I Like My Ecclesiology Salty and Subversive

Chapter Two of Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet is titled "The Irrelevance of Relevance: Grits, Salt, and the Assembling of the Saints." I begin the chapter by drawing a contrast between grits, the southern delicacy that has no taste of its own but instead takes on the flavor of what is added to it, and salt, the condiment that Jesus described as "good for nothing" if it loses the distinctness of its flavor. The purpose of this culinary observation is to show that the Christian church should be more like salt than like grits; in other words, instead of chameleonically changing our colors to adapt to the world around us, the church should seek to retain its distinctiveness and peculiarity in the culture.

Our sacred activity, such as hearing God’s Word and receiving the Lord’s Supper, therefore, is about as unique and countercultural as we can get, while our secular activity is just the opposite—it is thoroughly common. It is primarily on Sunday, therefore, rather than on Monday through Saturday, that believers display their peculiarity and distinc­tiveness from the world.

This means that the church’s main task, as simplistic as it may sound, is to be the church, to be, in the words of Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, “a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure.” They con­tinue: “The church does not exist to ask what needs doing to keep the world running smoothly and then to motivate our people to go do it . . . The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.” This does not mean that the church ceases to be influential, but that the church’s influence is of an altogether different—and often unwanted—variety. “[We] seek to influence the world by being the church, that is, by being something the world is not and never can be.”

It seems to me that the evangelical church gets things precisely backwards at this point. Rather than being distinct from the culture on Sunday and part of the culture the rest of the week, they seek to be as distinct from the world as they can during the week, but as familar and non-threatening to the world as possible on Sunday. Hence the demand for Christian T-shirts and bumper stickers in order to stand out from the culture when they should be participating it it, and hence the market-driven desire to supply tailor-made worship experiences for Christian consumers (be they traditional, contemporary, or emergent) when they should be expressing their otherworldliness. Michael Horton is spot-on when he describes this approach as "ecclesial apartheid."

Darryl Hart has argued that the church's attempt to be relevant inevitably results in our sacralizing the secular and trivializing the sacred. Instead, argues Horton, "genuine relevance is found not when the church tries to be relevant, since repeating what people already think is rather boring. Genuine relevance is found in contradicting the wisdom of the world that we entered the church with on Sunday morning."

When the church fails to embrace this salty and subversive role in the culture, then, in the words of Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon (quoting Barth), "God is reduced to 'MAN!' said in a loud voice."

The Road to Rome, Constantinople, and the Emergent Village

Every now and again you run across a passage in a book that is just chock-full of fodder for potential discussion and debate. I found just such a passage the other day in Scott Clark's Recovering the Reformed Confession. Under the heading "The Virtues of Being Confessional," he writes:

The evangelical and postevangelical discontent is the result of the two quests that have dominated American evangelical religion for more than two centuries. This explanation accounts for the relatively easy movement of evangelicals into what might seem to be foreign territory. With respect to the QIRE [quest for illegitimate religious experience], having grown up with flannel graphs of the Second Person of the Trinity, it is really only a short step to traditional icons. With respect to the QIRC [quest for illegitimate religious certainty], once one overcomes the predominating ignorance of and bigotry against Rome that permeate North American fundamentalism, once one discovers that Roman Catholics love Jesus and read the Bible, it is not a great step to trade the authoritarianism of fundamentalism for the magisterial authority of the Roman communion. In other words, though they occur in a different setting, Rome, Constantinople, and the Emergent Village each offer to fundamentalism and evangelicalism a more ancient and better-looking version of what already animates them.

As the yutes say, "Oh, snap!"

Discuss....

Sun City, Saddleback, and Ecclesial Apartheid

I am preaching through Genesis on Sunday evenings (and having a good time doing it I might add), and we just looked at the Tower of Babel episode the other night. As many commentators point out, the confusion of languages visited upon the Babelites in Genesis 11 is reversed in Acts 2 as “devout men from every nation under heaven” are given to hear the mighty works of God supernaturally proclaimed in their own tongues.

In People and Place, Michael Horton highlights the fact that the now-united multitude still retained their distinctive tongues, the significance being that those who believed in Christ that day “were more perfectly one than any society, yet in a harmony of difference.... They were one because they shared the same things, not because they became fused into the same thing.” He continues:

As we survey the contemporary ecclesial landscape, however, this account of catholicity seems to be reversed. Whereas an almost infinite diversity of doctrine and practice is tolerated, even celebrated, churches are becoming more hegemonic than ever with respect to politics, socioeconomic position, age, gender, and cultural tastes. [He then makes a veiled reference to Rick Warren's Saddleback Church to illustrate his point.]

