a defense of the consistency of dr. larycia hawkins’ statements

7/25/2019 A Defense of the Consistency of Dr. Larycia Hawkins’ Statements

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A Defense of the Consistency of Dr. Larycia Hawkins’ Statements concerningChristianity and Islam with the Wheaton College Statement of Faith

ABSTRACT: Wheaton College has not stated publicly its precise reasons forinitiating termination proceedings against Dr. Larycia Hawkins. It has comeclosest in two documents by Provost Stanton Jones: a Dec. 15 memo toHawkins and a Jan. 20 statement to the faculty. First, then, we take up each ofthe four areas of concern Jones highlights in his memo, with particularattention to the question of whether Christians and Muslims “worship thesame God.” We argue that Hawkins’ Dec. 17 reply to Jones suffices to showthat her initial statements are quite consistent with the College’s Statement ofFaith, taken on its face. But in his Jan. 20 statement, Jones suggests that theStatement of Faith performs its communal function, not merely in virtue ofwhat it explicitly says, but as “a living breathing instrument” that can compelassent to claims that are neither explicitly asserted by, nor clear consequences

of, the Statement. Therefore, our next task is to argue against thisunderstanding of the function of the Statement of Faith. We also contest theclaim that faculty members are obligated to enter into dialogue about theirtheological commitments with the administration, absent any compellingevidence that they have contradicted the Statement of Faith, taken on its face. We conclude by calling on the College to state publicly and definitively itsprecise grounds for its action against Hawkins, so that the merits of its casecan be publicly assessed. If its chief grounds are among those against whichwe have argued, and if our arguments are sound, we urge the College tocease pursuing its case against Hawkins and to welcome her back to herposition as a tenured member of the faculty in good standing.

Griffin Klemick Charles J. Guth III

B.A., BITH, Honors in Philosophy,

Wheaton College, 2012, summa cum laude

B.A., Honors in Philosophy,

Wheaton College, 2012, summa cum laude

Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy,

Wheaton College, Spring 2014

Teaching Ministry Intern,

Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton, NJ

Ph.D, Philosophy, University of Toronto,

in progress

M.Div, Princeton Theological Seminary,

in progress

[email protected] [email protected]

(Principal author.)



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membership in the College community. (And, of course, it risks wronging Hawkins’ students

and colleagues by depriving them of her mentorship and camaraderie.) So, if the College lacks

adequate cause, and if our actions can forestall this result, we ought to take action by calling

the College to reconsider its course of action regarding Hawkins. Moreover, it seems unlikely

that the College plans to furnish a public, definitive statement of its grounds for proceedingagainst Hawkins in the near future.3 Under such circumstances, we cannot suspend judgment

any longer: we must find some basis for determining whether the College’s proceedings

against Hawkins are justified.

Recently Provost Jones’ December 15 memo to Hawkins, in which he requests that she

clarify her affirmation of the Statement of Faith in light of her statements on Facebook, has

circulated, as the College notes in the statement just quoted. In this memo, Jones outlines “a

few of the many questions raised” by Hawkins’ statements (p. 1). Unless or until the College

releases publicly a more comprehensive list of its worries concerning Hawkins’ statements, itseems fair to take the questions Jones raises as the College’s chief grounds for doubting

Hawkins’ commitment to the Statement of Faith. Even if these do not in fact constitute its chief

grounds, this discussion would be worthwhile, since it might prompt the College to disclose its

actual grounds.4 Accordingly, in what follows, we address each of the “key areas of concern”

identified by Jones. We argue that in none of them does the claim of Hawkins’ in question

clearly conflict with the particular provision of the Statement of Faith that Jones cites, and we

3

The College has publicly addressed this question only once: in a January 14 update to its December22 “Frequently Asked Questions” statement regarding Hawkins, in which it stated that “The issue isnot that Hawkins’ statements were all definitively unorthodox, but that the College wanted andneeded to better understand her thinking.” (It did not explain why the College should need to betterunderstand her thinking if her statements were not in conflict with the Statement of Faith on theirface, or how that need would be at all relevant to Hawkins’ conditions of employment under thoseconditions.) The College has since retracted that statement (see the January 15 update to the“Frequently Asked Questions” statement), without providing a more adequate replacement. And in a January 21 “Listening Session” conducted by himself and Jones, Ryken replied to the question ofspecifically how Hawkins’ statements conflict with the Statement of Faith by noting that he and Jones“can’t talk about that.” He gave no indication that he would be able to address the question at somefuture point.

4 Furthermore, in the since-retracted January 14 statement, the College noted that Jones’ memo“identifies several of the theological issues” underlying the College’s action against Hawkins; indeed,this is the sole reference it made to any substantive justification for its action. If the memo circulatingwere not authentic, or if it did not accurately present the College’s chief grounds for its action,presumably this would have been noted, or, at least, the College’s statement would not have madeappeal to the document in this way. (Nor does the January 15 retraction note contradict the January14 statement’s reliance on Jones’ memo or tacit stipulation of its authenticity.) So, it seems reasonableto proceed on the assumption that Jones’ memo does identify the College’s chief grounds forproceeding against Hawkins, absent a public, definitive statement by the College of its grounds.



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suggest that Hawkins adequately demonstrates this lack of conflict in her December 17

response to Jones’ memo, which has now also circulated.

We cannot stress this last point enough. We do not view our task here as that of

supplying an original justification for Hawkins’ statements or defense of their consistency withthe College’s Statement of Faith, as though Hawkins herself had not supplied any such

justification or defense. On the contrary, we view her December 17 response as an entirely

adequate defense (and, secondarily, justification) of her statements, and we think the College

was wrong not to take it as such. Therefore, our task here is primarily to elaborate upon and

provide additional warrant for claims Hawkins has already made. Where we go beyond her

defense, it is typically in considering more expansive (and, in our view, less plausible)

interpretations of her statements for the sake of argument, in order to maintain that, even so

interpreted, her statements are not inconsistent with the College’s Statement of Faith. Neither

of us knows Hawkins personally, but her public statements in this matter have impressed us asproducts of deep reflection by an acute mind. We add to them only to defend them at greater

length and with closer attention to technical detail. This last is perhaps a product of our

particular disciplinary training (in theology and, especially, philosophy), but it also seems

dialectically useful now in a way it would not have been at an earlier stage: those who have

failed to see the force of Hawkins’ defense of her statements may nevertheless be persuaded by

an extensive analytical evaluation of them. At least, that is our hope. But in any case, the issues

at stake here ! namely, whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God; of how our

answer to that question bears on our understandings of the natures of God, salvation, and

worship; and of what all this means for how, concretely, we ought to relate to our Muslim

neighbors ! are of great intrinsic importance and are practically pressing for Christians today.

They merit lengthy and detailed consideration in themselves.

Another issue that merits some consideration is that of the particular role played by the

Statement of Faith in the Wheaton College community. Two important questions under this

topic concern the proper hermeneutical stance to adopt toward the Statement of

Faith ! whether to construe it strictly or expansively ! and the particular actions and

expressions that may rightly be expected from community members as manifestations of their

conformity to it. These questions are particularly pressing because a recent statement by Jones,

first circulated on January 20, suggests that the College’s objection to Hawkins’ statements is

not that they, taken on their face, contradict the Statement of Faith, taken on its face. While

Jones’ precise criticism of Hawkins’ statements remains opaque, he seems instead to argue that,

when the Statement of Faith is properly understood, not strictly but as “a living breathing

instrument,” it becomes apparent that Hawkins’ statements contradict it in some broader sense,



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showing her failure to clearly and adequately evince the mark these convictions ought to have

on the life of a Wheaton faculty member. For this reason, after demonstrating that Hawkins’

statements are consistent on their face with the Statement of Faith, we will take up the question

of the function we ought to attribute to the Statement of Faith itself.

One further preliminary note: in framing our defense of Hawkins as we have, we waive

appeal to some other arguments that have been given on her behalf. Some have taken issue

with the very idea of a Christian, or of a specifically Evangelical, institution of higher education

holding faculty members to a doctrinal statement as a condition of their employment. We do

not. Others have attempted to downplay the significance of Hawkins’ statements themselves in

favor of the practice in whose defense they were offered: namely, in her practicing embodied

solidarity with Muslims by wearing the hijab throughout Advent. But we reject the claim,

implicit in this line of thought, that the vital importance of concrete Christian practice is best

respected by ceasing to reflect carefully upon the theological principles from which it springs.We join these defenders of Hawkins in applauding her concrete efforts to show the love of

Christ to her Muslim neighbors, and we agree that her goal in crafting her statement clearly

was not to defend a theological assertion for its own sake, but rather to convey the importance

of her practice of embodied solidarity and to exhort others to share in it. Indeed, in our view,

this practical orientation is not peculiar to Hawkins but is inherent in the very task of theology.

We must do theology for the same reason that, according to St. Augustine, we must read and

interpret the Bible: namely, to guide our actions so that we may cultivate the virtues of faith,

hope and, above all, love.5 But far from trivializing our theological statements, this truth invests

them with deep significance. If theology is indeed the reflection on and necessary guide to

practicing the theological virtues, then it is no more dispensable than is that practice itself. For,

Augustine reminds us, even if the faith that flows directly from theology is ultimately

subordinate to love, still “if someone lapses in his faith, he inevitably lapses in his love as

well.”6 Therefore, those who would commend Hawkins’ practice as an admirable

exemplification of the love of Christ, and who suspect that Hawkins entered into that practice

not haphazardly but rather as the outworking of this very process of reflection on and for the

sake of practice, should take up the task of defending her theological claims rather than

minimizing their importance in favor of practice, considered in isolation.

It is this task that orients us in what follows. We will argue that one’s faithful

commitment to the basic tenets of Evangelicalism or to the Wheaton College Statement of Faith

5 See On Christian Doctrine, I.36-9.

6 Ibid., I.37.41.



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simply does not settle the question of which view one should take about whether Christians

and Muslims worship the same God. One can answer this question either way while retaining

such a commitment. We will further argue that there are reasons that Evangelicals should find

persuasive that render an affirmative answer at least plausible. And we will show that none of

Hawkins’ other statements singled out for criticism by Jones may be reasonably interpreted asconflicting with the Statement of Faith. If we succeed in our arguments for these claims, we will

have shown that, at least with respect to the evidence currently in the public record, the

College lacks adequate grounds for its proceedings against Hawkins and should cease them,

restoring her to her position as a tenured member of the faculty in good standing.

