Fundamentalism & American Evangelicalism

Fundamentalism & American Evangelicalism What Has Become of American Fundamentalism? | by George Marsden

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Rethinking How We Think about the Evangelical Mind and the Local Church | by Charles E. Cotherman

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Fundamentals for the Evangelical Future | by Daniel J. Treier

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Vo l . 31 , No. 1

January/February 2022

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Contents Modern Reformation January/February 2022 Vol. 31, No. 1

I. R E T R I E V E

10 B IBLE STUDY

| What Is Required to See the Lord? Reflections on Hebrews 12:14 | by S. M. Baugh R EFOR MATION R ESOURC ES | “God’s Providence” | by Franciscus Junius, translated by Ryan M. Hurd E SSAY | What Has Become of American Fundamentalism? | by George Marsden R EFOR MATION OUT TAKES | Luther’s Marginal Thoughts on Erasmus | by Zachary Purvis

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II. C O N V E R S E

36 G LOBAL THEOLOGICAL FOR UM

| Christianity in

Ethiopia | an interview with Dr. Frew Tamrat

40 E SSAY

| Rethinking How We Think about the

Evangelical Mind and the Local Church | by Charles E. Cotherman

52 P OEM

| Awe | by Matthew Nies

53 P OEM

| Birth of a Universe | by Nick Schaff

56 E SSAY

| Fundamentals for the Evangelical

III. P E R S U A D E

Future | by Daniel J. Treier I V. E N G A G E

68 E SSAY

| The Force of Poetic Thought

| by Larry Woiwode

05 F RO M THE E D ITOR

72 P OEM

| Christmas Break | by Nick Schaff

74 S PR ING BOOK PR EV IEW

| by Noah Frens

| by Joshua Schendel 07 L E T TE RS

76 B AC K PAGE

| The Narcissism of Small Differences | by Michael Horton

Endsheet illustration by Raxenne Maniquiz

Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton | Editorial Director Eric Landry | Executive Editor Joshua Schendel | Managing Editor Patricia Anders | Poetry Editor Larry Woiwode | Production Assistant Anna Heitmann | Copy Editor Kate Walker | Proofreader Ann Smith | Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative

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J O I N THE CONVERSATION

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From the Editor

N THE VERY FIRST “In this Issue” of Modern Reformation, Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton lamented that both popular culture and evangelicalism had pushed aside attentive and careful consideration of God, seeking instead entertainment, amusement, and fun. “So in this issue,” Dr. Horton wrote, “we will be raising thinking to the top of the agenda.” Indeed, not only for that first issue of July/August 1994, but for the whole of Modern Reformation’s now thirty years of publication, thinking has been at the top of its agenda.

As we at MR were preparing to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary, we spent a good deal of time reflecting on the magazine’s identity: its history and legacy. MR has been and continues to be a theological magazine for engaging in the public intellectual life of our culture. The way in which we have engaged, as our readers well know, has been rather specific. We don’t merely report on matters, nor are we a cultural or political commentary magazine. We aim at thinking theologically.

Thinking theologically is a rich sort of thinking.

It involves theological retrieval, whereby we learn to listen to the wisdom of the past (Ps. 78:1–4; Heb. 13:7). It involves theological conversation, where we consider, probe, and examine from varying perspectives in order to prove what is excellent and to grow in our discernment (Prov. 11:4; 18:17; Phil.

1:10). It involves theological engagement with the goodness, the perplexities, and the agonies of our time and place (Jude 3; Matt. 5:13ff ). This is the legacy of Modern Reformation, in which we have sought to persuade our readers that the truths of the Christian faith, and the particular insights of the confessional Reformation traditions, matter greatly.

As we prepared to celebrate, we also spent a good deal of time thinking about how the design

of the magazine might complement and reinforce its legacy. We hope that our new design’s elegance and simplicity convey the magazine’s intellectual heritage, while also maintaining its distinction from the pomp and circumstance of academic “inner circles” and pretentious high culture. We aim at thinking, yes, but not at pretending. You’ll also notice that the architecture of the magazine is a bit different now. We have created four new main sections that aptly express the magazine’s legacy: “Retrieve,” “Converse,” “Persuade,” and “Engage.” For a culture that’s fast becoming historically ignorant, aggressively tribalistic, and anti-intellectual, we believe that Modern Reformation is as important today as it was when Michael Horton began it three decades ago.

In 2022, we are again holding American evangelicalism up to the light. We’ll be asking questions about its history and influences, its relation to confessional Protestant traditions, its grasp on classical Christian orthodoxy, its stance toward “science,” and more. In this this first issue, we discuss its relation to fundamentalism, with essays from George Marsden, Daniel Treier, and Charles Cotherman. Our Global Theological Forum interview with Frew Tamrat on the history of Christianity in Ethiopia is fascinating and enriching. We are also delighted to announce our new poetry editor, award-winning poet Larry Woiwode, the poet laureate of North Dakota. With his assistance, we are publishing—for the first time ever in MR— new poems from Nick Schaff and Matthew Nies.

So, with this initial issue of 2022, please join with us in celebrating thirty years of thinking theologically!

Joshua Schendel Executive Editor

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M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

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Letters

Re: “In The Church: Finding Common Ground across Denominations” September/October 2021

THE PUBLICATION OF Modern Reformation magazine serves to connect the universal church in a fragmented world. I am grateful for this magazine as it has both challenged and encouraged me in my faith.

Recently, a well-known member of a Reformed ministry stepped down in light of new convictions concerning baptism. Ann Hart’s article [in the September/October 2021 issue] on unity across denominations couldn’t have been more timely republished. Much to her point, although he remains in the Reformed camp, the temptation to ridicule and criticize him was ever present. I was encouraged to repent, celebrate my brother, and pray for him and his family! I exhort others to do the same. Thank you.

As a wife, homemaker, and homeschooling mother of five children seven years old and under, I am often weary—of sin in my own life and that of my family. Allen Guelzo’s kind and gentle expositional walkthrough of the book of Jude challenged me to recommit to the daily work of patiently and seriously building and rebuilding my Christian architecture by (1) frequently

pleading before God on our behalf, (2) beholding God in his word, communion with other believers (local and universal), and meditating upon his “otherness,” and (3) actively and passively waiting for and receiving the mercy of our Lord, knowing that he is able to keep me from falling and will present me without blemish before his glory! Amen.

I also enjoyed Part 2 of Tipton’s translation of Witsius, a most providential and beneficial read as my husband just started seminary! We did not inherit Reformed theology, but rather, by God’s grace, came to it by conviction. We are still slowly learning and growing in our understanding. To the chagrin of some, we are learning from theologians of various traditions. My husband is a wonderful example of Posidonius’s statement: “He preferred to abandon the group over abandoning the truth.” I shared the article with him, and he was blessed by it! May the Lord grant him humility, wisdom, meekness, and faithful reverence as he defends the truth. Lord, make him a modest theologian by your grace and for your glory!

Finally, Michael Horton’s brief yet poignant reminder of the power of the word preached, even the very power of God, ignited a fire in my heart to listen carefully tomorrow when our local body gathers, as “Christ addresses me personally through the lips of a fellow sinner.”

In Christ, Sabiana Derenoncourt Jacksonville, Florida

We’d like to hear your thoughts about what you’re reading in the magazine, so please write to us at letters@ modernreformation.org. Due to limited space, keep your letter under 400 words (letters may be edited for length and clarity). We look forward to hearing from you!

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

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I.

Retrieve Learning from the wisdom of the past

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B I B L E ST U DY

What Is Required to See the Lord?

Reflections on Hebrews 12:14

by S. M. Baugh

is justifiably known for recovering the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. But one further benefit of this movement was the translation of the Bible into contemporary languages making it accessible to all. We may perhaps take it for granted that we have several outstanding English versions today, which makes me reluctant to appear to undermine them when they occasionally need correction. Yet translators are not themselves inspired. For the New Testament, the inspired text is contained in the original Greek documents that we have embodied in many thousands of hand-written copies.

One of the places in the New Testament where a correction of popular English versions is necessary is Hebrews 12:14. Our English versions have chosen to render one Greek word here in a way that leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion and even fear in Bible readers. The verse reads (in the English Standard Version): “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” I have italicized the word we need to examine here, holiness, which is sometimes given as “sanctification” in other versions. Read in isolation, this verse seems to say that a believer needs to attain to a certain level, or, more terrifyingly, to complete personal holiness; otherwise, he or she will not be saved and see the Lord. Undoubtedly, countless exhortations have placed the great weight of this view on the backs of poor Christians who are struggling the best they can to grow to be more like Jesus in purity and holiness but always with the nagging dread that it might not be quite enough to see the Lord at the end of their lives.

Common English translations thus raise the question: How much holiness do I need in order to see the Lord? Need I be just 10 percent holy? Or does holiness have to just outweigh my sinful self, so that I can scratch my way into heaven? But there’s a huge problem here. The phrase “holiness without which” in our verse is not a statement of degree but an absolute. One has this “holiness” or not. This is confirmed by the same word for “without” elsewhere in the New Testament and in Hebrews, for example in Hebrews 4:15 where Jesus was “without sin,” meaning that he had no sin at all. He was “devoid of sin” (a proper rendering of the word in question). Hence, the idea in Hebrews 12:14 is that one either has this “holiness” or not. There is no degree here. You either have this thing entirely or not at all.

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

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It is at this stage that a very serious error has crept into the discussion in the church’s history. If we must have complete and entire personal holiness to see the Lord, then we can only attain to it if we redefine sin and holiness away from the Bible’s own definition. For instance, holiness might be recast as avoidance of tobacco or dancing or drinking alcohol. If you simply avoid these things, you are holy and destined for heaven. But now, in fact, the biblical gospel is entirely compromised and sunk into the abyss of works-righteousness. If the Protestant Reformation with its deep expertise in biblical interpretation has taught us anything, it is that we are saved through grace alone by faith in Christ alone, with nothing of our own works entering into our justification or acquittal on the last day. If our personal holiness enters into the balance—even as the most minute grain of sand—of God’s forensic judgment, we have abandoned the Protestant understanding of justification, and we may as well abandon the gospel and vainly hope that our good works will outweigh the bad at the final judgment. But there is no gospel or grace here (e.g., Gal. 5:2–4).

All of these problems arising from Hebrews 12:14 are caused by translation of one Greek word hagiasmos as “holiness” or “sanctification.” The problems go away, though, by rendering hagiasmos properly, as I will argue, with “consecration.” The opposite of “holy” can be “sinful” but the opposite of “consecrated” is “profane” or “defiled.” The background of Hebrews 12:14 is the priestly system with its focus on purification and consecration through sacrifice. The forgiveness of sins is involved in that they are “remembered no more” (Heb. 8:12; 10:17; from Jer. 31:34). But the infallible basis of our forgiveness is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ with nothing of our own works or sanctity. Our good works invariably flow from this source, but they are not part of the spring from which the river flows from the Rock (1 Cor. 10:4).

Now let me state my thesis: In Hebrews 12:14, the author exhorts the professing church to pursue peace and to persevere in faith in order to hold fast to the consecration that comes from Christ’s atoning sacrifice required to enter God’s presence. The exhortation here is to persevere in faith in Christ; it is not focused on striving for personal sanctification. The author talks about personal holiness in different places and different ways, as I will mention below. But let me defend my thesis now by considering just three of the many factors that lead to a proper interpretation of Hebrews 12:14.

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The Unity of Hebrews First, it is vital to understand that Hebrews is just one thing from beginning to end (or to about Heb. 13:18). This is a very complex book that covers a lot of ground, but the author never strays from his central concern; the book is a unity—it is “one thing”—a unified sermon. Accordingly, Hebrews 12:14 must fit in with other things the author says throughout his work, because he has been building a case, and his earlier or later teaching in the sermon is part of the imme-

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hagiasmos: ἁγιασμός, n \ {hag-ee-as-mos’} (1) consecration, purification (2) the effect of consecration (2a) sanctification of heart and life

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diate context of anything he says in any one place. This means, for example, that the immediate context of Hebrews 12:14 is not only the surrounding few verses but also passages several chapters away that may seem quite distant to us, yet they actually are not when we remember that this is a work meant to be read and heard in one sitting. The author tells us what he means by hagiasmos by how he speaks of this concept elsewhere, because it is one of his central themes.

And for Hebrews, hagiasmos comes not through our personal actions or efforts but through the blood of Christ in sacrifice. The author has been building a case that one cannot abandon Christ’s once for all high priestly sacrifice, even for what was once divinely instituted in the Old Testament. To do so is to apostatize back into the “dead works” we openly abandoned when we confessed our faith in Christ (Heb. 4:14; 6:1, 4–6; 9:14; 10:23).

Now one small point of Greek needs to be established before concluding this point with the other key passages that bear on Hebrews 12:14. The word hagiasmos is a certain kind of noun that ties in with a verb. It points to an event or to the result of an event designated by the related verb. In English, it is like the noun “consecration” rooted in the verb “to consecrate.” Here, I could say that I have “consecration” from Christ, which is tantamount to saying that Christ “has consecrated” me. Greek hagiasmos relates to the verb sometimes rendered “to sanctify,” but I would render this verb throughout Hebrews as “to consecrate.”

In the unity of Hebrews, then, here are places relevant for the meaning of hagiasmos in Hebrews 12:14. The whole word group is clearly rooted in the sacrifice of Christ: 2

For he who consecrates [Christ as high priest in context] and those who are consecrated [i.e., by him and his high priestly sacrifice] all derive from one [Father]. (Heb. 2:11) And by that will [of the Father for the Son to become incarnate as high priest] we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ just once.

(Heb. 10:10; cf. 10:14, 29) Wherefore also Jesus, in order to consecrate his people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate. (Heb. 13:12) Hyssop was often used in the Old Testament as a means of consecrating objects or persons as “pure” or “clean.”

So David could pray, “Purge me with Hyssop, and I will be clean” (Ps. 51:7).

The Old Testament background for this consecration through Christ’s blood is mentioned in Hebrews when he says: For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies [i.e., consecrates] for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Heb. 9:13–14 ESV)

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Notice that “consecration” here relates to purification of defilement (relevant below) and that our consecration is rooted in Christ’s one sacrifice bringing eternal purity reaching even to our conscience. This all fits the examples from the Old Testament flowing out of Hebrews 12:14, to which we turn now. ***

The Textual Flow The translation of ancient Greek into English is fraught with many more challenges than simply how to render individual words. This is especially so in Hebrews, which is a fine example of a carefully crafted work that follows ancient compositional guidelines for powerful rhetorical presentation. But one feature of ancient Greek (and Latin) literary compositions like this is what are sometimes called their long “sentences,” as if ancient authors lacked editors (see the commentary on Hebrews by the Puritan author John Owen for examples of this style in English).

Without going into too much detail, let me simply state that a style like this worked in antiquity, because written documents like Hebrews were meant to be presented orally and not read silently in isolated chunks as we typically read the Bible today. Oral texts have a flow to them in their contexts that allow for bigger compositional units to fit together based on the presenter’s need to take a breath, intonation, and varying lengths of pauses between units.

The importance of this point is that Hebrews 12:14 is grammatically and compositionally an integral part of a larger unit. It is a serious mistake to read verse 14 in isolation, because the author moves immediately into three examples of what he means by “consecration without which no one will see the Lord” in verses 15–17. This is clear in Greek because there is just one participle at the beginning of verse 15 that controls these three examples in verses 15–16 (with an expansion on Esau in v. 17). The participle acts as a kind of hinge between verse 14 and verses 15–17 that connects them together.

Next, the author uses “anaphora” in verses 15–16 that shows the three Old Testament references to be parallel. Anaphora is and was common in public speaking by repetition of a lead word or phrase. “By faith” repeated in Hebrews 11 is a most notable example of this, but it is present in Hebrews 12:15–16 too, even if it might not be obvious in translation: “See to it lest any . . . lest any . . . lest any.” The parallelism is actually quite clear because literary Greeks loved conjunctive particles (“and,” “but,” “furthermore,” “yet,” etc.), and there are none here between these three statements opening with the “lest any” (mē tis) phrase.

The point here is that the anaphora helps us to see clearly that the author clarifies what he means by this “consecration” required to see the Lord in verse 14 by giving three negative references to someone who does not hold fast to it and apostatizes in verses 15–17. And this is our next and final point.