Horton’s term for the so-called “missional” obsession with target demographics is ecclesial apartheid, which is the very antithesis of the catholicity that was inaugurated at Pentecost and will become fully visible at the end-time harvest of sinners from all nations, tongues, tribes, and peoples. But “wherever Christ is the focus of catholicity and Word-and-sacrament ministry is the means, a genuinely multicultural and multigenerational community is generated.”

In the place of a “catholicity of the market”—which seeks to reverse cultural divisions with cultural commonalities—the church needs the kind of catholicity that arises not from the culture but from the cultus. This alone can prevent the church from becoming “a collection of consumers or tourists rather than a communion of saints and pilgrims.”

Contrary to the ecclesial apartheid of the missional movement, therefore, genuine catholicity is a necessarily churchly and supernatural phenomenon which secures for God’s people the ability to be one, but not the same.

(Am I bugging you? Don't mean to bug ya....)

The Unity of the Oh-Pavic: Fantasy or Farce?

In the comments under the previous thread it occurred to me that the unity of the Catholic Church is, in some respects, somewhat analogous to evangelical unity.

“Evangelical unity?” you ask, “Isn’t that an oxymoron like ‘a deafening silence’ or ‘an unbiased opinion’?” Well, it kind of depends. To be sure, “evangelicalism” is not a church, it is a movement consisting of various believers and churches who hold certain beliefs in common, most notably the inspiration of Scripture and the need for personal conversion. When defined in this way, the umbrella of evangelicalism is large enough to provide shelter for millions and millions of Americans.

But of course, the whole thing’s a sham.

In his Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham, D.G. Hart ably demonstrates that “evangelicalism” is a mirage, a façade with little of substance behind it. When you gather together a bunch of widely disparate communions under the very slimmest of criteria, voila! you’ve got a voting bloc. But beyond the flexing of its muscles for the purpose of cultural warfare, there is little significance to any movement that boasts as among its leaders both Joel Osteen and R.C. Sproul.

But imagine, if you will, that the evangelical movement decided to become a church. It then adopts a leader (we’ll go with Hart since the very idea would make him throw up a little in his mouth), subscribes a confession (say, the Westminster), applies for a P.O Box and 501-C3 status, and even comes up with a catchy name like “The Oh-Pavic” (which is obviously short for “The One Holy Protestant and Visible Church”). Can you see it? “Hey, so where do you go to church?” “Ummm… the Oh-Pavic? Where else? (Rolls eyes.)”

Suppose further, if you will, that although the pastors of the Oh-Pavic agree to stick to the Westminster Confession, none of her members are required to actually change their views. So you’ve got a bunch of Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, United Methodists, and Presbyterians all engaged in a group hug while singing “It’s a Small World After All,” despite the fact that the members of the Oh-Pavic have little in common with one another, and even less with their leaders.

My point? The Catholic Church’s institutional unity—which I admit is a better witness than what we Protestants display—still stops short of the ideal doctrinal, spiritual, and moral unity that I can’t help but believe Jesus had in mind in his high-priestly prayer in John 17. And further, the Catholic Church’s unity is little more than what could be achieved by Protestantism with the mere drive to the post office and the filling out of a few forms.

The Politics of Fear

Ever since issuing its "88 Reasons For '88" enumerating all the reasons why Jesus would return 20 years ago, I, along with all thinking Americans, have let out a loud "Ssshhh!!!" whenever evangelicalism has its collective ear to the ground. Like with E.F. Hutton, when the evangelical movement talks, people should listen.

To hear the latest prognostications, we need look no further than Focus on the Family's "Letter From 2012 in Obama's America." If the Illinois senator is elected, we are told, we have the following events to look forward to: (1) The Boy Scouts will disband rather than being forced to let gay scout masters sleep in the same tents with young boys; (2) Not only "government schools" but private Christian schools will be forced to teach homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle; (3) In 2011 there will cease to be any Protestant or Catholic adoption agencies in the U.S. because they will refuse to place children in homosexual homes; (4) In 2009 Obama will force the military to recruit gays; (5) Public schools will be forced to disallow praying during, before, or after school; (6) Schools will be forced to stop allowing churches to use their facilities; (7) In 2011 all FCC restrictions will be lifted allowing pornography to be shown on all TV channels at every hour of the day; (8) In May of 2010 Al-Qaeda will recapture Iraq because of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country; (9) Beginning in 2009 terrorists will detonate bombs in two small and two large U.S. cities, due in part to President Obama stopping the wiretapping of our phone lines; and (10) Nationalized health care will result in long lines for surgery and no access to hospitals for people over 80.