Area of Concern 1

Hawkins: “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, arepeople of the book. And . . . we worship the same God” (Dec. 10 Facebook post).7

The Statement of Faith: WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the

everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life . . .

.

WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ . . . was true God and true man, existing in one person and

without sin.

Jones: “It is widely and commonly understood that persons of the Islamic faith, on the basis of

the teaching of the Quran (e.g., Surah 4: 171), deny the Trinitarian nature of God Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, and specifically deny the divinity of Jesus Christ as the divine Son. With this

understanding, please articulate how you understand that Christians and Muslims worship the

same God. . . . If blasphemy is understood as statements showing profound disrespect or

disregard for the true nature of God as understood in a particular religious faith, can you

explain how your comments are to be understood as not falling into that characterization for

either Muslims or Christians or both?” (Dec. 15 memo, p. 1).

We Comment: Let us begin with this last question of Jones’, that of blasphemy. Granting Jones’

definition of blasphemy, it is doubtless correct that Christians will and should view the denial

of God’s Triune nature, or of the divinity of Jesus Christ, as blasphemous. And it is doubtless

correct that many Muslims will view the affirmation of either of these claims as blasphemous.

7 We elide Hawkins’ aside “as Pope Francis stated last week,” which Jones leaves out in his memo.



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So, suppose that Hawkins’ statement entails that Christians and Muslims share a belief in the

Trinity of God and the divinity of Jesus. In this case, her statement attributes a belief to

Muslims that they view as blasphemous. Suppose instead that it entails that Christians and

Muslims alike deny the Trinity of God and the divinity of Jesus. In that case, her statement

attributes a belief to Christians that they view as blasphemous. In either case, then, by at leastone group’s lights, her statement is, if not itself blasphemous, at least a serious

misrepresentation of its beliefs.

But it would be very surprising that Hawkins would intentionally assert a statement

with either of these consequences, as it would suggest that she was simply unaware of the

differences between Christians and Muslims on these matters. Given Hawkins’ close

interaction with Christian theology in the academy at Wheaton, as well as her deep

engagement with the Muslims around her, we find it nigh impossible to believe that she did

not know these elementary points of disagreement. And, indeed, she notes these disagreementsin her reply to Jones while still affirming her initial statement. It seems, then, that we should

seek another interpretation of her statements, one which is more plausible and more charitable.

Another possible interpretation is that while Hawkins was aware of these

disagreements between Christians and Muslims, she simply did not view them as important.

On this proposal, Christians and Muslims “worship the same God” because their beliefs about

God differ only about otiose matters ! or, perhaps, only about matters about which neither side

can be simply correct, but in which each belief represents a path to relationship with God that

is “equally valid” as the other (in some sense of the phrase). Indeed, committed as they are to

their respective doctrines of God, both Christians and Muslims would seem to be licensed to

regard this claim as blasphemous. Crucially, Hawkins concurs with this assessment in her

reply to Jones, noting that the stance of “an easygoing ecumenism that would amalgamate all

faiths into a homogenized whole”8 would amount to “both a distortion and a sign of

disrespect.” And yet she does not retract her initial statement. This may represent an

inconsistency in her beliefs. But if we would adopt a posture of charity toward her as an

interlocutor, we should prefer an interpretation that attributes to her consistent, reasonable

beliefs, provided that it does not unduly strain the ordinary meanings of her words. The

question is whether this is possible: can we give an interpretation of Hawkins’ statement that

Christians and Muslims worship the same God on which this statement is not unreasonable,

but that also continues to respect the particularities of religious traditions in general and the

8 The wording is Timothy George’s.



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differences between Christianity and Islam in particular? This is what we shall attempt to

provide.

Believing in the Same God

Let us take first a simpler case. Pretend that you and we both know someone named Stephen.

But you know Stephen quite intimately, while we met him only for a few minutes at a noisy

and hectic party. As a result, our impression of Stephen differs greatly from yours. We left

thinking that Stephen is a math teacher from Chicago who is very rude and disagreeable. You

know that Stephen is an anthropologist from Pittsburgh who is eccentric but big-hearted and

was simply off his social game that day. Now, you and we have very different beliefs about

Stephen. But clearly this does not prevent us all from knowing the same person, Stephen. Nor

does it prevent our very different beliefs about Stephen from nevertheless sharing an object orreferent: they are still beliefs about the same person. Moreover, we can give this verdict without

somehow implying that your disagreements with us about Stephen don’t matter, or that

neither of our conflicting beliefs is simply correct while each is somehow “equally valid.” On

the contrary, when our belief has the same object as yours, this entails that, if we attribute

incompatible attributes to the object, our beliefs disagree, and we can discuss the reasons for

and against our respective beliefs and can consider which of us might be best positioned to

apprehend the shared object of our beliefs correctly. (By contrast, if our belief that Stephen is

disagreeable refers to a different person named Stephen than your belief that Stephen is agreeable,

then they wouldn’t disagree at all, and so this further discussion would not arise.)

The general verdict this example teaches, then, is that beliefs can share an object (i.e. can

be about the same thing) while attributing importantly different properties to that object, and

can do so without this dispelling or rendering unimportant the disagreement between these

beliefs. Perhaps this principle allows for Christians and Muslims to believe in ! setting aside the

question of worship for a moment; we return to it below ! the same God even while having

importantly different beliefs about this one God.

We should consider a possible objection to this approach. In the case we just

considered, while you importantly disagree with us about some of Stephen’s attributes, all of

us nevertheless agree on a good number of his other attributes. We can all agree about his

appearance, for instance, or about whom he likes to hang out with at parties. Fundamentally,

moreover, we agree about Stephen’s basic nature: we all agree that Stephen is a human being.

We agree about the kind of object we are talking about. This agreement, an objector might



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claim, provides the necessary basis for our disagreement about some of Stephen’s attributes.

After all, if, in the course of our disagreement, it should become apparent that, while you know

that Stephen is a human being, we think that in talking about Stephen we are discussing a

friend’s Rottweiler, then we could not sensibly proceed to discuss the question of whether

Stephen is agreeable without clarifying which sort of object we are actually talking about. Now, itis a plausible claim that Christians and Muslims disagree not merely about God’s

attributes ! the features that God has but might have lacked ! but about God’s very nature: the

kind of being God is in Himself. And the objector might claim that while differences in beliefs

like those you and we respectively have about Stephen don’t make our beliefs about different

objects, differences in beliefs about the nature of an object do make these beliefs about different

objects, since they take away the basic agreement about what sort of object is being discussed

that is necessary for meaningful disagreement about the object’s other attributes.9

We grant that it is true that meaningful disagreement about some of an object’sattributes is possible only on the basis of agreement about some of its other attributes. But we

deny that this agreement must concern the nature of the object in particular, and so reject the

objection. To see why, consider another example. We have a significant number of beliefs about

water. So, too, it would seem, did the ancient Greeks: their beliefs about water seem to have

concerned the very same object that our beliefs about water are about. After all, we form beliefs

about this object in the same ways that they did: watching the rain, noting evaporation on hot

days, going to the seaside, experiencing thirst and its quenching, and so on. And it seems

obvious that our respective employments of these belief-formation processes led us to the very

same object: the water they encountered then in these ways is the same substance that we

encounter now in these ways. So, it would seem that our beliefs and theirs share an object in

common. Importantly, however, we have a very different conception of the nature of water

than they did. We think of water as a chemical compound made up of more basic elements

(namely, hydrogen and oxygen); in our judgment, water’s nature consists in its being H2O. But

the ancient Greeks thought of water quite differently, viewing it as one of the basic elements of

which the rest of physical reality is composed. The situation here is precisely the opposite from

that in the case of the disagreement about Stephen we considered above. In that case, you

shared with us a view about Stephen’s nature and basic physical attributes. This enabled our

9 We note, though, that only particular disagreements between Christians and Muslims can buttress

this precise objection. Among the points Jones asks Hawkins to clarify is “how it is that [Christiansand Muslims] worship the same God if Muslims cannot affirm that God is the Father of Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob; . . . or that the Father did not spare his only begotten Son” (Dec. 15 memo, p. 1). Butthese divine attributes would seem to be grounded in God’s free choice to bless and to redeem hiscreatures rather than in the unchangeable divine nature. Therefore, they have no bearing on theobjection presently at issue, which is a question of God’s essential nature or identity.



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beliefs to refer to the same object, which, in turn, allowed us meaningfully to disagree about his

other attributes. In this case, however, we and the ancient Greeks share a view not about

water’s nature, but about the attributes it evinces in its relations to us: how it looks to us, the

role it plays in sustaining our lives, and the like. And this enables our beliefs about it to refer to

the same object, which, in turn, allows us meaningfully to disagree about its precise nature.

Now, Christians and Muslims share many beliefs about the ways in which God relates

to us, as well as about elements of God’s nature. As Hawkins notes in her reply to Jones, “both

Christians and Muslims . . . confess that God is One” and that he revealed Himself to Abraham

and made a covenant with him. Moreover, for Muslims as well as for Christians, God is “the

transcendent, all-powerful and all-knowing Creator, Sustainer, Ordainer, and Judge of the

universe.”10 God is that on which all other beings depend at every moment for their continuing

existence, while He is dependent on nothing outside Himself. He is the righteous law-giver and

judge of all, but also the benevolent giver of natural sustenance, revelation through theprophets and Scriptures, and even forgiveness. This constitutes substantial agreement between

Christians and Muslims about who God is and how He relates to human beings. But as we

have seen, Christians and Muslims significantly disagree about God as well. It remains a

question of degree whether their agreement is sufficiently substantial to provide an adequate

basis in agreement for the shared reference of their beliefs. In recognition of this, we provide

two arguments in favor of Christians’ adopting a generous view of the requirements for a

belief’s successfully being about, or referring to, God.11

The first is missiological. Recently, missiologists have persuasively argued that failure to

translate the Gospel into terms that make contact with a culture’s own beliefs and values

practically reflects a flawed theology that fails to grapple with the Incarnation and God’s

accommodation to human particularity and limitations therein. Not only so, but, far from a

needed protection against syncretism (as was previously thought), this failure in fact invites

syncretism, as its natural output is “false conversions” in which converts are conditioned to

10 John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 22. Forthe further claims about the Islamic view of God made in this paragraph, see Esposito, pp. 22-8.

