The West is going through a period of religious conflict. Not the one you might be thinking of—this one has nothing to do with Islam. A thousand years ago, Franks and Saracens were fighting over a smaller issue, namely whose book was really the self-revelation of God.[1] Today's struggle is among people who identify themselves as Christians. They are fighting for the soul of the Church and the existence of historic Christianity in the West. In the balance hangs the salvation of millions of God's people. This fight is about whether God has revealed Himself at all.

The two camps are sometimes called liberal and conservative, but the left-right political categories don't fit well. The camps are better labelled traditional and revisionist. The conflict has broken into the open over a theological disagreement about the status of practicing homosexuals in the Church. Sexual purity is a very important part of the Christian life, but the fight is wider than that. It is not about politics, it is not about social policy, and it is not about prejudice. It is primarily about where we look for our source of truth. One side looks more to the Bible and apostolic tradition as the authentic voice of God. The other looks to people's stories about their experience, and doubts whether God can really be heard apart from these stories. Both sides use much the same vocabulary of grace, sin, atonement, and so on, but the revisionists intend very different meanings from the traditional ones, because they are completely adrift from their Biblical moorings—as many of them would openly admit.

The Bible says a lot of very unfashionable and uncomfortable things, as both sides agree. An unprepared twenty-first century reader looking into the Scriptures will see a strange mixture of primitive savagery, moral home-truths, and miracle stories, among other things. It's easy to miss the fact that the Bible is also the most sublime and penetrating account of God and the human heart ever written.

That reader would find a story that begins with an unscientific creation tale full of old-fashioned attitudes towards women. It proceeds through the history of generations of nomadic sheiks and their wanderings, including the slaughter of the previous inhabitants of Canaan and the dispossession of the survivors. It then details the court history and sacrificial cult of an unstable oriental monarchy until its ruin, with uncouth busybodies fulminating against apparently ordinary religious pluralism. At last it shows a few refugees returning to scratch out a precarious living in the rubble. Along the way, it presents a legal code, pages and pages of advice, some odd poetry, and constant reference to a god of love and judgement. This god seems to engineer some of this unpleasantness but is also somehow thought to be loving and forgiving.

The next section would appear quite different. It mainly consists of the demonstration by a remarkable man that love is the highest value, that love reveals the basic character of God, and that although God punishes evildoers, none of us needs to feel condemned because God longs to forgive us, if only we will turn back to Him and ask—an action called repentance. Though this section is also full of miracle stories, and the moral advice and old attitudes seem to recur towards the end, the figure of Jesus shines like a perfect pearl against a background of shadow.

Plausible though it may be, this dualistic view of Scripture is largely mistaken—the pictures of God in the two testaments are in harmony, and Jesus is God's human face. [2] Don't judge the twenty-first century reader too harshly; our errors are very pardonable, since they are rooted in concern for the individual, and they show a becoming modesty in holding our own opinions too strongly. The basic problem with it is that God doesn't mean us to be modest about things He has clearly revealed, especially not when people's salvation is at stake. God's opinions matter to everyone.

There are good and honourable people on both sides, people who love others and want to serve them—the basic disagreement is about matters of fact. However much we might sometimes like to blacken our opponents, we must resist that temptation so we can really hear them.

At bottom, revisionists want to free the figure of Jesus and his revolutionary gospel of God's unconditional love and acceptance from the rest of this rather unpleasant material. They see Jesus reaching out to embrace the despised and excluded, and they want very deeply to do the same. Traditionalists continue to see the Bible as an organic whole, which tells the truth about God and Man—and since there is a lot wrong with Man, no story that wasn't full of tough stuff could possibly be the truth. They also believe that the toughness and the love of God together have the power to turn ordinary sinners into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. God's word confronts us with what we really are—failed rebels and castaways, under condemnation and unable to save ourselves. Out of the Scripture and into this hopeless mess comes our Judge, Jesus Christ the righteous. But miraculously, instead of punishing us, He walks right into the centre of our darkness, pays the penalty Himself, with His own blood, and sets us free. He offers us new lives for old. When we give our mess to Him, His life begins to take shape in us, and it never stops. God became man that in Him, we might become gods. [3]

This is a gift surpassing all the wealth of the world, and the world needs us to proclaim it from the housetops. As Jesus said,

Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me. (Luke 7:22-23, RSV)

His promises are solid, and the salvation he offers lasts forever. He does not merely give us pardon, but gives us Himself in all His fullness:

Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:1-3, RSV)

The revisionists generally hold the view that everyone is saved, because God's love is so broad and so powerful that nobody can resist it: a doctrine known as universalism.