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The Three Old Testament References The most obvious example of an apostate our author points to is Esau (Heb. 12:16–17). Hence, the author of Hebrews calls him “profane” (KJV; “unholy” ESV; “godless” NASB and NIV). This is not a generic term for “wicked” or “evil,” but it has an Old Testament background of something polluted, such that Esau became disqualified for divine service (e.g., Lev. 10:10; 1 Sam. 21:5–6). He did not seek the consecration found only in Christ’s sacrifice, represented to him by his birthright, but sold it for a bowl of mush. He was apostate and consequently profane as one exiled from the covenant community.

The issue then in seeking consecration is to hold fast to Christ and not to apostatize; this is the general theme of Hebrews that the author addresses from different angles throughout his sermon. The other two “lest any” parallels in verse 15 confirm this view when we see the fact that failing “to obtain the grace of God” describes an apostate who has made a profession of faith but falls along the wayside. This is clear because the “root of bitterness” in verse 15 is a clear allusion to Deuteronomy 29:17–18, which describes someone who turns away from the Lord into idolatry and becomes a poisonous canker through whom “many become defiled” in the covenant community.

The conclusion, then, is that seeking the consecration through which one will see the Lord means to hold fast to Christ the High Priest of our confession of faith and to his sacrifice through which alone our sins are forgiven, and we are brought out of the defilement of sin and death and washed clean. This exhortation is made throughout the epistle, but it is summarized quite clearly in Hebrews 10:19–23, which I encourage you to read in this connection.

Finally, do we reject any thought of exhorting people to personal sanctification? Never! Our author has just done this by pointing to God’s own involvement in our lives as a loving Father who disciplines us so that we can bear the “peaceable fruit of righteousness” and share in his own holy character (Heb. 12:7–11).

Personal sanctification is such an important topic, though, that we will have to address it in a future column.

S. M. Baugh (PhD, University of California, Irvine) is an Emeritus Professor of New Testament at West-

minster Seminary California in Escondido.

One of the more extraordinary things I have seen is the deep and fast Metolius River in Oregon springing up out of rocks from apparently nowhere, but in fact it originates through a volcanic rock tunnel from nearby Black Butte. You can find a video or two of this online, or better, see it in person!

2. Hebrews 12:14 is the only place where hagiasmos itself occurs in Hebrews (cf. esp. 1 Pet. 1:2), but the cognate verb appears 1.

seven times in Hebrews. Other nouns of this sort are “sprinkling” from the verb “to sprinkle” (Heb. 12:24), “cleansing” from “to cleanse” (Heb. 1:3), and “sharing” or “partitioning” from “to share or portion out a share or portion” (Heb. 2:4).

3. In the ESV, for example, these words appear as “that no one . . . that no [root] . . . that no one.”

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R E F O R M AT I O N R E S O U R C E S

“ God’s Providence”

by Franciscus Junius translated by Ryan M. Hurd

The following is a translation of Franciscus Junius’s De Providentia Dei, “God’s Providence,” a short disputation held while he was professor. Abstaining from further introduction about Junius himself, I will add a word regarding the translation below. I have made no effort to establish a critical text and have simply translated from the Kuyper volume. A few notes occur for explanation.

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with style: people who set their heart on proving to themselves with drawn-out arguments “that some providence is,” actually deserve whips, not words; a reply from an executioner, not a philosopher (nor, I add, a theologian). And what is more: if “that fire is hot,” something we perceive with touch; or “that noonday is light to our sense perception,” something we perceive with sight, do not require demonstration, then much less will divine providence require it. For nothing more is or must be persuasive [to give assent], for Christian men drawing from God’s word (Eccl. 5:5; Wisdom 8; Isa. 10:15; Matt. 6:30–32; 10:19; Luke 12:11–12) as well as for pagans (even for creatures without speech), gathering from the natural light of reason (Rom. 1:10; Job 12:7, etc.; Ps. 19:1) and especially from the arrangement, order, and conservation of all things. Hence, skipping over the question “whether providence is” (an sit), we proceed to the question “what it is” (quid sit)—but not without first noting “what the word ‘providence’ signifies.” The term is usually taken sometimes in a broad way, and other times more precisely. Taken more broadly, it includes the eternal decree of creation, governance, and ordination and then the execution of such; taken more precisely, it pertains to the economy of created things only.

2. At the moment, we take the word “providence” in this second sense. And we define providence thus: this is the act of the supreme, universal principle (i.e., God), whereby all individual creatures are governed best and led on through unto their order and end (even though they are entirely disordered), for the glory of God. Here, all kinds of causes come into view that we can assign in this analysis. We cannot provide an efficient cause for providence, except maybe within the subject himself (i.e., God), if we settle on his absolutely free will as an efficient cause. The formal cause is the THESIS 1. ARISTOTLE SAID IT

Franciscus Junius the Elder (1545–1602)

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actual perpetual act of governing and ordering all things. The “matter about which” is the whole entire world and the individual creatures which were, are, and will exist therein. And finally, the final cause is for the purpose that all may obtain their end and their perfection, and give way to the glory of God, who is the ultimate end of things.

3. This specific providence which we defined has two “parts”: one is universal (Ps. 104:27; Prov. 15:3; Wisdom 8:1; 14:3; Rom. 11:36, etc.); the other is particular (Deut. 32:10; 1 Kings 17:4; Ps. 23:1; 34:8, 16, 19; Isa. 43:1; Matt. 6:33, 2, 10, 30; 16:19; Acts 9:4; Heb. 1:14; 1 Pet. 5:7, 12, and hundreds of other passages). The first is that whereby God upholds an order of nature (both superior and inferior) determined by him; we often just call this the universal conservation of the world.

The latter is that whereby God maintains a particular care for each and every creature, and particularly humanity, especially those who are faithful, whom he deemed worthy of closer attention and for whose good he created everything else. Now this latter work of God, which God effects in created things according to his twofold providence, is also twofold: a work of nature and of grace. We call it a work of nature where God effects in nature (both superior and inferior), and also in the individual things of a nature, according to the specific mode of nature, which he expresses in the nature of things just as in a clear mirror of his own nature. We call it a work of grace where God effects something in elect people according to the good pleasure of his will. He effects a work of nature according to his idea whereby the universal principle is in the nature of things; whereas he effects a work of grace individually, such that the principle for his grace is singular and immediate.

4. Further, we can assign the mode for this latter twofold work of God in various ways. For, (1) the work is ordinary or extraordinary. I call it “ordinary” when it follows the common order of nature or grace; “extraordinary,” when it moves beyond the common order. For example, God fed the Israelites with manna (Deut. 8:3) and quail (Exod. [16:11]), and Elijah with a raven (1 Kings 20:11).

These pieces of evidence show his fatherly care toward the faithful. Likewise, he caused the sun to stand still in its own place at the prayers of Joshua, and in the time of King Hezekiah, he made its shadow retrograde ten degrees (Josh. 10:13; 2 Kings 20:11). God has been corroborated by these few miracles. This is in spite of the fact that his own quality has been inlaid within individual creatures naturally, though not to exercise his own power, except insofar as they are directed by God’s present hand, because they are nothing else but instruments whereby God instills continually as far as he wills pertaining to efficacy, and per his free choice he sways toward one action or another. This is just what even the very changing of the times shows.

5. (2) This work is mediate or immediate. It is immediate, when he accomplishes something in the nature as a whole or in its individual parts, either by means (i.e., secondary causes) and beyond them or even against them (where it is suitable). Such a work abundantly serves to shine forth the glory of God and make known his power, as it is not restricted by any means external to him. We call 2

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God’s work mediate, when it exists by different means, sometimes by a superior nature, sometimes by one inferior (whether either is common or singular), and even sometimes by individual parts of nature according to the nature and above it, just as is suited to his majesty. Now this is a great testimony of divine goodness, conjoined with his manifold wisdom (Eph. 3:10): even though he is the one efficient cause of all things and their end, and even though he has the forms and ideas of all things within his mind, and as a result has such that he alone suffices so this whole world, made out of nothing by him, is conserved and so governed—despite all this, he even willed to communicate with creatures the status of causality (to speak in this way), according to the mode of such creatures.

6. In addition, because these means are not of one kind, we will distinguish them into their respective classes. Some means are necessary, while others are contingent. I call means “necessary” which produce an effect necessarily according to their own determinate nature; on the other hand, means are “contingent” which produce an effect contingently. Given all this, the Philosopher [Aristotle] refers to the former as “definite causes” and the latter as “indefinite causes” (Physics, lib 2, c 5). Among the causes we speak of as necessary, there are two kinds.

Some are necessary per se and absolutely—by the necessity of the consequent (as they say); others are necessary ex hypothesi—by the necessity of the consequence. The reason of contingencies is attributed to causes and effects under the concept of their future existences, their causalities, and their chance—all things yet to come, as they are uncertain for us, thus we reserve them in uncertainty, as if they leaned either way. Likewise, the cause of all things that just happen (by chance or accidentally) is uncertain—indeed, those things which can occur due to many causes.

For chance is not a determinate cause (Aristotle, Physics, lib 2, c 5). However, a cause per accidens is in those things which are performed for the sake of an end, but without election, and that in contingent things rarely. Now accident differs from chance in this single point: that accident occurs in those things that have election.

7. This position does not conflict with divine providence. Even though with respect to the eternal divine decree just as to the first and remote causes, all things are necessary, nevertheless this necessity does not destroy contingency. This is because even though the supreme cause is necessary (i.e., God’s will), the effect can be contingent, on account of the proximate cause that is contingent and indeterminate. Things are named more due to their proximate cause than to their remote one; and note further that things are more considered in themselves than as they are in some mind, even the divine mind. For instance, we will not call a stone immaterial, even though the stone exists immaterially in the soul or mind.

Third, God’s providence does not change the natures of things; rather, he governs all things in line with their natures. Thus, he rules over contingent causes and wills in such a way that they act contingently and act voluntarily. Finally, the very things which are contingent in things have such in this mode, having been so ordained: to providence these things are not contingent, but this is otherwise for others, even though the necessity of providence is preserved intact.

4

For a discussion of these and the other italicized phrases in this paragraph, all of which are technical scholastic formulae, see their respective entries in Richard Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms.

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8. So much for the first distinction of the means; now, let us shift to the other.

Thus, once again, some means are good, both natural (e.g., substances, motions, actions, and the perfections of things) and voluntary and moral (like civil and spiritual virtues); other means are evil, and disordered in themselves. Each of these God ordains, both good means and evil. This is because despite the fact that evil is not good, the ordination of evil for good is still good. Thus, God both ordains and powerfully effects good things, while he ordains and permits, but does not effect, evil things. However, this permission is not mere permission or even due to impotency—as are so many human permissions. Rather, it is permission from God’s free will, which cannot be thought of as unjust, because God, by right of office, is not fettered to restrain [evil], because he has not been bound to anything by any law. For “who gives, so that it is returned to him?” (Rom. 11:35).

(In the disputation following, we will handle God’s permission concerning evil things in detail.)

9. We affirm that both contingent and necessary things (Exod. 21:13), both evil and good things—all these depend upon God’s providence (Isa. 45:7; 2 Sam. 12:12; Jer. 50:25; etc.). Despite this assertion, we are not imagining some fate, akin to the Stoics (as they cavil, making this teaching vile); nor are we inventing necessity out of the continual bond of causes and the implicit series which would be involved in nature. Rather, we determine that God is free and the moderator of all things, the one who for his own ineffable wisdom decreed from eternity that it would occur, and now by his power carries out what he decreed. People who subsume God’s providence within nature’s general flow and utterly senseless fate rob God of his glory indeed, as well as they themselves of a highly useful teaching.

For nothing depresses one more than if they are susceptible to some movements in the sky or elements. What is more: establishing this [i.e., presuming a kind of natural fate] does not leave room for the fatherly favor of God nor his judgment—as if bounty one year were not God’s singular blessing, and poverty and famine were not his curse, but just the ways of nature. And this is despite the fact that quite often God proclaims in the law and prophets that he proves his grace and punishment in precisely these ways.

10. Others attack this teaching with equal absurdity when they take away all of people’s deliberations and corrections as genuine means, all under the pretext of affirming God’s universal and particular providence. Solomon teaches us precisely the opposite: “The heart of man,” he says, “conceives his way, and the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:6). He means that we are not at all hindered by God’s eternal decrees, so as to prevent us under his will from monitoring ourselves and dispensing all our affairs. Furthermore, this point does not lack overt rational proof. For he who bound our life within its own limits, at the same time left its care in our charge. He caused us to be prescient of dangers, lest we are taken unawares by surprise, and he afforded us cautions and remedies, whereby we could be subservient to his providence in conserving our own individual lives. This is just as, on the other hand, we invite for ourselves with our neglect and folly those things which he has linked to being bad for us. In this way, God willed to conceal from us

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all things to come, so that as we face uncertainties, we would not desist opposing ready-made solutions, until we have passed them by or overcome every burden.

11. Many come up with a fiction that is more thin and wicked still; they allege it is bare prescience, making excuse as a cover for God’s wondrous providence.

They feel the need to have prescience with the implication of “cause” separated from God’s will or decree, or his eternal declaration. This is even though prescience cannot be the per se cause of things in any way, because things do not come to exist, because God foreknew them as coming to exist. Rather, because he decreed them as coming to exist, therefore they are things that are coming to exist, and then he foreknows them as coming to exist. I am going to ignore the Epicureans who imagine God as idle and lifeless, as well as others, equally unsound, who once made up that God lords over the middle region of the air in such a way that he leaves things below to fortune, seeing the fact that actual creatures, while speechless, still clamor quite enough against such obvious madness.

12. Albeit the fruits of divine providence are various (actually, innumerable), we can still reduce and summarize them into two supreme fruits. One, men learn from divine providence that there is sufficiently full ability within God himself to bless them. Two, they can rest in protection with security of him to whose choice all things are subordinate, which otherwise can be feared as harmful, and to whose authority Satan is restrained not otherwise and with a bridle, along with all his followers. The excessive, overly scrupulous fears cannot well otherwise be corrected or allayed, which we conceive from thence from exposure to dangers, than if we always hold in our minds there is no random power, action, motion among creatures, nor one characterized by fate. Rather, all is ruled by God’s eternal judgment such that nothing comes to pass unless it has been decreed by him who knows and wills it. His will, perfectly just, is the cause of all things for us.

This is, of course, not the absolute will that sophists blubber about, separating by a wicked and profane division his righteousness from his power. Rather, it is providence, the moderator of all things, and by it only what is right endures even though his reasons have been hidden from us.

Ryan M. Hurd is a doctoral student at the Theologische Universiteit Kampen and a teaching fellow in

systematic theology at The Davenant Institute.

Franciscus Junius, “De Providentia Dei,” in Francisci Iunii Opuscula theologica selecta, ed. Abraham Kuyper (Amsterdam: Fred. Muller, 1882), 1:157–160. Kuyper’s text is simply a reprint of Franciscus Junius, Opera theologica, duobus tomis, ordine commodissimo, nempe Exegetico primo, Elenctica altero, comprehensa…2 vols. (Geneva: Societas Caldoriana, 1607).

2. Often called the “material cause” by Junius; note, however, that this is not the material cause as regularly spoken about in the tradition, but the material cause or in fact formal object of a science or knowledge (Junius regularly makes this switch).

Cf., e.g., Thomas, ST I q 1 a 7, where God is the “material 1.

cause,” as Junius means here, of the theological science.

Kuyper’s text has “& 119” here. Because Ps. 34 does not have 119 verses, and because verse 19 of Ps. 34 does speak to God’s providential care for his creatures, Junius was most probably referencing Ps. 34:19 rather than Ps. 119.

4. For a discussion of these and the other italicized phrases in this paragraph, all of which are technical scholastic formulae, see their respective entries in Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 2nd ed.

(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

3.

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W H AT H A S

BECOME of A M E R I C A N

Fundamentalism?

by G E O R G E M A R S D E N

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T

HE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION depends—not surprisingly—on what we mean by “fundamentalism.” As a religious designation, the term is just over a century old. Yet it never had just one meaning, and over the decades, these principal meanings have changed. So, to avoid confusion, we need to stay alert to these various meanings and be clear as to which we are talking about.

During the 1920s, the most common designation of “fundamentalist” was any evangelical Protestant who strongly affirmed traditional gospel teachings.