11 We briefly note a third here: if we have reason to doubt that a religious community’s beliefssucceed in referring to God when it denies important truths about God, even if this community hasmany other true and important beliefs about God, then we would seem to have nearly as muchreason to doubt that a religious community’s beliefs refer to God when it affirms these importanttruths imprecisely, or without understanding their true meaning (again, even if this community hasmany other true and important beliefs about God that it affirms precisely and does understand). Butsurely we do not wish to hold that communities within the Christian church that affirm someimportant orthodox Christian doctrines only imprecisely, or that do so without understanding theirtrue meaning, do not succeed in so much as having any beliefs about the one true God.



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repeat formulas of foreign concepts, but at the same time go on acting and even worshiping as

before ! precisely because since the proclamation of the Gospel they have received “is not

directed to [their] specific needs and problems,” it does not enable them to “experience the

Lordship of Christ in their concrete situation,” and so leaves them subject to the same “lords”

as they were before.12

This result is certainly antithetical to the task of Christian mission.Instead, we should affirm that other cultures and religious communities sometimes have

concepts that do refer to the one true God, but that nevertheless reflect a wrong understanding

of His nature and character. And we should prompt them to revise these prior understandings

in light of an understanding of what the God they have been trying to understand and serve is

actually like.

This may initially strike one as a piece of reasoning novel to “postmodern” theology or

the like. But nothing could be further from the truth, for this reasoning enjoys clear and striking

Biblical support. For it provides the basis for the apostle Paul’s explanation of the ChristianGod to the Athenian philosophers at the Areopagus in terms familiar to them: “Athenians, I see

how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked

carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To

an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23;

italics ours).13 Paul, then, does not hold back from identifying the object of the Athenians’

worship ! and not mere belief ! with the God who is the subject of the Christian Gospel he will

now present. Of course, he does not mean to affirm all the Athenians’ beliefs about this being.

Minimally, since the altar in question was just one of many objects of worship, the Athenians

appear to have conceived of the being in question as one of many beings on an equal footing in

power and worthiness of worship. This is quite an important mistake to make about God ! at

least as significant, one wants to say, as any made by Muslims.14 And yet Paul treats their

beliefs and acts of worship as referring to the one true God, not in order to give a facile

affirmation of all their beliefs about God, but precisely in order to call them to recognize the

way that elements of their own cultural and religious frameworks were already calling them to

12

See C. René Padilla, Mission Between the Times , rev. ed. (Cumbria: Langham, 2010), p. 113.

13 All Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.

14 This point is really not essential to argue that the Athenians’ view of God was at least as mistakenas Muslims’, however, since the Athenians seem to have made the precise mistakes about God thatMuslims do as well as additional ones like that noted above. For the Athenians would alsopresumably have been disposed to deny that the being Paul is discussing was Triune, as well as thatthe human being Jesus was also divine (see 17:31-2).



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turn away from “image[s] formed by the art and imagination of mortals” and to repent before

Jesus’ righteous judgment of the world (17:29-31).

The second concerns the doctrine of God. As we have noted, Muslims, like Christians,

view God as the transcendent creator of all, all-powerful with respect to His creation,dependent for His existence on nothing external to Himself. Now, if we nevertheless deny that

their beliefs about God are about the one true God described by Christianity, then we must

affirm one of two remaining options: we must hold that their beliefs about God are about some

other (merely possible) being who fits the above description, or we must hold that they are not

in fact about anything at all. But neither option is viable. So, we must affirm that their beliefs

about God succeed in referring to the one true God.

Why cannot the former option be made to work? Why cannot there be multiple possible

beings who are all-powerful, totally independent and transcendent creators of all? Well,orthodox Christian theology will not allow this. It tells us in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo

that the one God is the creator of all things other than Himself, and that He Himself depends

on nothing for His existence but rather exists eternally and necessarily. Obviously, then, there

cannot be another being of this description that actually exists, since it would be a being that

God has not created and so would violate the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. (Incidentally,

Muslims would assent to all these claims as well.) But why can there not be another possible

being of this description, to whom Muslims’ beliefs might refer? The reason for this takes some

effort to understand. It relies on the distinction between the natures (or essences, as they were

classically called) of things and their existence. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo tells us that it

was15 once true that no created things existed. None of the beings we encounter in the created

universe is such that its essence includes existence: that is, that it exists by its own nature alone.

Rather, God creates it by causing something of that nature to come to be, and so by conjoining

a particular act of existence to that essence. But God Himself is not created: nothing outside

Him causes Him to be, or causes existence to attach to His essence.16 What, then, must we say

about God’s essence? We must say that God, as a being of the above description ! the first

cause of all that is, dependent on nothing external to Him ! is a being “whose essence is its

15 This wording is infelicitous if time itself is a creature, as seems plausible. We hope this will beexcused us, as it is very difficult to speak precisely about an atemporal state, especially as it relates totemporal ones.

16 For one thing, this is entailed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. But it is also necessaryphilosophically, since, if something did cause God’s existence to be conjoined to His essence, then anadequate explanation of creation would require us to inquire about the relation of that being’s existence to its essence, and an infinite regress would result, so that creation would never beexplained at all.



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being” (i.e. existence), in Thomas Aquinas’ words: a being who is nothing short of pure being

itself, with no diminution or lack of any kind internal to it.17

So, this is the kind of being that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo entails that God is.

Now, let us press our question once more: are there multiple possible individuals of this sort?Given that one individual whose essence is its existence exists, can we consider another one

who might have existed? Thomas rightly answers that we cannot. We can, of course, do this

with respect to other essences: for instance, given that we exist, we can imagine having siblings

who do not in fact exist. But this is precisely because the human essence is neutral concerning

whether, and how many, humans exist: it is neutral, that is, with respect to particular acts of

human existence. For to imagine siblings that we might have had just is to imagine our human

nature to be conjoined to particular acts of existence other than those to which it really is

conjoined. Now, we have just seen that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo entails that God’s

essence simply is his particular act of existence: these are identical. So, for another being to shareGod’s essence would be for it to share God’s particular act of existence (this is what it means to

share God’s essence) and also to have its own distinct particular act of existence (this is what

makes it another being). But no being can have two distinct acts of existence: this would be for

one being to be literally two separate individual beings, which is impossible. And since this is

not merely not actually the case, but could not possibly be the case, similarly it could not

possibly be the case that there is a being who shares God’s essence but is not God. But if this is

true, there is no possible all-powerful, totally independent and transcendent creator of all who

is distinct from the one true God described by Christianity, and so such a being cannot serve as

the referent of Muslims’ beliefs.

What, then, of the second option: that Muslims’ beliefs lack an object altogether? The

best supporting rationale for this claim we can find is something like the following: God is by

nature Triune, and is also by nature transcendent, all-powerful, all-knowing, and so on. In fact, all these

features flow necessarily from the same, unchangeable nature. So, to hold that a being with this nature

could fail to be Triune is to affirm a contradiction. And because such contradictory beliefs do not describe

a coherent way that reality could be, they do not succeed in referring to any being at all, whether actual

or possible. Now, on the basis of Christian revelation, we are willing to grant the preliminary

conclusion that to hold that a being of the divine nature is not Triune is to affirm a

contradiction. If we fail to see this, this is because we have an inadequate grasp of the divine

nature, in virtue of our inability to come to know it in itself; rather, we come to know it only

17 Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, ch. 4, par. 6.



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derivatively, on the basis of our knowledge of God’s actions concerning us.18 But it is not true

that contradictory pairs of beliefs cannot succeed in referring to an object. This is clear, for one

thing, on the basis of examples. Suppose a person makes plans to visit a friend one day, and so

forms the belief that she will be visiting her friend later in the day. But she forgets these plans.

Then, another friend asks her to coffee at a different location at the same time, and she agrees.Accordingly, she forms the belief that she will be having coffee with the latter friend at that

time. Ultimately, she realizes her mistake and feels foolish, perhaps ! precisely because she

held two incompatible beliefs about herself . The beliefs have not become nonsense that refers to

nothing; rather, it is precisely because they share an object and each make a meaningful claim

about it that their meanings can be incompatible. In any case, Christians in particular should

not be quick to assert that those who view God other than as Triune cannot succeed in having

beliefs that are about anything at all. Hawkins notes this in her reply to Jones, quoting from

John Stackhouse:

if we insist . . . that God must be understood in terms of the Trinity, with a focus

especially on Jesus, or else one really doesn’t know God, I respectfully want to ask such

Bible believers what they make of Abraham (who is held up as a paradigm of faith in

the New Testament) and the list of Old Testament saints (who are held up as paradigms

of faith to Christians in Hebrews 11), precisely none of whom can be seriously

understood as holding Trinitarian views and some proleptic vision of the identity and

career of Jesus Christ.19

Christians will not find palatable the claim that the patriarchs’ beliefs were not in fact about

anything at all, even given that the patriarchs did not affirm the doctrines of the Trinity or the

Incarnation.20 Indeed, to deny that the Old Testament patriarchs’ religious beliefs referred to

18 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, part I, q. 2, a. 1.

19 John G. Stackhouse, Jr., “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?” Online blog post,Dec. 16, 2015. URL: <http://www.johnstackhouse.com/2015/12/16/do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god/>

20 Some might be attracted by the reply that, though the patriarchs did not explicitly affirm thesedoctrines, they did so tacitly. (Perhaps they would think this reply borne out by Scriptural passagessuch as John 8:56). But those putting forward such a reply would assume the burden of giving anaccount of just what this tacit knowledge consists of. This is a difficult question. For it is not obviousthat, given their own epistemic situations, the patriarchs would have explicitly affirmed thesedoctrines even had they entertained them, and had the relevant concepts been minimally explainedto them; indeed, it is not absurd to suppose that they would have explicitly denied them. Theviability of this reply, then, depends on whether a detailed account of this tacit knowledge can be



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the same God as the beliefs of the figures of the New Testament just seems to be to adopt the

heresy known as Marcionism. So, Christians cannot hold that Muslims’ beliefs lack an object

simply because they do not affirm these doctrines. And since they also cannot maintain that

Muslims’ beliefs about God refer to some object other than God, they should grant that

Muslims’ beliefs about God succeed in referring to the same object as their beliefs about God:namely, the one true God.

We take the foregoing to constitute an adequate defense of the claim that Christians and

Muslims believe in the same God. We think the foregoing renders it plausible that this claim is

true. Even failing that, however, we think it clearly shows that one can hold this belief without

denying the provisions of the Statement of Faith cited by Jones. And since our defense of the

consistency of this belief with the Statement of Faith drew largely on claims Hawkins herself

made in her reply to Jones, simply expounding and defending them at greater length and in

more detail, we view this as a defense of the adequacy of her own reply to Jones with respect toher reconciliation of this belief with the College’s theological position as it is codified in the

Statement of Faith.