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So there you have it, America: Vote Obama and, to tweak Pedro Sanchez's campaign slogan, "all your wildest nightmares will come true."

My point is not to contest the likelihood, the goodness, or the badness of any of these predictions. My only observation concerns just how frantic and nervous American evangelicals become when threatened with a diminishment of their power.

Employing such scare tactics may indeed rally the troops, we'll have to wait and see. But more serious than what these tactics communicate to the faithful is the message they send to the world, namely, that Christians are so in love with and invested in earth that we will not sit passively by and accept such a demonic agenda as one that offers free health care for everyone and tarnishes the nobility of all of our wars by letting openly gay soldiers fight in them.

But ask our faithful culture warriors what "justification" means, and prepare for glossed-over eyes and a blank stare....

The Curse of the Dollar-Shaped Plank

Sometimes I wonder if the reason we interpret "Blessed are the poor in spirit" to mean "Blessed are the people who feel poor on the inside" is because American culture is so oblivious to the sway that money holds over it that we feel we have no other choice but to read this beatitude in such a way that it makes no demands upon our lives. I mean, it's either that or we have to sell one of our Hummers (and that ain't gonna happen).

All cultures have their blind spots, including us. I mean, we have no problem recognizing the faults in other cultures, or in American culture of times past, but diagnosing similar traits in our own is another story. For example, we look at the fact that Muslim females wear those black robes with their faces veiled and lament the way Islam treats its women, while at the same time rarely seeing the demand for Botox, Calogen, and surgical augmentation as glaring testimonies against how we Westerners view our own.

We can wonder with great sanctimony how antebellum Southerners could claim to be disciples of Jesus while simultaneously being owners of slaves, but when a Fortune 500 CEO moves his company's manufacturing to a sweatshop in Malaysia so he can pay the workers $.09 an hour without having to worry about those pesky labor laws to protect them from oppression, we don't call that "slave-owning," we call it "smart business."

We watch those WWII documentaries and wonder how the German population could just sit back passively as Jews were being slaughtered, while feeling no more guilt than the Germans over the 1,000,000 innocent men, women, and children we have killed while liberating Iraq.

My point is simply that if we desire to interpret the Gospels correctly, we need begin by recognizing the dollar-shaped plank that we have firmly lodged in our collective eye.

Atheists 1, Evangelicals 0

An atheistic friend of mine approached me at a coffeehouse the other day and dropped a book on the table that he had just finished. I glanced at the title and read: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, a New York Times bestselling author.

Harris's primary purpose for this little volume, he says,

"... is to arm secularists in our society, who believe that religion should be kept out of public policy, against their opponents on the Christian Right.... I have set out to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms" (viii, ix).

In Chapter One, Harris sets the stage for his case by pointing out, helpfully, that the Christian he is arguing against believes the teachings of the Bible not because they make him feel good, but because he believes they are true. Furthermore, Harris concedes, if these doctrines are indeed true, then he will spend eternity in hell for rejecting them with contempt and encouraging others to do the same: "If the basic tenets of Christianity are true, then there are some very grim surprises in store for nonbelievers like myself."

How's that for honesty?

Before I begin my series of posts interacting with Harris's book, I must point out that this author seems to understand the issues involved in the debate over the Christian faith with more clarity than most evangelicals do. If Christian Smith's study of the religion of American teens is any indication, the adherents of what he calls "moralistic therapeutic deism" would stare blankly through glossed-over eyes at the suggestion that they believe in Christianity "because it is true." Even if "truth" were a valid category to judge a religious faith, it is beside the point, most evangelicals would argue. Jesus makes them happy.

Score 1 for the atheists.

Review of Kingdom Coming

This review of Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism was published in the most recent issue of Modern Reformation. Sorry for the length....

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A self-described secular Jew and ardent urbanite, Michelle Goldberg takes her readers behind the scenes of a movement she has dubbed Christian Nationalism, a “totalistic political ideology” that begins with the idea that “the Bible is absolutely and literally true” and extrapolates from this “a total political program... a conflation of scripture and politics that sees America’s triumphs as confirmation of the truth of the Christian religion, and America’s struggles as part of a cosmic contest between God and the devil.” Christian Nationalism, Goldberg argues, “claims supernatural sanction for its campaign of national renewal and speaks rapturously about vanquishing the millions of Americans who would stand in its way.” The “ultimate goal” of this movement is not fairness but dominion: “The movement is built on a theology that asserts the Christian right to rule. That doesn’t mean that nonbelievers will be forced to convert. They’ll just have to learn their place.”

