didactic (that is, teaching) texts. But the narrative accounts of miraculous events in Acts are just that - narrative accounts. They're stories written to prove a point, not to teach us about normative behaviour. The point of Acts? That God is working in the world through His growing Church.

Baptismal regeneration folk do the same thing - they take narrative texts (again, from Acts) that describe baptism and attempt to make them prescribe baptismal teachings.

God-controls-the-womb folk do the same thing, only this time they tend to use narrative accounts of the OT that talk about God controlling the womb of this or that woman. They then apply that specific story (ie, a narrative event) to all of humanity and thereby make it a teaching text.

Genre is critically important to understanding the Bible, folks! Without grasping the "why was it written" of any given text, how on earth are we supposed to draw proper conclusions about faith and practice?

We can't.

Honestly, at the theological level these three positions are little different than the lunatic on the street corner who says we shouldn't have TVs because Jesus didn't! Of the folk that say electric guitars are an abomination in the church because the early church didn't use them (though, apparently, they had organs - there's anachronism if ever there was!). We laugh at these two groups, but the fundamental way of thinking about the Bible is similar.

Using good hermeneutics matters, folks. It matters a lot.

Hatushili