Worshiping the Same God

But Hawkins did not state merely that Christians and Muslims believe in the same God, but

that they worship the same God. This might be thought to complicate matters. Scripture tells us

that a subject’s having correct beliefs about God (let alone incorrect ones that merely succeed in

referring to God) does not indicate much at all about the subject’s relationship to God: even the

demons believe that God is one, after all (James 2:19). Worship, by contrast, seems to be the

characteristic attitude of the heart toward God when it is rightly related to God. But our hearts

cannot be rightly related to God without first receiving Christ through faith. Accordingly, an

objector might contend, since they have not received Christ through faith, Muslims are unable

genuinely to worship God. And so Hawkins’ statement that Christians and Muslims worship

the same God is false. For, the objector claims, it could be true only if commitment to Islam

were capable of rightly relating a person to God, independent of the saving work of Christ and

the person’s reception of Him through faith. But, of course, any orthodox Christian must deny

this.

In our view, this objection is vulnerable at two points. The first is its claim that right

relation to God is not merely normative for worship (i.e. a standard according to which human

given on which it is plausible to think that all the patriarchs had it while Muslims in general do not.And whether such an account can be given is, at best, unclear.



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acts of worship are measured as proper or defective), but partly constitutive of it (i.e. necessary

for a human act to count as an act of worship in any sense at all). The second is its equation of a

person’s reception of Christ through faith with explicit belief in his Incarnate divinity and

confession of his Lordship. We consider each point in turn.

First, the objection succeeds only if it is necessary for one’s heart to be rightly related to

God, not merely for one to worship God in a manner acceptable to Him, but for one to worship

God at all. And this seems implausible. For it implies that, while Muslims have many beliefs

about God, and while these lead them to feel awe and adopt postures of respect, as well as to

carry out various practices of devotion and service, none of this amounts to worship in any

sense at all. Muslims, it would turn out, do not worship anything.21 And surely that

consequence is counterintuitive. Moreover, it is not clear how to apply the objectors’ analysis of

worship to idol-worship. It is absurd to think that it could be necessary for idol-worship that

one’s heart be rightly related to the one true God. But if we relativize this notion to the religionin question ! holding (roughly) that, for one to worship an object that, on the basis of one’s

religious commitments, one takes to be divine, it is necessary only that one’s heart be related to

that object in the way singled out as right by the religion one holds ! then it is hard to see why

Muslims should not succeed in worshiping, since (at least ideally) they do relate themselves to

the object of their religious belief in the way singled out as right by the religion they hold.

Instead, it seems more plausible to hold that Muslims do succeed in worshiping God,

but do so inadequately, or in a manner that is not as such acceptable to God. On this view,

certain characteristically religious emotions, attitudes, and practices suffice for worship ! awe,

respect, praise, confession, and the like.22 When persons adopt these emotions, attitudes, and

practices toward some object other than the one true God, they are what make true the

assessment that such persons are worshiping idols. And when they adopt them toward the one

true God, this suffices for that person to be worshiping God. However, this does not suffice for

this worship to be adequate, or for it to be acceptable to God.23 For this reason, this view of

21 Could they worship some other being than God? It seems not, since their religious beliefs succeedin referring to God (as we have argued), and since these beliefs restrict the referent of the emotions,

attitudes, and practices that are consequent upon them.

22 Obviously, we are concerned with the cases in which these are borne or done to the degrees and as

elements of the overall postures characteristic of religion; of course, we can bear and do these thingsin non-religious contexts, too. The precise distinction between, e.g., religious and non-religious awedoes not concern us here.

23 One way of explaining why this genuine worship could fail to be adequate or acceptable to God

involves two steps. First, one could hold that adequate worship acceptable to God must proceed not



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worship is perfectly consistent with the denial that commitment to Islam can of itself enable

persons to stand in right relation to God or to worship Him adequately or in a manner

acceptable to Him. So, it can warrant Hawkins’ statement without encountering any of the

difficulties raised by the objection we are considering.

The warrant for this claim, too, is not purely theoretical, but derives significantly from

the Biblical example we considered above: Paul’s claim at the Areopagus that the God he will

proclaim to the philosophers is the very being they “worship as unknown” (Acts 17:23; our

italics). Now, Paul was under no illusions that these philosophers were rightly related to God;

indeed, the very point of his message is to impress upon them their failure to stand in right

relation to God and the consequent urgency of their need to repent before Jesus should return

to judge the world. So, those who deny that Christians may be licensed in granting that those

not rightly related to God can nevertheless worship Him must explain Paul’s apparent

readiness to grant just this. (Of course, nothing about this concession should be taken to requirePaul to allow that the philosophers’ prior worship of God was either adequate or acceptable to

God. Indeed, Paul clearly would have denied this, lest his proclaiming to them the God they

previously worshiped as unknown be rendered pointless.)

Second, the objector is clearly correct to hold that orthodox Christians must not allow

that any person can be set free from sin and come to stand in right relation to God apart from

the saving work of Christ. But does this preclude that at least some Muslims can come to stand

in right relation to God, and so to worship Him in a manner acceptable to Him, while

remaining Muslims? It does so only on the assumption that one cannot be saved by the work of

merely from knowledge about the one true God, but from saving faith in Him. Second, one couldadopt Calvin’s definition of “full” or saving faith: “a firm and certain knowledge of God’sbenevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealedto our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (John Calvin, Institutes of theChristian Religion, 1559 Latin edition, III.II.7. Translation by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: TheWestminster Press, 1955.) Persons who lack knowledge of this freely given promise in Christ wouldthen be unable to attain saving faith in Him, and so would also be unable to worship God adequatelyor in a manner acceptable to Him. But their worship of God could nevertheless be genuine, since therequirements for this are the less demanding ones suggested in the text.

We note in passing that this particular explanatory strategy is inconsistent with the secondinterpretation of Hawkins’ claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God that weconsider below. But defending the consistency of Hawkins’ claims with the Statement of Faithrequires only that we present one or more reasonable interpretations of those claims on which boththey and the Statement can be true; it does not require that we demonstrate the consistency of each ofthese reasonable interpretations with each other. Moreover, Calvin at times makes claims quitesimilar to those underlying that second interpretation (see the penultimate paragraph of thissubsection), demonstrating just how difficult it can be for even an undeniably orthodox theologian tocraft an account of these matters that is both consistent and compelling.



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Christ while continuing to remain, or at least to identify consciously as, a Muslim. Those who

accept this premise will likely warrant it by claiming that only those who consciously affirm

the Incarnate divinity of Jesus and confess Him as Lord are covered by His saving work. But it

is important to note, as C. S. Lewis does, that this further claim does not follow from the initial

assertion that freedom from sin and right relation to God are possible only through the savingwork of Christ: “Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot

save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life.”24

We will not argue here that the objector’s second claim is false. But we do assert that it is

implausible that it is an essential tenet of orthodox Christianity.25 Indeed, we doubt whether

there is any strong reason to take it to be an essential tenet of Evangelicalism. (Presumably Billy

Graham, for one, does not take it as such, since he denied it in a 1997 interview with specific

reference to Muslims, among others.) In any case, the further claim is neither among nor

entailed by the theses included in the College’s Statement of Faith. Here are the only relevantportions of the Statement:

WE BELIEVE that our first parents sinned by rebelling against God’s revealed will and therebyincurred both physical and spiritual death, and that as a result all human beings are born with asinful nature that leads them to sin in thought, word, and deed.

WE BELIEVE that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as arepresentative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; and that all who believe inHim are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins.

24 C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 102.

25 Some here will protest that this claim is entailed by Romans 10:9: “if you confess with your lipsthat Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

But it is not. For this verse, considered in isolation, provides only a sufficient condition, and not anecessary one, for salvation. (Which is to say: the claim would be entailed by a verse that read “only ifyou confess with your lips . . . and believe in your heart . . . can you be saved.” But that is not whatthe verse says.) Moreover, the context also supports this view: Paul is concerned to argue thatsalvation need not be through “the righteousness that comes from the law” (10:5), because theconditions cited in 10:9 are sufficient. (He does go on in 10:14ff. to stress the importance of evangelismin order to ensure that people hear of Jesus and so are enabled consciously to call on Him. But thiswould be important in order to widen the availability of one important means of availing oneself ofChrist’s saving work even if there were other possible means of doing so. So, this passage is notdecisive.)



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WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the HolySpirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable toGod.26

WE BELIEVE in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of

the lost, and the everlasting blessedness of the saved.

These statements entail that all human beings are subject to sin; that those who receive Christ

by faith are forgiven of sin, come to be rightly related to God and to worship Him acceptably,

and will see everlasting blessedness; and that those who are lost will face everlasting

punishment. But they patently do not entail any particular account of the relationship between

receiving Christ by faith and conscious affirmation of the Incarnate divinity of Jesus and

confession of Him as Lord. Nor do they restrict the consequences of receiving Christ by

faith ! forgiveness, restoration of relationship and the ability to worship acceptably, everlasting

blessedness ! to only those persons who make such conscious affirmation and confession. Nor,again, do they specify conditions for being “lost” that entail that all those who do not make

such conscious affirmation and confession are lost.27

So, nothing in the College’s Statement of Faith bars Hawkins from holding that, through

the saving work of Christ, some, and perhaps even many, Muslims are enabled to worship God

adequately and in a manner acceptable to Him, even while, failing to know of the truth about

Christ or of any cogent reason to take it to be true, they remain Muslims who have not

consciously affirmed Jesus’ Incarnate divinity or confessed Him as Lord. And in the absence of

any such obstacle, the College has no basis for finding fault with her if her prayers, like those of

John Calvin, “embrace all who are [her] brothers in Christ, not only those whom [she] at

present sees and recognizes as such but all men who dwell on earth. For what God has

determined concerning them is beyond our knowing except that it is no less godly than

humane to wish and hope the best for them.”28

26 Incidentally, we do not take this thesis to rule out the account of worship by those outside rightrelation to God we offered on Hawkins’ behalf above. For that account does not entail that those who

have not received the Lord Jesus Christ by faith can offer worship that is acceptable to God, as weemphasized above.