The term was coined in 1920 by Curtis Lee Laws, a conservative leader of the Northern Baptist Convention. Laws intended this term for those who were willing to stand up and “to do battle royal” for the traditional biblical and gospel message, as opposed to modernism and higher criticism. The term soon caught on. Those who adopted it for themselves saw it as positive description of Christians who insisted on holding to the basics—as in sports, one might emphasize the importance of “the fundamentals.”

The recent Great War was one factor that helped shape the movement as it had precipitated among many a sense that American culture was losing its moorings. Not only were theological liberals becoming dominant in every major northern Protestant denomination, but also older Victorian mores were giving way to those of the Jazz Age. In that setting, a “fundamentalist” came to be a popular term: not only for any Protestant willing to defend the Bible and other essentials of evangelical faith, but additionally for those Bible-believers fighting to defend the Christian heritage of American culture. The latter cause became most famously represented in William Jennings Bryan’s campaign to ban the teaching of biological evolution in public schools. Bryan’s larger concern was that naturalistic evolutionary social teachings were undermining the nation’s morality.

In this broad 1920s’ meaning as “militantly conservative evangelical,” fundamentalism included people from a wide variety of Protestant traditions. Most major northern denominations—including Baptist, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Congregationalist—had fundamentalist parties. Baptists and Presbyterians experienced the most protracted intradenominational controversies as fundamentalists tried unsuccessfully to drive modernists from their pulpits and seminaries. In the South, most Protestants would have accepted the designation as “fundamentalist,” even though the predominance of conservative evangelicals meant there were few denominational controversies.

A fair number of African-American Protestants, as a recent study has shown, used “fundamentalist” either as a self-designation or alternatively as a term to designate those whom they thought were too conservative. “Fundamentalist” in that broad usage of the time meant something like “anyone who strongly holds to 1

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Plaque on site of the conversion of Dwight L. Moody at a shoe store in Boston, MA; now a Staples store. (photo by Swamp­ yank; from Creative Commons)

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old-time gospel teachings,” as opposed to modern teachings that would conflict with that biblicist gospel.

While the broad use of “fundamentalist” in the 1920s meant any strongly conservative Protestant, the subgroup that most enthusiastically embraced the term were dispensationalists who followed the teachings found in the Scofield Reference Bible. This group, which had been emerging since the days of Dwight L. Moody in the late 1800s, was building a distinct fundamentalist movement.

Bible institutes—such as Moody Bible Institute or The Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now, Biola University), or colleges such as Bob Jones or Wheaton in Illinois—became strategic institutions for training and sending out evangelists and missionaries. Billy Sunday became the best known of a host of evangelists who criss-crossed the country promoting such gospel teaching. Premillennial prophecy conferences, Bible conferences and camps, and eventually radio ministries deepened commitments and furthered the teachings. Since the dispensational premil­lennial movement was built largely on independent or parachurch ministries, it operated largely independently from, even sometimes within, major denominations. Eventually, by the 1930s and 1940s, after denominational fundamentalists had failed in efforts to exclude modernists from the major churches, dispensationalists became leading advocates of ecclesiastical separatism.

By the 1950s, dispensationalist separatists were taking over the term “fundamentalist” for their own movement, in part because a good many other conservative evangelicals were becoming uncomfortable with the term. Ever since the 1920s, critics of fundamentalism had been castigating it for its anti-intellectual tendencies. During the 1940s, the “new evangelical” movement emerged with the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942 and Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947. That movement suddenly gained prominence in 1949 with the advent of Billy Graham as a super-star evangelist. Graham tempered some of his fundamentalist heritage in favor of a new evangelical outlook. As Graham broadened his ministry and cooperated with mainline Protestant denominations, more strictly separatist dispensational fundamentalists disowned him. That led to a fairly clear distinction between the mostly dispensationalist strict separatists who proudly held to the term “fundamentalist” and broader “evangelicals.” From about the 1950s through the 1980s, one could say with at least some accuracy that “an evangelical is someone who likes Billy Graham.” One might also at that time have been tempted to say “a fundamentalist is someone who likes Bob Jones”—except that fundamentalists were divided into fiefdoms that were often fighting among themselves. Still, the groups that used the term as a self-designation were almost entirely various strictly separatist dispensationalist premillennialists.

By the late 1970s, however, a new phase of fundamentalism—as a politicalreligious movement—was beginning to emerge. Prior to that, separatist dispensational fundamentalists often had political messages and agendas, warning

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especially against Communism. Yet they typically also taught, in contrast to the liberal social gospel or the civil rights movements, that churches should avoid direct political involvement. That began to change in the later 1970s. Beginning in 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter identified as being “born again,” the news media began to talk about evangelicals as a potential voting bloc. That was possible because most Southern “born-again” Christians still voted Democrat and Carter could cut into a bit of the Northern evangelical Republican loyalties.

However, strictly conservative fundamentalists and evangelicals who were most interested in political mobilization soon became unhappy with Carter’s Democratic Party agenda, especially in promoting more progressive views of family, gender, and sexuality. That led to the organization of the Moral Majority under the leadership of Jerry Falwell and other avowed fundamentalists. It also fit with the Republican “Southern strategy” and helped turn many conservative, white Southern Christians into solid Republicans, thereby contributing to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. For the first time since before the Civil War, it was possible to build a nationwide coalition of white political conservatives. Conservative evangelicals, including some who would call themselves “fundamentalists” and many who would be just “evangelical” or “born again,” made up an important bloc in that coalition. Militant opposition to the progressive Democratic agenda fueled what became known as the “culture wars” and has remained a major dimension of American politics ever since.

“Fundamentalists” such as Falwell played prominent roles in building this new militant religious-political coalition, but its constituency included a wider variety of conservative evangelicals who were like-minded in their social-political views. In continuity with the fundamentalism of the 1920s, one of the emphases most effective in mobilizing the movement was to build on the popular perception that the United States had been a Christian nation but had turned from that heritage. In the new political mobilization, that theme was closely wedded to even more widely popular patriotism, militarism, and nationalism, resulting in ardent Christian nationalism. Now, unlike the 1920s when anti-evolution was the only national political program, a much broader and more emotionally charged agenda for restoring Christian America became a major appeal to evangelical Christians who have been alarmed by recent cultural changes.

Political militancy became a theme in dispensational premillennialism as well.

From 1995 to 2006, the Left Behind series of novels by militant cultural warriors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins sold over sixty million copies. One might suppose that ardent dispensationalists who preach that Christ will return within the next few years would care little about long-term political issues. But in the Left Behind series, political battles are at the center of the end-time events themselves. The heroes are people left behind when the saints are caught up in the air in the Secret Rapture, who are later converted to Christianity when they realize what has happened. Their adventures are those of a brave band of Christians fighting the political intrigues of the antichrist and the menacing world government. Although many readers of the series were not dispensational premillennialists themselves,

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they would be drawn in by the stories of Christian heroes and heroines fighting political battles that were recognizably extensions of those of their own time.

In the meantime, the political turn of much of the American fundamentalism helped precipitate an academic development that would soon have a notable impact on the American scene. In the 1980s and 1990s, Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby oversaw a major scholarly study called “The Fundamentalism Project.”

Defining “fundamentalism” to include any anti-modernist religious movement, they showed in a series of major publications that such “fundamentalists” could be found in just about every world religion. As modernity reshaped societies and threatened traditional religious practices and mores, militantly reactionary groups rose to defend the old ways. These movements often had political agendas.

Among some of them, unlike what was typical of American fundamentalism, their militancy included literal violence as part of their insurgency. The most conspicuous examples of such violent movements took place within radical Islam, which was becoming a major world force during the 1990s. Even though Islamic jihadists did not appreciate having the American term applied to them, they were often being referred as “Islamic fundamentalists.”

That usage came to have a major impact on American fundamentalism after the events of 9/11. Suddenly the most common usage of “fundamentalist” was to refer to the Islamic radicals who were perceived as the number one enemy of the United States. “Fundamentalist” thus took on more than ever the general meaning of “religious extremist.” That created a problem for many Americans who up to that time had proudly used “fundamentalist” as a self-designation. The term now might be off-putting for evangelism or for building a political coalition, and it needed a lot of explanation. Within a decade many institutions, such as Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and Bob Jones University, were no longer employing the term—at least not publicly. Strikingly, the Bob Jones website at present does not use the term “fundamentalist” in describing itself or in recounting the history of the institution.

The use of the term “fundamentalist” for Islamic extremists reinforced the broader negative implications of the term. Ever since the 1920s, critics such as H. L. Mencken have used the term to mean “anti-intellectual bigot.” Secularists have continued using the designation to dismiss any sort of traditionalist Christian belief. Meanwhile, more open-minded Christians often used it as a term of opprobrium to designate those who are more conservative than themselves.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga in his Warranted Christian Belief offers some careful reflections regarding the negative connotations of the term: On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disappropriation, rather like “son of a b*tch,” more exactly “sonovab*tch,” or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) “sumb*btch.”

Plantinga goes on to observe that such dismissive uses of the term most often

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target religious conservatives, so that “fundamentalist” means “considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.” After making some more fine distinctions, Plantinga concludes: “The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like “stupid sumb*tch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.”

As Plantinga’s broad first designation suggests, “fundamentalist” is now often used to characterize anyone who is a closed-minded militant. For instance, a number of twenty-first-century observers have characterized “the new atheists”—such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, or Daniel Dennet—as secular “fundamentalists” in that they in that they are closed-minded and shrill in defending their exclusivist scientific naturalism, which may in fact have lost ground in recent decades. Or in a recent volume, Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us, authors Gary Saul Morson and Gary Sharpiro argue that “fundamentalisms” are everywhere in our twenty-first-century world. While these authors give secondary attention to religious militants, they argue that the most pervasive and alarming examples of rampant “fundamentalism” today are in politics and economics, where typically one absolute closed-minded dogmatism is answered by another. The internet reinforces the convictions of true believers on each side, and there is no possibility of dialogue or of finding any common ground. Tribalism prevails.

Given such generalizations and negative connotations of the term “fundamentalist,” it is a wonder that any of the heirs to the American religious movement still use it. A few still keep the name, as does the Independent Fundamental Baptists, which are mostly “King James Version Only” and estimated to include some six thousand congregations. Others have dropped the name: for example, in 2017 the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International became the Baptist Fellowship International while still affirming their fundamentalist heritage. Even though the steep decline of the term as a self-designation makes the strict heirs to fundamentalism difficult to identify, there are quite a few American religious organizations that are functionally fundamentalist in continuity with the twentieth-century movement. That is, they are ecclesiastically separatist evangelical Christians who militantly preserve very conservative versions of evangelical faith, including the inerrancy of the Bible, literal interpretations when possible, young earth creationism, the atoning work of Christ on the cross, his literal second coming, the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in conversion and sanctification, and strict traditionalist Christian mores. Due to the largely pejorative connotations of the term, it may be best not to try to designate which of the ministries that have a fundamentalist heritage are still truly “fundamentalist” today.

Another fundamental legacy in addition to its separatist heritage is a conservative ecclesiastical reform movement within major denominations. In the 1920s, this was one of the most prominent manifestations of fundamentalism. While the conservative parties lost in those early struggles, later in the twentieth century similar conflicts arose within the Southern Baptist Convention, where the conservatives often won control. Those controversies are still ongoing. Because of 2

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its negative connotations, “fundamentalist” is not the best term to designate the Southern Baptist conservatives. But that party continues to display fundamentalist-like militancy in its attempts to purge the denomination of its progressive elements. One major difference as compared with the 1920s’ struggles, however, is that the Southern Baptist conflicts have been closely tied with the ongoing culture wars that directly involve American party politics. Even though opposition to moderately liberal theologies remains a major concern, passions seem to run the highest concerning the culture war issues especially regarding gender, sexuality, and progressive “social justice.”

That brings us back to what has been the most momentous transformation of the conservative evangelical heritage in America in the past forty years: uncompromising dogmatic militancy among conservative white evangelicals now is often most intense regarding issues shaped by partisan national political party allegiances. Again, putting aside the question of whether to call this politicized militancy “fundamentalist,” this new political militancy represents a striking reshaping of the old fundamentalist heritage. A half century ago, the fundamentalist heritage was most notable for its emphases on biblicist old-time gospel doctrinal purity, evangelism to rescue the perishing, lives of cultural and strict behavioural separatism, and emphasis on the overriding “blessed hope” of the imminent return of Christ to set up his millennial kingdom. Political programs were like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Fundamentalist and most other conservative evangelical churches often made a point of staying out of politics. Today, while a faithful remnant preserves such stances, more often it seems that the emphases on preserving pure doctrine and strict moral standards have been overshadowed by partisan political concerns. Party politics has also countered much of the separatism of the older fundamentalist movement and drawn its heirs into close alliances with one part of the polarized national mainstream.

The old divide between fundamentalists and other conservative evangelicals has faded as many from various denominational and doctrinal traditions have become close allies in common political concerns.

If one should ask how this political turn during the past half century has influenced American conservative evangelicalism as a whole, one concern should be the degree to which it has fostered tendencies to interpret the Bible through the lens of current partisan political loyalties. That is, of course, a danger on the Left as much as the Right. In today’s polarized America, it is tempting to let partisan politics shape one’s Christianity more than Christianity shapes one’s political choices. As a rule of thumb, if Christians find that their views on social, political, and economic issues almost entirely match those of either secular or pragmatic political party, then it is time to reexamine their principles. Still, since this essay concerns fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism, I am here pointing out how that phenomenon of letting political loyalties take priority has been prominent among Republican white evangelical conservatives in recent years. One could make a similar argument, mutatis mutandis, for how the outlooks of more progressive evangelicals have been too much shaped by Democratic Party loyalties.

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Many of the social attitudes that have been prominent in the political mobilization of conservative white evangelicals in recent decades have been longstanding parts of their predominantly old-stock British or northern European ethnic communities. While evangelical churches have long flourished in such communities, they usually only temper rather than transform many of the social outlooks and assumptions of their members. That can be seen in the fact that the political behavior and concerns of white evangelicals in such communities do not differ substantially from those of their unchurched white neighbours, aside from a few issues. The reason for this is that evangelical religion depends on voluntary adherence. That has been one of its great strengths, allowing it to put down deep grass roots in America in contrast to Old World state churches that have been languishing.

Being voluntary also means that it is almost impossible to be prophetic regarding attitudes the community holds dear. If people do not like a preacher’s social-political views, they will get rid of the preacher or find another church. Converts to Christianity will therefore retain most of their preexisting social-political outlooks. That is nothing entirely new in the history of Christianity. Converts from every tribe and nation have retained many, even if not all, of their cultural assumptions and loyalties. Still, the American case includes an unusual feature. The United States has a Protestant heritage that has contributed partially, even if imperfectly, to shaping the culture. That has led, especially in many older predominantly Protestant communities, to conflation of the national and cultural heritage with Christianity.

Ardent patriotism celebrating the virtual equation of God and country is the clearest example. This Protestant background has also made it easy for many people to view others of their cultural assumptions as essentially Christian. The idea of restoring American’s Christian heritage has been one of the most compelling themes in politically mobilizing the Christian Right in recent decades. So, for many white evangelicals, that “Christian” heritage includes a number of traits that are more parts of the white American cultural heritage than they are derived from biblical principles. For instance, the rugged individualism bred on the frontier has long helped foster distrust of central government. Such attitudes are still especially strong in the regions of the old Confederacy, but they also have many Northern counterparts where they go back to Jacksonianism or to the American Revolution itself.

Evangelical religion has also put down deep roots in such areas, so the conflation of Christianity and these cultural attitudes is not surprising. Perhaps the clearest example is ardent opposition to most limitations on gun ownership, including even assault weapons. Such attitudes would seem difficult to justify from Scripture. Yet the motto of “God and guns” remains compelling and helps solidify political stances that would generally minimize government regulations. A recent example has been opposition to mask-wearing and vaccinations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to think of any principle in biblical ethics that would justify opposing regulations that would help protect

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one’s neighbors from a dangerous contagious disease. Yet don’t-tread-on-me individualism, distrust of government, and suspicion of elite experts have been integral to the cultural heritage of many in old stock white ethnic communities. So white evangelicals, despite their gospel teachings rather than because of them, have been one of the groups most likely to oppose such community health measures.

