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vol.21 | no.4 | July-August 2012 | $6.50

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Bringing the rich resources of the reformation to the hallway of mere Christianity C. S. Lewis famously remarked that “mere Christianity� is like a hallway where real conversations between Christians of different convictions can begin and develop over time as we emerge from our various rooms to speak of Christ and his gospel to one another. For twenty years, White Horse Inn has hosted this conversation both on our radio show, White Horse Inn, and in our magazine, Modern Reformation.

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features vol.21 | no.4 | July-August 2012

Bangkok Taxi Evangelism

By Karl Dahlfred

Loving Muslim Neighbors

By Michael S. Horton

28

30

Insider Movements and the Busted Church

Christ and Islam

By by Bill Nikides

36

By Michael S. Horton

40 ModernReformation.org

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departments 06 07 14

Letter from the editor

20 47

Theology ›› Inspiration by Numbers

56

Geek Squad ››

58

BACK PAGE ››

By ryan glomsrud

interview ›› Understanding Islam

Q & A with

Adam Francis co

From the hallway ››

Singing the Lord’s Song in Babylon

By Andy Wils on

By Rick Ritchie

Book Reviews

A nthony Trollope, Marilynne Robinson, Albert N. Martin, and Alain de Botton

Christianity and Islam: Core Beliefs

By Michael S. Horton

Insider Translations Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Ryan Glomsrud Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Design Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative, metaleapcreative.com Department Editors Ryan Glomsrud (Letter from the Editor & Reviews), Michael S. Horton Designers Tiffany Forrester, Joshua Baker Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Modern Reformation © 2012 All rights reserved. ISSN-1076-7169 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido, CA 92027 (800) 890-7556 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org Subscription Information US 1 YR $32 2 YR $58 Digital Only 1 YR $25 US Student 1 YR $26 Canada 1 YR $39 2 YR $70 Europe 1 YR $58 2 YR $104 Other 1 YR $65 2 YR $118

ModernReformation.org

5

letter from the editor

Ryan Glomsrud executive editor

The theme indicated by the cover of this issue, Christianity and Islam—or the cross and the crescent, or Jesus and Mohammed—is in actual fact a present-day reflection on the Reformation sola: “Christ alone.” With this historic teaching, Christians profess salvation in Christ alone, the sole mediator of grace, our Prophet, Priest, and King. As Peter insisted about Jesus before the Jewish rulers and elders in Jerusalem, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

There has been much brooding in evangelical culture over the so-called “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam. But there is no political scaremongering here. This issue isn’t about Islam and the West, theocracy and democracy, terrorism and human rights. We are taking a more introductory approach, because it is our conviction that evangelicals need to go back to school on Islam in terms of its basic history and core beliefs, instead of being overwhelmed by the political narrative on America’s news channels.

We value expertise regarding this enormous topic, and in this issue we rely on two of the best: Adam Francisco,

an Oxford-educated scholar of Islamic history; and Bill Nikides, a veteran missionary and missions strategist. Dr. Francisco gives us the basics of Islam, and we provide a historical timeline and suggestions for further reading. In one article, our editorin-chief Michael Horton discusses the nature of the battle between these world religions, and in another article he deals with a topic of more practical concern, namely, how to think about your Muslim neighbor next door. There are serious issues to consider in relation to missions and evangelism, and Bill Nikides helps us dig deeper into the subject of evangelization among Muslim people groups by introducing us to an alarming trend called the “Insider Movement” that is undermining the integrity of our confession of “Christ alone.”

We also have our usual departments. In “Theology,” regular Lutheran contributor Rick Ritchie follows up on our widely read “Exit Interviews” discussion with Christian Smith about the problem of biblicism in evangelicalism today. In “From the Hallway,” Presbyterian pastor Andy Wilson takes up the controversial topic of worship; he offers wise counsel regardless of our denomination, which is precisely the goal of this soapbox department.

While Islam does seem to have certain political goals, our concern is not with the kingdoms of this world but with the spiritual battle in the heavenly places, over which Christ has already triumphed decisively on the cross and in the resurrection.

The conflict is more spiritual than cultural, and it is crucial that confessing evangelicals return to the basics of faith and apologetics in order to be ready to regard Christ the Lord as holy, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15).

“Evangelicals need to go back to school on Islam in terms of its basic history and core beliefs, instead of being overwhelmed by the political narrative on America’s news channels.”

6

interview

Understanding

Islam Q & A with Adam Francisco

interview

U n d e r sta n d i n g I s l am Q & A with Adam Francis co

A

dam Francisco (DPhil in Islamic and Christian Relations, Oxford University) is professor of history at Concordia University in Irvine, California. He’s a frequent contributor to Modern Reformation magazine and editor of Theologia et Apologia: Essays in Reformation Theology and Its Defense (Wipf & Stock, 2007).

How did you become interested in Islam?

a. My first real interest in Islam started

around 1999 when I was working on a research project on Martin Luther and his view of the Turks. The Ottoman Turks were pushing up through Hungary during the heyday of the early Reformation, and I looked at how Luther may have approached Islam apologetically.

This research was more of a historical concern. Afterward, I applied to do graduate work at Oxford in Luther studies in this particular topic; but as I was prepping to make the trip to England, 9/11 happened. The date September 11 itself is significant: September 11, 1683, is the last jihad on Europe, at the behest of the Ottomans. All these things started clicking, and I thought maybe I should look at this a little more broadly than just sixteenth-century European-Ottoman relations.

How did you acquire the expertise to teach about Islam and then suggest how to reach Muslims with the gospel?

a.

I studied at the University of Oxford and its Center for Islamic Studies, which is run and funded by Muslims. It was trial by fire in many ways. My dissertation supervisor was a high profile scholar of Islam, David Timea, who has been called al-Qaida’s philosopher.

For three years, he put me through the wringer, and I’m extremely grateful for it. He told me exactly what Muslims thought of particular passages in the Koranic text, and he schooled me in Arabic.

Islamic History For those who may not be familiar with Islamic history, could you give us a thumbnail sketch?

a. Historically speaking—and the histori-

cal record isn’t great—Islam began in a . d .

610 when Mohammed was about forty. He was involved in trading from his hometown of Mecca up to Syria, where he may have heard Christian claims, perhaps espoused by

610–622 Defining Meccan Period

Islamic History From mohammed to arab spring

570–632 Life of Mohammed (born in Mecca, died in Medina)

8

On page 7: Masjid al-Haram (Sacred Mosque) of the city of Mecca, CA. 1600 (Panel tile).

Mohammad solves a dispute, ca. 1315, Jami al-Tawarikh (Manuscript).

Christians who were outside the creedal consensus of the church on who Christ was—at least that’s the tradition that’s been passed down.

So the “Christians” he encountered in his travels may not have been orthodox?

a. I think that’s right. It’s hard to prove that his-

torically, of course, but everything sort of lines up there. He may have heard monotheistic claims, if we can put it that way, which certainly would have contradicted the claims he heard down in Mecca. The ancient Arabs before Islam were primarily polytheists. They worshipped pretty much anything: stones, the moon, stars. In fact, it is said that Mohammed’s tribe was responsible for overseeing and maintaining the Kaaba, that square-like black-covered structure in Mecca today. Allegedly, there were three hundred sixty idols that represented every god worshipped in the Arabian Peninsula. Every Arab tribe would annually visit that idol, and Mohammed’s family would, of course, reap the benefits financially for that.

When Mohammed was about twenty-five, a wealthy—and perhaps even attractive—woman named Khadijah proposed marriage to him, and all of a sudden he no longer had to work so much. The way the biographical tradition puts it, he began taking retreats, pondering in a cave the great questions of life. I can’t prove this, but I imagine that the claims he heard up in Syria, which contrasted so remarkably with those in Mecca, made him ponder which religion was true. Who is the true God? Maybe that’s giving him too much credit, but it’s certainly feasible.

After being in this cave for over fifteen years and not coming to a conclusion, one night in the ninth month of the lunar calendar, he started to hear a voice. At first, he thought the voice was coming from the jinni, bodiless spirits that inhabit the earth, and that he had become possessed by them. But after three years he was convinced that this voice and the continual voices he had been hearing and the impressions he had been getting in his mind were not the jinni toying with him, but rather Allah, the Creator of the universe, who had been sending down his message to him, using the angel Gabriel. Around 610–613, he took the so-called prophetic mantle around and began to preach to the people of Mecca. From 610–622, he preached that there is no God but Allah; all the idols the Arabs have been worshiping are false; there is only one God and he is Allah. Allah in Arabic simply means “the Creator” or “the God.” It’s not a personal name; it’s like Elohim in Hebrew and not like Yahweh.

After he started preaching that there’s only one God, he also attached to it the claim that if you do not turn from your polytheism, you’re going to spend an eternity in hellfire. And that’s pretty much the core, theologically speaking, of what Mohammed preached in Mecca.

If you open up a Koran, which isn’t put together chronologically—it’s difficult to understand how this all unfolded unless you have a good Koran that tells you when the so-called revelations were given. It’s basic monotheism, if you will.

Things change radically, though, around 622— which is the year Muslims hold to be “year one.”

Islam really began when Mohammed moved from Mecca with around a hundred followers, who were for the most part being persecuted.

622–632

c. 650

Defining Medinan Period

Codification of the Koran

(622 is Year 1 in Islamic calendar)

632–661

661–1258

“The Rightly-Guided Caliphs” (immediate

The Age of the Islamic Empire

and revered successors to Mohammed)

➨ Umayyads (661–750) ➨ Abbasids (750–1258)

Abbasids coin, ca. 1244

ModernReformation.org

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interview

Around 622, then, he received the offer to go up to what would eventually be called Medina, where he was given political, military, and religious authority over the city. In passages from this period in the Koran, Islam was not altered but started to define itself theologically, politically, and legally. That’s the Islam with which we’re familiar, I think: not only the claim that there’s no god but God, but also that Islam is the true continuation of the faith of Abraham, even the faith of Adam, and all the prophets of the past. Jews and Christians, while they might claim to be monotheists, have gone astray at some point over time and are therefore only loosely connected with the so-called Abrahamic tradition.

Is there something to the claim that earlier Meccan Islam, the Mohammed of Mecca, was more open to “people of the book,” but that the later Medinan Mohammed is really what we know as Islam today?

a.

Yes and no. The Koran is curious with regard to its treatment of Christianity. On some occasions, it praises it and holds it in high regard. On other occasions (such as Koran 9:29), it enjoins Muslims to kill Christians and Jews if they don’t submit to Islam either as a faith or at least as a political and legal system by paying additional taxes and things. The Meccan passages on Christianity largely regard it as an ally. Koran 29:46

has Mohammed telling what few followers he has that when they come across the people of the book (Jews and Christians), they should not deal harshly with them; rather, Muslims should tell them that their God and our God, that their revelation and our revelation, is one.

Everyone loves to quote Koran 109, especially the last verse where Mohammed is responding to the Meccan elders who tell him to tone down his preaching because it was upsetting the status quo. Mohammed says to them, “You have your religion; I have mine.” Lots of folks like that passage to assert that Islam is open to a pluralistic environment. It recognizes differences but is comfortable living alongside polytheists or Christians or Jews.

So we get this picture of Islam and its relationship with Christianity and even Judaism early on, but then we get these strongly anti-Christian passages in the later Medinan period. That’s accounted for in at least two ways. One school of Islamic thought says that the revelation that Allah sent down has a progression. Early on, Allah saw that Islam was being persecuted by the Meccan elite and knew it was in danger of becoming extinct so he allowed for Mohammed and the Muslim community to look for allies. Later on, when he didn’t need them, he turned his back on them—the Jews especially, but also the Christians, up in Medina. Another school of thought says that there is a contradictory picture of Christianity that is resolved by saying there are at least two Christianities

1258–1924 Imperial fragmentation and the emergence of New Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals

1924 c. late 700s/ early 800s

Islamic civilization starts to divide into Nation-States

The emergence of codified Islamic tradition in law and polity

10

Ottoman representation of Holy mosques of Mecca, ca. 1700 (Manuscript).

being talked about in the Koran. When it’s positive toward Christianity, it’s talking about what we would call “heretical Christianity”— maybe Arianism or Nestorianism, some version of Christianity that perhaps was around in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century that did not confess creedal Christianity —regarding Christ perhaps as a prophet but certainly not the divine son of God. When the Koran speaks negatively of Christianity, it’s referring to creedal or orthodox Christianity. There are other positions, but those are the two prominent ones.