27 Nor would such conditions be palatable if they were included, since, in this totally unqualified

form, they would entail that those lacking the mental capacity to consider the question of Jesus’Incarnate divinity and Lordship, including the very young and some mentally disabled persons, areone and all lost.

28 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.XX.38.



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Whether, then, one construes the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same

God to mean that each group worships God in some sense, or even if we construe it to mean

that, through the saving work of Christ, at least some persons belonging to each group are

enabled to do so in a manner acceptable to God, we find no reason to think the claim

inconsistent with the College’s Statement of Faith.

“People of the Book” and “Religious Solidarity”

We now turn to another of Hawkins’ statements: “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims

because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book.” Jones does not say how this passage

is in putative conflict with the passages from the Statement of Faith he cites; indeed, none of his

questions specifically concerns the concept of religious solidarity or the topic of whether Islam

and Christianity share Scriptures in common. Therefore, without further clarification from theCollege, we need not defend this claim in any detail. Concerning the question of whether

Muslims are “people of the book,” it should suffice to note that Muslims do believe that “God .

. . revealed his will to Moses and the Hebrew prophets and later to Jesus,” and that the

Christian Old and New Testaments are therefore sacred writings, containing revelations from

God.29 Muslims hold, however, that these revelations became “corrupted” by extraneous

cultural beliefs, so that the “current texts of the Torah and the New Testament are regarded as a

composite of human fabrication mixed with divine revelation.”30 This explains the need for

God’s final, decisive revelation in the immutable and inerrant Quran. Obviously, most

Christians ! and certainly most Evangelicals ! will disagree with this assessment of the status

of the Biblical revelation. But Hawkins’ claim, when read charitably, does not require that

Christians and Muslims agree entirely about the status of the Bible, but only that each group

take it to be a sacred text centered around a divine revelation and treat it as such in its

practices. And, in fact, many Muslims do study the Bible carefully and respectfully in order to

come to a fuller understanding of their religion. In our view, then, this statement of Hawkins’ is

simply a true and straightforward description of a simple matter of fact.

This might seem to raise an important question about Hawkins’ invoking religious

solidarity with Muslims, however. Throughout this section, we have argued that Hawkins’

claims that Christianity and Islam share common Scriptures and a common object of worship

are importantly minimal. They do not entail that there are not important disagreements

29 Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, p. 17.

30 Ibid., p. 18.



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between Christians and Muslims concerning their respective understandings of these

Scriptures and this God. Nor do they entail that neither conflicting answer can be simply more

accurate than the other. But, in that case, is this “religious solidarity” really so significant after

all? In her December 13 Facebook post, Hawkins suggest that she finds “convincing” Miroslav

Volf’s argument that “asserting our religious solidarity with Muslims and Jews will go a longway toward quelling religious violence and enervating religionist fear of the religious other.”

But given that the grounds for this solidarity leave it open that one of these religions might

understand and worship God more adequately than the others, it might seem that it leaves the

religions in competition with one another, leaving the seeds of religious violence as sown as

they ever were. And, of course, as Hawkins notes in her initial post, we are called to love each

of our neighbors, including our Muslim neighbors, not primarily as a member of the particular

communities to which we belong, but simply “by virtue of her/his human dignity.”

So, why do we need to assert our religious solidarity with Muslims, when this solidaritymust acknowledge also religious incompatibilities with them, and when an invocation of

human solidarity would seem to suffice to ground the desired practical method? Perhaps it is at

bottom Hawkins’ refusal to confine herself to invoking the latter sort of solidarity with

Muslims that has led Hawkins’ critics to view her comments with suspicion, rather than the

meanings of her statements themselves, considered on their face. And yet we think that this

stance of Hawkins’ is eminently defensible, and perhaps it is even politically urgent in the

circumstances we currently face.

Of course few Christians will deny the abstract claim that each of our neighbors is a

bearer of dignity in virtue of her share in our common human nature, and so in the image of

God. But many people currently believe that Muslims as such are captive to a religious

ideology that refuses to recognize the humanity of non-believers and treat them accordingly.

That is, many people currently think that Islam refuses all relations of human solidarity with

non-Muslims. But it is psychologically difficult in the extreme for one to continue to recognize

another person as a bearer of dignity and value in virtue of her common humanity when the

other person ceases to return this recognition. In those circumstances, one will find it very

difficult to treat the other person in the ways Christianity requires ! and requires precisely

because the other person equally shares in humanity, and so, at least by nature, equally bears

the image of God. Now, in such circumstances, one task for faithful Christians is to recall and

strive to emulate the example of Jesus, who not only respected the human dignity of his

persecutors but, further, forgave and loved them. But it is also very important to consider

carefully whether the religious differences between most Christians and most Muslims are

actually so stark as to prevent interaction based on mutual recognition of a common human



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nature. In such cases, emphasizing Christians’ and Muslims’ common, and/or even similar,

religious beliefs and practices is one potentially constructive way of enabling Christians to

engage their Muslim neighbors as fellow humans and bearers of dignity ! and, indeed, to see

them as fellow humans who in turn recognize our humanity and dignity. Therefore,

expressions of religious solidarity with Muslims are important because they remove theobstacles to relating to Muslims in human solidarity. This latter task is vital in present

circumstances, and we are simultaneously encouraged and convicted of its urgency by Dr.

Hawkins’ concrete attempts to carry it out.

We have engaged the concerns Jones expressed in this first area at such length because

they appear to be the ones most central to the College’s case against Hawkins. Jones’ further

questions for Hawkins are less detailed; indeed, he does not even always attempt to ground his

remaining concerns in the Statement of Faith. Therefore, our comments on these remaining

areas of concern can be much briefer.

Area of Concern 2

Hawkins expresses her desire to live at peace even with those who view her as apostate for

“daring to call fellow humans who happen to be Muslim my brothers and sisters” and to

respond to her critics in “the spirit of the unity of what Christians term the body of Christ”

(Dec. 13 Facebook post). (Jones quotes only these two sentence fragments.)

The Statement of Faith: WE BELIEVE that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the

Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; and that all who

believe in Him are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins.

WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy

Spirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God.

Jones: “not only do the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed deny the reality of the divinity of

Jesus, but they also deny the reality of his bodily resurrection from the dead (Surah 4: 157). It is

on the basis of that resurrection power that we become children of God " brothers and sisters

in Christ Jesus. . . . Please clarify the type of religious unity you are affirming with Muslim

persons, and how you understand your relationship with them as sisters and brothers” (Dec. 15

memo, p. 2).



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We Comment: We may as well begin by noting that the second fragment Jones quotes from

Hawkins is given without any context. Jones criticizes her for identifying the “religious unity”

Christians share with Muslims with Christians’ “unity as believers.” This suggests that she

discusses “the spirit of the unity of what Christians term the body of Christ” in connection with

the attitude Christians should take toward Muslims. This is simply false. In fact, she isdiscussing the criticism her previous post received, “almost exclusively from other Christians,”

and her desire to reply to their criticism in “the spirit of the unity of what Christians term the

body of Christ.” This is laudable, for one thing, and in any case Jones’ comment and citation are

entirely irrelevant to it.

What, then, of Hawkins’ calling Muslims her “brothers and sisters”? Hawkins does not

explain precisely what she means by using this phrase, either in this post or when speaking of

“our Muslim sisters” in the December 10 post. Importantly, however, she does not cite any

religious considerations in the immediate context of either occurrence of this language. In theDecember 13 post, she identifies her Muslim “brothers and sisters” neither as fellow believers

nor as likeminded worshipers, but simply as “fellow humans who happen to be Muslim.” So,

she is perfectly consistent with the apparent meaning of her prior statements when she

explains this language in her reply to Jones as licensed by the fact that “all human beings

originate from the same parents and bear the unalterable imago Dei.” Clearly, Christians ! or,

at any rate, Evangelicals who affirm the literal existence of our first parents ! should allow that

Muslims, like Christians, trace their origin to our first parents and, as bearers of the human

nature, are bearers of the image of God. Nor, its other appropriate uses notwithstanding, does

the language of “brothers and sisters” seem inappropriate for expressing these commonalities

or ill-suited to do so. It is of course unfortunate that this led to confusion, but this confusion

does not derive from the original context of Hawkins’ remark, which, as we have noted, lends

itself far more to interpretation as “a statement of the imago Dei, and a reflection of [Hawkins’]

African-American cultural heritage” (reply to Jones) than it does to interpretation as an

ecclesiological or soteriological contention.

We think it is reasonably clear, then, that critics who are confident that Hawkins

employed the language of “brothers and sisters” to connote the relation of fellow membership

in the body of Christ are not justified in their confidence. Even if this were her claim,

moreover ! and we stress once more that we do not think it was; this is merely a concession for

the sake of argument ! this claim would not clearly violate the Statement of Faith, Jones’

comments notwithstanding. It clearly would violate the spirit of the Statement of Faith if

Hawkins should claim that Muslims can attain membership in the family of God and the status

of the unity of believers without sharing by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, or



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without “abid[ing] together in the Resurrected Christ,” as Jones notes.31 But simply to affirm

that Muslims can be, or even often are, our brothers and sisters in Christ does not entail this,

but rather entails only that Muslims can, or perhaps often do, share by faith in the death and

resurrection of Christ in a way other than by conscious knowledge of Jesus and affirmation of

His lordship. As we saw earlier, a number of figures generally regarded as within the boundsof Evangelical “orthodoxy” have embraced claims in this arena. Similarly, Calvin encourages

us to view “all men who dwell on earth” as “brothers in Christ,” since we cannot know that

they are not and since it is fitting for us to hope this. And, most importantly, the Statement of

Faith employs the concept of “receiv[ing] the Lord Jesus Christ by faith” without defining it or

importantly restricting it. So, it does not contradict the entailed claim in question.

So, even if there were reason to suppose that Hawkins meant this more striking claim by

her talk of Muslim “brothers and sisters,” her statement would not clearly conflict with the

Statement of Faith. But, as we have said, we take her claim actually to be the much less strikingone she herself identified, one grounded in a shared human nature. And this statement

obviously does not conflict with the Statement of Faith. What is more, as Hawkins herself

contends in her response to Jones, indeed the Statement of Faith seems to entail it.

Area of Concern 3

Hawkins notes that the Eucharist is “the culmination of the Christian liturgy where Christians

through the centuries have united around a common table to practice hospitality by the eating

of bread and the drinking of wine, to seek forgiveness from those we’ve hurt or offended, and

to grant forgiveness to ourselves and others. It is a table of reconciliation--both spiritual

reconciliation and relational reconciliation” (Dec. 13 Facebook post).