The Donald Trump era of fusing of evangelical religion, politics, and cultural prejudices in many white evangelical communities has most notoriously led to the yoking of the religion to a leader whose lifestyle, character, and integrity were about as far from the old fundamentalist ideals as is imaginable. But political militancy has often come to overshadow militancy in promoting true doctrine and personal purity. For many, it seems to have led to an unquestioned loyalty. Granted, Trump promised to advance some genuine Christian concerns. Yet much of his popularity among white evangelicals seems also to have been fueled by his appeals to individualism and suspicion of big government, racial and cultural prejudices, and longstanding cultural resentments in the communities where white evangelicals flourish. Fealty to Trump seemed to blind many to everything else.

Trump, who did not hide his preoccupation with his own success and popularity, frequently declared things “true” or “false” on the basis of whether or not they benefited him, regardless of the facts involved. So, Christians who had come to reverence his word had to put aside their usual commitments about bearing false witness. For example, after Trump lost the 2020 election, white evangelicals were among those most likely to believe his claim that he had won in a landslide, even though there was no court-worthy evidence to support that claim. Radio host Eric Metaxas went so far as to say of overturning the election results, “I’d be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us. Jesus is with us in this fight for liberty.” Others made similar claims. Some militant Christians were even among those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2020, to try to disrupt Congress in its certification of the presidential election.

Whether or not such political militancy can be seen as a new variant of “fundamentalism,” it has had the effect of drastically changing the public image of American evangelicalism. The term “evangelical” has come to take on for many outsiders almost as negative a set of connotations as has the term “fundamentalist.” These tendencies are likely one reason this movement has been losing young people in recent years. Many thoughtful observers from within the evangelical tradition have been wondering whether they can still use that name.

Fundamentalism, like revivalist evangelicalism before it, always had a numerically dominant populist side. Early Reformed leaders, such as J. Gresham Machen, worried about such tendencies but reluctantly accepted the “fundamentalist” label in the larger efforts to counter theological liberalism. And at mid-century, the “new evangelicalism,” designed in part by Harold John Ockenga (a former student of Machen), had as one of its principal goals the tempering of fundamentalist populism with carefully developed principles drawn from sound scholarship and the deeper Christian theological heritage.

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J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937)

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The theological seminaries associated with these movements, together with many associated ministries, Christian colleges and universities, and Christian presses have remained dedicated to strengthening the theological and thoughtfully principled base of American evangelicalism. Alliances with educated British evangelicals have played an important role as well. In many ways, that movement to deepen evangelical thought has succeeded. In past half century, there has been something of a renaissance of traditionalist Christian scholarship, not only in theology and biblical studies, but also in philosophy and almost every other intellectual discipline. Yet, given the populist and market-driven nature of the numerically dominant parts of American evangelicalism, it may seem as though such thoughtful efforts have been of little consequence. If one lumps together all of American evangelicalism—or all of white American evangelicalism (which is what the politically oriented pollsters do)—then it may seem as though there is an insurmountable evangelical mind/body problem. For instance, health and wealth Pentecostal megachurch ministries, to cite just one major set of movements, have far larger numerical influence than all the seminaries and related ministries grounded in the more thoughtful and deeply grounded theologies.

Such tendencies should not, however, lead us to give up entirely on the popular forms of evangelicalism. One way to think positively about what has been happening is that the massive populist ministries, anti-intellectual tendencies, and fundamentalist-like absolutisms of American evangelicalism continue to provide fertile ground for deeper renewal. Very often, people who are brought into the faith through more popular ministries find richer understandings of the faith in older theological teachings, such as the Reformed. That is one reason why traditionalist Reformed ministries have been growing in the twenty-first century, even if they remain a relatively small percentage of the whole of American evangelicalism. As Richard Lovelace argued in his classic Dynamics of the Spiritual Life (1979), if there is to be evangelical renewal, the various parts of the body of Christ need one another.

Although the past decade has seen some decline in the number of Americans who identify as “evangelical,” especially among young people, if we think of fundamentalism in its original 1920 sense, then it has been in some ways a story of remarkable success. During the early years when “fundamentalist” meant Bible-believing Christians who resisted liberal theologies, it was commonplace for mainstream observers to predict that the movement would die away as rural culture faded and science-based education advanced. Yet, even though the early fundamentalists lost in their campaigns to purge liberalism from the major Northern denominations, they were not the ones who died away. By the last decades of the twentieth century, it was the mainline theologically inclusive Protestant denominations that experienced sharp declines in membership. In the meantime, those who continued to preach something like the old-time gospel were thriving.

Even though populist and anti-intellectual appeals have had much to do with that success, theological renewal movements played a supporting role. In the 5

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1920s, one of the reasons why critics of fundamentalism were so confident that modernist outlooks would prevail was because they were convinced that traditional gospel beliefs could not be sustained intellectually in the modern scientific world. Yet, after a century of substantial biblical theological, philosophical, and other scholarship, it now seems that traditionalist Bible-based theologies are intellectually defensible.

Finally, on the positive side, it is important to recognize that a century after the rise of American fundamentalism, evangelicalism has become primarily a global phenomenon. Some of the earliest manifestations of fundamentalist/ modernist conflicts were on the mission fields. Now in the majority world, it is clearly the more traditionalist gospel emphases that have been widely embraced and spread remarkably, beyond almost any predictions. Those phenomena are especially helpful for putting the present state of American evangelicalism in perspective. Whatever one might think of the recent political turn within many American white evangelical communities, this can be seen as a drop in the bucket if one is looking at global evangelicalism as a whole. At the same time, however, it must be acknowledged that parts of world evangelicalism have some of the same sorts of populist tendencies that have long been part of American evangelicalism.

The health and wealth gospel is the clearest example. Still, we should view the popular spread of gospel-based Christianity throughout the world as mostly a positive work of the Holy Spirit, even as we may hope that, among many other good things, it helps open the way for versions of that gospel message more deeply grounded in more substantial heritages of biblical and theological interpretation.

George Marsden is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History emeritus at the University of Notre Dame.

His works include Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1980; 3rd ed., 2021). He is also co-editor with Mark Noll and David Bebbington of The Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (Eerdmans, 2019).

Daniel R. Bare, Black Fundamentalists: Conservative Christianity and Racial Identity in the Segregation Era (New York: New York University Press, 2021).

2. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 245.

3. Mark Winfield, “Meet the Trump Truthers: Jenna Ellis and Eric Metaxas,” Baptist News, December 10, 2020, https:// baptistnews.com.

4. Numerous such examples can be found in John Fea, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Grand Rapids: 1.

Eerdmans, 2018), and on his blogs The Way of Improvement Goes Home and Current, where he documents, sometimes on a daily basis, such evangelical support for Trump throughout and since his presidency.

5. Whether the decline has been steep or modest is a matter of some dispute, seeming to depend on how pollsters ask their questions. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/ politics/2021/07/08/rapid-decline-­white-evangelicalamerica/.

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R E F O R M AT I O N O U T TA K E S

Luther’s Marginal Thoughts on Erasmus

by Zachary Purvis

in The Netherlands possesses a remarkable book previously owned by Martin Luther: a 1527 edition of the New Testament by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus’s New Testament, first published in 1516, contained the Greek text, Erasmus’s own translation into Latin, and his technical commentary, which justified the choices he had made. It was a signal achievement: the first Greek New Testament accessible to many in Western Europe by means of the printing press and a new Latin form to improve on Jerome’s Vulgate.

Luther’s general antipathy to Erasmus, the preeminent Renaissance scholar north of the Alps, is well known. Luther would call him “Christ’s chief enemy in a thousand years.” Luther’s book promises more illumination, for he filled it with the distinctive chicken scratches of his marginalia. More than two hundred handwritten notes, in both Latin and German, reveal his opinion on what he read. When Luther acquired it, probably in 1528, he had already engaged in brutal controversy with Erasmus on free will and salvation and the means to reform the church. What drew Luther’s ire was not Erasmus’s humanist scholarship—his interest in languages, rhetoric, history, poetry, and the return to classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome. In fact, Luther himself qualified as a humanist, or at least a great friend of humanists, under any sane definition of the term. He had even used an earlier edition of Erasmus’s work when he made his own translation of the New Testament into German in 1522. Yet he remained forever suspicious that Erasmus hid behind his sophisticated literary abilities to mask a lack of trust in Scripture.

Luther was quick to sniff out what he held to be Erasmus’s disingenuousness—sometimes in unusual passages. When Erasmus came to Ephesians 1:23, he pointed out two possible meanings of a Greek verbal form. Luther read this as an attempt not to understand but to undermine the text: the style in which Erasmus wrote seemed to put philology in the service of skepticism. So, Luther jotted down what he took to be Erasmus’s real intent: “And therefore one should not believe anything of Paul and the entire gospel. What else does Epicurus say, who does not know Christ, indeed who considers it a fairy tale?” More striking is the battle waged over 1 Corinthians 7:39: “A wife is bound to her husband as long THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF GRONINGEN

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as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” Erasmus’s annotation ran to some ten pages—the longest in his book. He argued every side of the question of divorce and remarriage and heaped up citations from every church father. Finally, he expressed doubt whether the church could ever be free of errors. Luther responded: “Erasmus is a skeptic and he always has doubts about everything.”

At other places, Luther detected the voice of a biting humorist. In notes on Ephesians 1:13 and 4:8, he thought Erasmus proudly satirized the text. Thus Luther wrote in the margin, “Laugh” and “Laugh please.” In another passage— again, 1 Corinthians 7:39—Erasmus referred to the practice of indulgences with sharp irony: if the pope had mercy on souls in purgatory, then why not on souls on earth? Surely, Luther agreed. But an edition of the New Testament was no place for idle wisecracks. He responded, pen in hand, “Do not laugh yourself to death.” At the Wittenberg dinner table, Luther summed up this complaint about Erasmus, “If he can joke about just one letter, he will do so.” True, Luther believed in humor as much as he did in grammatical knowledge about the Bible.

“Where there is faith, one should laugh,” he admitted. “But God does not allow himself and his greatness to be mocked.”

Whether Luther read Erasmus with precision on every point is arguable. Of course, Luther was aware of this. He read critically, intentionally, even with hostility. When Erasmus suggested, with a playful, cavalier tone, how to punctuate Luke 2:13–14 and begged the benevolence of his “kind reader” to agree with him, Luther lost his patience: “I am not a kind reader,” he scribbled on the page, “and you are not a kind writer.” In any case, it is clear that Luther regarded Erasmus as evasive and ambivalent, as someone who took Scripture less seriously than his own skill and wit. It turns out that marginal comments are not so marginal after all.

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Zachary Purvis (DPhil, University of Oxford) is lecturer of church history at Edinburgh Theological

Seminary. He is the author of Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press, 2016), and his articles have appeared in such venues as Journal of the History of Ideas, Church History, and Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

The book is in two parts: Novum Testamentum, ex Erasmi Roterodami recognitione . . . (Basel: J. Froben, 1527); and Des. Erasmi Roterodami in Novum Testamentum annotationes . . . (Basel: J. Froben, 1527); Groningen University Library, Special Collections, HS 494.

2. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Tischreden, 6 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1912–21), 1:407, no. 837.

3. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luther’s Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 60 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980), 193–228.

4. πληρουμένων as passive or middle.

5. Luther, marginal note on Des. Erasmi Roterodami in Novum Testamentum annotationes, 533: “Ideo nihil est credendum Paulo et toti Evangelio. Quid Epicurus aliud diceret, qui Christum nescit, imo pro fabula habet.”

6. Luther, marginal note on Des. Erasmi, 432: “Erasmus 1.

scepticus est et dubitat semper et in omnibus.”

Luther, marginal note on Des. Erasmi, 541: “Ride”; 532, “Ride q[uae] so.”

8. Luther, marginal note on Des. Erasmi, 431: “Lache dich nicht zu Tod.” 9. Luther, Tischreden, 5:220, no. 5535.

10. Luther, Tischreden, 1:391, no. 813.

11. Luther, Tischreden, 3:214, no. 3186a.

12. See, e.g., Arnoud Visser, “Irreverent Reading: Martin Luther as Annotator of Erasmus,” Sixteenth Century Journal 48 (2017): 87–109; J. Kingma, De Groningse Luther-Bijbel. Tentoonstelling rond Luthers exemplaar van Erasmus’ Nieuwe Testament, Basel 1527 (Groningen: Universiteitsbibliothek,1983).

13. Luther, marginal note on Des. Erasmi, 156: “ego non sum candidus lector, nec tu candidus scriptor.”

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Converse Discussing from perspectives of the present

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GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL FORUM

Christianity in Ethiopia an interview with Dr. Frew Tamrat

The Chapel of the Tablet of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia.

Housed in this chapel, it is claimed, is the original Ark of the Covenant. (photo by Adam Cohn; GNU Free Documentation)

Dr. Tamrat, thank you for taking the time to talk with us at Modern Reformation. Perhaps we can begin with the history and current state of the Ethiopian Church.

For many centuries, Ethiopia considered itself a Christian nation; it is mentioned in the Old and New Testament more than forty times. So, there is historical attachment with Judaism. There are popular extrabiblical legends and accounts of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon in 1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles 9. The legends describe a relationship with Israel, where some Jews migrated to Ethiopia. Today, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to have the Ark of the Covenant in northern Ethiopia.

In Acts 8, an Ethiopian eunuch heard the gospel from Philip, although we don’t have recorded documents to indicate if he later spread the gospel in Ethiopia. We believe Ethiopia has been a Christian nation starting from the fourth and fifth century, after Syrians came to the Aksumite Empire and evangelized the king with the gospel. Unlike the Roman Empire, where Christianity grew from the grassroots level, here it was imposed by the rulers and gradually grew among the Jewish population in the north and the pagan population in the south. Ethiopia is one of the most ancient recipients of the gospel, along with Alexandria.

The relationship between Ethiopia and Alexandrian churches, called the Coptic Church, existed from the fourth century until 1959, when the Ethiopian church broke away and started ordaining Ethiopian patriarchs. The Ethiopian Church belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church, after the Chalcedonian Council in 451, which debated the nature of Christ and resulted in the Ethiopian Church becoming a Monophysite church. Until the modern missionary movement, this was the only Christian denomination in Ethiopia.

Before the spread of evangelical Christianity in Ethiopia, people used to say that there were two religions in Ethiopia: people are born either as Orthodox Christian or Muslim. After the seventh century, followers of Muhammed found refuge in Ethiopia. Because of this, the Islamic world has a high regard for Ethiopia and has become a challenge to the Christian church there. Until the fourteenth century, the Ethiopian Church generally adhered to apostolic teaching.

It was later on that other teachings began to creep in and distort the teaching of

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the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In 1959, when the church broke off its relationship with Alexandria, they were then called the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (“Tewahedo” means “unity”). From that point, it established its own Ethiopian identity and was no longer called “Coptic.” The name itself, Tewahedo, has theological significance as it is Monophysite. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church does not believe in the two natures of Christ. Rather, they affirm that Christ is one person with one nature. They believe two natures require double or dual personalities. When you evangelize, they will affirm “fully human and fully divine,” but they deny that this means two natures.

Though Islam historically came very early to Ethiopia, attempting to make it an Islamic nation by Turkish and Egyptian Muslims, Ethiopia has never been converted to Islam. There was a time when northern Ethiopia almost became a Muslim nation as the result of a brutal Islamic invasion under Geragne (left-handed) Mohammed. The Ethiopian Empire appealed to Europeans for help as it was the only Christian nation in Africa at the time. In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Portuguese responded with military force to curb Islam’s spread, fighting together with the Ethiopians to defeat the Islamic forces.

As a kind of thank-you gesture, the emperor of Ethiopia became a Catholic.

This was a turning point. This caused a civil war between the Orthodox and Catholics, taking the lives of thousands of Ethiopians. When another emperor came, there was theological debate about the two natures of Christ, and he confirmed that Ethiopia would stay an Orthodox nation. This further established the historical relationship between the Orthodox Church and the national identity of Ethiopia.

During the European Reformation, Ethiopia closed itself off from the outside world since foreign influence and theology had led to civil religious war. We were ignorant about the Reformation when it was happening. For two hundred years this continued, until the modern missionary movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It was during this time that the Ethiopian Church began developing some dangerous elements in its theology: salvation by works, the worship of angels, and the veneration of Mary and the saints. What had a very good beginning, with good apostolic history, became twisted.