Although this reviewer’s usual reaction to reading the theologizing of atheists is similar to that of watching the blind juggle (i.e., amusement mixed with horror), I was both surprised and disturbed at the accuracy of Goldberg’s portrayal of Christian Nationalist leaders and the theology that compels them (surprised, because it’s not every day that I come across a Jew who can navigate the labyrinthine relationship between Tim LaHaye’s Dispensationalism, D. James Kennedy’s postmillennialism, and R.J. Rushdoony’s Reconstructionism; and disturbed, because she understands the relationship of eschatology to cultural vision more clearly than most Christians I know. More on this later…).

Among the topics Goldberg examines are Christian homeschooling and its importance for raising up the next generation of faithful conservative politicians and lobbyists, the revisionist history necessary to instill in us the myth of the evangelical piety of our nation’s Founding Fathers, the politics of homophobia, Intelligent Design, the elitism of faith-based initiatives for the poor, and the politics behind abstinence-only education. Goldberg points out the incredible irony of the fact that Christian Nationalism’s closest allies in these cultural battles are none other than Islamic fundamentalists. According to a story from The Washington Post (the headline of which read: “Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N.”), “American evangelicals have made common cause with Islamists at the United Nations” to plot strategy on social issues. The lines defining good and evil, it seems, have been redrawn according to cultural, rather than religious, ideals. This is nothing new, of course. If many Protestant denominational distinctives have been sacrificed for the sake of waging a common cultural war, why stop there? Muslims, if anything, are certainly good in a fight.

Though the Jesus of Calvinism has been dubbed “The Transformer of Culture” by H. Richard Niebuhr in his seminal work Christ and Culture, the degree to which the Geneva reformer (or for that matter, the second Person of the Trinity) advocated social transformation as belonging to the church’s mandate is still an open question. What is not open to debate, however, is the Christian Nationalists’ interpretation of Jesus’ Great Commission to his disciples prior to his ascension to the Father’s right hand. Also closed is any discussion about the cultural content of that Commission, let alone the deeper issue of whether it contains such cultural content in the first place.

The Christian Nationalist political agenda, Goldberg points out, is essentially a baptized version of the talking points of the Grand Old Party. Though a robust critique of the movement’s underlying eschatology falls outside Goldberg’s purview or expertise—but she has plenty to say about its politics—it seems, to this reviewer anyway, that the differences between the politicized versions of pre- and postmillennialism pale in comparison to their glaring similarities. Both are consumed with power and the flexing of political muscle, and both are fearful of losing their influence and fading into cultural obscurity.

Throughout Kingdom Coming Goldberg both advocates a return to the rationalistic epistemology of the Enlightenment and assumes, somewhat naïvely, that such “objective” thinking will forever cure religious mankind of the need to force our cunningly devised fables upon our neighbors. The notion, for instance, that an evangelical scientist can have anything meaningful to say about cosmic origins is absurd in Goldberg’s estimation. An atheist biologist, on the other hand, has no ideological axe to grind, and therefore may speak authoritatively without having to recuse herself due to a conflict of interest.

Aside from the biased nature of Goldberg’s pretended lack of bias, her overall point is certainly well-taken: Christianity has been co-opted and its true aims commandeered for political ends, and narrow ones at that. Conspicuous by its absence from Christian Nationalist rhetoric is any actual defense of their understanding of what a Christianized society would look like. Instead, with a “wink wink” here and a “nudge nudge” there, we are exhorted to elect officials who will restore godliness and Christian virtue to our once-glorious land. “Godliness,” of course, really means unbridled capitalism, and “Christian virtue” is code for maintaining U.S. foreign policy and the War on Terror. But what about those Christians who don’t believe that America is under a national, conditional covenant with God like Israel was in time past? What about the thousands of sincere saints who don’t think the U.S. Constitution belongs in the ark of the covenant along with the tables of the Decalogue and Aaron’s rod that budded? And what about those believers whose eschatology precludes them from identifying the eternal concerns of the kingdom of Christ with the earthly affairs of the kingdom of man?

It is human nature to desire to unite with others of a like mind. What is often lacking is some banner or common cause to measure our like-mindedness and give us a reason to come together. While it is perfectly legitimate for fellow-citizens of the civil sphere to rally together for a social cause, or for brothers and sisters in Christ to celebrate their unity in the gospel, what is altogether illegitimate is to collapse these two kingdoms into one (a mistake Calvin called a “Jewish folly”). When we label our unity “Christian” while defining it by the bullet points of a political party (on either side of the aisle), we sacralize the secular, trivialize the sacred, and misconstrue the nature of Christianity as a civil religion whose first great commandment can be swallowed by the second.