Jones does not cite the Statement of Faith in this area. Moreover, the Statement of Faith does

not explicitly reference the Eucharist at all.

Jones suggests that Hawkins’ discussion of the Eucharist “seemingly fails to reflect any

acknowledgement of the unique and fundamental sacramental and memorial purposes of the

celebration of the offering of his own body and blood by our Lord Jesus Christ in Christian

31 Interestingly, it is not clear that it would violate the letter of the Statement of Faith. While theStatement affirms that those who receive Christ by faith receive forgiveness, justification, andwelcome into the family of God, it actually does not state explicitly that this is the only way in whichone can receive forgiveness, etc. But clearly this is simply an oversight ! though a significant one thatshould be corrected.



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worship. The Eucharistic table, in Christian understanding, only functions as a vehicle of

human communion and hospitality, and of relational reconciliation and forgiveness, because it

first and foremost celebrates and memorializes the unique sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood on

our behalf so that in eating his body and drinking his blood we are reconciled with God. What

is the significance of your emphasis of the ‘horizontal’ to the exclusion of the ‘vertical,’ as whenyou speak of granting ‘forgiveness to ourselves and to others’ when the focus of Christian

worship is on God’s merciful granting of forgiveness to us as a free gift based on the sacrifice of

his Son as an atonement for sin?” (Dec. 15 memo, p. 2).

We Comment: Upon reading Jones’ comment, one is immediately struck by the fact that he

does not challenge anything that Hawkins actually says. It would seem to suffice to allay his

concerns, then, for Hawkins to state her agreement with the claims that he makes about the

“vertical” significance of the Eucharist. In her response to Jones, she does so: “You and I are not

in disagreement in our understanding of the Lord’s Table.” And since Jones does not identifyany inconsistency between the claims he makes and Hawkins’ statement, there is nothing to

impugn her claim to agree with them.

There are two interpretations available regarding Jones’ claim that Hawkins emphasizes

the “horizontal” dimension of the Eucharist “to the exclusion of the ‘vertical.’” It might mean

that the assertions Hawkins makes about the “horizontal” dimension contradict with a right

understanding of the “vertical.” But, reading her assertions, this claim seems false; at best, it

remains unargued. Instead, however, Jones’ claim might mean simply that, in her Dec. 13

Facebook post, Hawkins discusses the horizontal dimension of the Eucharist but not the

vertical. This is true. But there is a reason for this: Hawkins’ post is chiefly devoted to

discussing breaks in her relations with fellow Christians and to attempting to repair them. The

Eucharist’s role in reconciling Christians to one another, then, is directly relevant to the topic of

her post in a way that its role in celebrating and perhaps effecting our reconciliation to God is

not (though, of course, it is the necessary condition for the former mode of reconciliation and so

is strongly indirectly linked to this topic). It seems too demanding to require that Hawkins

interrupt a rather focused essay to add an irrelevant discussion of the foundations of the

Eucharist. Or, at any rate, surely this question of emphasis in a particular piece of writing

would warrant at most for a friendly conversation, not for disciplinary action.

This already seems like a sufficient defense of Hawkins in this area. But before moving

on, we wish to defend the strong emphasis she places on the “horizontal” dimension of the

Eucharist as importantly Biblical. From one point of view, Jones is clearly correct to hold that

the Eucharist is a vehicle of reconciliation and hospitality within the church only because it is



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“first and foremost” a vehicle for God’s hospitality to us and our reconciliation to Him. For

only the transformation of us sinners effected by God’s grace to us, concretized in the

sufferings of Christ and, derivatively, in the Eucharist, enables us to rightly relate to one

another once more and so to be reconciled. But we are in grave error if, once we are members

of the body of Christ, we take this claim to license us in partaking of the Eucharist while we aredivided from, rather than reconciled to, one another. Indeed, perhaps the most prominent

interpretation of the Eucharist given in Scripture, Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 11:23-6, is

given, not in the immediate context of a broader discussion of our reconciliation to God

through Christ, but in that of a denouncement of the Corinthians for partaking of the Eucharist

in a manner that reinforces factions while ignoring and humiliating the poor. Those who do

this, Paul tells us, “eat and drink judgment against themselves” and “will be answerable for the

body and blood of the Lord”; they should refrain from taking the Eucharist until they have

repented of their behavior toward one another (11:27-9). So, while we must remember that our

reconciliation to others is only possible because God has already reconciled us to himself, as a practical imperative, we must strive to effect our reconciliation to others as part and parcel of,

rather than as distantly secondary to, our reconciliation to God as it is concretized in the

Eucharist. Indeed, if anything, Scripture advises us to concern ourselves first with our

neighbors; our sacrifices to God can wait (Matthew 5:23-4). If we have forgiven the debts of

others, God will see to our debts; until we have done so, nothing we do, no flowery prayer we

can offer, can make a difference to our own (6:12-5). Not merely in Hawkins’ particular

circumstances, then, but in practical contexts generally, we are warranted in according the

horizontal dimension of the Eucharist no less significance than the vertical dimension. Indeed,

this warrant proceeds precisely from a sound Biblical understanding of the Eucharist.

So, we think that the priority Hawkins places on the horizontal dimension of the

Eucharist as she writes in a practical context is defensible both by appeal to Biblical and

theological principles as well as relative to the specific aims of her post. But, in any case,

since ! we reiterate ! the Statement of Faith does not explicitly reference the Eucharist at all, it

is unclear how Hawkins’ views on the topic could possibly be inconsistent with it, and so could

provide the basis for any action with respect to her employment.

Area of Concern 4a

Hawkins: “I trust that we can peacefully disagree on theological points and affirm others like

the Triune God (albeit there are differences here as well--Athanasian Creed, anyone?), the



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virgin birth (or Immaculate Conception depending on your persuasion) . . .” (Jones quotes

only the bolded portion.)

Jones does not cite the Statement of Faith in this area. The only relevant thesis seems to be the

following: WE BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,was true God and true man, existing in one person and without sin.

Jones takes Hawkins’ statement to reflect “a troubling confusion in basic theological categories,

this since the virgin birth applies to the birth of Jesus of the Virgin Mary, while the Immaculate

Conception is a Catholic doctrine applying to the conception of Mary” (Dec. 15 memo, p. 2).

We Comment: As Hawkins notes, her statement was attempting “an enumeration of doctrines

on which Christians have had long discussions and disagreements over the ages.” Moreover, in

discussing the previous entry in her list, she emphasized that, while Christians all agree inaffirming the doctrine, they understand its details and outworking differently. It seems fair,

then, to view her parenthetical remark here as performing a similar function. The virgin birth is

a doctrine that is central to Christianity. But Christians can understand the details of its

purpose and function differently. And those who affirm the doctrine of the Immaculate

Conception do so in part because they think this doctrine initially plays, or at least is necessary

for, the function played by the doctrine of the virgin birth. (So, if the function of the virgin

birth is to explain how Jesus can be born as a human without taking on original sin, then the

question arises of how this is possible if He is born of a woman who has taken on original sin;

the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is one available response to this question.) It makes

sense, then, that, depending on one’s persuasion, one might make primary appeal either to the

virgin birth or to the Immaculate Conception to explain how the function in question is played,

while agreeing in affirming the doctrine of the virgin birth.

We note that we do not affirm the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. And we

stress that Hawkins’ public statements provide no reason to believe that she affirms it. (Nor do

we have any other reason to believe that she affirms it.) But she is surely correct to identify it as

an example of an area of legitimate disagreement among orthodox Christians that falls under a

broader Christian doctrine that all orthodox Christians agree in affirming as true and deeply

important. Her statement, then, is sensible enough.

But even if Hawkins had simply made a terminological mistake here, it is not clear how

it could amount to a violation of the Statement of Faith. Accordingly, it seems out of place for

Jones to discuss it in his request that Hawkins clarify her statements to show their consistency



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with the Statement of Faith ! particularly when Hawkins had at least strongly implied her

affirmation of the virgin birth in her statement (singling it out as one doctrine that Christians

can, and seemingly should, all affirm despite their disagreement about other theological

points), and when the Statement of Faith makes no mention of the doctrine of the Immaculate

Conception.

Area of Concern 4b

Hawkins: “I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor because we are formed of the

same primordial clay, descendents of the same cradle of humankind--a cave in Sterkfontein,

South Africa that I had the privilege to descend into to plumb the depth of our common

humanity in 2014.”

Jones does not cite the Statement of Faith in this area. The only relevant thesis seems to be

the following: WE BELIEVE that God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the

entire human race; and that they were created in His own image, distinct from all other living

creatures, and in a state of original righteousness.

Jones: “Please clarify your views on Human Origins in light of your comments in the third

paragraph of your initial Facebook posting” (Dec. 15 memo, p. 2).

We Comment: In her response to Jones, Hawkins reaffirms that “all human beings originate

from the same parents,” created through an “original creation.” She notes, seemingly correctly,

that “no specific reference is made in the statement as to the process of that historic, original

creation.” The burden would seem to be on the College to show that Hawkins’ above statement

is inconsistent with this reaffirmation of the applicable portion of the Statement of Faith. Jones

does not attempt to show this in his memo.

Some Remarks on the Function of the Statement of Faith

The College has not publicly provided any further arguments that Hawkins’ statements

contradict the Statement of Faith, taken on its face. But a recent statement written by Jones, sent

to the faculty on January 20 and read before students at a “Listening Session” on January 21,

takes a different line against Hawkins, suggests that her statements conflict with the Statement

of Faith in some broader sense. Jones notes that “the college has no explicit position on what



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can or cannot be said on the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same

God,” and suggests that he himself thinks it “logical” to judge that “there must be some

referential overlap or similarity in the divine being that each [monotheist] is referring to in each

of the monotheistic religions.” It would seem to follow from this that at least this central

statement of Hawkins’ is consistent with the Statement of Faith and, indeed, is inherentlyplausible.

But, Jones suggests, it is not enough for a faculty member simply to grant “passive

acknowledgement” to the Statement of Faith, or to refrain from contradicting it explicitly.

