On the 9th of this month, a long-awaited Independent Report was issued, confirming the rumored longstanding pattern of sexual abuse committed by the famous Christian and Missionary Alliance Evangelist/Apologist Ravi Zacharias in the years leading up to his death in May of last year. The report documented, in excruciating and nauseating detail, his manifold sins against women who trusted him, not to mention against the God he ostensibly served.
The question immediately presents itself: How should Christians, not only the laity but professional ministers and academicians, respond to such a public fall from grace? I remember well the knee-jerk response from (too) many in the immediate aftermath of abuse allegations before his death, to wit, to play down the claims and discredit the accuser under the pretense of the "importance" of his ministry for the advancement of God's kingdom. [David French shoots down this dodge with a dose of good theology: "In reality, God will accomplish His purposes, with or without any of us, regardless of our gifts or talents."] Alas, the accusations turned out to be all too true. And, as we all should have learned by now in light of sexual abuse allegations in the political realm (see: Clarence Thomas, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh), the testimony of victimized women should be taken seriously, not dismissed out of hand when inconvenient. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, if not a fortiori, in the sphere of Christian ministry.
Once sin has been exposed and confirmed, however, how should we respond? Alas, as Kyle J. Howard has lamented, many Christian "leaders" have rushed to empathize with Zacharias, some even resorting to the timeworn, oh-so-pious sounding "But for the grace of God" line (thankfully, Howard has refrained from naming names, to protect the guilty). And, make no mistake, atheists and other nonbelievers like Beth Stoneburner have noticed. One wonders, wouldn't it be preferable to empathize with the victims in such situations? Certainly we must do better than that. The C&MA have made a start in the right direction by posthumously revoking his ordination. Yes, we are all sinners, but some sins are such that any future attempt at ministry would be disqualified. To excuse or minimize the consequences of such actions perhaps tells more about the excusers' own foibles than it does their spiritual discernment. In the Pastoral Epistles one requirement of an overseer (episkopos ["bishop"]) is that he be a "one woman man" (mias gynaikos andra) (1 Timothy 3:2). The precise interpretation of this expression is disputed, but all agree that it is inconsistent with sexual infidelity, let alone heinous, premeditated sins like sexual predation and sexual abuse. Yes, we all experience temptation to sin, and do so daily. But sins such as these are not among the "normal" range of sins for which we routinely pray in the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us our trespasses." Thus I would argue that men who perform these acts are thereby disqualified from positions of spiritual leadership. Yes, grace is available and repentance is possible. But actions, even forgiven sinful ones, have consequences.
There are no precise parallels to what Zacharias did in the pages of Scripture, though the sinfulness of major biblical characters is hardly swept under the rug. Simon Peter, of course, was a denier, but his later career certainly warranted the name "Peter" (i.e., "Rock") given him by Jesus on the occasion of his confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:18). Likewise, the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles can refer to himself as the "worst" (prōtos) of sinners because he had, prior to his call on the road to Damascus, persecuted the church (1 Timothy 1:15; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9). The late F. F. Bruce may have praised the "warmth" of his personality (Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, p. 15), but, as one who considers Paul his greatest hero and who did his doctoral work on the Apostle's most hot-tempered letter, Galatians, I can certainly attest to what his opponents there would have considered his irascibility. Indeed, as the great Bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot wrote in 1865, "The systematic hatred of St Paul is an important fact, which we are too apt to overlook, but without which the whole history of the Apostolic ages will be misread and misunderstood." One need not look to hard or long to discern why.
Perhaps the best partial parallel is King David who, though referred to as a "man after God's own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14; cf. Acts 7:46), was, if one reads carefully between the lines of the Deuteronomistic history, consistently more of a scoundrel than he appears on a surface reading; and that doesn't even take into consideration his affair with Bathsheba and his subsequent machinations ensuring her husband Uriah's death on the battlefield. Yet this is the man to whom God promised an everlasting kingly line, culminating, as the New Testament argues, in the present and future reign of Jesus, Son of David (Matthew 1:1).
Despite these failures, one thing each of these biblical examples have that is lacking in Zacharias is the all-important matter of repentance. Even the adulterer and murderer, David, has a literary record of his repentance inscripturated in Psalm 51, a penitential psalm traditionally attributed to his pen. I am obviously not privy to the inner workings of Zacharias's mind or soul, but there is no public record of any repentance on his part, let alone evidence of any "fruit worthy of (karpous axious) repentance" (Luke 3:8) in his last days. And that is a pity.
The question remains, however, about the work of men like Zacharias. Are their ideas and contributions, especially their books, now off limits by association? [Note: in the title, I have co-opted the au courant expression, "cancel." By doing so, I do not mean to provide support for the current right-wing complaint about so-called "cancel culture." Indeed, this tiresome campaign is both hypocritical and disingenuous (see the recent posts by Calvin Univesity professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez and the venerable anti-Trump conservative columnist Mona Charen), intended as a way to get their racist and other objectionable ideas in through the back door, as it were. Accountability cannot be avoided by juvenile screeds against "canceling."] Indeed, some, including the English writer Tanya Marlow, answer with an unequivocal yes. To do otherwise, according to Marlow, would be an insult to victims of abuse.