By Jason J. Stellman

Of Roses and Rifles, Crescents and Crosses

As was pointed out in the last thread, there is a stubborn insistence on the part of many American Christians that our nation's immunity to cultural Babylonianism inevitably results in our being the number one exporter of happiness to the rest of the planet. God uses this country, we are told, to be a providential source of blessing to the entire globe.

I cannot help but wonder if what we export is received in the same spirit in which it is allegedly given (I mean come on, those roses with which the Iraqis were supposed to greet our soldiers sure ended up looking a lot like rifles). Is it possible that others may not be particularly fond of the blessings we keep trying to give them?

Just because we say, really loudly and with lots of force, that we are just trying to help, doesn't always make it so. There is greater reason to believe that intense persecution by Muslim fundamentalists would be a blessing to the American church than there is for the idea that an American-style government and culture would be a blessing to the people of the third world. I mean, concerning the first scenario Jesus himself told us as much (Matt. 5:11-12), but that still doesn't make us actually desire it.

So maybe a healthy dose of national humility is called for, especially on the part of us Christians whose Bibles tell us that unchecked power, untold wealth, and greed euphemized as ambition, though as American as apple pie, are called in Scripture "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (I John 2:16).

If we don't want Islamo-fascist oppression here, and if they don't want our "free markets" over there, so what? Whether it comes dressed in camo and army boots, or in turbans and sandals, it's still Babylon.

And stamping it with a crescent or a cross won't change that....

Romney and Blair: Nutters Both?

Well, after much speculation, it is now official: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has converted to Roman Catholicism.

As when Dr. Francis Beckwith abandoned his post as president of the Evangelical Theological Society for the greener pastures of Rome, my reaction is to yawn, and then wonder what's for dinner.

I will make a few observations, though.

First, anyone who thinks that the Christian world is still divided between Catholics and Protestants is stuck in the sixteenth century. The Anglicanism that Blair jettisoned, much like Beckwith's former evangelicalism, is more similar to Catholicism than most care to admit, for various reasons.

Secondly, when our focus shifts from doctrine to piety, confessional Reformed theology is much closer to the Vatican than to Saddleback.

Thirdly, as Mitt Romney has been arguing, the minutiae of one's theology, despite our insistence to the contrary, has little bearing on his or her discharging of public duties. The next time we ask whether one who believes he will become a god one day is fit to have access to "the button," we should then pause to inquire the same of someone who believes that the earth stopped rotating for a day so the Amorites could be slain in Gibeon (is it not written in the Book of Jashar?).

The article cited goes on to say that "The former prime minister told the BBC this year that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for about 10 years for fear of being labeled 'a nutter.'"

I'm speculating here, but I'll wager that if Romney is elected, American evangelical culture warriors will expect the Latter-Day Saint to hold his tongue about the whole "Jesus is Lucifer's brother" thing. But if President Huckabee shies away from publically affirming that Jesus walked out of a grave on Easter morning, he'll be stoned for denying such a reasonable proposition.

The View from the Other End of the Club

It has been pointed out, correctly I think, that the world looks very different depending on whether you have your boot on your enemy's neck, or he has his boot on yours. While power is a sought-after commodity, there is also something to be said for the clarity that comes from being on the receiving end of the club.

Returning to Mitt Romney's appeal to allow the common morality that he shares with all people of faith to trump whatever theological differences there may be between him and evangelicals, it must be pointed out that the appeal for tolerance of minority positions is not uncommon for minorities to make.

After all, does not history demonstrate that the rights of those outside the inner circle are never bequeathed from on high, but must be won through popular struggle? Power, whether political, social, or religious, is often clutched with great jealousy lest it be lost. So if you're a woman, an immigrant, or in Romney's case, a Mormon, the clarion call is for civil liberty and the right to be treated as equals in the public square.

The evangelical church (err, excuse me: movement) has not had the best track record in according said civil liberties to those who are demanding them. You see, as long as we are in power, we will use all the muscle we can muster to win the culture war and defeat the godless, feminist, socialist Ivy-Leaguers who would just as soon surrender the American Dream to those A-rabs in the Middle East.

Sure, we can't define justification by faith if given a hundred tries, but by God we're gonna keep those gays at bay if it kills us.

Let's hope that if our millennial dreams shatter like the tables of the Decalogue and we are unseated from the corridors of power, the new occupants will be kinder and gentler than we were.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Romney, Rodney, and the Plea to "Get Along"

It was humorously pointed out in the previous thread that it apparently takes a Mormon like Mitt Romney to recognize the fact that the minutiae of one's theology has much less bearing upon his public service than the "common morality" that he shares with all people of faith.

I'm not sure if what lay behind Romney's appeal is an example of irony, or the most obvious thing in the world.