Instead, we must view the Statement of Faith as “a living breathing instrument [that must be]

interpreted wisely and responsibly in the context of a community.” In itself, it is not clear just

what it means to view the Statement of Faith in this way. The conclusion Jones appears to draw

is that, when a member of the Wheaton faculty views the Statement of Faith in this way, her life

“will be marked — however imperfectly, as in my case — by [the] convictions” to which itgives expression. Moreover, Jones maintains, “the more controversy or confusion a remark or

action generates about our core institutional identity, the greater our responsibility for clarity

as an expression of modeling the statement of faith.” So, what the College objects to is not

Hawkins’ views themselves. It is perfectly acceptable for members of the Wheaton community

to conduct “wide ranging discussions about the complexities of these matters in this

community,” seemingly including asserting the view that Hawkins asserted ! as Jones himself

comes close to doing in this very statement.32 Instead, the College’s grounds for initiating the

process to terminate her, Jones implies, are her failure to model the Statement of Faith clearly in

publicly expressing this view (as evidenced, seemingly, by the controversy that it provoked), as

well as her failure to “remain adaptable and responsive in working out our core theological

commitments in these discussions in a manner that is sensitive to our various audiences.”

We note first that this statement appears entirely to concede that Hawkins’ statement

that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, taken on its face, is not inconsistent with

32 It is not entirely clear what Jones means by saying that “there must be some referential overlap or

similarity in the divine being that each [monotheist] is referring to in each of the monotheisticreligions.” It is true that, for any given pair of terms or concepts, we may have more or less reason tothink that they refer to a common object. It is also plausible that our concept of reference is somewhatvague, so that we cannot say definitively in a number of difficult cases whether the reasons suffice towarrant either the claim that the terms do co-refer or the claim that they do not, but must insteadremain agnostic. According to standard views of reference, though, two terms or concepts cannotexhibit “some referential overlap”; either they co-refer, or they do not. In our view, then, Jones’ claimis most charitably read as the claim that it is only logical to think that there are some cogent reasons,perhaps dispositive ones, for thinking that all the major monotheistic concepts of God co-refer ! andso for thinking that Hawkins’ statement that Christians and Muslims worship the same God iscorrect.



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the Statement of Faith, taken on its face. For Jones notes that the College has no explicit position

on this question. Assuredly he would not concede this if her statement explicitly contradicted

the Statement of Faith. Nor would he be at such pains to maintain that one can contradict a

Statement of Faith in more subtle ways than merely by “the explicit denial of some explicit

aspect of that statement.” It seems, then, that, if Jones’ statement is appropriately attributed tothe College, his statement represents the College’s concession that this statement of Hawkins’

does not strictly contradict any provision of the Statement of Faith. This concession would be

welcome, since, as we have seen above, the claim conceded is supported by powerful

arguments.

The question, then, is whether the College is correct to claim that a community

member’s statement or action can conflict with a confessional statement in a way other than by

expressing “the explicit denial of some explicit aspect of that statement.” Now, there is one

obvious way in which this can occur: the community member’s statement might express theexplicit denial of some logical consequence of the Statement of Faith rather than an explicit aspect

of it. We have argued, however, that the Statement of Faith does not have any clear

consequences that contradict the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (or

with any claim strictly entailed by it). And Jones’ statement does not make the case that it does.

So, it is safe to conclude that this is not what Jones had in mind.

Instead, he seems to hold that a community member’s statement or action might conflict

with the Statement of Faith even if it does not explicitly deny any explicit aspect or clear

consequence of the Statement. This will be true, Jones implies, if two conditions are met. First,

the statement or action’s controversial or confusing character must render it unclear to the

audience to which it is addressed (or before which it is performed) that the community

member accepts and seeks to model the Statement of Faith, properly understood. And second,

the community member must fail to remain adaptable and responsive in working out her

relation to the College’s core theological commitments in a manner that is sensitive to the

various audiences who might encounter her statements. If these two conditions are met, the

community member’s statement or action may conflict implicitly with the Statement of Faith,

understood as “a living breathing instrument” functioning in the context of a community. And

it could do so even if it is not contradicted or prohibited by any provision of the Statement of

Faith or any clear consequence of it.

The College’s justification of its account of this subtler sort of conflict by reference to the

Statement of Faith’s status as “a living breathing instrument” interpreted by a particular

community strikes us as suspect and even troubling. On this account, the communal context of



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the Statement does not affect the way its content should be understood: Jones does not seem to

argue that this communal context helps give the Statement the meaning it has, and that

Hawkins’ statement conflicts with what the Statement actually says, so interpreted. Instead, he

seems willing to grant that Hawkins’ statement is consistent with the Statement’s content, but

that, in its communal context, the Statement has an additional force: it imposes additionaldemands or requirements on community members, disallowing them from making even some

statements consistent with its content.

We think this appeal to additional force provided by the communal context entirely

illegitimate. To see why, consider whether appeals to this contextual force would be persuasive

if used in defense of a community member’s statements. Suppose a faculty member at Wheaton

College were to deny the doctrine of the virgin birth or the existence of Satan and evil spirits.

And suppose that he grants that these denials were in clear conflict with the explicit content of

the Statement of Faith. But now suppose he defends himself by arguing that, in our present ageof electric lights, radios, and modern medicine, it would be silly to require conformity to the

actual letter of the Statement, and that these contextual factors license him in considering only

its more permissive spirit. Finally, suppose he is supported even by more local contextual

factors, as his particular audience members and even a substantial percentage of members of

the College community agree with him. Should we judge this to suffice for his conformity to

the Statement of Faith? Surely not: we should reply that conformity to the spirit of the

Statement of Faith does not float free of conformity to its letter. That is, we should reply that

the force of the Statement of Faith is proportionate to its content, requiring his conformity to

just those principles that the Statement of Faith actually says. Now, if this principle is indeed the

reasonable conclusion to draw from this hypothetical case, it is unclear why the College would

be warranted in departing from it in Hawkins’ case. Why should we think that it may

rightfully demand her conformity to a free-floating “spirit” of the Statement that goes

significantly beyond what it actually says? It seems quite unprincipled to hold that the

Statement’s content and force, letter and spirit, must be strictly held together only when this

would increase the demands it makes on faculty members, and must not be when this would

relax its demands!

We do think that the communal context of a document can have an important bearing

on its force. But this is only because its communal situation can importantly bear on its content

(or on what it actually says), and its force (or the demands or requirements it imposes on those

who accept it) is a function of its content. For the content of a document is a product of many

factors about the communal context it occupies: it is written in a particular language, for

instance, and addressed to a particular audience with particular presuppositions and practical



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aims. This is why hermeneutics and the imaginative projection of oneself into the situation of

the original audience it commends to us are so important. But there can also be a “living,

breathing” dimension to content or meaning, in the following very minimal sense: interpreting a

text against a backdrop of our own presuppositions and practical aims, some (though certainly

not all) of which may differ from those of the original audience, we may be equipped touncover implications of the text and aspects of its meaning to which we and others had

previously been blind. And these will naturally correlate with previously unobserved demands

we discover the text to make on us. But to say this is very different from saying that, without

discovering that the text’s content actually carries an implication to which we were previously

blind, or speaks to a situation we previously had not envisioned, we might nevertheless find

that the text requires something new of us, even though this new-found requirement lacks any

clear foundation in what the text actually says. We find the idea that this situation could obtain

to be absurd. (Again, those who would reject appeal to it as the warrant for dispensing with the

letter of Biblical or confessional texts in favor of programs of modernization or liberalization oftheir message should find appeal to it no more plausible in this case.)

What of Jones’ suggestion that the controversial nature of Hawkins’ claim, relative to

her particular audience, has some special bearing on her standing with respect to the Statement

of Faith? If this is to be interpreted as implying that a claim that is quite consistent with what

the Statement of Faith actually says could come to conflict with the Statement of Faith simply

because it provokes controversy, in which many people misunderstand it and so become

confused about the College’s “core institutional identity,” then we think this suggestion should

be categorically rejected. So interpreted, it will rest either on the idea that the Statement of Faith

might impose requirements in particular contexts that lack a foundation in what it actually

says, against which we have just argued, or else on the idea that the meaning of a claim

changes according to the understanding of it an audience has, which seems perniciously

subjectivist.33

Further, so interpreted, this suggestion seems self-defeating. For it is highly plausible

that the College’s own statement that Hawkins’ claim “that Muslims and Christians worship

the same God . . . appear[s] to be in conflict with the College’s Statement of Faith” (Dec. 16

statement) itself has been the subject of significant controversy and misunderstanding and has

led to confusion about the College’s core institutional identity. Yet, far from treating its

statement as thereby proven inconsistent with, or reflecting a flawed understanding of, the

33 We note that this idea that a statement’s meaning actually changes with its reception by an

audience goes significantly beyond our minimal claim above that a particular audience may beequipped to uncover “new” dimensions of meaning that a statement objectively had all the while.



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Statement of Faith, the College has continued to treat it as borne out by a proper understanding

of what the Statement of Faith actually says, its controversial nature notwithstanding. We think

this entirely proper. But consistency then demands that the same standard be used in assessing

Hawkins’ statement: namely, that it be assessed as the basis for action concerning her

employment only relative to what the Statement of Faith actually says.

It is possible to interpret Jones’ suggestion in a less rigorous way, as claiming merely

that statements and actions that may be understood without difficulty and correctly judged to

be consistent with the Statement of Faith in some conversational contexts ! especially contexts

internal to the Wheaton community ! may nevertheless be misunderstood and thought

inconsistent with it in others. Accordingly, members of the community should be especially

careful when communicating in those contexts. And they should remain adaptable and

responsive should such misunderstanding arise, trying to communicate effectively in the

conversational context at hand. So understood, this suggestion seems reasonable. But it is notobvious to us that Hawkins has not met it—indeed, the opposite opinion seems more plausible.

True, her original claim was misinterpreted. But that particular claim was not the focus of her

initial post, and she likely did not think it would have as wide an audience as it did or become

such an intense locus of scrutiny. And it does not seem unreasonable of her to fail to foresee

this. In any case, she quickly followed up that post with another in which she provided a

defense of her claim by an Evangelical Christian with extensive theological training (Miroslav

Volf), which defense should have sufficed to show the consistency of her claim with the

doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation to the satisfaction of any reasonable observer, and so to

remove the most important elements of confusion that her claim might have caused with

respect to the College’s core institutional identity. And she provided a further statement to

Jones in which she provided another defense of her claim, now in her own words. We have

already argued that this defense, too, should have sufficed to show the consistency of her claim

with Christian orthodoxy to the satisfaction of the College. If the College remained concerned

to demonstrate this consistency to the wider public, presumably it could have issued a more

detailed statement on the matter, perhaps incorporating portions of Hawkins’ reply to Jones to

show her agreement with its construal and qualified defense of her claim. The College seems to

have judged that public misunderstanding of the implications of Hawkins’ claim and its

bearing the College’s core institutional identity would be dispelled more effectively if it

initiated termination proceedings against Hawkins, even though her claim was in fact

consistent with the Statement of Faith, and perhaps even though the College was aware of this

consistency. Its reasons for judging this path more effective remain thoroughly mysterious to

us.