The modern missionary movement began in Ethiopia in the nineteenth century. The teaching of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was identified as distorted, far from true teaching, so Protestant missionaries came to bring reformation/ revitalization to the existing Ethiopian Church in the north. The church was open, and the missionaries helped with translation of the Bible into the vernacular language.

But the missionaries repeated the same mistake from the past, not learning why Ethiopians expelled Catholics—the sensitive theological issue of the nature of Christ. There was a head-on collision with clergy of the Ethiopian Church on the doctrine of two natures. They also started by attacking the veneration of Mary, so the Orthodox Church expelled missionaries from the northern part of Ethiopia.

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By God’s providence, the missionaries came to southern Ethiopia where there was a high concentration of pagans and animists. They received the gospel and established Protestant, evangelical churches. In Ethiopia today, there is a clear demarcation between the north, which is highly Orthodox dominated, and evangelicals in the south.

What is the current relationship between the Evangelical Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church?

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church sees itself in a certain way. To them, “orthodox” means pure Christianity, and outsiders are perceived as bringers of foreign, nonorthodox religion. We have seen in the past state-sponsored persecution against evangelicals as a foreign, white-man’s religion: they have given us the slang names of “anti-Mary” or “Pente.” There is some improvement now, but for many years, we evangelicals were seen as heretics and a foreign threat. If someone wants to insult you in Ethiopia, they will call you “Pente,” as someone who denies the faith. While it’s not as bad as other times, there is not a strong, flourishing relationship. I cannot preach in an Orthodox Church. I would be forced to leave and maybe be beaten. In the past, there have been state-sponsored efforts to eliminate the evangelical movement. Evangelical churches have been denied the privilege of tax-free status, which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has. Especially in rural parts of the country, you are excommunicated from social participation and isolated from societal affairs. These are some of the “crosses” evangelicals are bearing in our country.

For evangelicals in Ethiopia, the focus is the gospel; it is not tradition or religion, but salvation that is by faith in Christ and not by works. This is our main, distinguishing mark: our sinfulness and salvation through Christ. For the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, it is tradition. We seek to be aggressive proclaimers of Christ.

The most important thing is the good news of the saving work of Jesus Christ.

What strengths and opportunities does the Ethiopian Evangelical Church have, and how can we pray?

Today, Ethiopia has one of fastest growing evangelical churches in Africa and in the world. Almost 20 percent of Ethiopia’s 118 million population is now evangelical. It is a young church, filled with children and youth with almost 70 percent under the age of thirty. We see the need to invest in the young people.

Another unique strength is that it is an indigenous church, starting with its own identity from the beginning. It is largely self-led and supported, not primarily missionary supported. We have different denominations, but there is general unity of evangelical denominations.

Ethiopian people have basic knowledge about the Scriptures, such that when you evangelize, you don’t start from scratch. The Ethiopian Church is really changing; we are less on the receiving end of the gospel. Instead, we are mission sending, mission minded, and globally engaged. The present government has given us relative religious freedom to preach the gospel, unlike some previous

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generations. Our geographic location, in the horn of Africa, is strategically important—near the Middle East and its gateway to Africa.

But we have many challenges. It is believed that there are up to 63,000 local churches in Ethiopia. However, this numerical growth is not met by maturity.

There is a theological famine, and many churches are largely without properly trained pastors. Islam also continues to grow. It is now 33 percent of the population and continues to be a challenge for the church and the country as a whole.

We are also currently facing political instability, with religious extremism rising.

Internal civil war in Ethiopia right now is a hindrance to preaching the gospel. We believe the gospel can bring peace if leaders have changed hearts. Globalization is another challenge to the church as postmodernism is now well introduced in Ethiopia, denying absolute truth. Liberal thinking can creep into our institutions, denying the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and miracles, seeking to redefine and “demythologize” the Scriptures. In all these things, we recognize our need for the Lord and for the global church’s prayer and support.

What do you think the Western Church can learn from the Ethiopian Church and its experiences?

There is a lot the Western Church can learn from the church in Ethiopia. In spite of the challenges, the church grows in persecution. We are not promised that we will be saved from experiencing this. If the church shuns persecution and compromises its identity in this, it will die.

When you travel to Europe and the United States, many churches that came out of the Reformation have quite elderly congregations. The church in the West needs to invest in young people and children for the sake of the gospel in the next generation.

Working in unity! In the Western world, denominationalism separates the church. Primary issues can bring us together in unity. Too often, churches divide over secondary issues that are not salvation issues.

Please tell us a little more about your work at Evangelical Theological College.

ETC has been in existence for the last thirty-seven years, after having begun as an undergraduate institution. The college grew after the fall of Communism in 1991. In thirty-seven years, 1,620 students from Ethiopia and around the world have graduated to serve in many different capacities and in many countries. We currently have 650 students in Addis Ababa, and we are accredited by the Association of Christian Theological Education in Africa. Our purpose is to prepare servant-leaders for the Ethiopian Church and beyond, and I’m very grateful to the Lord for calling me to this and for empowering ETC to fulfill this mission.

Dr. Frew Tamrat lives with his wife and two children in Addis Abada, Ethiopia, where he is the

principal of the Evangelical Theological College (ETC). He has a master’s degree in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD from Columbia International University.

“ ETC’s mission is to prepare servants primarily for vocational and nonvocational ministry that expands and matures the church in Ethiopia and beyond!” (etcollege.org)

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How We Think A B O U T

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I was a newly minted PhD shopping a revised dissertation manuscript around to a handful of publishing houses. Not long after an evangelical house decided to take it on, I found out that my title—something involving the phrase “the evangelical mind”—would be the first part of the project to feel the editor’s scalpel.

I was a bit surprised at my editor’s reluctance to include the phrase. Since the publication of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in 1994, the idea of a so-called evangelical mind (or, as it turned out, its relative absence) became a topic of interest both inside and outside American evangelicalism.

Over the years, the questions Noll raised were taken up and expanded by a variety of commentators, and discussions about the development or absence of an “evangelical mind” turned up in conferences, articles, and books ranging from Noll’s Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2010), which contained a postscript titled “How Fares the ‘Evangelical Mind?,’” to Owen Strachan’s Awakening the Evangelical Mind: An Intellectual History of the Neo-Evangelical Movement (Zondervan, 2015). Indeed, at the same time that I was in the initial phases of correspondence regarding my book proposal, my editor was working on an edited volume that would be published the next year as The State of the Evangelical Mind: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future (IVP Academic, 2018).

So, why the reluctance to include the oft-repeated phrase in my title? It was partly attributable to background noise—there were already a good number of titles containing the phrase. Some of the reluctance, however, pointed to a larger shift that was then gaining ground in some evangelical circles. In the fraught political and cultural wake of a Trump presidency, many evangelically inclined scholars and cultural commentators were beginning to doubt whether talking about an evangelical mind, let alone evangelicalism, continued to be helpful.

The question was not without some precedent. Commenting on a seldom quoted section of Noll’s Scandal, James K. A. Smith noted Noll’s distinction between “evangelical thinking and Christian thinking done by evangelicals” in order to highlight evangelicalism’s function “as a renewal movement that needs to find its fount and future in the broader Christian tradition—even as it is itself a gift to these older traditions.” For Smith, as for Noll, it followed that “the future of the evangelical mind is Catholic.” According to Smith, “The best thing for the future of the evangelical mind is to stop imagining that there is a distinctly evangelical mind.”

Before we start listing solas, we should note that this distinction does not necessarily imply that thinking Protestants should join the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church (though, as Smith notes, many one-time evangelicals are doing just that). Rather, he suggests that American Protestants

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“rekindle an unapologetic Protestant identity” that is both “confessional and ecclesial.” In part, this means that Protestants with evangelical histories and sensibilities have something to offer the church even as they allow themselves to be shaped by the global and historic church.

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Thinking Christianly with the Church Smith’s emphasis on rooting our efforts to cultivate a thinking Christianity in the life of the church strikes me as his most significant emphasis in a generally timely piece. Smith argues that from the time of Augustine through the Reformation and the birth of the modern evangelical movement, the church has been defined by an impulse toward the “democratization of knowledge,” whereby some of its greatest teachers have taken on the task of helping congregations learn to love God with both the heart and the mind.

The impulse to care for the hearts and minds of the whole church speaks to the sending nature of God and his call that his followers might be servants of all. It means that as Christians, our scholarly and educational endeavors should always be undertaken in an awareness of our rootedness—not primarily in the academy or our field, though those relationships certainly have their place, but within the family of God. As Smith asserts, “What evangelicalism ‘on the ground’ needs is scholars from the church for the church.”

For those of us who have spent any time around evangelical seminaries or university campuses with a robust community of historically orthodox Christians, it is probably easy to think about individual Christians and local congregations who seem to have a healthy balance of intellectual and evangelical sensibilities.

Outside those circles, however, this is not the case in the evangelical (or, for that matter, Protestant) church. Enormous regional, cultural, and socioeconomic differences exist—so much so that even churches who share similar denominational roots may find another church in the denomination almost unrecognizable in its approach to helping those in the pew think Christianly about all of life.

Sociologist D. Michael Lindsay highlights these polarizing trends in his 2007 book Faith in the Halls of Power. He notes that “as more evangelicals have entered the elite strata of society, a significant division has emerged within the movement” between what he describes as “cosmopolitan” and “populist” forms of evangelicalism. Lindsay, hovering on the edge of condescension, describes populist evangelicalism as “the domain of the PowerPoint sermon and the affect-oriented praise chorus,” noting that leaders within this stream of evangelicalism “derive their authority from the evangelical subculture,” which “remains their primary point of reference.” For Lindsay and his elite informants, evangelical Christianity at a popular level is a landscape littered with evangelical kitsch of the order of Thomas Kinkade paintings and Left Behind novels. He 4

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finds that cosmopolitan evangelicals are quick to distance themselves from this brand of evangelicalism in search of wider legitimacy—the pursuit of which Lindsay found to be “a principal concern” for his cosmopolitan evangelical interviewees.

Legitimacy, as it turns out, is not something these cosmopolitan evangelicals often found in church. Perhaps the most notable aspect of Lindsay’s study is not that these two general groups—or perhaps more accurately, a populist and cosmopolitan continuum—of Christians exist, but rather how little interaction individuals in either group have with the other. Lindsay found that most of his informants who gained elite status gradually distanced themselves from the local church in favor of involvement in parachurch ministries and personal interactions with individual pastors and teachers.

While Lindsay’s respondents enjoyed a level of social and cultural elitism far beyond what is attainable by most individuals, the general sensibilities and the ensuing cosmopolitan-populist divide he identified are often discernable to a lesser degree in American Christianity. If anything, this divide has likely grown in the fifteen years since Lindsay first conducted his research. Today, the need to anchor Christianity’s best thinking in the church and the church in Christianity’s best thinking seems more urgent than ever. To think, act, and pray Christianly requires that the American church explore promising avenues that seek to bridge the divides—including socioeconomic, racial, and intellectual—that mark the Protestant church in America. To think Christianly is to move away from disembodied faith and individualism and to discover afresh what it means to be an embodied human being made for holistic participation in the missio Dei as part of the people of God. 6

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The Roots of the Divide To understand the roots of this need, we have to understand the history and the cultural trends that have shaped the American church, both in its thinking and its overall sensibilities. Between the democratic impulses of revivalism and the sheer necessities of life on the frontier, the nation and its churches tended toward a pragmatic activism; in short, most early Americans were more accustomed to clearing land than clearing the shelves of a library.

Over time, however, Americans settled the land and correspondingly settled into more institutionalized patterns of intellectual engagement. The life of the mind began to find a greater place in American society in the last decades of the nineteenth century as German educational models caught on in American higher education. But for some evangelicals, these changes came with a price. While many Christians found a place within the new models, others found themselves increasingly at odds with formal education and the critical methods that seemed to run counter to traditional patterns of biblical interpretation. The stage for a controversy between fundamentalists and modernists was set.

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By the third decade of the twentieth century, the bitter disputes of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that wracked denominations and educational institutions during the 1920s had resulted in the transition of many fundamentalist Christians away from secular universities and mainline seminaries.

A vibrant network of Bible institutes emerged to fill the educational void. Like the Sunday school training conferences and Bible camps that also proliferated during this period, Bible institutes offered courses specifically geared to help lay Christians prepare for evangelism and practical participation in the functions of church life. Their tendency to engage theological training with a pragmatic emphasis on apologetics, evangelism, and training for Sunday school educators often left little time for wider intellectual inquiry. To some, it seemed as if fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants had relegated themselves to the cultural and intellectual backwaters. ***

The Limited Neo-Evangelical Renaissance

Charles E. Fuller (1887–1968)

Among those who observed this situation with concern was prominent Boston pastor Harold J. Ockenga. A former student of J. Gresham Machen, Ockenga benefitted from Machen’s keen theological mind without maintaining his mentor’s separatist bent. Thanks to both his earned PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and his prominent pastorate at Boston’s Park Street Church, Ockenga emerged as a kind of evangelical statesman in the 1940s as he helped found the National Association of Evangelicals (1942) to engage American culture with a new evangelicalism.

Ockenga was convinced that further engagement with the broader culture demanded not just an organization to unite and organize evangelical churches and pastors, but also an educational institution capable of training pastors in a way that was both academically rigorous and theologically orthodox. Working alongside radio evangelist Charles Fuller and a band of evangelical scholars, Ockenga helped found Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947. From its campus in Pasadena, California, the nondenominational school filled a need for evangelical theological education in the American West.

As noteworthy as the early vision of Fuller Theological Seminary was, the school’s top-down influence on local congregations could only ever be one part of a larger effort to help American churchgoers think Christianly about all of life.

During the first three quarters of the twentieth century, evangelical seminaries and their well-trained staff focused on a small subset of clergy-men—a double minority in most evangelical churches where laywomen made up the majority in the pews each Sunday. If the American church had a chance to adopt more rigorous and theologically aware patterns of thinking, it was going to need to engage its laity—men and women—more intentionally.

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The Promise of Lay Theological Education: L’Abri, Regent College, and Ligonier For evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, the 1960s was a season of innovation and openness, especially as it related to the role of the laity. While evangelicals did not have a Vatican II moment, some evangelically inclined Protestants demonstrated a remarkable ability to innovate during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Among the most influential of these innovators were Francis and Edith Schaeffer, an American missionary couple who made their home in a chalet on the edge of the small Swiss village of Huemoz. From this alpine outpost, the Schaeffers helped catalyze a loosely connected movement dedicated to bringing thinking Christianity to individual Christians and their churches and workplaces in the United States and around the world.

After several years as missionaries with the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, the couple decided in 1955 to launch L’Abri, an independent ministry centered around hospitality and spiritual conversations. L’Abri gradually developed into a well-known destination for a generation of footloose spiritual seekers and intellectually inclined young Christians. By the late 1960s, the Schaeffers’ ministry had expanded to include several other chalets and a chapel building that doubled as a study center called Farel House. Farel House students listened to Schaeffer’s tapes in the morning and worked on tasks like gardening or meal preparation in the afternoon.

Many of those who made their way to the Schaeffers’ Swiss retreat in the late 1960s and early 1970s found L’Abri to be a multifaceted community. At a basic level, L’Abri was a spiritual community but also one defined by open-handed hospitality and intellectual curiosity. As the Schaeffers helped students wrestle with intellectual questions in philosophy or modern art, they did so in the context of hospitality marked by generosity and a deep appreciation for cultivating beauty in everyday life. In so doing, they offered a generation of young people—most of them members of the laity—a framework for living a holistic Christian life in which their faith impacted every aspect of life.

Today, few would say that either Francis or Edith Schaeffer was right on every point. The Schaeffers’ strength lay in cultivating a hunger for beauty, truth, and goodness in many of those who stayed at L’Abri or encountered their work in print. Indeed, as Os Guinness and others have noted, Francis Schaeffer was a “door opener.” Together with Edith and the community at L’Abri, Francis helped enlarge the horizon of the possible by granting access not just to ideas but also to a hospitable community and an internationally connected relational network engaged in pursuing a life holistically affected by the gospel. Furthermore, because L’Abri was not a seminary and was open with an extremely minimal fee to anyone who could make the trip, it offered a chance for any man or woman who could find enough for a one-way ticket to Europe to take part in the community.