Because, of course, Arian “Christians” would have had a great deal of sympathy with some of Mohammed’s concerns, right?

a.

Absolutely. We don’t know a whole lot about the Arabian Peninsula before the seventh century, so we can’t confirm where Arianism had spread at that point. There just aren’t any written sources besides a few fragments of poetry.

Though some research, primarily archaeological, done in the last fifteen years has been finding evidence that there are these Arian-leaning Christian sects, sort of like a Jewish Christianity, that would have certainly downplayed or rejected the deity of Jesus, seeing him rather as a prophetic figure.

Islamic Theology Let’s talk about “doctrine” briefly. It’s important for us as Christians not to impose our categories

Defining our terms Arianism is summed up in the line, “There was when he was not.” Arianism held that Jesus was a created being, in fact the first created being, and thus had no eternal preexistence as the second person of the Trinity. As such, Jesus shared no being or substance with the Father, and the title “Son of God” was simply honorary.

on Islam, as if they were concerned, for instance, about doctrine as Reformation Christians would be. What does the Koran say about Jesus?

a.

Jesus is mentioned over a dozen times in the Koran, with most of the detail in chapter 19.

The Koran says that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. In fact, Mary is the only female named in the Koran. He grows up and performs lots of miracles over the course of his life. The Koran doesn’t get into the particulars, but it does say he healed the sick, raised the dead, and so on.

The Koran does record one particular miracle of Jesus as a child where he impresses his friends by blowing on a clay pigeon and causing it to become alive. There are a couple places in the Koran that are almost verbatim transcription from Talmudic or noncanonical Christian sources, but we don’t get a whole lot about the content of his teaching.

He’s regarded as a prophet of Allah. According to chapter 19 of the Koran, his first miracle

1928 Birth of the Muslim Brotherhood (the most

dec. 2010–present

influential of political Islamic organizations)

Arab Spring

1979–2012 Islamic Resurgence, Iranian Revolution, and Afghan Jihad

People marching before the Iranian Revolution for Ahmad Moftizadeh, 1979. Photographed by Kamal al-Din.

ModernReformation.org

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interview

occurred when he was an infant. Mary was a bit distraught because she wasn’t married and had a child, and had to explain to her family how this happened. When Jesus was placed in a cradle, he looked up and comforted her by saying, “Don’t worry, Mary. I am a prophet of Allah.” So he’s regarded as a prophet of Allah and a prophet of Islam, but as a prophet of Islam to the nation of Israel. His prophetic ministry was confined to that group of people.

There’s also a picture in Koran 4:157 saying that the Jews claimed to have crucified the Christ, the Messiah—which is merely an honorific title—but in fact they didn’t crucify him, nor was Christ killed at all. In the commentaries on the Koran, there are many

The Koran (Qur’an) and Tradition

S

theories posed in explanation. The prominent one is that Jesus was sitting with his disciples and asked them if someone wanted to take his place, and Judas raised his hand.

His face was transformed to look like Jesus, the roof parted, and Jesus was taken up to heaven. Judas was eventually crucified in his place, and he’s still up in the second or third realm of heaven waiting to return at the last day. Koran 5:117–118 says at the last day, when all the dead are raised and the living are raised up with them, and everybody’s being judged on the basis of their good or bad deeds, Jesus will come down and Allah will point to a group of Christians, perhaps all Christians, and say to Jesus, “Did you tell them that they

when he’s ruling on domestic issues. Though not directly from Allah, it is inspired as well because he’s a prophet of Allah. Then later Muslim jurists fill in the gray areas, using deduction and analogical

unni Muslims, who are traditionalists of

reasoning.

some sort, usually cite both the Koran and

In the sunna there is also the hadith. There are a

sunna as their sources of authority. The

number of collections, some having more authority

Koran is their scriptural text and sunna a term

than others, depending on the chain of transmis-

meaning “tradition.” The latter refers to the tradi-

sion. Then there are the Sira, or biographies of

tion established by Mohammed and the early

Mohammed, which date about one hundred eighty

generations of Muslims. Tradition is anything that’s

years after his death and are of questionable histori-

recorded about what Mohammed said and did that

cal veracity. Lastly, some view other early accounts

didn’t make it into the Koran, but has been passed

of Islam and the early Islamic conquests as authori-

down orally and checked through what Muslims call

tative in the proper conduct of Islam.

“a chain of transmission”—namely, that it comes from a legitimate source, such as the wife of Mohammed or a companion of Mohammed, and is considered, in a sense, revelatory.

M o h a m m e d i s re g a rd e d as the perfect man. When he speaks or acts under inspiration, it is as if Allah speaks directly through him, even when he conducts himself in jihad or

12

Folio from a Qur’an, CA. 1200-1300 (manuscript).

should regard you and your mother Mary as God, that they should take you as lords?” And Jesus responds, “I would have never told them such a thing. I would have never told them what you did not tell me to tell them.” So once again, an unusual type of Christianity that confesses Jesus as the Son of God and Mary as a part of God (much like Nestorianism) is renounced.

The traditional literature develops things further to claim that Jesus, after that judgment, will join forces with the Islamic Messiah and find every crucifix that’s ever been made and crush it, and that he will hunt down and kill every last pig on earth. A more spurious tradition says that he will also hunt down the Jews and persecute and kill them as well.

Recommended Reading

S

tudying Islam can be confusing. The prob -

lem is not the lack of information, though. It is, instead, the preponderance of conflicting information. So where does one begin?

History Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction by Adam J. Silverstein (2010) offers a quick intro-

Is there any gospel, any good news in Islam?

Or is it all law?

a. It is all law. You can read the Koran and see

that it’s filled with legal and moral injunctions, and though you can never be sure, your eternal destiny—whether you’re going to heaven or hell—is largely dependent upon whether you’ve really followed the sharia and stayed on the straight path. The only way to be sure is to die as a martyr. But even then, the Koran says that if you die as a martyr, when you go up and are enjoying your seventy-two virgins and drinking as much wine as you want without getting a headache, it’s such an honor to die as a martyr that you’ll petition to go back and die in the cause of Allah again.

After I’ve had an apologetic discussion with a Muslim, perhaps to open up their mind a bit to read a Gospel for an eyewitness or a companion of an eyewitness to the real Jesus, I always ask them the classic evangelistic questions. What about your salvation? Can you be certain of this? If you were to die, can you be certain you’d enter heaven at some point? Their response is always, “No, I couldn’t be certain, nor do I care.”

I remember one Lutheran convert to Islam, a young woman, told me that her concern and the concern of any Muslim is just to be a good submitter to Allah—what Allah does with them in the afterlife has already been predetermined.

duction to the history of Islam.

The Koran (Qur’an) and Muslim Thought The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an (2006) brings together several essays written by leading scholars in the field of Koranic studies. The last chapter is misleading, however, as it suggests the Koran provides a blueprint for religious pluralism, a view that is certainly not indicative of classic Muslim thought.

Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes by Paul J. Griffiths (1990) is probably the best introduction to the very diverse Muslim views of non-Muslim religions, especially Christianity (in part two).

Apologetics A History of Christian-Muslim Relations by Hugh Goddard (2000) provides a good, albeit basic, overview of Christian approaches to Islam.

Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection by Michael Licona (2006) and Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb (2002) cover the gamut of Christian apologetics to Islam (see also www.answering-islam.org).

ModernReformation.org

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FRO M t h e Ha l lway

Singing the Lord’s song i n Ba by l o n

by Andy Wils on

14

illustration by Dan Page

At the time of the Babylonian exile,

the people of Israel asked, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4). This question is still relevant for the church today, because we too are “sojourners and exiles” on the earth (1 Pet. 2:11). God clearly wants his pilgrim people to be a community of song (Heb. 13:14–15), but he has not given us an inspired set of musical tunes. So the question arises: what musical styles should we employ as we sing the Lord’s song in spiritual Babylon? Over the past few decades, the determining factor for many churches has been the desire to make Christian worship appear more relevant in the eyes of the broader culture. But should this be the key criterion in how we make decisions about worship music? Should we allow contemporary culture to have the privilege of being the standard of relevance for the church’s worship? It is true that some people see traditional expressions of Christian worship as out of touch and outdated. But we need to remember that the various cultures of this world will always find reasons to reject the gospel because of its apparent foolishness and weakness (1 Cor. 1:22–31). Christians should not seek to win converts and keep their children in the faith by making the gospel look “cool.”

Christians today have a lot to say about being culturally engaged, and we need to continue to emphasize both mature discernment and inevitable confrontation in this engagement. As Ken Myers writes, “The widespread desire to be…‘culturally engaged’ is often a distraction from the church’s mission, not because it takes culture too seriously, but because it has not paid close enough attention to the actual state of our culture.…If Christians were really culturally engaged, really serious about recognizing meaning in forms of cultural expression, they would be much more reluctant to embrace certain cultural trends.”1 After all, the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that “‘all things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all

things build up” (10:23). And a few chapters later he explains, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (13:11). Biblical teaching therefore encourages grown-up thinking about all matters of faith and life, as when Paul concludes, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (14:20).

As mature Christians and grown-up saints we need to remember at the outset that the church by its very nature is distinct from the world. The Greek word for church is ekklesia, a word whose etymology means “called out of.” We still live in the world, but we need to be different from the world, especially in our Sunday worship of the living God. This is the only way we can function as salt and light in the world.

Music as a Common Cultural Product Music is a product of common culture, the same culture we share with non-Christians, and not something per se that we are called to redeem.

David VanDrunen explains the notion of a “common culture” in that “while God, in the progress of redemptive history, would choose out of the world a people of his very own, he has also preserved a common, cultural realm in which those who love him and those who do not must live and work together.”2 The common realm and its activities are not being redeemed but are being preserved as the ModernReformation.org

15

FRO M t h e Ha l lway

context in which God is carrying out his work of redemption through the ministry he has instituted in his church.

Christians should care about all matters pertaining to the common realm, as well as participate in the range of activities that occur in this sphere. But in such engagement we are not called to create cultural forms that are distinctly Christian, first because the work of redemption isn’t something to be ordinarily found outside the church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament, and second because we have no biblical blueprint for redeeming culture or music. We must always regard music as a product of the common culture and acknowledge that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “Christian music” or “church music.”

That being said, we need to be careful lest we slip into the error of aesthetic relativism, which says there are no objective standards by which musical forms can be evaluated. Art is not entirely subjective. It is true that people have disagreements when it comes to evaluating the quality of a work of art. I am sure there are people who think Justin Bieber’s music is better than J. S. Bach’s. But it is also possible that some people have less well-developed aesthetic tastes.

Such claims are unpopular in our day because our culture tends to define art entirely in terms of self-expression rather than as the development of the order that God has woven into his creation. When art is defined as self-expression, attempts to evaluate the quality of the art are sometimes viewed with suspicion. But Christians should not always go along with this tendency of our age. Before we jettison old worship music in favor of the new, we need to ask whether the new music is qualitatively better than what it is meant to replace, and not just a subjective preference. Contrary to the contemporary conventional wisdom, newer does not always mean better. Further, we also need to remember that not everything that is permissible in some contexts is suitable for corporate worship. You can wear your swimsuit at the beach, but I hope you don’t wear it to church. Just as a mother

16

would not try to put her infant to sleep by singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” to the rollicking tune of “Seventy-Six Trombones,” we all recognize that musical form contributes significantly to the meaning and appropriateness of a song.

What Does the Bible Say ?

