Bestselling Christian writer Philip Yancy has confessed to having an eight-year affair with a married woman. He admits shame and guilt and has resigned from all ministry and writing.
I’m not sure what there is to say about it other than the obvious: it was a bad thing. Bad for him, for his wife, for the church, and bad in that it gives the enemies of the church ammunition against us. It happens too often.
They say that Philip Yancy has sold fifteen million books. I’ve read one of them, The Jesus I Never Knew, as well as parts of some of his other books, including What’s So Amazing About Grace? To say that Yancy was a good writer would be an understatement. I think of him as a ‘clear glass’ writer: someone with the ability to make you really understand what he is saying without any clunky distractions. That was his gift.
I also think I should make some comments about the theological point of view that come through in his writings.
I was not enthused about his presentation of Christianity. It was less than robust. It was weak and fragile.
This may have been caused by the fact that Yancy was raised in a toxic, fundamental, legalistic church. He made us know, in detail, just how dysfunctional that church was. Later he reacted against it and went hard in the other direction. He would emphasize the opposite of legalism: grace. Lots of grace. But it was a grace without the ballast of the full gospel context. It seemed like a grace without much in the way of response or obligation. There was a lack of moral backbone.
It is true that we are saved by grace, not by works. We cannot plead any merit or good works as a means of salvation. But once saved, there is a place for moral law as a guide to living and discipleship. Jesus Himself gave many of these moral commands; just look at the Sermon on the Mount.
The tendency to downplay moral law is not new. In olden times an over emphasis on grace coupled with a hostility to moral law was called antinomianism. Nomos is the Greek word for law. It was anti-law-ism. It made for a weak Christianity.
Grace and moral fortitude are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they should be inseparable. We see it all through scripture. We see it in God’s dealings with Israel. Before God gave Israel the Ten Commandments, he prefaced it with a reminder that he had already saved them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery,” (Exodus 20:2). It was a reminder that they were a rescued, changed, people. They knew who their God was. They knew what He did for them. It was in that context that Israel was given moral commands to follow.
We see the same thing in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul said, “for it is grace you have been saved…not by works” (Ephesian 2:8-9). But some Christians abused the generosity of that grace. Some used it as an excuse for sin. Paul was beside himself when he heard about this. He wrote, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2). Grace was meant to save, and also to lead into maturity and discipleship.
The evangelical church in America seems to have forgotten about moral backbone. It seems that in the 1970’s we began a 50-year backlash against legalism. And when you engage in a backlash, you always go too far. We took a turn toward softness, user-friendliness and easy religion. Churches emphasized ‘come as you are’ so much that they were afraid to talk about how salvation could change your life.
We talked about grace so much that we shunned talking about law, which still had its place as a moral guide. Some people need to be confronted with God’s moral laws so they can realize their sins and repent.
An example. I had a seminary professor (a very respected, solid, professor) who wrote a book that dealt with divorce in the church. A difficult issue! The book was surprising and thought-provoking, and ultimately I think it was right. The professor said that every instance of divorce was different, and the people going through it should not all be treated in the same way. The victim in the divorce needed to hear a word of grace. But the one that caused the divorce, that did the bad acts that brought it about, for them grace was not what they needed to hear. They needed to hear law. They needed correction, not affirmation. Knowing when to apply grace or law was the task of the pastor.
Our Christianity needs to have room for law as moral guidance. Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). That message is not popular today, but moral correction is rarely a popular thing. Christianity without it is shallow at best. At worst, the teaching of grace without morals encourages sin. People may think, “After all, I can sin because God’s grace will just make it go away afterwards; isn’t God in the business of forgiving?”
I don’t know what was going through Philip Yancy’s mind during those eight years of his affair. Was it compartmentalization? We don’t know, he hasn’t given the details. But I think his theology, with its lack of robustness, did not help him.
Can we have both a strong moral sense and still have a strong view of grace? Of course! We should not see them as opposites, but as indispensable parts of a whole. When we separate them, it is easy to go one way or the other, either into an indulgent, weak faith or the other way into legalism. Both extremes are bad. The answer is not to find ‘the middle’ but to remember that grace brings with it responsibility, a continuing call for response, and a grateful obedience.