Think about it: Experience amply demonstrates that, generally speaking, it is the underdog who pleads for leniency and the outsider who calls for tolerance. In our nation's history it wasn't white people who were marching for civil rights, it wasn't Protestants who were calling for an end to religious bigotry, and it wasn't men demanding equal pay for equal work.

As Andrew Meyer can testify, it's the guy with the taser to his chest who cries, "Don't tase me, bro!"

Part and parcel of (fallen) human nature seems to be that one must find himself against the ropes before he will employ the Rodney King defense. Whether the humans in question are religious or not, once the powerless become the powerful, it is no longer time for "just getting along," but for brandishing the sword and taking the land.

If and/or when the church in America becomes completely marginalized in the public square, our religious leaders will begin to whistle a very different tune than they have heretofore. Instead of the sabre-rattling and rhetoric of dominion, we will begin to hear our evangelical leaders make the "live and let live" appeal that their enemies presently invoke.

The problem, however, is that anyone's appeal to the same civil liberties that he has been instrumental in denying the underdog for centuries cannot but sound hypocritical and hollow.

In a word, when Bellick gets sentenced to Fox River, whatever happens next, it won't be good....

On Whipping-Boys and Collective Growth

"Revivals," insists John Williamson Nevin,

"... are as old as the gospel itself. Special effusions of the Spirit the Church has a right to expect in every age, in proportion as she is found faithful to God's covenant; and where such effusions take place, an extraordinary use of the ordinary means of grace will appear, as a matter of course" (The Anxious Bench, 15-16).

I have observed on several occasions the propensity of Reformed believers to define ourselves negatively, over against what we reject rather than according to what we actually affirm. The subtle perception is that we need a foil or whipping boy in order to figure out who we are.

"You instruct the members of your congregation to kneel during the confession of sin and raise their hands while singing the Gloria Patri? But Catholics and charismatics do those things!"

I can't help but wonder whether we do the same thing with revival.

Yeah, I get it: Finney was a bad guy and contemporary evangelicalism is obsessed with the Gnostic and novel over the tried and true. But if the highest of high churchmen, a man who lived to see the effects of revivalism first hand, was still willing to boldly lay claim to the phenomenon of revival despite its being highjacked by fanatics, then maybe we don't need to be so afraid of it.

Think about it this way: What is growth in the Christian life but increasing in faith, love, and various other graces through the proper use of the means Jesus has appointed for these ends? Well, is it not possible for growth to happen in a church in the same way it does for an individual believer?

And what do you call that?

Deadbeat Dads and Latch-Key Kids (Or, Why We Need the Church)

"No one can have God for his Father," Cyprian insisted, "who does not have the Church as his mother." To our own Gnostic sensibilities, this statement is offensive and extreme. Sure, American evangelicals are all about healthy, two-parent families, but this only applies to the cultural type, not the cultic antitype. In other words, we're conservatives in the culture wars, but when it comes to the worship wars, we're ecclesiatical versions of Jeanine Gerofalo.

But while "tsk-tsk"ing those poor, inner-city (read: black) types for supposedly spawning scores latch-key kids, have we unwittingly made God out to be the greatest deadbeat Dad of all time?

The harsh reality, folks, is that Jesus is not here. Well, let me rephrase that: Jesus is no longer locally present with us, he has ascended to his Father's right hand in glory. This means that we don't get to refer to him as "the One we have seen with our eyes, whom we have touched with our hands" (I John 1:1).

Not that we no longer hear him or truly commune with him, we certainly do. But we do so in a mediated, not immediate, way through the ministry of his church. When your minister faithfully expounds God's Word, that is Jesus talking. When he declares the forgiveness of your sins, that is Jesus forgiving you. When he administers the bread and cup, that is Jesus feeding you his own body and blood. The keys of the kingdom have been entrusted to the officers of Christ's church for the holy purpose of opening, shutting, binding, and loosing (Matt. 16:19).

If Cyprian was right when he said that extra ecclesiam nulla salus est (outside the church there is no salvation), then despite our attempts at a Gnostic shortcut, we simply cannot have the Head without the Body.

After all, is it not a tad ironic for physical decapitation to be condemned by a group of spiritual Jack the Rippers?

American Trinitarianism: Me, Myself, and I

In The Shape of Sola Scriptura, Keith Mathison argues that the "Radical Reformers" (i.e., the Anabaptists) went well beyond the position of the magisterial reformers regarding Scripture. The view of the latter – "Tradition 1" – was that the Bible is the only source of infallible revelation, that it is to be interpreted in and by the church, and that this must be done in a way consistent with the regula fidei (the oral tradition preached by the apostles before its enscripturization).