The Bible does not tell us what musical forms we should use in our worship, but this does not mean it has nothing to say on the matter. For one thing, Scripture makes it clear that the prevailing mood of our worship should be one of reverence and awe (Heb. 12:28–29). In light of this, our worship music should not be trivial or showy, nor should it foster a sentimental practice of the Christian faith.

Instead, it should be capable of carrying the weighty doctrinal content of Scripture, of good aesthetic quality, and easily sung by the average congregation. When it comes to serving these purposes, some musical forms are better than others.

The Bible also tells us that the songs we sing in worship are a means by which God’s Word comes to richly indwell us (Col. 3:16). One of the most powerful ways this can happen is when we have a core set of songs that we sing our whole life long. This is one of the benefits of taking a slow approach in adding new songs to the church’s worship repertoire. If we are always looking for the next new song, it becomes difficult for our singing to be a means by which the Word richly indwells us.

Closely related to this is the importance of nurturing the church as a community of song. Singing should not primarily be about what the musical professionals do. Instead, individual Christians should be encouraged to incorporate the church’s hymns into their times of private and family worship, and the overall musical atmosphere in our worship should not be one of entertainment (a danger for both worship teams and choirs), but one in which the entire congregation is lifting up its voice in song.

Another biblical truth that speaks to this matter is the fact that wisdom is obtained by listening

The Rock Myth

M

often relativized so that consumer preferences reign supreme. To go against this common assumption is dangerous, as Johnson concludes: “A challenge to the

ost of the worship music we refer to as

music through which one identifies oneself is experi-

“contemporary” has been influenced by

enced with the same anxiety as a personal attack.”3

rock ‘n’ roll. As a form of art, the meaning

This may have a lot to do with the extraordinarily long

of this style of music involves a whole set of assump-

life of the so-called “Worship Wars.”

tions and ideals, something Ken Myers has described

Another way in which the rock myth affects us has

as the “rock myth.” Myers explains, “The essence of

to do with the function music is expected to perform

that myth was that rock would offer a form of spiritu-

in our lives. For many modern people, music is almost

al deliverance by providing a superior form of knowl-

exclusively used as background or distraction in the

edge, a form that was immediate rather than

midst of some other activity (driving, shopping, din-

reflective, physical rather than mental, and emotional

ing, studying, and so forth). We use music to help set

rather than volitional.”1 If these things are inherent to

or alter a mood. Thus music is judged on the basis of

rock as a musical form, then rock music itself, regard-

its ability to arouse a certain set of emotions. When

less of the lyrics, may imply something about how we

music makes this immediate connection, we judge it

come to know and experience truth. It suggests that

to be good. In a culture that sees leisure as a release

the immediate, physical, and emotional is more au-

from having to think, any musical form that requires

thentic and reliable than the reflective, mental, and

thoughtful or patient participation is going to be

volitional. This is something to consider seriously in

viewed as irrelevant and burdensome.

relation to our worship tunes, especially in terms of

Music has power, and this power can be directed to-

how the Bible says we come to an understanding of

ward either good or bad ends. Consider John Calvin’s

the truth, as well as Paul’s exhortation to “be trans-

comments on this in his introduction to a sixteenth-

formed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

century psalter: “There is hardly anything in the world

There are many ways the “rock myth” has shaped

with more power to turn or bend, this way and that,

our culture’s dominant approach to music. For one,

the morals of men.…It has a secret power to move our

music has largely ceased to be an activity in which

hearts in one way or another. Wherefore we must be

people participate and has instead become a com-

the more diligent in ruling it in such a manner that it

modity that is consumed. For Oxford musicologist Ju-

may be useful to us and in no way pernicious.”4

lian Johnson, ours is “a commercial culture that

1

accords equal validity and equal status to all of its products. In the marketplace, all music becomes functionally equivalent.” 2 In other words, music is

Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 137.

Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14.

3 Johnson, 15.

4 Cited in Paul S. Jones, Singing and Making Music (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006), 292.

2

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FRO M t h e Ha l lway

“ Our thinking about the music we use in worship should be mindful of the fact that the goal of Christian discipleship is Christian maturity (Col. 1:28).” to our elders and conforming our lives to their teachings (Prov. 1:7–9). In our culture, the voice of tradition is largely rejected, and everything is expected to conform to our personal interests and desires. This is especially evident in our approach to music. In the post-1960s era, much of our culture’s thinking about music has been influenced by the sensibilities of rock and pop music. These sensibilities include: an attitude that rejects tradition in favor of what is new; an impatient and prideful exaltation of younger over older generations; and an emphasis upon impulse and emotion that has little patience for careful reflection.3 In a culture that makes an idol of newness and takes its cues from its youth, the church needs to exercise discernment in how it thinks about the music it uses in its worship. If we are going to avoid the tyranny of trendiness, we need to make use of the best music from church history. While there is nothing wrong with adding new songs to the church’s repertoire, the impulse in many churches today is one of replacement rather than enhancement. Even if older hymns are still utilized, they are often sung only in the contemporary style. The church can serve its young people better by teaching them to receive

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the hymnody of previous generations as a rich heritage. Surely this is more consistent with the biblical principle of honoring your father and mother than a mind-set that sets aside old songs as outdated and irrelevant.

On a related note, our thinking about the music we use in worship should be mindful of the fact that the goal of Christian discipleship is Christian maturity (Col. 1:28). The songs we sing in worship should not encourage a perpetual state of adolescence but help move us toward maturity in Christ. How will this happen if the determining factor for our worship music is a desire to appeal to the preferences of the young?

Conclusion If we are going to faithfully sing the Lord’s song in Babylon, we need to understand that the music we employ in our worship will always be a product of Babylon—the culture we have in common with non-Christians. Music is a matter of common grace, a part of the realm being preserved as the theater in which redemption is taking place.

For this reason, we should not think of musical styles as something we are called to redeem for Christ. But this does not mean that “anything goes” as far as the kind of music we use in our worship. On the contrary, we need to carefully evaluate musical styles in terms of their aesthetic quality and their appropriateness for use in Christian worship. The church sings the Lord’s song in Babylon most faithfully and most fruitfully when her decisions about musical styles are guided by her pilgrim identity rather than by a desire to feel at home in this world.

Andy Wilson is the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Laconia, New Hampshire.

Ken Myers, “Waiting for Epimenides,” Touchstone (July/August 2009), 9–11.

David VanDrunen, A Biblical Case for Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Action Institute, 2006), 26.

3 See Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 133–55.

1

2

road trip We know conversations are even better in person.

That’s why we want you to join us at a White Horse Inn event near you.

See what’s coming up on the schedule, and start penciling them into your calendar. We hope to see you at the next event!

V i s i t Wh iteHo r seInn.o r g/ events to che ck the s che d ul e

insp1rati0n by

NUMB3RS

by Rick Ritchie

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theology

ike a diet promoter who gains fame by promising better results with fewer restrictions, Christian Smith has produced a stir in the evangelical publishing world by offering an understanding of scriptural authority that is supposedly both easier to maintain and more orthodox.

In his book, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Brazos Press, 2011), Smith argues that the “biblicism that pervades much of American evangelicalism is untenable and needs to be abandoned in favor of a better approach” (3). He introduces himself as a sociologist, saying that coming from outside theology he has some unique insights on the subject. His key argument against biblicism is that people who share belief in the authority of Scripture come to differing conclusions as to what it says, a practical conclusion that calls into question the theoretical claims made for the Bible as the only rule for faith and practice.

Smith is better equipped to make his practical case than his theoretical case. While we often minimize how much interpretations can differ, Smith marshals mountains of evidence that different people’s interpretations vary widely from one another. While at times most of us admit this, we can push that knowledge aside when our views of the Bible get challenged. Smith does a fine job at exposing this problem. He is at his best here.

As a sociologist, he puts as much focus on social and psychological “causes” of beliefs as on intellectual and philosophical “reasons” for beliefs. As C. S. Lewis once pointed out, however, the critic always imagines he has good reasons for his own beliefs, while his opponents’ beliefs have describable external causes (for a longer discussion, see Lewis’s essay “Bulverism” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics). Ironically, Smith tries to argue that his recent conversion to

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Roman Catholicism should not discount the intellectual case he makes in the book. But if we are to ignore causes and focus on reasons, then we must dismiss his arguments in The Bible Made Impossible because they fail to do the same.

When Smith defines biblicism, he offers a list of what could be termed “symptoms of biblicism” (4–5): 1. Divine Writing 2. Total Representation 3. Complete Coverage 4. Democratic Perspicuity 5. Commonsense Hermeneutics 6. Solo Scriptura (i.e., you alone with the Bible) 7. Internal Harmony 8. Universal Applicability 9. Inductive Method 10. Handbook Model No one belief is considered as defining, and it almost appears he is describing a syndrome rather than a theory. If you hold several of these beliefs, you might be a biblicist. On a practical level, this might be a reasonable way of approaching the topic. If all he wished to argue was that this cluster of beliefs had failed to bring consensus to those who hold it, such a description of beliefs would be acceptable. This is no straw-man claim.

I know that views such as he describes are held by some, and typically in the manner in which he describes them.

The Theoretical Case The trouble comes in the fact that this syndrome approach carries over into the theoretical case.

Smith wishes to show that biblicism is theoretically impossible—not just difficult or even

wrong, but impossible on logical grounds. Yet at many points he seems to forget the nature of the theoretical argument. Take for example Smith’s interaction with giants of Reformed theology, A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, two Princeton theologians who did more than practically anyone to articulate the evangelical view of biblical authority and inerrancy. But rather than deal with their best arguments, Smith nitpicks instead: “These quotes of Hodge and Warfield are among the weakest; elsewhere they do write with greater sophistication on these matters. But as their teachings later passed through the scorching flames of the modernist-fundamentalist battles of the early twentieth century, it was often their weaker, more simplistic ideas that shaped the thinking of subsequent generations of evangelicals” (57). Unfortunately, in apologetics we don’t find out how robust a theory is by testing its weakest statements. Therefore, simply on logical grounds when Smith’s thesis is that a position is impossible, he hasn’t made his case if all he’s done is show that some statements of the position are weak, especially after admitting that there are more cogent versions available.

Reconsidering Warfield on the Biblical Writers

“The Princeton Lion”: B. B. Warfield

B

enjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851– 1921) was a massive figure in the history of American evangelicalism, especially

within the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition.

If all Warfield gave us was a deductive case for inerrancy, then Smith’s proposal might work. But Warfield did not leave us there. In his classic work The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Warfield includes a chapter titled “‘It says:’ ‘Scripture says:’ ‘God says.’” Here he collects statements showing how many authors in the Bible speak about God and the Bible interchangeably at times. The unavoidable conclusion is that the biblical writers themselves held to a view of Scripture that Smith would dismiss as “biblicistic.”

One dramatic example occurs in Romans 9:17, where Moses spoke to Pharaoh but St. Paul says that “Scripture” spoke to Pharaoh. This makes sense only by way of an involved thought process. What Moses spoke could be termed “Scripture” because what he spoke was the Word of God. This is called “Scripture” despite the fact that at this point we have no reason to think that what Moses spoke to Pharaoh had been written down yet. So the point is not that

Warfield came of age during the height of European influence on the interpretation of the Bible in America. Having studied in Germany with the leading academics and linguists of the Bible, Warfield returned home to the States with firsthand knowledge of what is called “higher criticism.”

In the midst of raging debates about the authority, inspiration, and inerrancy of the Bible in America, Warfield and Archibald Alexander Hodge (son of Charles Hodge) collaborated to write one of the best statements on the nature of the Bible in an article called “Inspiration,” first published in the Presbyterian Review in 1881. For his classic defense of the Bible, Warfield rightly deserves to be lionized as a defender of orthodox Protestant evangelicalism.

From Roger R. Nicole’s introduction to A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, Inspiration (Wipf & Stock, 2007).