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At the same time L’Abri was beginning to gain international prominence, a group of Plymouth Brethren businessmen and scholars in Vancouver, British Columbia, were kicking off their own experiment in the theological education of the laity. Led by Marshall Sheppard and a talented board, the Vancouver committee hired Oxford geographer James M. Houston as principal and chartered Regent College in 1968.

The new college was both a reflection of the times and of the Plymouth Brethren’s historic aversion to professional clergy. As folks like Sheppard looked around North America, they were convinced that a better educated laity would demand better educated teaching from its pulpits. Graduate training was needed.

For Houston, however, the need went even deeper. From his position as a fellow and then bursar of Oxford’s Hertford College, Houston had witnessed the growing influence of the university within an increasingly professionalized society. His hope for Regent College was that it might be a place where laymen and laywomen could prepare to think theologically—to “think Christianly,” as he put it—about their profession and life, while the college simultaneously sought to impact the larger university through rigorous academics, publishing, and formal affiliation with its neighbor, the University of British Columbia.

From the start, Regent College differed from L’Abri in its commitment to engaging the university and the wider academy. Regent was meant to be a springboard to thoughtful Christian influence within the university and, especially after the first decade, the realms of business and politics. As subsequent work has shown, L’Abri also exerted some influence on these spheres of society, but it did so more as a byproduct than as a goal. Houston was much more intentional, noting that the university had become “the central institution of our time.” He urged young Christians, “Do not desert the campus for the church.”

But what Regent and L’Abri had in common was also significant. As communities dedicated to shaping the hearts and minds of lay Christians, they both did what traditional evangelical seminaries could (or would) not do. They could educate men and women on topics that included traditional seminary fare (e.g., church history, biblical studies, theology), while also providing opportunities for students to engage literature, modern art, and other contemporary issues. Both L’Abri and Regent could also do so more affordably and with greater flexibility and relational connection than a traditional seminary or Christian liberal arts college.

These shared emphases gave L’Abri and Regent College a magnetism that few other educational institutions or Christian communities could match. It also prompted a handful of folks to want to recreate the experiences they had within these communities back home at their churches or campuses, and for their own friends, family, and neighbors.

One of those who sought to build on the pattern of L’Abri as a living and learning community was a young Presbyterian pastor named R. C. Sproul. In 1971, after consultation with Francis Schaeffer, Sproul moved with his family and a couple of friends to Stahlstown, Pennsylvania, a rural town about an hour east of Pittsburgh in the Ligonier Valley. From 1971 until 1984—when Sproul 8

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and his board moved the ministry to Orlando and began focusing more exclusively on video distribution—the Ligonier Valley Study Center functioned as a regional hub for lay people and parachurch campus ministers seeking to develop a more theologically robust understanding of faith and life. Thanks in part to the ministry’s location, Sproul and his team at Ligonier made pursuing this type of intellectual engagement feasible for a wider subset of American evangelicals.

For evangelicals from Pennsylvania and surrounding states, the cost—in terms of time and money—of taking part in the programming at the Ligonier Valley Study Center was relatively manageable, thus giving access to more people from a greater socioeconomic and geographical spectrum.

L’Abri was Sproul’s primary model for the study center in Stahlstown, but the more likely scenario during the mid-1970s for those who were starting up living and learning communities was an amalgamation of the methods and ethos of L’Abri and Regent College. Whether it was campus-based efforts like the Center for Christian Study (f. 1975) at the University of Virginia, and New College Berkeley (f. 1977) at the University of California, Berkeley, or city-based study centers like the C. S. Lewis Institute near Washington, DC (f. 1976), many of the most significant efforts in the decade had direct ties to both L’Abri and Regent College. Leaders who had spent time at both L’Abri and Regent were a common feature in each community. In many cases, the influence of Regent College showed up in an explicit commitment to the theological education of the laity, whereas the connection to L’Abri manifested itself through a commitment to creating hospitable spaces where honest questions could find honest answers. By the late 1990s, the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville began to emerge as a model for university-based study centers that would eventually form the Consortium of Christian Study Centers (f. 2009) and take their place within a growing study center movement. ***

Assessing the Study Center Movement’s Impact Of course, the institutions connected to this study center movement have not and cannot singlehandedly reshape the ability of American Christians to think Christianly about all of life. But then again, that has never been the goal. That project is far larger and more multifaceted than one approach could ever hope to encompass. Most of the institutions mentioned above are extremely local. Like stick-built homes, most have been painstakingly constructed with their immediate context in mind. Though some study centers, like Sproul’s Ligonier Valley Study Center or the C. S. Lewis Institute, eventually expanded to regional or global ministries, many study centers, and virtually all the study centers that hold membership in the Consortium, are intentionally local with deeply embodied ways of ushering students into community, study, and spiritual discipleship. They

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are more than ideas; they are places where people and ideas thrive, comingle, and grow. In so doing, they also have an opportunity to help a generation of students who come through their door consider more fully what it means to think Christianly with and in the church. ***

Thinking Christianly with the Church

“ St. Anselm of Canterbury was an 11th century theologian and philosopher.

He is remembered, among other things, for the concept of ‘faith seeking understanding.’

He believed that our faith and our knowledge of the world are intertwined. His life of thoughtful faithfulness and engagement with learning provides a model for our presence at the university.” (anselmhouse.org)

Historically, the educational efforts of most study centers have drawn strength from their connections to local churches. New College Berkeley had First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley. The Center for Christian Study had Trinity Presbyterian Church. Regent College had the folks at Granville Chapel. These local churches supported the innovative efforts of study center founders by providing everything from built-in audiences and potential board members to financial contributions and access to mailing lists.

Connections to a local community of believers have always been important for study centers. If early study center leadership were members of a local congregation, the connections might be organic. In many cases, however, study center leaders had to work intentionally to cultivate good relationships with local churches. In 2009 when Bryan Bademan took over the role of executive director at the MacLaurin Institute (later renamed Anselm House) on the edge of the University of Minnesota, one of the first things he did was reach out to church leaders across the Minneapolis-St. Paul region to help forge connections between local congregations and the study center. The goal of these efforts was to link the parachurch ministry to local churches so that Bademan and his team could “do theological work on campus in ways that our churches would recognize as valuable.” Judging from the fact that Anselm House receives financial support from around thirty churches—some of which are from suburban or rural contexts and are solidly populist—it seems that Bademan’s efforts are paying off.

From the beginning, Bademan chose not to limit his efforts to evangelical churches. Though his own denominational affiliation was with the PCA, Bademan was intentional about reaching out to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders in his community. This openness to thinking with the whole church—not just an evangelical subset of it—eventually led Bademan and his team to change the name of the study center at the University of Minnesota to Anselm House, a name that was more recognizable to Catholic students and one that demonstrated the range of Christian thought on offer at the study center.

This movement toward thinking with the church historic, not the just the church as fractured by internecine rivalries in the American church or even the fragmentation that accompanied the Protestant Reformation, has been gaining momentum within the study center movement for years. Part of it is attributable to leaders like Regent’s James Houston and New College Berkeley’s Susan Phillips, who helped pioneer what became known as “spiritual theology.” Leaders like Houston and Phillips drew on methods of spiritual formation ranging from 11

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the spiritual practices of Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola to investigations of the spiritual discipline and theology of early Puritans. In so doing, these leaders and the institutions they led learned how to think with the wider church. ***

Thinking Christianly in the Church The impulse to form a Christian mind and not simply an evangelical one is an important way in which study centers like Anselm House and Chesterton House are helping Protestants of various stripes as well as their Catholic and Orthodox peers think Christianly with the wider church. But how can this thinking move from thinking with the church at a distance to thinking in the church? To quote James Smith again, how can places like study centers play a part in raising up “scholars from the church for the church”?

Although there is no one answer to this question, there is one trait that any answer will have to include—intentionality. Raising up scholars and thoughtful Christian voices from and for the church will not just happen.

Fortunately, there are reasons to be hopeful that this kind of intentionality is starting to gain some momentum. In addition to the clarion calls of prominent thinkers like Smith for deeper engagement between Christian scholars and local churches, some ministries like the Center for Pastor Theologians (f. 2006) have the explicit goal of connecting thinking Christianity to local congregations and wider networks of church leaders. Another notable example of this effort to help folks learn to think Christianly within the church is The Fellows Initiative.

Founded in 2006 in the Washington, DC, area out of preexisting Fellows Programs, the Fellows Initiative is a post-college gap-year program with deep connections to the study center movement. Unlike university-based study centers, which center their ministry in a free-standing study center building, the Fellows Initiative centers its ministry within local churches. Participating churches host anywhere from four to sixteen fellows for a nine-month residency program that includes host families, part-time work in the student’s field, a mentor, service in the local church, and theological education through a local Christian college or seminary.

Fellows Initiative executive director John Kyle sees the program as a twofold blessing, both to the fellows and to the churches. The fellows, who are typically recent college graduates who are attempting to think theologically about their fields at the onset of their careers, benefit from the intellectual and relational engagement they get from the program, while churches benefit from having a cohort of engaged and capable young adults serving with deep intentionality. Today, almost thirty churches in fourteen states host fellows through the Fellowship Initiative, and the number is likely to grow in the coming years.

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***

The Deepening Challenge: Thinking in and with the Whole Church Examples like those described above offer some of the compelling reasons to be hopeful about what the future might hold for the cultivation of hearts and minds within the American church. My own work of over nearly a decade to chart the history and influence of a study center movement within North American evangelicalism has reminded me time and time again that there are amazing thinkers with deep spirituality within evangelical churches and the larger church in America. There certainly are many Christians who have demonstrated the ability to think well and to think Christianly. For this, I remain grateful.

At the same time, my optimism is checked by a growing sense that significant blind spots and limitations remain. In an increasingly polarized society, where “populist” and “cosmopolitan” evangelicals and Christians of all traditions generally self-sort along lines of education and affluence (to name only a few), bringing Christian scholarship and the instinct to think Christianly about all of life to bear on the church as a whole—and not the church in a few affluent, well-educated parts—does not happen haphazardly. It takes intentional, Spirit-led effort to cross boundaries, to invest with kingdom sensibilities rather than market-driven metrics alone.

The reality is that from where I sit in rural America, I don’t see much of this.

This is part of the problem with our discussions about an “evangelical mind” and any discussion about helping evangelically inclined Protestants think Christianly about all of life. A vast majority of American Christians live in communities relatively untouched—and largely unsought—by the ministries and individuals who possess the resources that could truly help folks think Christianly. Instead, it is “experts” like Ken Ham, David Barton, and other celebrity communicators channeled through Christian radio, cable television, and mass market content ministries, who seek an audience in small towns like mine and thousands of other overlooked rural and urban communities across the country.

The study center movement has historically been one option that has had the intellectual tools and missional sensibilities to expand the horizons of the possible for everyday American Christians by offering an alternative vision of what it means to think Christianly about life. Even if the movement has not specifically targeted folks from the nonaffluent fringes of American society, it has (at least historically) been somewhat accessible. Places like L’Abri and the Ligonier Valley Study Center were open to all and relatively affordable once one got there. That is why a person such as African-American photographer Sylvester Jacobs, jaded by the racism he encountered in America, could purchase a one-way ticket to Europe and find his way to L’Abri and a new way of thinking about faith. Today, the path is more difficult. As significant as the university-based study center movement is in terms of helping students think Christianly, the very fact that most are located at elite state and private institutions means that selective university admissions committees are now determining which students have access to these

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ministries. In many cases, the students who get into places like Yale, Cornell, or the University of Virginia hail from affluent suburban or urban areas that primed them in a host of ways for academic success. More than a plane ticket, getting to these study centers takes years of work and planning in addition to the nod of a university administrator.

Don’t get me wrong. It makes sense that elite schools and affluent communities are among the pioneers for study centers and fellows programs. What doesn’t make sense to me, from a kingdom perspective, is how little effort I have seen put forth to expand the robust heart-mind programs I have witnessed in cities like New Haven and Charlottesville to the small campuses and towns where thousands upon thousands of evangelical students and congregants live largely unaware of the spiritual, intellectual, and even relational depth that the church at its best can offer if one knows where to look.

Perhaps the real crisis of the American church’s ability to think Christianly is more a failure to winsomely and intentionally engage the church outside the scholarly communities and affinity groups that more cosmopolitan evangelicals have worked so hard to carve out of secular campuses and urban cityscapes. I’m not downplaying the hard work of these groups at all. In fact, I’m commending it, so much so that I’m asking folks with the intellectual, relational, and financial resources to partner with local churches and communities to extend it to places that make strategic sense and to places that don’t. Where are the investors, thinkers, and partners willing to invest in the overlooked, nonstrategic corners of America’s countryside or cityscapes? Deep needs can be found in both places.

We need Spirit-led vision and imagination fueled by the goodness of the gospel as it relates to all of life. To think Christianly is not just to think well about scholarship or theology. It is that, but it is not only that. It is also to think with Christ and his church as we harness the resources that he has lavished on us to be the servants of all. This is a countercultural vision that just might be able to span the growing divides in our culture and orient our efforts to the whole church, not just the parts of it we recognize.

Charles E. Cotherman (PhD, University of Virginia) is pastor of Oil City Vineyard Church in

Pennsylvania and program director of the Project on Rural Ministry at Grove City College.

Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).

2. Noll, Scandal, 212; James K. A. Smith “The Future Is Catholic: The Next Scandal for the Evangelical Mind,” in Todd C. Ream, Jerry Pattengale, and Christopher J. Devers, The State of the Evangelical Mind: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 155–56.

3. Smith, “The Future Is Catholic,” 156.

4. Smith, “The Future Is Catholic,” 152.

5. D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 219.

6. Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power, 221.

7. Justin Taylor, “An Interview with Os Guinness on the 25th Anniversary of Schaeffer’s Death,” May 8, 2009, https:// 1.

www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor.

James M. Houston, “Regent College Vancouver: A New Venture in Christian Scholarship,” Thrust (January 1969), 3–8.

9. D. Michael Lindsay, “Evangelicals in the Power Elite: Elite Cohesion Advancing a Movement,” American Sociological Review 73, no. 1 (February 2008), 60–82.

10. James M. Houston, “The Christian Presence in the University,” Crux 10, no. 4 (Summer 1973): 21–23.

11. Information on the Anselm House comes from a Zoom interview with Bryan Bademan, July 6, 2021.

12. Bademan interview.

13. Bryan Bademan, email to author, July 26, 2021.

14. John Kyle, Zoom interview, June 24, 2021; https://www. thefellowsinitiative.org/fellows-programs.

8.

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POEM

Awe

by Matthew Nies

Cliffside, all I could ever see hidden in mist; I diatribe the great air unaware if up or down Holds my feet stone-sure, when rapture lifts A veil to magnificence surpassingly profound.

And instantly, universe, glowing stars as at a grasp, Surging past a billion galaxies free-anchored Into constant nothing—ducking, twisting, racing, splash!

Into the deep, cave black abyss, adrift despair. Sword Light heaves me dripping to the sun. I am one To infinity’s face, a naturally selected complication In the light of all creation. I am undone.

A gentle breeze carries me back to that misted canyon, Where I first faced the ages’ Awe and saw my honor Slanted by eternal height, width, breadth, and depth.

I glance and see an unexpected mirror; I hear a whisper: “Of all, you, image-bearing carrier of my breath.”

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POEM

Birth of a Universe

by Nick Schaff

Beyond. In lightless, soundless space, The night is infinite and void, Except for possibility.

Beginning has eluded us, And left us staring up at stars, Debating questions—“How,” then “Why?” Such musings perpendicular To better lines of questioning— The greatest mystery, “What?”

We ask ourselves, “What is? What isn’t?”

Within the shadow womb, a flare, Explosion piercing nothingness, Emergent substance, color. Light.

Cascades of energy expand, Traversing space in lightning waves To bathe our stars and drown wide eyes.

Our eyes reflect a swirling glow, The gleam of distant nebulas, A radiance celestial, Bright clouds of stardust on a canvas.

Unkind to thus bestow on us This infant universe, when we So little comprehend the first.

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III.

Persuade Thinking theologically about all things

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Fundamentals F O R

T H E

Evangelical

FUTURE by

D A N I E L

J.

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Persuade

M

Y S P I R I T UA L P I L G R I M AG E

offers one microcosm of American evangelicalism’s basic story arc: from mainline pietism through fundamentalism to both neo-evangelicalism and confessional Protestantism. I was born into mainline pietism as a Methodist in rural Ohio.