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True, dialogue between Hawkins and the College about the implications of her claim

seems to have ceased not long after she delivered her defense of her claim to Jones on

December 17. The College blames this on Hawkins: “Regrettably, Dr. Hawkins has clearly

stated her unwillingness to further participate in clarifying conversations.”34 And this might be

construed as her failure to “remain adaptable and responsive in working out our coretheological commitments” in discussion. It is difficult to assess whether this is an accurate

explanation of the end of Hawkins’ dialogue with the College. To reach an accurate assessment

on this point, for example, we would need to know what conditions (if any) the College

demanded Hawkins meet in order for such dialogue to continue, and to determine whether

this demand was reasonable. But perhaps only the College’s administrators and Hawkins

herself presently know the answer to that question.

This ignorance does not prevent us from assessing whether this alleged failure of

Hawkins’, if true, would constitute an adequate basis for her termination, however. We do notthink that it would. As we noted above, we think Jones’ suggestion that faculty members

should communicate carefully in public contexts and should remain adaptable and responsive

in addressing public misunderstandings is a reasonable one. But we do not think this warrants

the College in terminating the employment of any faculty member who makes a public remark

with insufficient care (particularly when the remark is in fact consistent with the Statement of

Faith) or of any faculty member who at some point declines, absent further evidence against

her, to submit to further critical examination of her beliefs or to devote further effort to

demonstrating publicly their consistency with the Statement of Faith (particularly when the

faculty member has already made sound defenses of the consistency of her remark with the

Statement of Faith both publicly and before the administration). This nigh-unbounded right to

terminate faculty members ! in effect, the right to terminate them whenever they make an

orthodox remark that enough audience members misunderstand, or whenever they decline to

submit to a critical examination of their beliefs by the administration that is based on no

evidence and imposes a vague and seemingly limitless burden upon them to prove their

orthodoxy ! certainly is not entailed by the College’s right to terminate faculty members who

contravene the Statement of Faith.

Now, if and as long as it is controversial whether the statement at issue conflicts with

the College’s Statement of Faith, it does seem reasonable to construe dialogue with the

administration concerning the implications of the statement as a condition of employment. But

once it seems implausible to claim that the statement at issue conflicts with the Statement of

34 See the College’s Dec. 22 “Statement Regarding Dr. Larycia Hawkins’ Review and Resolution

Process.”



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Faith, once the faculty member in question has made a cogent defense of it to the College

administration, once she has circulated a cogent defense of it before the general public, and

once several further cogent defenses of it have meanwhile been publicly circulated,35 it seems

to us that adaptiveness and receptiveness regarding her statement, or further dialogue with the

administration about its implications, can no longer constitute conditions for her employment.At any rate, their imposition cannot be justified by the more basic condition of employment of

affirming the Statement of Faith. At some point, surely, the burden of proof reverts to the

College administration. At some point, surely, the College must supply further reasons for

thinking a faculty member’s statements inconsistent with what the Statement of Faith actually

says if it is to impose its demand for further dialogue and public clarification. At some point,

surely, it must justify its claim that a faculty member’s efforts toward dialogue about and public

clarification of her statements do not suffice to show its consistency with the Statement of Faith,

rather than merely asserting this claim. Based on the evidence currently available to the public,

it seems clear to us that the College has now reached this point regarding Hawkins.

In our view, then, Jones is quite mistaken to think a faculty member’s statement or

action might conflict with the Statement of Faith, and so constitute grounds for termination of

her employment, even though it does not explicitly deny any explicit aspect or clear

consequence of the Statement. Indeed, Jones did not suggest that this might obtain in his initial

memo to Hawkins, when he requested she clarify her remarks with reference to the Statement

of Faith. If it was an essential premise of the College’s initial objection to Hawkins’ remarks,

one would think that Jones should have mentioned this, as it might very well have impacted

the approach Hawkins took to defending herself. It is unclear why the College has fallen back

on this view of the function of the Statement of Faith, and of the conditions for contradicting it,

at this late point. Given our genuine affection for and gratitude toward the College, we

certainly hope that it has a more principled reason for appealing to this view than its

recognition that the considerations raised by Jones’ memo did not succeed in showing that

Hawkins’ statements contradict the Statement of Faith, together with its determination from

the outset to terminate her, regardless of the cogency of the reasoning it must employ to effect

this outcome.

The College could go some distance toward demonstrating that this was not its motive

if it made a public statement precisely delineating and carefully defending its position on the

35 In our view, cogent defenses of the consistency of Hawkins’ claim with Christian orthodoxy (and

even with Evangelicalism) have now been publicly circulated by at least three prominent Christianthinkers: Bruce McCormack, John Stackhouse, and Michael Rea.



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Statement of Faith, as well as elucidating ! in consonance with the Faculty Handbook ! just

what sorts of departures from the Statement constitute grounds for the termination of a

tenured faculty member. Ideally, this statement would include a demonstration that the

College has consistently operated on the basis of this view of the Statement of Faith in past

dealings with faculty members, to show that it is not applying it selectively and so favoringsome faculty members over others. (Of course, if it cannot provide such a statement in its

defense, the College could equally demonstrate its good faith by releasing a statement that

recognizes the theological and procedural inadequacies of its actions against Dr. Hawkins,

apologizes to her, and invites her back to her position as a tenured member of the faculty in

good standing.)

At any rate, if it is unclear why the College is only now articulating this view of the

Statement of Faith, it is clear that the view is wholly unwarranted. It does not provide a

sufficient basis for the College’s action against Hawkins.

Conclusion

We conclude that the concerns raised by Wheaton College in Provost Jones’ memo to Dr.

Hawkins do not provide an adequate basis for termination of her employment. For nearly all of

them, on at least some reasonable interpretation, are plausibly taken to be true. And all of

them, on any reasonable interpretation, are consistent with the College’s Statement of Faith.

We close with two exhortations, one to defenders of Hawkins and the other to Wheaton

College.

First, we hope that this defense of Hawkins’ statements has encouraged those whose

hearts and imaginations were captured by her initial efforts to show the love of Christ to her

Muslim neighbors. Given the close connection between sound Christian theology and sound

Christian practice, it seemed to us that a full defense of Hawkins should not attempt to sharply

separate her practice from her theology. Rather, recognizing the roots of the former in the

latter, it should demonstrate that the latter is above reproach. If our argument has been sound,

it may provide supporters of Hawkins’ practical efforts who shared our understanding of the

relation between theory and practice with some reassurance that these efforts can ! and, in

Hawkins’ case, are ! rooted in a sound theological understanding of the points at issue.



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In that case, we hope that our critical reflection on Christian practice can motivate us

Christians, and especially defenders of Hawkins, to carry out the practices of honoring, aiding,

defending, and most of all loving our Muslim neighbors she exemplifies with renewed energy

and conviction. As practice requires us to engage in theological reflection to guide it rightly, so

theological reflection requires us to engage still more deeply in practice; we know God and Histruth about us when we do this truth, as the Apostle John never tired of reminding his audience

(1 John 1:6-7, 2:3-4). We hope this will be the legacy of the Wheaton College community in this

case: that, although at first theological inquiry, while valuable in itself, inadvertently

threatened to hinder and distract from Christian practice, ultimately it instilled community

members with a renewed sense of obligation, with regard to their neighbors in general and to

their Muslim neighbors in particular, to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in

love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”

(Ephesians 5:1-2).

Second, we invite Wheaton College to consider carefully our argument for the

consistency of Hawkins’ assertions with its Statement of Faith. If, on reflection, it judges this

argument to be sound, and if the College’s chief grounds for proceeding against Hawkins are

the ones presented in Jones’ memo, or if its grounds essentially depend on the understanding

of the function of the Statement of Faith espoused by Jones in his recent statement, then we

urge the College to cease pursuing its case against Hawkins and to reconcile to her, welcoming

her back as a member of the College community in good standing. But if the College’s chief

grounds for proceeding against Hawkins are other than those we have considered, then we urge

the College to state its reasons publicly. In our view, theology, more than any other discipline,

must be practiced communally if it is to be sound. For one thing, each of us is a unique

individual, with her own set of features, aptitudes, and passions, who nevertheless bears the

common status of bearer of the image of God. For this reason, each of us testifies in a unique

way to the character of God and of His work in creation, which is the subject matter of

theology. For another thing, as we have noted, coming to know and deeply understand

theological truths requires that we practice them, and so that we live them out in communal

life in the common world. But this is most of all true because, of all the disciplines, theology

concerns the subject matter that is most definitive of the nature and telos of the human person,

and so is the domain of inquiry in which the human heart ! perverse, mysterious, and “devious

above all else” (Jeremiah 17:9) ! has the most to lose, as well as the most opportunity to lead us

astray. Our fellow believers, then, are essential guardrails for our thinking about God, not only

because they can show us and tell us of aspects of the divine character that we had not

adequately appreciated, and not only because they are our partners in the practical activity on

the basis of which we come to know the truth, but also, and especially, because they are well-



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positioned to warn us when, through ignorance or self-deception, we run the risk of going

astray in our theologizing.

For this reason, we have attempted to state clearly and precisely our reasons for taking

Dr. Hawkins’ statements to be quite consistent with the Wheaton College Statement of Faith.And we encourage readers of this document to circulate it among interested parties and to

correct us if we have erred. Likewise, we encourage the College to state clearly and precisely its

reasons for taking Hawkins to be in violation of the Statement of Faith, to circulate this

statement publicly, and to consider prayerfully any criticisms of its reasoning that are

subsequently offered. Only then can the cogency of its rationale for its proceedings against

Hawkins be adequately demonstrated; until then, we should remain skeptical that it is in the

right with respect to its dispute with her.

Based on the available evidence, we feel confident in our defense of Hawkins and in ourclaim that the college ought to reinstate her. Whatever happens, however, we pray that God

will work these circumstances together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28),

including all the members of the Wheaton College community, and that the body of Christ will

be built up “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of

God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-3).36

a defense of the consistency of dr. larycia hawkins’ statements

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