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theology

what Moses spoke was like Scripture by being written down; it was that what Scripture spoke was like what Moses spoke by being God’s very words. It was exactly what God wanted said, and not because Moses or some other writer pondered and meditated himself into some receptive state; Moses admitted he didn’t know what to say to Pharaoh (Exod. 4:12). I therefore challenge readers to consider St. Paul’s reading of Exodus when considering Smith’s views. The Bible Made Impossible suggests that we need to allow our ideas of what Scripture is to be formed by careful observation of how it actually works rather than what human theories say (153). Fair enough. But Warfield does this, and his views are drawn from the way the biblical authors themselves speak about Scripture as a whole. Because Warfield did not concoct his theory from his own presuppositions, he felt bound (by Scripture) to defend Scripture.

So the syndrome approach suffers in that it does not describe beliefs as they are held by the most thoughtful. Then when we see the clash of interpretations that results, careful readers will be right to question if the problem is not biblicism per se but rather the bastardized forms of the doctrines it seems to represent. There is no denying the reality of solo scriptura-ism in evangelicalism today or the problems that come with it. But are the problems also found in the original doctrine of sola scriptura? It is important then to ask if it is just Smith’s description of common biblicism that is impossible, or Warfield’s doctrine of inerrancy. Unfortunately, we don’t get to find out.

Now, part of what Smith faces is a challenge of space. He clearly could not test every possible form of biblicism, yet it is only a specific form that can offer a robust answer. Were I to test the merits of biblicism, I would probably choose three of the most robust forms of biblicism and see how they fared. It would require finding only one workable form of the doctrine to defeat his thesis; and I suspect that certain biblicist systems of belief might turn out to be much more rigorous than Smith’s generalizations about biblicism as a whole.

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“ There is no denying the reality of solo scriptura -ism in evangelicalism today or the problems that come with it.”

Interpretation and Application Assessments such as Smith’s require careful attention to definition. Unfortunately, specificity is precisely what is lacking when Smith discusses terms such as “meaning,” “interpretation,” and “application.” Smith can describe terms such as “multivalence” and “polysemous,” distinguishing “locutionary,” “illocutionary,” and “perlocutionary” acts, making it appear that he has a carefully shaded linguistic apparatus to guide him through the difficulties of discussing meaning. Yet when it comes to the term “meaning” itself, his language is actually quite slippery. For instance, he offers a list of possible sermons on the woman at the well as evidence of multiple meanings to the text. However, most of these sermons really amounted to what is often termed “application.” Are we to assume an application is a meaning? If someone says, “The text has one meaning,” and you answer, “But that can’t be right—the text has many applications,” there will be some confusion because of the problem in assuming that an application is a meaning.

This is a real problem when it comes to Smith’s interaction with opponents. Evangelical author David Wells speaks of how “meaning is not to be found above the text, behind it, beyond it, or in the interpreter. Meaning is to be found in the text. It is the language of the text which determines what meaning God intends for us to have” (53). Oddly,

Smith rejects the claim that the text has one single meaning in the quotation that he himself provides, and insists the contrary instead— that each conclusion someone reaches is a meaning, which is something Wells clearly denies.

Aside from the philosophical consideration of meaning and application, I think Wells is closer to the assumptions of the biblical text. Consider Jesus’ understanding of meaning in his telling of the parable of the sower. If Wells claimed that the parable had one meaning, would Jesus object? Presumably not, given that Jesus argued for one single meaning when he told the disciples what that meaning was.

But if Smith claimed this parable as polysemous and multivalent, and further that this led to multiple understandings, would this mesh with Jesus saying that his hearers heard but did not understand (Mark 4:12)? In other words, misunderstandings of biblical messages are not to be considered multiple meanings of Scripture.

Realities of the Day

Defining our terms Sola Scriptura “By Scripture alone”: The Reformation teaching on the authority of the Bible.

Example: The Westminster Confession of Faith observes that our faith and practice are determined by that which is explicitly taught in Scripture or “by good and necessary consequences may be deduced therefrom.”

Solo Scriptura “You alone with Scripture”: The prevailing approach to the Bible in American evangelicalism.

Example: Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), a

Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible is at its strongest when making its practical case. I would recommend people read the book, but with the caveat that they note carefully what kind of case Smith is trying to make. We live in a pragmatic age, and I fear that the typical reader won’t easily notice a slip from a theoretical back into a practical examination of evangelical biblicism. While I don’t think that the nineteenthcentury inerrantists had the last word to say on the subject, or that modern literary theory has had nothing to add to our understanding of how Scripture works, I do not think Smith is the person best suited to help us move forward in evangelical debates. What he has done well, especially in his other books, is remind us that we have a sociological mess on our hands. Perhaps he can offer sociological answers as to how people of different views can better live with their differences. I just hope this won’t involve trying to persuade people that the problems of biblicism are somehow unique to evangelical Protestantism.

nineteenth-century evangelical, modified Reformation teaching by declaring his individualistic approach: “I have endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.”

Biblicism Biblicism restricts truth to that which is “explicitly” taught in Scripture. When combined with a solo scriptura approach to Bible reading, this can “reinvent the wheel” in every area of theology and life.

Example: Few biblicists deny the Trinity, but the same method (biblicism) that leads some to hate systematic theology should make

Rick Ritchie is a long-time contributor to Modern Reformation.

them Unitarians.

He is a graduate of Christ College Irvine and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

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Christ and Islam 40

Bangkok Taxi Evangelism p28 Loving Muslim Neighbors p30 Insider Movements p36

Bangkok Taxi

E va n g e l i s m

by Karl Dahlfred

S

ealed inside an air-conditioned bubble, far from the eavesdropping ears of society at large, Bangkok’s taxi drivers will give you their uninhibited opinion on just about anything. Politics. Religion. Education. The monarchy. Their hometown. How to manage multiple wives in different cities. Of course, not all of them are chatty, and I have many times ridden in near silence to my destination. But I love riding with the guys who want to talk. And anytime there is conversation, there is the potential for a conversation about the gospel.

On one particular trip, I quickly discovered that the taxi driver taking us to the airport in the middle of the night was ready to talk. Our driver told me that he was studying the Bible with the Mormons.

That led us into a forty-five minute conversation about God and spiritual things.

I gently told him that the Mormons are not mainstream Christians and are regarded as a cult by the majority of Christians. Since this Buddhist fellow was just beginning to learn about Christianity, I didn’t want to create the impression that different Christian groups are hopelessly divided among themselves. That’s a valid question, but not one I wanted to get into at the time.

As we were nearing the departure terminal, he told me how unjust it seemed that God would just forgive someone like a rapist, letting him get off scot-free. I ventured a response, but my answer didn’t seem to satisfy. All the same, as we unloaded the baggage, he asked where he could learn more about Christianity. I gave him a copy of the Gospel of John and recommended he contact our mission’s guest home manager who had hired him to drive us.

We paid the fare and headed off to check-in. After we got back to the U.S., the mission home manager e-mailed to say that our taxi driver had called her and that they had talked for twenty minutes about faith questions. She was going to try to connect him with a local pastor and his church.

After that point, I hadn’t thought too much more about our taxi driver friend until I went back to Thailand a couple months later to renew my visa. I needed another ride to the airport and asked the mission home manager to get me the same taxi driver. As we drove out in the wee hours of the morning, I asked if he was still meeting up with the Mormons.

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I stopped meeting up with

them after we talked, and I am a Christian now.”

Wow! Our previous conversation had gotten him thinking and he had asked around about the Mormons. A Thai Protestant girl and a Thai Catholic both told him that Mormonism is not Christianity, confirming what I had told him. He had been reading the Gospel of John I gave him, as well as a small daily devotional book (both were sitting on the dashboard of the taxi). During our ride that morning, I wasn’t able to determine to what degree he truly understood, but he talked about how God can help us, and he no longer objected to God forgiving people. I strongly encouraged him to get involved in a local church to continue learning about Jesus.

During my six years in Thailand, I have talked about Jesus and religion with many taxi drivers.

But I have never had a conversation like this with such evident interest and openness to considering the gospel seriously. I didn’t say anything different to this fellow, but it seems that God was at work in his heart.

I meet most taxi drivers only once, so it’s hard to say whether anything that I or other Christians have shared with these men (and a few women) was eventually used by God to work faith and repentance in some of them. But I praise God for the many opportunities that he gives for free conversation at stoplights and on expressways. Only eternity will reveal to what extent God has been pleased to use one-time conversations in Bangkok’s taxis to the praise of his glory.

Karl Dahlfred (ThM Talbot School of Theology, MDiv GordonConwell Theological Seminary) is a missionary in Bangkok, Thailand, and an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

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Loving Muslim Neighbors

by Michael S. Horton

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“Who is my neighbor?” the rich young ruler asked Jesus. The query was an attempt to def lect responsibility. Of course, I have a responsibility for my family, kinsmen, and fellow Jews, but surely not for the outcasts, the morally unclean, or the Gentile. No loophole, Jesus replied. Your neighbor is the one right under your nose, whomever God created in his image. Like the rich young ruler, we all have ways of defining “neighbor” as someone who is like us. This is group narcissism: not really loving my neighbor, but loving myself and what I see of myself in others.

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Who Is My Neighb or?

We recognize our responsibilities to our own families, churches, and perhaps various voluntary associations. There are school ties—fraternity/ sorority mates, secret societies, and alumni associations—where belonging gives advantages in climbing the corporate ladder or getting our kids into Harvard. In a less mobile era, churches reflected the demographics of their neighborhood, as it was often divided between the farm and the town, or along racial and socioeconomic lines (different sides of the tracks). Even in many cases where blacks and whites worshipped together, the former sat in the loft—never in the main gallery— and certainly did not drink from a common cup in Communion (Paul says something about this in 1 Corinthians). In our mobile society today, churches are divided more than ever into increasingly smaller niche demographics defined by the marketplace.

In all of these cases, we choose our neighbors.

They are people who are like us. We share similar playlists on our iPods, shop at the same stores, drive similar cars, and even dress alike. When we move to a new city or suburb, we find a neighborhood, church, and school that most closely fit our own self-chosen identity. (Of course, some people have more freedom to choose than others.)

Our closest neighbors, however, are not those we choose; they are the ones who are chosen for us by God, either in his common grace (providence) or special grace (salvation). The most obvious example is our nuclear and extended families. The

“Faith is so bound up with culture—not only in Islam, but in their perception (too often the reality) of Christianity in America.”

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church is another place designed by God rather than the market—at least in principle. Ideally, based on biblical principles, a local church should reflect the unity of faith and diversity of culture that belong to its particular time and place. When the defining location is “in Christ”—“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”—then all sorts of people show up who are different from me. They are not only my neighbors, but also my brothers and sisters. I didn’t choose them; God did.

Who is my brother or sister? Those whom God has given to his Son, and therefore to me, as someone to love in a concrete yet mysterious depth of mutual affection. But who is my neighbor? As far as our neighborhoods are concerned, increasingly, socioeconomic demographics are more definitive than other factors, such as race or religion, which cut across income levels.

Our family lives in a typical middle-class tract home. Two doors down from us is a family of Muslim immigrants. How do I embrace them as a gift from God—as neighbors rather than aliens? It is interesting to see how our children more naturally interact with this family than my wife and I. The children play together regularly, either at our house or theirs. Sometimes there is tension, especially when they get into a theological conversation! Sometimes the kids get into lively discussions, and our children have developed a genuine love for their friends, praying that they will come to know Christ and offering witness where they are able. For the most part, they simply accept one another as neighbors.

My wife and I do our best to remember not to offer treats during Ramadan. I’ve tried to help get one of the kids a job, my wife gave them a stroller, and we sign up for their school contests. But surely we are not loving our neighbors if we have not shared the gospel with them ourselves. I have done so with the oldest son from time to time, but I confess it’s difficult. Faith is so bound up with culture—not only in Islam, but in their perception (too often the reality) of Christianity in America.