The Anabaptist view, which has been dubbed "Tradition 0" and is virtually identical to the contemporary evangelical notion of Solo Scriptura, insists not only that the Bible is the sole source of infallible authority, but that it is the only source of authority altogether.

If this view is correct, some pretty insurmountable problems arise. First, if the Bible alone is authoritative, then how do we define "the Bible"? Nowhere within the sixty-six books of Scripture is there a table of contents saying, "Now the inspired books are...." Solo Scriptura, therefore, may be able to assert that the Bible alone has authority, but it requires an extra-biblical declaration by a non-authoritative body (the church) to determine which books comprise "the Bible."

Another problem with the idea that Scripture is the sole source of authority (inspired or otherwise) is that without the general consensus of the early church, codified in the ecumenical creeds, there is no way to determine what the core of Christianity really is. Without the regula fidei functioning as our hermeneutical context and guardian of our exegesis, it is impossible to know what does or does not contitute heresy. If all we have is a Sacred Magisterium of One (me), then Mormonism's falsehood is only a matter of opinion, and the insistence that Jesus is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father is no more or less true than his being the brother of Lucifer who died on a pole.

(As an aside, if you think I'm embellishing for the sake of rhetorical effect, click here.)

Maybe Cyprian was right, and God doesn't raise latch-key kids. If you want God for your Father, you must also have the church as your mother, for extra ecclesiam nulla salus est.

Egypt's Unworthiness, Part VII

This is the last segment of Egypt's Unworthiness, enjoy....

“Eschatology Precedes Soteriology”

Princeton theologian Geerhardus Vos famously stated that “eschatology precedes soteriology.” What he meant by this was that man’s desire for eternal life was resident within him even before his need to be saved from his sin. The implications of this insight are legion, but what is especially germane to our discussion is how this relates to the idea, so common in the context of modern evangelism, that before a person can be expected to repent and trust in Christ he must be convinced of his dissatisfaction with life as he presently knows it.

Many of us have encountered what I refer to as the “Jesus Is Better Than Drugs” method of evangelism. Aside from the fact that, if what is being compared here is the feeling one derives from Jesus on the one hand and drugs on the other, this statement is probably false, this approach also fails the test of eschatology. If Vos is correct, then the need that we often feel to invalidate all earthly pleasure in order to make Jesus appear the most pleasing option is wrongheaded to begin with.

All people—even the ones with nice houses and expensive cars—are equally plagued with a longing to escape the fleeting and temporal confines of this age. This is not due to their worldly happiness being a farce, which allows us to concede the point rather than secretly wishing we could slash their tires in order to prepare them to hear about “the happiness that only Jesus can give.” Rather, the angst that all people inwardly experience is due to their being created for eternity and hardwired for frustration with anything less. In fact, the apostle Paul even extends this sense of longing past the human heart into the very universe itself.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Rom. 8:20-22).

Our two malcontents, therefore, were not alone in their shared sense of burden. Even with the pleasures of the world’s most powerful kingdom at their beck and call, Joseph and Moses had a faith that penetrated the here and now and glimpsed the One who has entered the age to come as a “forerunner” for all who take up crosses and follow (Heb. 6:20). What the cosmos knows, and what the saints of Hebrews 11 understood, is precisely what many believers in our own day forget: It is the height of vanity to identify our lasting treasure with the stuff of earth. Our heavenly pedigree is set aside when we, like “that profane man Esau” (Heb. 12:16), forfeit our noble birthright because we are charmed by the trifles of time.

Thanks Anyway, But I'll Take My Best Life Later

I plan to return to the topic of Egypt's Unworthiness shortly, but before I do I must point out that if anyone missed Sunday night's episode of 60 Minutes, you missed a rather chilling experience indeed.

If Joel Osteen is a gospel preacher, then I am not one. If the gospel message is that God can be manipulated in order to secure for myself the things I want, then I reject the gospel. And conversely, if the message of the Reformation is in fact the biblical message, then Joel Osteen is a false prophet whose promise of "Peace! Peace!" when there is no peace is a farce at best, and damnable heresy at worst.

When a non-believing interviewer rebukes you for excluding the message of the cross from your gospel message and for saying nothing that can't be heard on Oprah or Dr. Phil, you know you're doing something seriously wrong.

And what confuses me to no end is when people in confessional Reformed churches express, even subtly, a sense of envy toward broad evangelicalism. Perhaps those who grew up in Reformation churches have seen the ugly side of Calvinistic elitism, but for this former megachurch evangelical, I take offense when the truths I actually had to pay a price to embrace are hocked, like Esau's birthright, for a bowl of my best life now.