Marlow understands the difficulty of her position. Difficult or not, we must take her argument seriously. Speaking for myself, "canceling" Zacharias wouldn't cost me a thing. Indeed, Zacharias wrote 30 or so books, but none of them were scholarly tomes, and his erstwhile field of popular apologetics is, to say the least, not my bailiwick. I have always found more philosophical arguments for the justification of religious belief (e.g., by Oxford's Basil Mitchell and Notre Dame's Alvin Plantinga) and historical arguments centered on Jesus' resurrection (e.g., by The University of St. Andrews' N. T. Wright and Houston Baptist University's Michael Licona) more significant.
But "Slacktivist" Fred Clark threw an inconvenient spanner in the works this week by referring to a parallel situation, the sad case of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. I first became aware of Yoder through an assignment in my Political Science course at Cairn University as a senior in the fall of 1977. My teacher, Lin Crowe, had us write a book review of Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, a book-length exegetical and theological defense of nonviolence with which I, having been raised in red-blooded, dispensationalist American Fundamentalism, had never been acquainted. To be frank, I didn't have a clue what to do with it and, as I recall, Professor Crowe was more than gracious in the grade I was given. Over the years, however, as I allowed the Synoptic Gospels to correct my naïve, dualist "soterian" understanding of the New Testament―gleaned almost entirely from John's Gospel and a selective reading of Paul―I began to appreciate and learn from Yoder's work, even as I continued to disagree with him in some respects. But then, after his death in 1997, the truthfulness of reports about his longstanding, sociopathic sexual abuse of multiple women was confirmed. This raised an existential question: What should I do about his work? Should it be relegated to the dustbin, invalidated to the same extent as his character was revealed to be unworthy of the adjective "Christian?"
I could go on. What about Karl Barth, surely the most significant Systematic Theologian of the 20th century, who maintained a decades-long affair with his personal assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum with the full knowledge of his wife? What about Confederate Reformed theologian Robert Dabney and slavery-defending 17th century Methodist evangelist George Whitefield? Even more problematic for me: What about my theological forebear, John Calvin, who was a witness at the trial that led to the burning of heretic Michael Servetus at the stake in 16th century Geneva? And what about my hero, Martin Luther, who, despite his massive achievements, in 1543 penned the execrable On the Jews and Their Lies, providing an model of Germanic anti-semitism that flowered, as we know all too well, in the Holocaust of the 1930's-40's? It would be tempting to excuse or lessen the liability of many of these men by claiming they were all "men of their time." But all of us are, aren't we? Not to mention that Dabney's contemporary, the theologically-challenged evangelist Charles Finney, was an abolitionist. Likewise, Whitefield's friend, John Wesley, preached strongly against the evils of slavery. Many have tried to lessen Calvin's culpability by reminding us that the Reformer didn't have the authority to execute Servetus, and that the motivation of both Calvin and the civil magistrates was to uphold God's honor by punishing heretics. Good motives, however, even misguided good motives, don't excuse wrong behavior. Yes, these were all men of their times, and we do well not to expect them anachronistically to have 21st century sensibilities. Yet, I repeat, such acknowledgement does not excuse their actions.
But what about the books of these flawed, at time fatally flawed men? Baylor's Roger Olsen is representative of many who follow former Wheaton College Philosophy Professor Arthur F. Holmes, who in 1979 wrote the popular All Truth Is God's Truth:
If someone says something true, it doesn’t really matter what his or her life was or is like—in terms of the TRUTH status of what he or she said or wrote. We should embrace the truth regardless of the broken vessel that held it …
I do separate the truth from the communicator of it. If what a person says is true, it doesn’t matter what his or her life is like—as far as the truth remaining true and therefore being valuable.
Olsen attributes the idea to the early 3rd century Father Clement of Alexandria. I have been unable to find such an idea in his writings. St. Augustine, however, when discussing the "superstition of the heathen" in his On Christian Doctrine, II.18, writes: "Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master." So the notion has good historical Christian precedent.
If only things were so simple in cases like Zacharias's. Indeed, "All truth is God's truth" has become something of a truism. Yes, of course, it's true. But it doesn't necessarily answer the question. N. T. Wright, in an interview dealing with the revelations of sexual abuse by the late Catholic theologian and advocate for the disabled, Jean Vanier, nuances the thought somewhat: "Does it undermine everything he did and said? No, it casts a shadow on it." That's certainly getting closer, I believe. And it has the air of reasonableness. But does it answer the question definitively? Not that I can tell.
It is essential to understand that authors, even the most scholarly ones, are not authorities who must be followed by virtue of their position in the church or in the academy. What they write can be, and must be separated from their vocation. If, as in the delightful story found in Numbers 22, God can speak through the comical, humble medium of Balaam's ass, one can likewise learn from the words of flawed―genuine Christians or not, as the case may be!―interpreters of the Bible. One must, as with all things theological, prayerfully use one's mind, renewed and transformed by the Spirit (Romans 12:2), to think critically and, like the Bereans of old (Acts 17:11), examine what is said to determine whether or not what is said is trustworthy. As I have often said, beware the opposite error: an interpreter's spirituality or spiritual maturity are not guarantors of accuracy, either!
But here's the rub: Can one disentangle what such men as Zacharias write from what type of people they are or were? Certainly not. And thus one can't blithely assert that their books are fine and untouched by the filth of their personal lives. There is no simple answer. Discernment and maturity are required, taking into consideration both the seriousness of their offense and how their sinful perversion may have influenced their thought processes. Will we be up to the task?
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