But when the denomination began sending pastors to our congregation who did not believe and preach the Bible, we shifted into the fundamentalist Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches. There I was taught “the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible” to the extent, as a teenage Bible quizzer, of memorizing thirteen entire books of the Bible—including some big ones like Matthew, John, Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians.

My college was quasi-fundamentalist, yet it began to broaden my evangelical horizons. As a seminary student in Grand Rapids, I encountered Reformed theology. Although I initially remained in baptistic churches, I began to explore more liturgical traditions. After doing PhD work at one pan-evangelical institution, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I accepted a teaching position at another, Wheaton College, in which context I was tempted by Anglicanism but ended up Presbyterian. For the people I came from, Wheaton is both suspect and elite— controversial for its approach to the sciences, its association with Billy Graham, and its aspiration to engage the wider world with a big evangelical tent.

This pilgrimage has compressed the so-called long twentieth century into a middle-aged theologian’s life. So, I have long been motivated to study the tangled historical web that is American fundamentalism and evangelicalism via, for instance, multivolume syllabi obtained from the heyday of Grace Theological Seminary as well as a PhD seminar taught by John Woodbridge, who was a fountain of insider anecdotes.

Although my assigned question for this essay is theological—Do “fundamentals” have a necessary place in the future of evangelical theology, assuming that “evangelical” theology has a future?—I cannot fulfill this assignment as if the question lacks a history. Despite its author’s lack of technical expertise, each section of this essay will comment on evangelical history’s theological morals. On one hand, we will find necessary achievements of early fundamentalism that evangelical theology cannot and should not disown. Yet, on the other hand, we will face profound failures of subsequent fundamentalism, which evangelical theology also cannot disown but must overcome.

This theological question of fundamental doctrines confronts us in a challenging context. Today, “fundamentalist” is a term of derision; as Alvin Plantinga colorfully analyzes, it functionally means “any stupid [expletive] . . . to the right” of the speaker. Even in scholarly circles, “fundamentalism” no longer designates a specific Protestant movement but rather labels a subset of conservative

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adherents—in whatever religious tribe—who believe in the literal truth of their sacred texts enough to be a societal menace.

In recent years, pollsters and pundits essentially conflated “evangelicalism” with this type of fundamentalism, and many “evangelicals” cooperated with politicizing both terms. The ensuing variety of supposed evangelical beliefs hardly increases confidence in the concept of fundamental doctrines. Of course, these are generalizations that apply particularly to the American context, whereas evangelical theology is a complex global phenomenon (and, for that matter, historians newly recognize the reality of Black and British fundamentalists that complicates earlier narratives). It will be difficult but important not to overreact theologically, one way or the other, to the bad press.

For Protestants to answer this question about fundamental doctrines theologically requires discerning biblical principles, but also developing historical perspective and deploying contemporary prudence. As we shall see, biblical principles require evangelical theology to embrace the concept and identify the content of fundamental doctrines. As we do so, historical perspective and contemporary prudence are necessary to prevent the American cultural context from distorting that evangelical task. Scripture must set the “fundamental” parameters. By definition, though, it cannot speak directly into the vastly different milieu of divided churches twenty centuries later. Accordingly, the relevant biblical principles involve not only the form and content of (1) creedal confession, but also commitments to (2) ecumenical endeavor, (3) theological triage, and (4) lawful love as we identify (5) evangelical essentials. ***

Creedal Confession The biblical foundation for embracing the concept and identifying the content of fundamental doctrines is creedal confession, reflected in both precept and example. We believe and therefore we speak (2 Cor. 4:13; cf. Ps. 116:10). Whoever ultimately denies Christ before human tribunals (whether literal or metaphorical) will find that Christ denies being united with them, but whoever confesses Christ will be guided by the Holy Spirit and vindicated at the final judgment (e.g., Matt.

10:32–33). This act of confession is deeply personal but also profoundly communal, originating in baptism. The primitive Christian confession of “Jesus is Lord” is enabled by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3) yet is publicly made with words that depend on churchly evangelism (Rom. 10:9–21). Jesus Christ is the foundation on which the church is built into a holy temple (1 Cor. 3:10–17), and the gospel’s matters of first importance center on his death and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3–4).

The importance of these confessional precepts is evident in numerous examples of warnings against false teachers. These warnings consistently identify heresy by its contradiction of sound teaching about the person and work of Christ.

Creedal confession involves personal participation in Christian worship, which enacts a public witness. “I believe” the gospel proclaimed by the church,

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in which I join the praise of the Triune God who has redeemed us. Coming to participate in the church’s public witness begins in baptism. Between that initial confession and the church’s eschatological vocation of declaring God’s glory (e.g., Ps. 96:3), we regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper, making visible the foundational unity we share by virtue of Christ’s saving death. The Lord’s Table is “fenced,” but not in terms of human worthiness outside of union with Christ. The table is “open” to all who have joined in the baptismal confession and whose penitent participation joins in proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:17–34). ***

Ecumenical Endeavor Speaking of creedal confession may seem awkward or redundant, but in two ways it fosters conceptual clarity that encourages ecumenical endeavor. First, fundamental doctrines orient personal faith toward communal worship. While the adjective “creedal” emerges from credo—a personal act—the noun “confession” denotes public acknowledgment of these life-defining beliefs. This movement from personal faith to public confession places the identification of fundamental doctrines in a positive context: Christian worship reminds the church that these doctrines are not just a deposit to safeguard but ultimately a treasure to share.

Second, fundamental doctrines orient the church toward oneness in Christ.

The plurality of Protestant confessions has its place this side of heaven. These confessions, however, particularize the historic creeds, which come as close as possible to being truly “ecumenical”—expressing what, in the famous words of Vincent of Lérins (d. 450), has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all.” If we would obediently “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace,” then our confessional acts need the regular creedal reminder that “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:3–6).

The initial fundamentalists were ecumenical in this sense—defending the core doctrines without which, they recognized, Christian faith would no longer be the same. They joined this project from a variety of backgrounds—even transatlantic locations—and denominational affiliations. They offered their defenses in a relatively calm, deliberate fashion. Of course, they undertook some polemics, but their arguments were rarely ad hominem and they typically engaged the best rather than the worst opposition. The doctrines they defended were at the heart of the ecumenical creeds and their Protestant identity: the full divinity, incarnation, virgin birth, and miracles of Christ; his atoning death and bodily resurrection; and the trustworthy authority of the Scriptures that taught them.

Medieval Credo Apostolorum, dated ca. 1300 (public domain)

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***

Theological Triage The act of confession and the pursuit of unity entail theological triage: identifying different levels of biblical doctrines to communicate and defend. Matters of first importance claim that operational status only when other matters are treated as secondary. Ephesians roots the unity of the Spirit in maintaining a bond of peace that emerges from the Trinitarian salvation we share. Often, New Testament exhortations to be “of the same mind” (e.g., Phil. 2:1–4) do not clarify the correct content to believe but challenge us to pursue Christ-likeness by loving others, even our opponents (e.g., Phil. 4:1–3).

Recent discussions of theological triage typically recognize three levels. In Theology and the Mirror of Scripture, Kevin Vanhoozer and I identify these levels with as much biblical texture as possible.

(1) Gospel-level disagreements put heresy at stake. Division is regrettably necessary at this level, even if scholars and pastors may be called to maintain discerning dialogue with opponents. As noted above, in Scripture such disagreements consistently focus on the person and work of Christ although, as noted below, they incorporate ethics in a particular way.

(2) Then ministry-level disagreements call for maintaining fellowship, despite differences that may require separate practices of Christian mission. The disagreement of Paul and Barnabas about whether to include John Mark on their missionary journey is a case in point (Acts 15:36–41). Their ministries could not be paralyzed by waiting to find agreement, but their walking apart did not entail any breach of eucharistic, evangelical communion.

(3) In congregation- and person-level disagreements, it should often be possible to maintain collaboration and fellowship by adopting Christlike forbearance. Such disagreements allow for mutual admonition, while leaving each person accountable to the Lord for what they approve (Rom. 14:1–15:7; 15:14). In such cases, institutional separation or refusal of fellowship would diminish the church’s public witness regarding the love that should distinguish Christ-followers (John 13:34–35).

Of course, the rub lies in distinguishing between the second and third levels, as well as discerning how they apply to doctrinal disagreements between Protestant Christians. The church’s history of postbiblical division makes it unlikely that the Bible could specify exactly which doctrines land at what level for modern institutions. New Testament epistles were wrestling to articulate christological orthodoxy as it applied to legions of practical concerns, not to address how views of baptism or the Lord’s return should affect thresholds for communion and collaboration. While this biblical framework therefore has limits, with the second and third levels focusing on divergent practices, it remains pertinent because doctrines and practices are profoundly interwoven. Disagreement about baptism may be more immediately and obviously “practical” than disagreement about the Lord’s return, but both deploy theological beliefs—as did the disagree1

The three levels of theological triage: (1) gospel-level disagreements (2) ministry-level disagreements (3) congregationand person-level disagreements

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ments between Paul and Barnabas or the first-century adiaphora, the “disputable matters” of Romans 14.

To state the obvious, twentieth-century fundamentalism failed to remain an ecumenical endeavor focused on confronting heretical departures from the biblical gospel. At worst, it degenerated into paranoid and pugnacious cults of celebrity. At best, however, it retained a crucial basis for its own reform—the Bible’s foundational authority—while its institutional retrenchment enabled some ongoing evangelical collaboration. To give credit where credit is due, the fundamentalists taught me the Bible, which repeatedly celebrates Christian unity and calls for Christlike love to characterize his disciples. In so doing, fundamentalism fostered its own critique. An instructive example of first- and second-level doctrinal confusion would be its frequent identification of a pretribulation rapture with biblical orthodoxy, associating amillennialism with nonliteral interpretation and social-gospel optimism. Admittedly, it should be no more problematic for a dispensationalist seminary to place an eschatological view within its doctrinal statement than for a confessionally covenantal seminary to do so. But many fundamentalists went farther than that. An instructive example of second- and third-level confusion would be the lukewarm or even hostile American engagement with the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. Whatever the exact assessment of its call for integral mission, Lausanne’s global insights did not merit dismissal as a social gospel. Such reactions reflected and reinforced American fundamentalist myopia. ***

Lawful Love Thus the biblical principles undergirding an account of fundamental doctrines would be incomplete without another vital element: lawful love. In 1 John, the false teachers are not simply heralding christological heresy but also hindering Christian love. The Bible confronts both temptations as fundamental errors.

Perhaps, actually, these errors are connected. Those who sow churchly division or stifle Christian affections may not grasp the extent of the mercy that God has shown them in Christ’s work. Lest “love” become a trite cipher for tolerance, however, the New Testament underscores its harmony with God’s law (e.g., Rom. 13:8–10). Speaking of the church’s “peace and unity” without its “purity” would mean minimalist absence of conflict—not the manifold oneness of biblical shalom.

In principle, the church’s peace, unity, and purity involve creaturely participation in and analogical reflection of God’s love and truth, which coinhere.

In practice within our fallen world, of course, we encounter apparent tensions between these values. But we should neither assume that pursuing the church’s purity always excludes forbearing love nor attempt to maintain peace and unity apart from purity. This side of heaven, to be sure, not every debate about God’s law jeopardizes churchly purity enough to authorize division—as we can see from disagreements over the Torah’s ongoing application in the adiaphora of Romans 14. But divisions can manifest divine approval and disapproval (1 Cor. 11:19).

“ Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”

From Augustine's — De Doctrina Christiana, I.36.

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Jude (see especially v. 4) apparently provides a case in which ethical deviation— promotion of sexual license—constitutes false teaching that undermines christological orthodoxy, functionally denying Jesus’s Lordship. The New Testament’s gospel-level boundary therefore concerns not only Christ’s person and work but also his ethical authority. It is possible to hinder Christian love or herald immoral living so severely as to become heretically incompatible with the confession that Jesus is Lord. Contemporary suggestions for grounding church unity in the affirmation of Nicene orthodoxy while ignoring disagreements over human sexuality may be naive about the degree to which these are mutually implicated. The church’s genuine peace and unity are interrelated with its purity.

Just so, however, fundamentalism and evangelicalism must grapple with their history of pugnacious Americans, whose injuries to the church’s peace and unity have not simply overrated its purity but have seriously harmed its genuine pursuit. As fundamentalists suffered serial defeats in mainline denominations during the early twentieth century, they retrenched with institutions that became relatively isolated, partly by design, from wider culture. This isolation reflected and intensified a sense of embattlement. In that context, unfortunately, debates about “secondary separation” from other believers who were not strict enough about interaction with liberals proliferated injuries from friendly fire.

The ecumenical impulse of defending fundamental doctrines gave way to denying fellowship over tertiary matters. Worse still, American fundamentalists and many evangelical heirs became characterized by both rabid anti-Communism and (at best) indifference to racism, which moved them beyond the confusion of tertiary and fundamental doctrines. With due allowance for their complex circumstances, hindsight highlights that they frequently conflated secular political desires with fundamental doctrines. Hence, they failed to uphold, in practice if not in principle, the Bible’s fundamental teaching about the equal dignity of all God’s image-bearers and the spiritual oneness of Christ’s body. Loss of proportion about Communism exacerbated a lack of perspective about racism. This lack of Christian love did fundamental violence to God’s law and gospel witness, as Carl Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism confronted long ago.

While too often complicit, evangelical leaders have also tried to confront such error—yet with mixed results. Donald Dayton was probably right to highlight social class as a neglected factor in mainstream evangelical histories. But championing grassroots pietism in contrast with Reformed elites may be a double-edged sword. Granting the elites’ overrated competence and influence, we might sympathize with Richard Mouw’s plea for “consulting the faithful.” But, as David Wells charged, popular evangelicalism often has “no place for truth.” Instead a syncretistic set of fundamental doctrines may be dominant—or just another “cultural toolkit” altogether (as Michael Emerson and Christian Smith documented with respect to race). American evangelicalism has made a grand attempt to foster “the priesthood of all believers” but without sufficient catechesis to fulfill it.

In the ensuing reflections about the evangelical future, I do not speak for everyone thus labeled or to everyone in defense of retaining the label. I attempt 2

3

4

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to reason with Protestant brothers and sisters about the biblical necessity of “confessional” Christianity and the related aspirations of properly “evangelical” theology by whatever name. Confessional Protestants should naturally recognize the biblical need for renewed catechesis. We should recognize, however, that biblical catechesis seeks not only to impart gospel doctrine but also to inculcate Christlike love. Thus, given the current state of our churches, we should acknowledge the need to learn from the critiques of nonconfessional pietists regarding our lack of conformity to biblical orthopraxy. ***

Evangelical Essentials “Evangelical” is a label with a polyvalent history and a perplexing future. New factors have complicated our map drawing. The conservative Southern Baptist resurgence, institutions such as the Evangelical Theological Society, movements such as Christian schooling, and political pollsters’ data sets have added swaths of Christians to the ranks of so-called evangelicals who were previously labeled otherwise. Increasing evangelical overlap with forms of “Pentecostal” Christianity, in America and abroad, has also changed the landscape. Whatever the changing fortunes of the evangelical label, though, the preceding theological framework suggests that we cannot do without the reality it stands for. Even confessional Protestants with a primary identity in a particular tradition should feel a secondary impetus from creedal confession to pursue ecumenical endeavor and therefore to practice theological triage.

If such evangelical theology would both honor and improve its fundamentalist heritage, then it must maintain fundamental doctrines while manifesting its integral bond with lawful love. Thus the orthopraxy of the book of James confronts key failures of second-generation fundamentalism and calls contemporary evangelicals to fruitfulness in Christian love alongside our faithfulness to confessional orthodoxy.

First, unbiblical “fundamentalism” has failed to “consider it pure joy” when facing possible trials (James 1:2–4). Without lionizing persecution or placing cultural marginalization on the same level as physical martyrdom, it is vital to acknowledge the biblical expectation of suffering for the sake of mature Christian faith—whereas we have been tempted instead to confuse the blessings of American freedom with fundamental doctrine.

Second, unbiblical “fundamentalism” has failed to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). Without minimizing God’s call to champion truth, it is vital to avoid shooting first and asking questions later—which became our characteristic posture even before the age of social media.