Thanks very much, but I'll stick with a cross, an empty tomb, and some good old wine for these trusty old wineskins.

W2K Part One: The Exclusiveness of Christianity

While in Oxford last winter my good friend Ryan and I concluded that the issue of Christ and culture in general, and of the two kingdoms in particular, is the most important discussion that needs to take place within contemporary American evangelicalism, and that we should do everything we can to "force" the conversation by whatever means at our disposal.

I'm happy to see that the discussion is taking place in various online forums, often framed in terms of the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of what has come to be known as "W2K" (which is code for Westminster Seminary California's doctrine of the two kingdoms). I have already given a basic biblical defense of the teaching; my goal now is to approach the issue from various other angles.

One of the main arguments for the two kingdoms doctrine begins with the exclusive nature of the Christian religion. A brief survey of our creeds, confessions, and catechisms from the past couple thousand years will indicate just how arcane our faith is: We place a lot of emphasis on such topics as the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Christ, the extent of his atoning work, the role of faith in justification, and the exact meaning of "Hoc est corpus meum."

What role, I ask, does the Eutychean/Nestorian controversy play in determining whether the federal budget should concentrate more on social aid to the poor or on expanding the military? How crucial is a correct interpretation of the communicatio idiomatum for setting the agenda for U.S. foreign policy?

I trust you see where I'm going with this....

We are certainly free to make it our goal to legislate the second great commandment of the law under the guise of creating a Godly society, but love of neighbor cannot be divorced from love of the one true God and still be called "Christianity."

So our only options are to (1) bite the bullet and proselytize by sword-point, (2) reduce Christianity to a social gospel, or (3) let the State be the State, and the Church the Church.

Rome Vs. Wheaton, Round Three: Scripture

Francis Beckwith, in discussing with Christianity Today his recent return to the Roman Catholic Church of his youth, highlighted the relationship of the church to Scripture. The former president of the Evangelical Theological Society remarked:

"At some point, there has to be some connection between the church and its role and the phenomenon of Scripture.... In a weird way, there's an assumption [within evangelicalism] that all authority is authoritarian. I deny that assumption. I think that the church was given the authority to make these judgments, and that the Holy Spirit allowed them to make those judgments.... So [the Bible’s canonicity and the church’s authority to interpret Scripture] are not inconsistent with each other."

Keith Mathison, in a recent article in Modern Reformation, very helpfully pointed out that what often masquerades as "the Protestant view" of the Bible’s authority is actually a distortion of the Reformation position. The latter has been called Sola Scriptura ("Scripture Alone"), while the view more common in evangelicalism has been dubbed Solo Scriptura ("Just me and my Bible").

While the confessional Reformed position argues that Scripture is the church's only source of divine revelation, it also maintains that the Bible is the church's Book, and her interpretations—expressed via creed, confession, or catechism—do carry a secondary kind of authority that should not be trumped by fresh revelations, divine whisperings, or still, small voices.

As expected, the classical Protestant position is a tertium quid (a third thing) in distinction from both evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. But when the debate excludes Geneva and leaves us to decide between Wheaton and Rome, we may still disagree with Dr. Beckwith’s decision, but can we blame him?

Rome Vs. Wheaton, Round Two: Tradition

"Evangelicals kid themselves," insists former Evangelical Theological Society president and recently re-converted Roman Catholic Francis Beckwith,

"when they believe that they can re-invent the wheel with every generation, that you have to produce another spate of systematic theology textbooks to teach people the stuff that has already been articulated for generations."

Instead, "The way that we read Scripture is through the ideas and concepts that have been passed down to us by a great tradition." The average believer, he concludes, would never simply sit down with the Bible and come up with the mature and well-developed Christology of the Nicene Creed (a Christology the reformers themselves took for granted).

This is certainly a valid criticism, especially for those, like me, who grew up thinking that after the apostle John died there was nothing but rampant apostasy until the Jesus Movement began in 1965 (it is so typical of moderns and post-moderns to insist that their generation is unique among all those that have lived on the earth).

As I pointed out in my last post, if evangelicalism can no longer claim to trumpet a doctrine of justification that differs significantly from that of Roman Catholicism, and if the former's latent distrust of the wisdom and tradition of its forefathers necessitates reinventing the theological wheel every twenty years or so, then its appeal is lost, it seems, amid all the confusion and hassle.

The issue here is not the Bible vs. tradition, but whether we read that Bible in conjunction with, or in isolation from, those who have gone before us. By adding to its confusion of law and gospel the burden of its generational snobbery, evangelicalism will continue to fail to make a compelling case for retaining the high-profile intellectuals it values so highly.