Born Again and Exegetical Selectivity

I was sitting at Pizza Port, drinking a pint of Flying Dog Kujo, and a woman asked me about my tattoo on my left arm. I ended up entertaining a conversation I knew full-well that I shouldn't have entertained. The woman and her husband were good Evangelical Christians. Now, there's nothing wrong with evangelical Christians, nor with being such. However, I knew that eventually they'd ask questions about what I believe, and that never goes as well as some might imagine. 


So, eventually the conversation made its way around to what we all know it was leading to.... and she asked me "Are you born again?" However, this question came at an interesting point in the conversation, where her and her husband had attempted to use wedding ceremony practices to talk about the significance of communion, as a way of saying that it has no significance other than memorialist purposes. After all, it is by believing in Jesus that we're saved, so, am I born again?
What I found most interesting about the question was the fact that they had attempted to talk mix proof-texts (and interpretation of those texts) while leaving out other texts. Now, they surely aren't the only two people guilty of this practice, and I doubt that even those who study Scripture critically are immune to this. However, this specific instance of it made me notice something.


I told them I was generally uncomfortable with using that phrase, and of course they insisted it was "in the Bible." I told there there were a lot of other phrases that were used in the Bible to talk about salvation, and that this one, only being used once, in an obscure passage, probably wasn't the best choice for setting as our model and litmus test for salvation in general. At this, she insisted that it conforms to how it is that we are saved. That is, we come from a life of sin, and debauchery, and wickedness, and become "born again", as we're saved into a new life of faith. 


Now, there's nothing new about this. However, it brings me to two realizations... one exegetical and one praxical. 


The one, is coming back to understanding "believe" and "born again" in John's Gospel. The couple were using a particular means of interpreting the Synoptic tradition on the Eucharist in order to affirm a particular interpretation of salvation from a term John's Gospel. All the while, their interpretation disregards the actual discussion of the Eucharist in John's Gospel, and how it relates to salvation. 


We tend to do a good job of focusing on "believe" and "faith" and such terms in evangelicalism, and we tend to stop there. These are the things that bring salvation. However, John 6:53-58 gives us a clear indication of the Eucharist's place in salvation:

‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

So, if one cannot have eternal life without partaking of the Eucharist, so, too, can one not be born again without partaking of the Eucharist. One cannot believe without partaking of the Eucharist. One cannot have faith without partaking of the Eucharist.

But when we make the decision to allow certain theological starting points to determine our soteriology, we end up obscuring what John's Gospel actually communicates. What is worse, we form a soteriology  that rests upon a model of crisis and leaves out those who have been a part of the Church their entire life, because we have left the Biblical models of Baptism and Eucharist out of our soteriology.

I would suggest it is important to take the whole of the texts and tradition into account when formulating our theology, so as to not come up with theologies that are untenable both exegetically and practically, while leaving out large sections of the Church.