Is Jensenism compatible with Christianity?

A RECENT BIOGRAPHY of Marcus Loane, evangelical Anglican Archbishop of Sydney in the 1960s, records that as a student at Moore Theological College he would read during lectures to avoid having to listen to the liberal Principal. When you are committed to a closed system of thought, you can't be too careful when it comes to letting ideas in from the outside. But what about the ideas already inside? How does the Sydney Anglican interpretation of Christianity compare to what Jesus said?

Sydney's Archbishop Peter Jensen and Dean Phillip Jensen are the public face of a proudly "narrow" interpretation of the Bible that has had an immense success in the English-speaking world in the last quarter of Christianity's history. The basic tenets of "Bible-based" faith are clear. They are summarised in what Peter Jensen calls the "great alones" of the Reformation: scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone.

The point of the word alone is what it excludes: there is no role for good works as opposed to faith, for human effort in addition to God's help, for the insights of other faiths as well as Christ, for the tradition of the church as well as the written word of scripture. "Faith alone" means exactly what it says: what God wants is belief in certain propositions about Jesus and salvation, and without that belief good actions are not pleasing to God. In fact, they deserve his punishment. "The final sin of religious people," Peter Jensen writes, "is moralism, by which we trust that we can come to know the living God and to gain his approval by the quality of our lives." He condemns "any religious system which involves even a modicum of human merit". That means, in plain terms, that Jensenites believe God disapproves of the ordinary person's virtue for the same reason he disapproves of Mother Teresa's charity--it is not badged by them.

There are many objections that spring to mind--is that not a narrow view, intolerant, prejudicial to the good health of society? Jensenites rejoice in those criticisms--the best persecution going, they think, in our sadly lion-free age. But what will immediately strike anyone who has read even casually in the Bible is! how grossly it is out of tune with the Jesus of the gospels. The big statements of Jesus' message that the gospels themselves foreground, like the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the Good Samaritan, are all about God's concern that humans should act rightly, with love and compassion. "Blessed are the peacemakers," says Jesus, not "Blessed are the staunch subscribers to Reformation formularies of doctrine". The very point of Jesus' choosing to illustrate care for one's neighbour by a Samaritan--by Jewish lights, one of woefully heretical beliefs--is to emphasise that God does love compassionate action irrespective of belief in doctrinal details.

In a key passage (Matthew 25) that so-called Bible-based Christianity has always been keen to downplay, Jesus discusses the principles on which God judges people: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat ... I was in prison and you visited me." There is no mention of ritual observances, none of assent to propositions. That is not to say Jesus was unconcerned by doctrine--he was very eager to reveal that there is a God who cares for humans and wishes humans to have a relationship with him. But his emphasis was always on how that relationship plays out in action, not on details of doctrine or religious ceremonies. It is impossible to imagine him getting hot under the toga about doctrinal and liturgical trivia like stained glass or church choirs. What would Jesus have thought of a "Christianity" that plays up St Paul's statements in a minor letter about women in church, and hides in embarrassment the peaks of Jesus' own teaching?

Jensenism believes it has an answer to these criticisms in the words of St Paul on the ...