Where do we begin? Yet we’re neighbors. In Jesus’ book, that word means a lot more than it ordinarily would in my own. Especially when it comes to the parents; the difference between us intrigues me, but it also allows me to justify a certain distance, even unavailability. I walk into their home, surrounded by framed texts in illuminated Arabic

“ Christians worship the Triune God revealed in Scripture and Muslims believe that this is blasphemy. We are not simple monotheists, but Trinitarians: God’s identity as three persons is just as basic to our faith as the one essence that they share.” script and swords, and they too sense the dance of the porcupines. Yet I want to be their neighbor, and I suspect they might want to be mine. I want to see them from God’s perspective, as a gift he has chosen for me, rather than as a resource I choose or don’t choose for myself.

Building Bridges without Compromise Some these days are stepping out into choppy waters by trying to build bridges to Islamic communities. In many cases the effort is social, but other times theology enters the picture, no matter how casually. For example, it is commonly argued that Christians and Muslims worship the same God and acknowledge many of the same religious principles, such as love of neighbor.

This kind of bridge-building is admirable for its motivation, and I don’t question the sincerity of the neighbor-love on display, working to create greater friendship, understanding, and social cooperation.

As a recent Newsweek cover story documents, this is

extremely rare in Islamic countries, where persecution of Christians is alarming. In other words, wherever bridges of friendship and understanding can be built, so much the better.

I have, however, some concerns on two fronts.

The more important concern touches the ultimate mission and identity of believers and the church. Do we in fact worship the same God? It is true that there is widespread misunderstanding among Muslims concerning the Christian view of God—for example, that the Trinity implies three separate gods and that the incarnation was the result of God the Father’s sexual relations with Mary. Nevertheless, even when these misconceptions are resolved, the fact remains that Christians worship the Triune God revealed in Scripture and Muslims believe that this is blasphemy. We are not simple monotheists, but Trinitarians: God’s identity as three persons is just as basic to our faith as the one essence that they share. With respect to the latter, we disagree sharply over who this God is: his attributes, character, purposes, and relation to the world.

Out of respect for our neighbors, we have to allow them to register their own “No!” to our creed, and out of faith we have to confess and witness to the revelation of God’s Word. Doesn’t love require that we extend neighborly friendship and seek to bring Muslims the gospel? Is this not the way it should be with all of our neighbors? Surely not every social event—whether public or in our backyards—has to be an evangelistic opportunity, but then it also should not be a religious one either—as if churches and mosques could find some common ground of faith for their charity toward each other. The bridge-building between neighbors should happen in neighborhoods, not in “interfaith” quasi-religious gatherings.

As to the alleged shared belief in a common law of love, even this is interpreted in radically different ways in the authoritative texts of both religions.

The “love” of Allah is radically different in definition from love as it is manifested by God and commanded in Scripture. More importantly, there is no gospel in Islam. It is a religion of works-righteousness from start to finish, with no rescue operation of God incarnate for sinners. The God we worship is known in Jesus Christ, and any god who could be known apart from this Savior, dying and rising for us, is an idol. To separate belief in God from the ModernReformation.org

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Calvin on Loving your neighbor “And let us not grow wearing of going good….So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone.” (Gal. 6:9–10)

“Now when [Paul] says ‘unto all men,’ it is to teach us that although we may be so disgusted by others that we do not want to do them good, we

gospel is to vitiate biblical faith at its core. The Allah of the Koran and hadith is the archetype of terror, and I have witnessed the overwhelming relief of those who have been freed from the fearful resignation to Allah by embracing the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ.

I do not for that reason wish to deprive my Muslim neighbors of the free expression of their religion. In fact, I would defend their right to it with life and limb. Nevertheless, our faith is missionary not in the jihadist sense, but as the inherent impulse of the gospel itself as good news that must be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. Certainly it is true that we should engage in civil conversation. It is not merely democratic values but also the New Testament that require Christians to love their neighbors regardless of the response. To tell Muslim friends, however, that we essentially worship the same God or that God likes religious diversity is to imply that God approves of idolatry, as if this rhetoric were equivalent to the diversity that God does in fact like—indeed, creates—when he saves people “from every tribe, kindred, language, and people” by his blood (Rev. 5:9).

must, nevertheless, show kindness because God commands it. As I have already said, we are not to consider what each person is like, or what he de-

Neighb or -Love without Illusions

serves; we must rise above this and realize that God has placed us in this world to the end that we might be united and joined together. Since he has stamped his image upon us, and since we share a common nature, this ought to inspire us to provide for one another….For whilst we are human beings, we must see our own faces reflected, as by a mirror, in the faces of the poor and despised, who can go no further and who are trembling under their burdens, even if they are people who are most alien to us. If a Moor or a barbarian comes to us, because he is a man, he is a mirror in which we see reflected the fact that he is our brother and our neighbor; for we cannot change the rules of nature that God has established as immutable.

Thus, we are obligated without exception to all men, because we are made of the same flesh; as the prophet Isaiah says: ‘that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh’ (Isa. 58:7).”

John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians, trans. Kathy Childress (Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 624–25.

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My second misgiving is subordinate to the first, but perhaps still worth mentioning. I do not doubt that there are many Muslims who embrace democratic values, but it is naive for Christians to assume that Islam is simply a religion, much less one that is freely embraced. Ask any devout Muslim.

Until we come to understand, respect, and respond to Islam in all of its differences, we will not be prepared to love our neighbors properly. Islam does not proclaim to the world good news that is freely embraced by faith apart from political coercion. Islam makes no distinction between mosque and state. In fact, the nation that matters ultimately is Islam—the ummah or community of Muslims around the world. This is not only an international kingdom of those who are joined spiritually to each other in a common faith, but also a political state. Islam is a totally encompassing geopolitical, social, legal, and cultural system. Whatever divergences may be allowed by specific rulers, Islam itself does not recognize, much less tolerate, any

“ the era of a holy land, with holy war, is suspended. Instead of driving the idolaters out of his land, we are to proclaim the good news, endure persecution without retaliation, and pray for our enemies. ” idea of a state that permits the free exercise of religion. Believing that all people are by nature Muslim, Islam divides the world sharply not into believers and unbelievers, Muslims and non-Muslims, but rather into believers and apostates (“infidels”). The latter are called Dhimmis—literally, “one whose responsibility has been taken.” If they are allowed to live within the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam), it is only as apostates who may not practice their faith (at least openly), much less seek to convert others to it. The non-Muslim world is Dar al-Harb (“House of War”).

Now, it doesn’t take much research to show that Christians have failed gravely in their discipleship.

Our hands are stained with the blood of “Christendom,” which in many ways was indistinguishable from Islam in its “one-kingdom” confusion. The difference, though, is that when we have confused Christ and culture, we have acted in clear violation of the teaching of the New Testament. Islamic states, however, are only inconsistent with their sacred texts when they do not impose sharia, declare holy war, and extend the universal caliphate of Allah to the ends of the earth as a political empire.

Whether through patient moderation or radical extremism, Islam remains a worldwide culture that

is only secondarily religious. One may endure a liberal democratic compromise for a time, but only for a time.

Love and War The holy wars that God commanded in the old covenant were types, a mere foretaste of the final judgment when Christ returns. Yet we are now living in the period between Christ’s two advents when the kingdoms of this age are ruled by God’s common grace while his church grows and expands by his gospel. In Matthew 5, Jesus makes it clear that the era of a holy land, with holy war, is suspended. Instead of driving the idolaters out of his land, we are to proclaim the good news, endure persecution without retaliation, and pray for our enemies. No matter how Islam continues to expand its reign of terror across the globe, focusing especially on Christ’s coheirs, believers everywhere must resist any appeal to political coercion to defend the faith.

Like Paul who appealed his case to Caesar on the basis of his Roman citizenship, we may invoke our Constitutional liberties, but we must not claim any political privileges beyond the freedom to practice the Christian faith, including the freedom to evangelize, which is at the heart of that faith.

There are at least three easy ways of avoiding the command to love our Muslim neighbors.

The first is to ignore them, to pretend that America is a “Christian nation” and that the “other” does not really exist. That’s a version of the group narcissism I referred to above. The second is to demonize them, as if they were not fellow imagebearers of God whom we are called to love and serve and to whom we are called to bring the gospel. The third way is to try to establish some religious common ground that can make them seem less “other” and more like us, so that we can love them.

The hardest thing is to love them simply because they are our neighbors and, as such, make a claim on us in all of their differences from us, a claim we cannot ignore precisely because God’s law and his gospel are true—savingly true—for them as well as for us. May we all pray for more of this kind of love.

Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

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Insider

Movements and the Busted Church

by Bill Nikides

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Ed i t o r ’ s N o t e

Bill Nikides has spent much of his adult life working in the Muslim world, engaging cultures and worldviews in North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, and in Central, South, and East Asia. Regarded as a leading expert in Muslim ministry, specifically on Insider Movements and their impact on cultures, he is director of i2 Ministries (East Asia) and an Advancing Native Missions missiologist.

M

aybe you haven’t heard, but the organizations—while in others, only some individmost explosive issue in global ual members—are committed to its core principles. missions within the evangeliEven worse, it appears that some missionaries and cal church today is something agencies are guilty of dissembling so as to maintain called “Insider Movements.” plausible deniability. But before we go deeper, we You aren’t alone if you don’t know anything about have to ask two basic questions. it, as most of the evangelical world in the West knew nothing of the movement until about the year What Is It and Why Don’t 2000 when a series of articles was published in We Know More Ab out It? missionary journals trumpeting a new way for Muslims to enter the kingdom of God. The Here are a couple of stock definitions to get us on announcement came with a lot of fanfare. Hunour way. Insider Movements (IM) are variously dreds of thousands, even millions, of Muslims were defined as “popular movements to suddenly said to be finding eternal Christ that bypass both formal and life with Jesus. Praise the Lord for explicit expressions of Christian this movement of grace, right? religion” (Kevin Higgins, “The For years, the latest report from Key to Insider Movements,” Interthe mission field was that evangelinal Journal of Frontier Missiology, cal labor in Muslim countries was Winter 2004). Another definition slow and arduous—that is, until the Higgins offers is that they are “moveInsider meteor entered our atmoments to Jesus that remain to varysphere. As it stands today, Insider ing degrees inside the social fabric Movements occupy a great deal of of Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, or oththe evangelical world’s missions re➨ Born-Again Islam er people groups.” In other words, as sources, some of its brains, and sad➨ Incarnational Jesus John Ridgeway of the Navigators rely, for reasons I will introduce here, Movements lates, Insider Movements advocate many of its dreams. It has become a ➨ Jesus Muslims “becoming faithful disciples of go-to option for all sorts of tradition➨ Kingdom Movements Jesus within the culture of their a l e va n g e l i ca l s wo r k i n g w i t h ➨ Messianic Muslims people group, including religious ostensibly reputable missions orga➨ Muslim Followers culture.” nizations such as Navigators, Fronof Jesus Fundamentally, Insiders are those tiers, Summer Institute of ➨ Oikos Communities who profess faith in Christ but reLinguistics (a branch of Wycliffe), main members of their original reliGlobal Partners for Development, gious communities; Muslims and the International Mission Board remain Muslims, Hindus remain Hindus, and Budof the Southern Baptist Convention. Some embrace dhists remain Buddhists. In the Muslim world that the Insider Movement label and identity; others means they must acknowledge one exclusive God, prefer to remain low key. In many cases entire

“Insider Movement” Aliases

illustration by Dan Page

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Half Devil, Half Child editor’s note:

“Half Devil, Half Child” is a

documentary on “born-again Islam” with the simple goal of setting Americans face to face with Bangladeshis who understand firsthand the danger of the Insider missions practices being imported from the West. The title of the film is taken from a line in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “White Man’s Burden.”