Universalists deemphasize things like repentance and self-denial. Their view implies that these things are optional, so why add to the load of condemnation that so many of us carry already? On the surface, this is a very attractive position—we can affirm everyone's choices, and we'll all get along fine and be good people building a heaven on Earth while we wait to be admitted to the one above, if any. This position is easy to poke fun at. It implies that the Church is basically a social welfare agency, and a very inefficient one at that. Why not sleep in on Sunday and give to an efficient charity, rather than support all the big buildings? They could be sold and the money given to the poor.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, though; thus, while recognizing that the revisionists' view doesn't hold water, we need to love them and be willing to care about what they care about. In some respects this is easy, especially about salvation. Christians ought to have very soft hearts towards all their fellow sinners, and we ought to hope that each one is saved. This tender hope makes universalism attractive emotionally, which is a good and godly feeling. Even Jesus wishes it could be so: `O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!' (Matthew 23:37). However, He tells us in the very same verse that it isn't so, because of our refusal. Jesus clearly distinguishes between facts and feelings—even His own feelings—and this distinction is the nub of the whole matter: `How often would I...and you would not.'

Universalism appeals to our feelings, but as Jesus tells us so emphatically, it just isn't true in real life. It was explicitly condemned by the Apostles, and has been refuted each time it has surfaced over the past 2000 years. [4]

Since the revisionists are hazarding their eternity (and ours) on its being true, it is important to ask how they come to be so sure: How exactly do they know about this easy-going god of theirs? He isn't the one in the book. Traditionalists have a well thought-out answer to this question (see The Bible and The Canon), but what about revisionists? They will talk by the hour about inclusiveness, but on the identity of God, their answer is a deafening silence. The sheer frivolity with which the words of Jesus Himself are twisted and discarded shows that the revisionist school has never thought seriously about the ultimate things: sin, death, judgement, Heaven and Hell. They preach over and over again about a quarter of the Gospel, the easy parts about healing and being forgiven and loving the outcast, but the tougher things they leave out are matters of life and death.

We tend to see judgement as a bad thing, but the Bible portrays it as a creative and merciful act, something to wish for and hope for, not something to shun and fear. God promises to right every wrong and dry every tear—that is, to judge, and judge rightly: to destroy evil and reward goodness. God's judgement is a major theme of the whole Bible. God gives His people covenants, which have blessings for those who obey and curses for those who do not. This has been true of every covenant God has made with Man: with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, and with us, the Church. `I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days, that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.' (Dt 30:19-20, RSV) God wants us to have all the blessings; when we disobey, He longs to forgive, and calls us back again and again, but if we harden our hearts the curses fall on us eventually.

The same is true in the New Testament. The Jesus of the Gospels does basically five things: teach about love, teach about Hell and judgement, perform miracles, die, and rise from the dead. His miracles attest to His deity, and are miniatures of the Father's work in the world: feeding, healing, stilling storms, raising the dead—and withering the fig tree because it bore no fruit. All God's tender care for the outcasts and the sinners is exhibited in Jesus; all the beautiful and challenging moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is his. All the toughest things about judgement come from the mouth of Jesus: the terrifying parables of the sheep and the goats; the wise and foolish virgins; the wedding garment; the tenants; the talents; the two debtors; and the fire that is not quenched. God is good, and He is like a refiner's fire: no evil thing can abide His presence. He has told us so. That is a quite unalterable part of His character. You can't have the love without the judgement, because they don't exist separately. God is both, and all the wishful thinking and enlightened discussion in the world won't change that.

Our salvation comes by the power and the grace of God. The atonement is real only because the judgement is real; Christ died and rose again because God is both Justice and Mercy. The Gospel is Good News only because of the Bad News. Christ's sacrifice matters to us because we're doomed without it-but we have to say yes, and show that mean it by obeying His commandments and repenting when we fail (as we inevitably do). That's the most basic answer to the revisionist picture of universal acceptance: God wants to accept everyone, but as He tells us, we can refuse, and many of us do refuse. True Christian life really messes up our self-respect, but as Jesus says, `You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' Choosing transformation is freedom; choosing reassurance instead is slavery. Revisionist clerics who want to suppress the judgement of God have to mutilate the Scripture almost beyond recognition. Their version has no power to transform. They're like a doctor putting a bandage on a cancer: it looks nicer for awhile, but the patient's last hope is gone.