Over the last century, Christianity has grown dra-

our material blessings. This film challenges our taste

matically in the 10-40 Window. In Bangladesh, as

for the comfort, ease, and safety we enjoy. It identifies

Western colonies faded into history, young, dynam-

what drives a movement that creates invisible Chris-

ic leaders came out of Islam and into the church. Bol-

tians for an invisible and ineffectual church, to the

stered by strong fellowship and an outspoken witness,

glory of Islam. It is a call to recapture for the West what

Muslim-background Christians planted churches, start-

has been known for millennia—that the blood of the

ed schools, translated resources, and grew into a vi-

martyrs is the seed of the church. It reminds us to let

brant, visible, Christian church. But something else was

our light shine before men that they may see our good

lurking in the shadows.

works and glorify our Father in heaven.

Under the guise of evangelistic contextualization,

Opposed by both Muslims and “Insider” Western-

colonialism has evolved. Western missionaries are

ers, faithful men called from Islam to Christ and his

encouraging new believers to keep their faith “inside.”

visible body continue to plant churches, preach the

Baptized Christians are going back to the imams and

gospel, train new leaders, and love their enemies. Hear

back to the mosques. Rather than identifying them-

them speak of their love for Jesus Christ and the free-

selves as Christians, they are calling themselves Isai

dom of his gospel. Journey to Bangladesh and meet

or “Jesus” Muslims. Bibles are being produced that

the men who tell a story of deception and confusion,

omit references to God as Father and to Jesus Christ

but also of true faith. Join these men who are giving all

as the Son of God. It is an idea that turns the gospel

they have to reach their nation with the faith delivered

upside down, reversing what the Bible means when it

once for all to the saints, and—once for all—to light the

calls people to turn to Christ and out of darkness and

10-40 Window.

into the light.

No simple diatribe against accommodation, “Half Devil, Half Child” calls the church in the West to re-

“Half Devil, Half Child” is a Red Futon Films documentary. It

member who it is in Christ—a new creation that re-

is directed by Bill Nikides and produced by Jay Friesen. Jon

quires a wiser approach to missions and better use of

McKee is director of photography.

“A lot of evangelicals were raised with this contrast between getting saved and joining the church. And those seeds are now bearing fruit, disastrous fruit, in the Insider Movement. I can see how people raised with that dichotomy can believe that they can keep everything secret; they can have Jesus in their heart privately, but not publicly identify with Christ and his church. But that’s not the way it is in the book of Acts. Everybody who believed was baptized and was joined to the church and met regularly for the means of grace and was under the oversight of the elders, not of the imams. What’s so striking in the history of the church is that people were willing to be martyred for that—people were willing to be martyred for their testimony to Christ. It seems, to me at least, that in the Insider Movement no one is called to be martyred.”

Quote from Michael Horton’s interview in the “Half Devil, Half Child” documentary.

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Allah, and that Mohammed is his final and greatest messenger. They remain members of the mosque, practice the five pillars of Islam, live openly in their cultures as Muslims, participate in Muslim sacrifices and feasts, and identify themselves as Muslims. In many cases, I’m familiar with baptized Christians who are persuaded to re-enter the mosque after renouncing their Christian identities.

In the case of Muslim Insiders, most acknowledge four sacred books: the Law, Psalms, “Gospel” (as a book originally given to Jesus, but no longer in existence), and Koran. Of these texts, many assume that since the Koran is the latest, it is still the greatest, though others see both containing God’s Word. Insiders typically claim the Bible as inspiration for their view, at least part of it. For example, they see the stories of Naaman and Elisha in 2 Kings 5, the pagan sailors in Jonah, Balaam and Balak, the Samaritans, and the Council of Jerusalem as proof positive that believers in Jesus can have two passports—one stamped with the symbols of Islam, and the other with Jesus.

Inside Out and Unbiblical There are, of course, major problems with such an approach to missions and evangelism. First, Insiders make the unbiblical assumption that such biblical passages teach that true believers can have a purely inward faith that can be manifested inside any faith system, including that of other non-Christian religions.

Second, practitioners and Insider missiologists (or scholars of the theology of missions) ignore the fact that the Bible is loaded with texts, even entire books, devoted to distinguishing truth from error and true religion from false religion. In other words, doctrine matters and has to be central in our theology of missions. Unfortunately, doctrine is surprisingly absent from much Insider literature, and rarely do their proponents address the twin topics of idolatry and false religion. Instead, Insiders suppose that religions are relatively harmless cultural creations, that they are man-made and therefore disposable. Even Christian articles of faith, such as the church and the sacraments, can be said to be cultural creations that can simply be replaced with other things in Muslim cultures.

What Every Christian Should Know The Insider Movements are not new and spontaneous acts of the Holy Spirit bringing a great advancement of missions. Sadly, the philosophy was invented in American missionary laboratories and then imported into Muslim cultures. On the whole, nationals in various countries do not want it.

Muslim-background Christians are clear thinking in this regard, much more so than some contemporary missions theorists: embracing Christ means becoming a new creation, and that means becoming part of a new family with a new identity. Yes, new Christians ought to continue living with their families and neighbors, but those relationships no longer define who we are at the most basic level.

The people who emerge from Islam know that with absolute certainty. And yet well-funded American missionaries continue to arrive with defective theology and, in some cases, actually talk converts back into Islam, allegedly “for the sake of Jesus.”

What could be stranger than that? The people I know, even most of the Insiders, understand that it’s wrong to do things like alter the words “Son,” “Son of God,” and “Father” in the New Testament, but it makes it easier for Muslims consequently to accept Jesus (see the chart on page 58 for examples).

The problem is not simply that some evangelical missionaries have gone astray and compromised the gospel, but that our churches at home and abroad are deaf to the voices that could offer correction. To begin with, we might listen to the many Muslim-background Christians all over the world who strenuously object to the spread of Insider philosophy.

Given the covenantal responsibility we all share for global missions, Insiders represent a direct and profound threat to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of Jesus Christ. Further, they demonstrate the limitations of an evangelicalism that has broken from its moorings and become infatuated with cultural relevance. Religious inclusivism and missions are like oil and water. Nevertheless, it also represents an opportunity. We can learn a great deal from Muslim-background Christians who are manning gospel lighthouses in nations around the world.

They can help us keep from running aground.

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Christ & Islam

by Michael S. Horton

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O

n a cold November day in 1095, Pope Urban II roused a Christendom plagued by internal wars to take up the cause of holy war against Islam. “If you must have blood,” he exhorted, “bathe in the blood of infidels.” With the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, Christian leaders had gone from being dipped in wax to their necks as candles in Ne r o ’s g a r d e n t o b e i n g s e a t e d i n regal splendor for imperial feasts.

Increasingly, the kingdom of Christ— expanding by Word and Spirit—was identified with a civilization—expanding by sword and shield.

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administration of this world’s affairs.” With divine mandate, therefore, the emperor “subdues and chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the usages of war.”

The medieval imagination was fed by an allegorization of Europe as Israel of old. Monarchs fancied themselves King David reborn, driving out the Canaanites with their holy knights, although there were lively debates as to whether the pope or the emperor was the visible head.

The Clash of Civilizations?

In many ways, the imperial church’s misunderstanding of the nature of Christ’s kingdom echoed that of our Lord’s own disciples. Many Jews in Jesus’ day expected a replay of the old covenant: exodus from exile followed by conquest through holy war. To the very last, they imagined that the Messiah would drive out the Romans and reestablish a theocracy that would be everlasting. Their last question before Jesus’ ascension was, “Now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?” Our Lord’s answer is telling: The new covenant conquest is not of a sliver of real estate in the Middle East, but the whole earth (“from Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth”); yet it expands in the power of the Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel. So they are to go to Jerusalem and wait for the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, to be made witnesses of Christ. With Christ’s ascension to the seat of all authority, and the Spirit leading the ground campaign, his kingdom of grace would conquer by preaching and sacrament. Only when Christ returned in glory would the announcement ring out, “Now the kingdoms of this age have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.”

“Christendom” is the result of jumping the eschatological gun. Ironically, Christ’s bodily absence on earth was filled by a newly converted Caesar. Concerning his patron Constantine, the church father Eusebius explained, “Our divinely favored emperor, receiving, as it were, a transcript of the divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the Godfrey’s soldiers drive through the Muslim Army in Bibliotheque des Croisades by J-F. Michaud, 1877.

In spite of the Reformation’s insistence on the distinction between the kingdoms of this age (entrusted with the sword) and the kingdom of grace (expanding through the Word and Spirit), Protestant nations were just as eager to cast themselves in the role of Israel’s royal emissaries of holy war.

Secularized, the myth of a revived holy nation played in the imagination of the new American republic. It even generated a political doctrine: manifest destiny, with the “lesser peoples”—barbarous idolaters—being driven out by God’s command from the land that Providence had given to Western settlers. Both the theology of colonialism and anticolonial liberation theologies have invoked the exodus-conquest pattern of the old covenant in their own fusion of Christ and culture, preaching and violence, baptism and political coercion. Confusion of the kingdom of Christ with the theocratic kingdom of the old covenant, and then with whatever secular kingdom chooses to elect itself into divine favor, has provided the script for history’s most atrocious performances in Christ’s name. Focusing on the challenges of secularism and Islam, evangelicals and Roman Catholics increasingly congeal around salvaging “Judeo-Christian” culture. In a 2006 Time article on the relation of Pope Benedict and Islam, conservative Catholic scholar Michael Novak explained concerning the pontiff: “His role is to represent Western civilization.”

At least in the United States, the culture wars— not to mention the “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam—provoke nostalgia for this parody of the body of Christ. For millions of conservative Protestants in America today, biblical ModernReformation.org

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prophecy coalesces around the events unfolding in the Middle East more than around the events that transpired there in the first century. Writing as “a Muslim to Muslims,” Vincent J. Cornell has correctly observed, “Extremists on both sides feed on America’s moral and eschatological obsession with the Holy Land. Both sides exploit the memory of the crusades.” He further notes that “Islam,” for its own part, means “submission,” not “peace.”1 Holy lands inevitably provoke holy wars.

Through a combination of Reformation and Enlightenment influences, liberal democracy has become the West’s dominant polity. To be sure, it has its critics—including Christian ones. However, the fact of bewildering religious diversity makes any alternative to liberal democracy implausible.

Religious communities may still build distinct traditions and webs of socialization for their members, but the idea of a shared cultural worldview is receding quickly even in the United States. I believe that this, on balance, is a far safer environment for the genuinely apostolic mission than the nostalgic appeals to a revived “Christendom” recommended by some critics of liberal democracy.

The West—particularly the United States—seems only slowly to be realizing that democracy doesn’t equal religious toleration. On the heels of the Arab Spring a scorching Islamist summer has arrived. As bad as things were for Christians—and others— under dictators, they will be worse wherever bare democracy ensures the triumph of consistent Islamists and their flagrant persecution of minorities.

The only thing that can distract Islamists from religious civil war within is a cobelligerent spirit of jihad against Christians. In spite of ancient and indigenous roots in these countries, Christianity is spun as “Western” and, as we have seen, there is often too much in our own history (and current rhetoric) to lend plausibility to that caricature.

Islam’s Consistent Theocracy When Christians do “Christendom,” they are dangerously misinterpreting the whole character of Christ’s teaching concerning his kingdom. They must interpret the Old Testament allegorically, as if it were a pattern that any modern nation could invoke. They must confuse the old and new covenants—the geopolitical theocracy established at

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“In spite of ancient and indigenous roots in these countries, Christianity is spun as ‘Western’ and, as we have seen, there is often too much in our own history (and current rhetoric) to lend plausibility to that caricature.”

Mount Sinai with Christ’s reign from Mount Zion.

They must ignore Christ’s explicit statements that his kingdom is distinct from Caesar’s, that instead of holy war believers are to suffer persecution for their witness and pray for their enemies, and that by no means are they to prosecute his peace treaty by physical coercion. They must ignore the explicit statements in the New Testament that the old covenant, having been fulfilled by Christ, is now “obsolete” (Heb. 8:13). In declaring any nation or land holy (thus justifying holy wars), interpreters must contradict the clear New Testament teaching that the true Israel is Christ together with all who, with Abraham, place their faith in him alone. Jesus is the temple, his worldwide body is the holy land, and the war we wage is not with temporal swords.

In sharp contrast, when Islamists regard all nonMuslims as apostates from their natural birth who must be converted or eradicated, make no distinction between mosque and state, and insist that every

aspect of cultural, legal, dietary, economic, political, and social life conform to sharia law, they are faithful interpreters of their religious texts. They do not need any allegorizing hermeneutic. No scripturetwisting or self-justifying misinterpretations are required for this fusion of cult and culture. What we call “radical Islamism” is simply a consistent and straightforward application of Mohammed’s teachings and example, interpreted in the ordinary and natural sense of the texts.

To be sure, there have been periods in which Christians, Muslims, and Jews have coexisted in relative peace. However, Islam has a very patient process of coercion. It begins with peaceful coexistence among a non-Muslim majority, allowed even to relax certain sharia obligations in the long-term service of jihad. Next, there is the gradual organization of Islamic communities petitioning for allowing sharia to take precedence over civil laws for Muslims. As a nation-within-a-nation emerges, the expectation is that the host country will eventually collapse from within and succumb to Islamic pressure from without. The history of the Islamization of once Christian-majority countries proves the point. And the point is still being made.

For example, here is a memo entered into evidence for a 2007 trial involving American Islamist leader Ismail Elbarasse, explaining the methodology of the Muslim Brotherhood: The process of settlement is a “CivilizationJihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [brothers in arms] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.…It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.2 Furthermore, there is no example of a nation under sharia law that can be considered “moderate” by the standard of human rights. Among Arab nations, Jordan alone is non-sharia, and in every other Arab

country non-Muslims are repressed in varying degrees. Although it has a Muslim majority, the modern republic of Turkey was founded by Ataturk in defiance of sharia rule, preferring more Westernstyle models. A recent Newsweek cover story announces “The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World.” The writer, Ayann Hirsi Ali, fled her native Somalia and served in the Dutch Parliament before taking a position at the American Enterprise Institute. As the article points out, widespread anti-Christian violence is exploding even in countries with Muslim minorities. Increasingly, Western nations—and courts—are expanding the realms of alternative Muslim self-government, and seem far more accommodating of Muslim scruples (for example, demands that Mohammed not be ridiculed) even while aggressively prosecuting some forms of Christian conviction as hate crimes.

In the face of such challenges, there will be growing pressure for Christians to take one of two positions: either to capitulate to Islamic ambitions out of a naive assumption that Islam is a religion of peace, or to try to match these ambitions by implicitly or even explicitly digging up the deeply flawed and failed policies of Christendom: “If it’s holy war you want, it’s holy war you’ll get!”

The much more difficult but, I believe, faithful way of moving forward, at least for Christians in the U.S., involves: (1) a deeper commitment on the part of churches to help Christians know what they believe and why, and to see that faith and practice shape Christian communities of “faithful presence” in the world; (2) helping Christians understand the teachings and history of Islam; and (3) being engaged citizens in defense of a political system that recognizes no basis for its temporal organization and laws other than the Constitution.

All kingdoms of this age are flawed, but some are better than others. By God’s common grace, we live in a nation that—for all of its relativism and dogmatic resistance to ultimate truth-claims—allows them to be made freely. While God grants it, let’s use our freedom with wisdom and vigor.

Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

1 Vincent J. Cornell, “A Muslim to Muslims” in Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchia, eds., Dissent from the Homeland: Essays after September 11 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 85, 86.

2 See www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25692.

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book reviews 49

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book reviews

Barchester Towers

By Anthony Trollope Oxford University Press, 2009 672 pages (paperback), $9.95

D

espite the existence in print of odd genres like Young Adult Fiction, Manga, or Online Harry Potter Fan Fiction, I suggest that perhaps the strangest literary genre today is something I call “Dramatic Clergy Fiction.” Impossible, you say, that such literature could yield a profit in today’s economy. Yet recent novels set in pastoral-sounding towns like Gilead or Mitford should be enough to demonstrate otherwise.

For my purposes here, however, I prefer to call to memory that great fictional city epitomizing the whole corpus of romantic pastoral literature. I am referring, of course, to the cathedral town of Barchester.

I n 1 8 5 7, A n t h o ny Trollope, by day a bureaucrat in Her Majesty’s postal service, published Barchester Towers, the expansive and ambitious follow-up to his novel The Warden. Like its predecessor, Trollope’s sequel humorously intertwines ecclesiastical drama with romantic intrigue connected to the family of Septimus Harding, a humble minister in Barchester and father of the now-widowed Eleanor Bold. The quaint yet tumultuous narrative woven together in its pages provides a window, not only into church controversies still raging today, but also into the way human nature and human character affect such bitter controversy.

The central ecclesiastical conflict of the book

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emerges in the first few pages: who is competent to take the reins of diocesan power in Barchester now that a new bishop has been enthroned? Curiously enough, it is not the new bishop; in fact, the pitiful prelate has been left quite spineless by the relentless and ever-present wife of his youth.

In the ensuing power vacuum, various contenders join in the contest to control the bishop and rule the diocese, including the diocese’s all-time most insufferable archdeacon, the bishop’s social-climbing chaplain, and (most intimidating of all) the bishop’s own beloved helpmeet.

The contest escalates when a chaplaincy position for a geriatric rest home becomes vacant and the new bishop must choose a warden to care for a dozen elderly men. Immediately, manifold interests—political, personal, and petty—all come to bear on the warden’s appointment, and the manipulation of the bishop’s decision becomes the prime objective of both the old High-Church and the new Low- Church factions of Barchester.

Practically everyone assumes that the “winner” in this struggle will rise to supremacy in the diocese, and all the various combatants end up clashing in a sort of winnertake-all Spaghetti Western showdown. For many of us who have served Christ in his not-quite-perfect church, there is some pleasure, albeit wincing pleasure, in watching this titanic battle play out.

Nevertheless, Trollope actually manages to pull off a convincing love story, in spite of this bloody backdrop, when a simple romance develops between Eleanor and a clergyman who is new in town. It is a tale as old as time: nerd boy meets

“Regardless of which side of the ecclesiastical infighting is wrong or right, this novel presents people as people no matter how crazy they or their agendas might be.” girl, nerd boy falls in love with girl, nerd boy infuriates girl, girl has other suitors besides nerd boy, nerd boy bungles communicating his feelings to girl, and then for some inexplicable reason girl falls in love with nerd boy, and they live happily ever after. Though the details of their courtship are inextricably bound up with the ecclesiastical controversy swirling about them, Trollope paints a picture of love that transcends factions and parties and demonstrates just how human the entire story truly is.

It is precisely this quality of enduring humanity welling up within Barchester Towers that puts it on the must-read list, even if it is “Dramatic Clergy Fiction.” On the one hand, Trollope’s characters function almost like archetypes of humanity; in fact, some of them even have archetypal names like Mr. Quiverful (the impoverished clergyman who never knew when to quit having children), Mr. Slope (the Low-Church clergyman whose ways will lead down into ruin), or Mrs. Proudie (whose name needs no further explanation). A reader getting to know one of Trollope’s characters soon realizes that this is not the first time they have met.

On the other hand, Trollope’s exposition of humanity goes much deeper than this: communicating the unique personhood of each character is his foremost concern. In all honesty, the plot of Barchester Towers is not just predictable but actually predicted: the narrator continually gives away major plot points ahead of time in order to build trust with

readers. Instead of making the enjoyment in reading his novel dependent on suspense, Trollope surprises his readers by unveiling each of his characters as complex, individual persons with strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, positions and parties. Regardless of which side of the ecclesiastical infighting is wrong or right, this novel presents people as people no matter how crazy they or their agendas might be. The author found delight in creating his characters as people, and he expects us to find similar delight in getting to know them as people. And by the end, it really is a delight.

At this moment in our shared history, public positions appear to have become polarized, religion saturated with political shenanigans, politics overrun by religionists. I believe, now more than ever, that the deep humanity of Barchester Towers, and its presentation of people in controversy as people, strongly recommends it to readers today. And without a doubt, it is always deeply rewarding to discover, whether it be in fiction or in real life, that true romance, genuine love, and Christian charity can be found in the church, even among its clergy.

Fr. David Alenskis, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, recently began serving several congregations in the Cayo District of Belize as a missionary with SAMS-USA.

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self

By Marilynne Robinson Yale University Press, 2011 176 pages (paperback), $15.00

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ood books that are well written are an increasing rarity these days. That is why it is always a pleasure to find a new volume from the pen of Marilynne Robinson, who is not only a novelist of distinction but also a careful and stylish essayist. In Absence of Mind she turns her attention to the self-satisfied establishment of the cultured despisers of religion and does so with subtly devastating effect.

The subtitle gives the clue to the book’s theme: she is here taking to task the scientific reductionism that afflicts the modern world even as it claims to be doing the exact opposite. Popular critic Richard ModernReformation.org

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book reviews

Dawkins can claim that evolution is the greatest show on earth, but in his imperious reduction of humanity to an ape distinguished by oppositional thumbs and the ability to watch lunchtime soap operas, he impoverishes reality.

The four chapters of this book were originally given as a series of lectures for the Dwight Harrington Foundation, the brief of which is to integrate science and religion in a way that builds “the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion.…To the end that the Christian spirit may be nurtured in the fullest light of the world’s knowledge.” Ms. Robinson fulfills this mandate with grace.

In chapter 1, she turns the tables on the modern heralds of the new age of reason, such as Daniel Dennett and company, sweeping up the three Masters of Suspicion—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—along the way. The spirit of our age, she says, sees itself as having crossed a threshold that gives it a superior place from which to judge the past. Not so, she argues: this itself is a myth we have produced in order merely to privilege our perspective or, as she expresses it, to establish a “hermeneutics of condescension” that relativizes all of the past while absolutizing the present. The notion of novelty functions as a potent force in many of the (often incompatible) views that make up modernity.

For Christians, one relevant example she gives is that of approaches to the flood narratives. How often has it been said in recent years that the discovery of Ancient Near Eastern literature has completely changed the field of engagement for those involved in biblical studies? Yet as Robinson points out, much

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“she is here taking to task the scientific reductionism that afflicts the modern world even as it claims to be doing the exact opposite.” of this literature was available to previous generations. Thus Grotius in the seventeenth century was aware of similarities between Genesis and other Mesopotamian myths, and for him these implied the truth of the former; for scholars today, they prove the opposite. Wherein lies the difference? According to Robinson, we live in an era in which classical learning and awareness of the past has declined. And it is hard to argue with her on this point.

In chapter 2, she looks at the dominance of the modern “scientific” view of human nature, which ultimately excludes from the definition of humanity everything that makes us significant either as a species or as individuals. Taking up the matter of altruism, she argues that the evolutionary monism of Dawkins simply cannot provide a coherent and comprehensive account of human nature; it can only do so by imposing a Procustean

behavioral bed upon us all. Robinson does not say this, but one can conclude that she believes a reductionist conclusion has been smuggled into the premise of modern Dawkinsian arguments from the start.

Chapter 3 is perhaps the most fascinating.

Here, Robinson argues that Freud’s influential theories, most especially that of the murder of the primal father, are to be understood in the context of certain theories of race and nationhood that were becoming ominously popular in central Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. As with hardcore evolutionary theorists, Freud’s theories essentially thrust the particulars of individual consciousness to the margins, preferring to dabble with the universals of the unconscious.

In the end, as expressed almost poetically in the final chapter, Robinson knows that she has not proved her case in the sense of having dismantled notions of the stable truth of the modern world, whether Darwinian or Freudian. What she has done, however, is offered a series of reflections that point both to the grandeur of humanity and its current condition; central to that are the potencies, the triumphs and the failures of humans, not as a universal concept but as individuals. She has pointed to the fact that one does not have to see human beings as simply exalted apes; we might actually be simply a little lower than the angels.

If you enjoy erudition expressed in elegant prose, if you want a critique of the modern tendency to remove the individual mind from the narratives and explanations of history and of cultures, then this book is for you.

Carl R. Trueman is professor of historical theology and church history, and the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Preaching in the Holy Spirit

By Albert N. Martin Reformation Heritage Books, 2011 67 pages (hardcover), $8.00

I

t is sometimes a peculiar pitfall of Reformed preaching to treat it as a mechanical process through which the Spirit of God operates, rather than as a dynamic relationship of dependence upon a divine person. John Owen once remarked that if we removed the person and work of the Holy Spirit, we may as well burn our Bibles (Owen, Works, III, 192). The same holds true for preaching. Without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, our preaching becomes powerless to save or to sanctify anyone. In Preaching in the Holy Spirit, Al Martin has singled out briefly one of the most vital ingredients missing from modern preaching.

The book comprises four chapters with a short conclusion. Because Martin is concerned with the work of the Holy Spirit upon the preacher in the act of preaching, chapter 1 limits the parameters of the subject. This means that the book does not address related topics, such as the work of the Spirit in the pastor’s study or upon the congregation during the preaching of the Word.

Chapter 2 sets forth why the dynamic operation of the Holy Spirit is necessary in the act of preaching, and chapter 3 makes this assertion concrete by describing what this looks like in practice. It is important to note that most of the characteristics of the Holy Spirit’s work in preaching reflect the subjective experience of the preacher as much as the objective truths of Scripture. Martin is driving at two things here. First, preaching is an act of experimental piety on the part of the preacher, with dependence upon and in communion with the Spirit.

Second, while the work of the Spirit is indispensable for true preaching, the Spirit is a sovereign person who acts when, where, and how he pleases. Since we cannot take his presence or work for granted, this places a premium on prayer. Chapter ModernReformation.org

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book reviews

4 addresses ways in which preachers can diminish the blessings of the Spirit, and Martin gives careful attention to what it means to “grieve” or to “quench” the Spirit.

The subject matter in this book is of great relevance for our time. Ministers should keep this book on their desks and consult it regularly, and church members should read it so they know how to unite with their minister in prayer for his pulpit ministry. As Martin concludes: God has chosen preaching as His grand weapon to dismantle the kingdom of darkness and to establish the kingdom of His dear Son. But not just any kind of preaching will serve. God’s grand weapon is preaching with the presence and powerful agency and operation of the Holy Spirit. He regards this sword as David did Goliath’s: “There is none like that; give it to me” (1 Sam. 21:9). May God, by His grace, be pleased to make us such instruments of grace to our needy generation. (67)

Ryan M. McGraw is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Conway, South Carolina.

Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion

By Alain de Botton Pantheon Books, 2012 320 pages (hardcover), $26.95

W

hen I learned that Alain de Botton had written a book with the title Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, I thought: “Why, of course he has.”

I was introduced to de Botton through The Architecture of Happiness—a book that really is about how architecture can make us happy.

Since then, I’ve read all his books. And even though he never wears his atheism on his sleeve, one of those books—The Consolations of

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Philosophy (a nod toward Boethius)—did tip his hand. When four out of six of the philosophers highlighted are Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, you have declared yourself.

The New Atheists declaim with much spittle that religion is a bad thing, and even some evangelicals wring their hands and insist that Christianity is not actually a religion at all. We are informed that what looks like a religion is really nothing more than being on good terms with Jesus. De Botton thinks this is all sadly misguided. Religion is not all that bad—it has just taken up some bad ideas. And when it comes to “Christianity is not a religion,” de Botton would gladly take our religion off our hands if we could truly get Christ out of it.

De Botton’s book begins with the surprising concession (replete with examples) that contemporary atheism wants for wisdom. Its art is ugly, its commerce degrading, its educational

methodology too cerebral, its politics too libertarian and too optimistic, and its psychology too sunny. But although religion may be encumbered with a lot of superstitious nonsense, when it comes to the stuff of life it is clear-eyed and realistic about human nature.

Recognizing the need to reassure his fellow travelers before beginning, de Botton starts with a pillory of religion in a chapter titled “Wisdom without Doctrine.” Mercifully, further sermons to the choir are few and far between. Unfortunately, after the obligatory harangue, the book manages to mix much secular silliness in with the religious wisdom. The silliness comes in the form of de Botton’s advice.

Since he cannot abide the lesson that should be taken from the sorry state of secular culture—namely, that it is the true fruit of atheism—he proffers naive and superficial prescriptions gleaned from religious practices. At times these are downright hilarious— as, for example, when he proposes that public readings of Montaigne could be conducted in the mode of the call and response of black Pentecostal preaching. Like many irreligious people, de Botton has almost no understanding of how religious communities actually form and operate. A reading of his manuscript by a rabbi or a priest prior to publication could have ferreted out some of the nonsense.

De Botton has another disadvantage when it comes to his project. While he acknowledges the historical basis of religious practices—the exodus or the resurrection come to mind—there is no corollary for atheists. Atheism must live on the thin gruel of a negation, which is what de Botton wants to get away from. But from whence does the binding force come? If atheism is right in saying that both history and material reality are essentially meaningless, then everything must devolve into the subjective. We are left with personal histories and the autonomy of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Yet between sermons to the choir and some silly advice, there is some excellent analysis. Although religion is reduced to morality and consolation, we must concede it does have plenty of those. There are gems of insight throughout that justify the cost of the book.

The greatest challenge the book presents to the Reformed, though, is de Botton’s contempt for what we may call “Reformed aesthetics”—or the lack thereof. Like his patron saint Montaigne, de Botton

is a generalist; but his first love is the visual arts, and here he is an excellent critic. He has weighed us in his balances and found us wanting. He wants an atheism that appeals to the senses. And when it comes to the senses, the panoply of Rome is hard to beat. Now, doctrine has always been our beat, but as his opening chapter indicates, he believes he has no need of what we specialize in.

Still, it ought to give us pause: how do we respond to his accusation that where Reformed Protestantism flourishes, visual ugliness follows? Do we really believe, as he claims, that words are the only vehicles of meaning? I think not. But we do not need yet another book to make the point. What we need to do is make some beautiful things and let them speak for us. If we can manage to do that, we may find that atheists like Alain de Botton are willing to reconsider our doctrine.

C. R. Wiley is pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Manchester in Manchester, Connecticut. He writes young adult fiction under his pen name, Mortimus Clay. His short stories have appeared in Silverblade magazine and ResAliens. His nonfiction has appeared in Touchstone magazine, Modern Reformation, and Relevant magazine online.

“What we need to do is make some beautiful things and let them speak for us. If we can manage to do that, we may find that atheists like Alain de Botton are willing to reconsider our doctrine.”

ModernReformation.org

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C

C h r i st i a n i t y a n d I s l am : C o r e B e l i e fs

by Michael S. Horton

omparing different religions is always a tricky business. Even an English word such as “God” cannot be understood as common to both Christianity and Islam. For example, although both affirm that God is transcendent, all powerful, and even merciful, the history and doctrines of their respective texts reveal rather different meanings for each of these attributes. Both affirm the proposition that “God is one” but differ radically in what they mean by the one God. In Islam, it is a numerical oneness of person, while in Christianity it is one essence shared equally by three persons. Nor are Muslims likely to be satisfied by representations of their views vis-à-vis Christianity, especially when offered by Christians.

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Nevertheless, the following chart can help at least summarize some of the distinct views of each religion.

Some of the sharpest differences arise over Muslim misunderstandings of what Christians teach. They often mistake the doctrine of the Trinity for tritheism: that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three Gods, not three persons who are one in essence. They also describe Christianity as teaching that the Father engaged in sexual intercourse with the Virgin Mary. Yet even if such misunderstandings were corrected, Islam and Christianity teach irreconcilable beliefs on every tenet central to their respective systems.

Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

Core belief on...

God

One God (in essence), in three persons:

One God in one person: Allah.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Scripture

The Bible is inspired by the Spirit

The Bible has been corrupted, but is

through the agency of prophets and

acceptable where it agrees with the

apostles over many centuries.

Koran, dictated directly to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. The hadith is also regarded as authoritative.

Humanity

Created in God’s image, yet guilty and

Human beings are not created in God’s

corrupt in Adam’s fall (original sin).

image. There is no inherent sinfulness; sin is simply a matter of personal choice.

Christ

Eternally God, incarnate from the Virgin

A great prophet who prepared the way for

Mary: divine and human natures united

Mohammed. Misunderstands Christianity as

inseparably in one person; was crucified,

implying that God had intercourse with Mary.

buried, and raised on the third day.

“God has no son.” Jesus is only human, but a great prophet who performed miracles. It seemed he was crucified, but a disciple took his place and Jesus ascended into heaven.

Salvation

The Holy Spirit

Return of Christ

By grace alone, in Christ alone, through

A record of good deeds and bad deeds is

faith alone. Good works are the fruit of

kept in Paradise; salvation is hoped for on the

salvation, not its basis.

basis of good deeds outweighing the bad.

Second person of the Trinity,

Given the denial of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit

“Lord and giver of life.”

is identified with the non-divine angel Gabriel.

Jesus will return as the judge of the world,

Jesus will return (with Mohammed) to lead

raising all people: the justified to everlasting

his followers to Allah, repenting of their

life, and those who do not believe in

blasphemies and embracing Islam.

Christ to everlasting death.

Heaven and Hell

The future hope is “the resurrection of the

All will be raised, and non-Muslims will be

body and life everlasting” in a renewed

consigned to hell along with Muslims whose

creation. There will be unending fellowship

bad deeds outweigh the good. In Paradise,

and joy in the presence of the Triune God and

the faithful indulge every desire (including

one another, without sin, sorrow, or death.

sexual intercourse with virgins).

ModernReformation.org

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b a c k PA GE

I n s i d e r t r a n s l at i o n s

Verse Gospel of Matthew

Announcing Jesus’ Birth Luke 1:32, 35

Jesus’ Baptism Mark 1:11

NASB

New American Standard Bible

TRAnslation Original language Turkish: Incil-i Serif’in Yuce

Son of God

“God’s representative”

Kaleminden “He will be great, and will be

“He will be great and will

called the Son of the Most High;

be called the prince of God

and the Lord God will give Him

Most High. God, our Lord will

the throne of His father David.”

grant the throne of David, his

And the angel answered and

ancestor to him.” The angel

Malay

said to her, “The Holy Spirit will

said, “The Holy Spirit will

(“Shellabear revision”):

come upon you, and the power

descend upon you, and the

My Kitab Suci

of the Most High will overshad-

power of the Most High will

ow you; and for that reason the

overshadow you. Therefore, the

holy offspring shall be called

holy child to be born will be

the Son of God.”

called the prince of God.”

And a voice came out of

From heaven a voice came, that

the heavens: “Thou art

“you are my beloved [habeeb], I

My beloved Son, in Thee

am happy with you.”

I am well-pleased.”

[Son is not translated] “And when you pray then

The Lord’s Prayer Matthew 6:9

Anlami— Havari Matta’nin

“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.’”

pray in the following manner, saying, ‘O our guardian whose throne has encompassed the heavens, blessed [be] your name, the exalted.’”

Baluchi/Balochi

Arabic: The True Meaning of the Gospel of Christ (aka, The Lighthouse, An Eastern Reading of the Gospels and Acts)

“Now go to all the nations “Go therefore and make

The Great Commission Matthew 28:19

and train [Islamic] disciples

disciples of all the nations,

to me and make them purify

Turkish: Incil-i Serif’in Yuce

baptizing them in the name

themselves by [Islamic ritualistic]

Anlami— Havari Matta’nin

of the Father and the Son

washing unto repentance to the

Kaleminden

and the Holy Spirit.”

name of the Protector, his Representative [or, deputy, agent] and the Holy Spirit.”

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Christless Christianity diagnoses the problem facing our churches, The Gospel-Driven Life offers a solution and The Gospel Commission charts the way forward. Together they provoke Christians to rediscover God’s promises for our time.

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