Third, unbiblical “fundamentalism” has failed to oppose favoritism and discrimination (James 2:1–13). Without faddishly criticizing our forebears, it is vital to address this sinful history. Our culture of celebrity preachers is not an invention of the internet. Even honorable leaders like Billy Graham have acknowledged 6

“ If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. . . . So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” ( James 2:8-9, 12-13 ESV)

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mistakes in navigating the halls of power. And we have a shameful tendency toward both indifference about social injustice and even racial discrimination itself. As James confronts the church, unbiblical fundamentalists may simultaneously and ironically suffer class discrimination while perpetuating other forms of favoritism.

Fourth, unbiblical “fundamentalism” has failed to accomplish the good works of communal care that are consistent with biblical faith (James 2:14–26). Without embracing a “woke” gospel, it is vital to align our priorities with the biblical prophets (including James 5:1–6) and our mission with Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom.

Fifth, unbiblical “fundamentalism” has failed to avoid the devilish “wisdom” that stokes churchly division (James 3–4). Without ignoring the need for doctrinal vigilance (e.g., Acts 20:28–31), it is vital to attain the humility that can tame our tongues. All too frequently, we praise God while attacking God’s image-bearers. Our leaders often use bully pulpits to enhance their churchly influence and worldly status. Failing truly to acknowledge God as lawgiver and judge, we thus violate the ninth commandment with slander left and right.

To be sure, the contemporary scene contains unbiblical “evangelicalism” that is so desperate to disown fundamentalism, it risks denying fundamental doctrine. Here, James gives no quarter in his critique of double-minded departures from faith (1:2–8), his commitment to truth given God’s immutable character (1:17–18), his celebration of God’s liberating law (1:22–25; 2:8–13), and his call for righteousness in light of divine judgment (e.g., 4:11–12). Orthopraxy and orthodoxy coinhere.

The future of evangelical theology certainly depends on embracing fundamental doctrines, rooted in creedal confession as a positive aspect of the Christian life and the church’s worship. From this impetus, baptized members of Christ’s body should pursue ecumenical endeavors and practice theological triage as we regularly proclaim our gospel unity in partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Alongside such evangelical orthodoxy, we must renew our commitment to the biblical orthopraxy of lawful love. Faithful testimony to the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) depends on it.

Daniel J. Treier (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the Gunther H. Knoedler Professor of

Theology at Wheaton College, Illinois.

See, e.g., R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s contribution to Andrew David Naselli and Collin Hansen, eds., Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011); and Gavin Ortlund, Finding the Right Hills to Die on: The Case for Theological Triage (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).

2. E.g., in Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, eds., The Variety of American Evangelicalism (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1991).

3. Richard J. Mouw, Consulting the Faithful (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

1.

David Wells, No Place for Truth: or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

5. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

6. For my definitional approach, see the aforementioned book with Kevin Vanhoozer, as well as my Introducing Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019).

4.

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Vol. 31, No. 1

IV.

Engage Understanding our time and place

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THE

FORCE O F

POETIC THOUGHT

by

L A R R Y

W O I W O D E

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M

is pleased to welcome Larry Woiwode, poet laureate of North Dakota, as the new poetry editor.

Larry is the author of the poetry collection Even Tide (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977) and a chapbook, Land of Sunlit Ice (NDSU Press, 2016). His poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker, The Transatlantic Review, and other venues, and is reprinted in a dozen anthologies. His novels have received the William Faulkner Foundation Award and John Dos Passos Prize and one was a finalist for the National Book Award. He received the Medal of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is awarded every six years “for distinction in the art of the short story.”

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“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day.

For there would be an intolerable hunger.” —Muriel Rukeyser 1

Some might take this statement of Muriel Rukeyser, an esteemed poet and political activist, as hyperbole when you consider how often people say, “I just don’t understand poetry” or “I’ve hated poetry since high school!” That distaste likely exists because poetry in high school is often taught as an inexplicable entity crowded with symbols and hidden meanings that only the initiated can comprehend and explicate.

I must say right off that this isn’t so. I’ve worked and spent time with dozens of poets, and I don’t know one who hoped to hide meanings or purposely put symbols in a poem. Poets don’t do that. Those outside of the creative process take a critical stance that sets them in a position superior to the poem on the page. They identify symbols and meanings beyond the poet’s intent, and every poem contains elements that evade entire understanding. Paul Valery, the lauded twentieth-century French poet, wrote, “The power of verse is derived from an indefinable harmony between what it says and what it is.”

A contra-poetry crowd, I’ll call it, has been around as long as poetry itself, as noted by Pulitzer laureate Edward Hirsch: 2

Cicero said that even if his lifetime were to be doubled he would still not have time to waste on reading the lyric poets. . . . In America the old line repeats itself with a kind of tired regularity, and every few years some Cicero or other decides poetry is dead. It is not. When Plato suggested banning poetry from the Republic he showed much better sense, for he recognized the revolutionary power of poetic thinking.

3

This thinking is apparent in the depths to which it took the foremost scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein. He said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” and added that he thought in pictures. “I rarely think in

Larry Woiwode

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words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.”

Einstein’s poetic imagination was able to achieve conceptual leaps that more conventional modes of word-filled thought could not.

Visual imagination is the poet’s realm. The word or phrase a critic might propose as a symbol is probably a vestige of visual imagery that moved a poet to write the poem. Said Einstein, “Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the beauty of the universe itself. Of course, like all great beauty, his music was pure simplicity” —as in the musicality of this poem by Robert Frost: 4

5

The way a crow shook down on me The dust of snow from a hemlock tree Has given my heart a change of mood And saved some part of a day I had rued.

A black-and-white poem of cold change turns out for the speaker’s good, with of course a green hemlock front and center and the poet beneath. Was Frost thinking of Socrates’s less exhilarating experience with hemlock? I doubt it occurred to him in this moment of pure simplicity and tight rhyme that lifts into song.

The formulation of a language can occur through poetry. Take the Iliad and Odyssey. Whether composed by Homer or a generation of his adherents, here classical Greek had its beginning. Similarly, when the German tribes, the Angles and the Saxes, retreated from the island of England, the linguistic heritage they left formed Beowulf, which led to the Middle English of Chaucer, which led to Shakespeare codifying the breadth of English. And Dante’s Divine Comedy elevated a local version of Italian vernacular into the Italian language as spoken to this day.

Turn now to a forerunner of Dante, the apostle Paul. Preparing his persuasive gospel to the philosophers at the Areopagus, Paul was aware that poetry articulates the philosophical outreach of a culture. Nearing his conclusion, he said that the god called the “unknown god” was “him in whom we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘We are indeed his offspring.’” In their panoply of gods, Paul says, the poets recognized a single god from whom they sensed their descent, “his offspring”—a catchy phrase.

The poem quoted by the apostle was not a lyric, but a meaningful line of poetry that Paul, who recited or sang many psalms, would pick up on. Its first-person lyrics fall somewhere between discernable statements and song:

Western wind when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain?

Christ! if my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again! [Anon]

The songs of a Broadway musical are lyrics set in stanzas that rhyme. Advertising jingles are lyrics. And if the lyrics of popular songs are a gauge of the direction a culture is trending, the majority of American versions are grossly

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sexually troubling, headed on a hellish downhill slide. America also has serious young and middle-aged and older poets, however, whose books in many instances contain varieties of positive directions. A good number of poets, too, have been employed in business: from T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens to Dana Gioia and Ted Kooser, alongside farmers like Robert Frost and Wendell Berry, plus thousands of professors.

In a recent podcast, Bishop Robert Barron pointed out the powerful influence poetry can exert. According to Barron, Walt Whitman, the transcendental American poet, had such a robust effect on G. K. Chesterton that it moved him to faith in Christ and led him to become an apologist for Christianity and, particularly, Catholicism. The Whitmanesque effect opened nature, and then nature’s Creator, to Chesterton.

Poetry trains the mind to explore creative realms, enabling a reader to escape repeated televised opinions, for instance, most of which are nonfactual. This is one side of the effectual power of poetic imagery, especially animated multicolor imagery projected electronically into the brain. So, a “dark side” to the power of creative imagery does exist, not to the extent in poets, I believe, as in propagandists and criminals who operate at the creative edge to keep a step ahead of rationality and the law. That includes not only scammers, cyber criminals, and drug and human traffickers, but also local and national politicians who employ imagery to deceive. Trust arrives only in the context of truth.

To do a turn on the adage “It isn’t true because it’s in the Bible; it’s in the Bible because it’s true,” I will say, “It isn’t true and beautiful because it’s in a poem; it’s in a poem because it’s beautiful and true.” This echoes the poet John Keats’s dictum: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

To transfer this to the Christian realm, you will find John Calvin state in his commentaries that truth, no matter its source, is from God, and that a reader of Scripture knows that God dwells in the beauty of holiness. He has set down the footsteps of the Word made flesh as a path for anyone interested in poetry or metaphorical thought to follow. When Jesus as that Word speaks, it’s not mere talk; it’s creation and recreation of us in his image. It is supernatural poetry.

Larry Woiwode is the poetry editor for Modern Reformation.

Muriel Rukeyser, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/muriel-rukeyser (accessed August 10, 2021).

2. Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999), xi (italics original).

1.

Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, xii.

Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 7, 9.

5. Isaacson, Einstein, 14.

3.

4.

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POEM

Christmas Break

by Nick Schaff

I’d like to preface with a claim I can’t particularly support: That kids and grown-ups are the same, But kids play games, and grown-ups, sports.

The rules don’t change, and nor do we, But somewhere in there, life adds stakes, Great stakes, as tall as any tree, Bequeathed with grace and well-placed whacks.

Thus hammered, we meander, trip, And jump at distant thunder while Ignoring hairs that start to crisp From looming lightning overhead— The camera flashes as we smile.

Our life’s a life-long exercise In missing forests for their trees.

We fill our chests, rely on eyes, And trust the little each eye sees.

A man stands in his kitchen and Beholds the backyard, while above, His daughter spies a far-off land (What wise old Noah missed could not Elude the vantage of a dove).

Her small feet patter in the wake Of those tough soles that came before, Unsure if they’d made a grave mistake, Leaving home to walk a distant shore.

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I think of them beneath outcropped Jungle, unsure if I’ve been tricked, For I feel I’m home, and I drop My knee. I know when I’ve been licked.

I mean, really, how grown are we, To boast of such a massive change As five or six feet up from three?

Can depth stand substitute for range?

In time, so many have grown up, So few gone out—including me— A wolf that came to dread its inner pup And human stakes and restless trees.

They say the sky’s the limit, but Guess what? A circle has no end.

Look left, look right, look up and cut The sky with strangers who may turn Out to be your long-forgotten friends.

Although we wonder at a plant’s Great height, is branching from its stalk Not braver effort, slimmer chance, Reaching out, not up? (Pardon the Anthropomorphization, Doc).

Don’t know developmental stages, All of that oral, phallic stuff; I’ll take tundras over entendres, Because I find them beautiful, Which is, for me, enough.

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Spring Book Preview

by Noah Frens

January/February 2022

The Knowledge of God: Essays on God, Christ, and Church

By Michael Allen T&T CLARK | JANUARY 2022 | 192 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $115.00

The Fear of the Lord: Essays on Theological Method

By Michael Allen

All Thy Lights Combine: Figural Reading in the Anglican Tradition Edited by Ephraim Radner and David Ney LEXHAM PRESS | JANUARY 2022 | 304 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $32.99

a growing interest by Protestants in what has been variously called the “theological” or precritical reading of Scripture that has centered around a theological retrieval of previous and neglected avenues of biblical interpretation. Often these works detail ways of reading the biblical text that are not strictly “literal” but often involve figurative or even allegorical readings of a text. This present monograph is much needed and fills a lacuna. The current body of scholarship tends to draw deeply from either patristic sources or the magisterial Reformers, notably Luther and Calvin, and around a narrower range of topics, such as Christology or covenant theology. This volume focuses on a specific tradition (the Church of England) over a broader chronology (from William Tyndale to C. S. Lewis) and touches a range of topics (from law to ecclesiology), and so promises to be a welcome addition to the current precritical hermeneutics scholarship.

RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN

T&T CLARK | JANUARY 2022 | 208 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $115.00

Allen has placed himself as one of the most interesting and engaging Protestant dogmaticians writing today, as the essays in these collections will no doubt evidence. I have always appreciated his ability to deftly weave together multiple disciplines—from theology to church history to exegesis—into an informative and coherent project. In this respect, Allen reminds me of the late John Webster, about whom Allen has written quite a bit in recent years. Anyone interested in the doctrine of God and theological method will want to pick up these volumes.

OVER THE LAST DECADE OR MORE,

Calvin’s Ecclesiology: A Study in the History of Doctrine

By Tadataka Maruyama EERDMANS | MAY 2022 | 480 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $65.00

THE TOPIC OF CALVIN and ecclesiology has long in-

terested scholars, though most of this work has tended to be done by social historians interested in the societal impact of Calvin’s ecclesial reforms in Geneva (e.g., the work of Robert Kingdon or Scott

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Manetsch). Substantially less work has been done on theological contour and development of Calvin’s ecclesiology doctrines. With the vast body of literature on Calvin and widespread interest that he and ecclesiology have garnered over the years, I was amazed that no monographs had yet appeared that elucidate the theological shape of his ecclesiology, tracing its development over the various periods of his life. Tadataka Maruyama has filled this gap with his new book. Having written a similar, meticulous study on the development of Beza’s ecclesiology, Maruyama seems well situated as a scholar to produce this study. The work looks to be an excellent addition to the body of Calvin scholarship and Reformation views of the church.

You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature

Long). In previous writings and discussions on the topic, Hart, in his typical acerbic tone, has made it well known that the revival of a Manual Thomist view of nature and supernature is one of the greatest theological travesties of this century.

Though debates about nature and supernature may seem pedantic and highly abstract at times, how one conceives of the relation between the two affects nearly every area of soteriology. As Hart’s previous writings have sketched, his understanding of nature and supernature undergirds his conception of universal salvation as well as how he understands theosis, both of which I am sure he will discuss in this book.

Though not everyone appreciates Hart’s rhetorical style, to say the least, I find in reading him never a dull moment. Even when I often find myself holding completely opposite opinions, I always come away from him having thought through my own views in greater detail.

By David Bentley Hart

Other Works

NOTRE DAME PRESS | APRIL 2022 | 162 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $25.00

Reformed and Evangelical across Four Centuries: The Presbyterian Story in America By Nathan P. Feldmeth, S. Donald Fortson III, Garth M. Rosell, and Kenneth J. Stewart

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN the natural and super-

EERDMANS | JANUARY 2022 | 360 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $29.99

natural, or nature and grace, has had a significant place in the periphery of nearly every theological book that David Bentley Hart has written, and I am glad he is finally coming out with a booklength treatment of the topic. Outside of a few Anglicans or neo-Calvinists, contemporary Protestants rarely make use of the categories of the natural and the supernatural. But twentiethcentury Catholicism had many rancorous disputes on how to understand these concepts. On the one side were the so-called Manual Thomists (e.g., Réginald Garigou Lagrange, et al.) and on the other were those who followed the Ressourcement Thomism (e.g. Henri de Lubac, et al.).

Various movements of the past two decades, however, have revived the dispute (see especially the works of Lawrence Feingold and Steven A.

The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God

By Thomas Joseph Whit, O.P. CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA MARCH 2022 | 632 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $34.95

Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures Edited by Jessica R. Joustra and Robert J. Joustra INTERVARSITY PRESS | FEBRUARY 2022 | 250 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $28.00

Church History for Young Readers By Simonetta Carr REFORMATION HERITAGE BOOKS | JUNE 2022 | 272 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $35.00

Noah J. Frens is a graduate of Calvin College (philosophy)

and Westminster Seminary California (MAHT) and is currently a PhD candidate in the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt University.

|

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The Narcissism of Small Differences

by Michael Horton

ALTHOUGH THEY LIVED near

each other along the border, the McCoys were in Kentucky and the Hatfields in West Virginia. Their infamous feud began when Asa Harmon McCoy returned from fighting for the Union in the Civil War and was murdered by some Confederate thugs calling themselves the “Wildcats.” A prominent member of the Hatfield clan was suspected as the ringleader, though he was never arrested.

It was not until 2003 that an official truce was declared, signed by sixty descendants.

The McCoy-Hatfield feud has become a cliché for what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” There are countless examples in history of inhabitants who live close to borders, whether artificial or natural, asserting their identity more intensely than the rest of their compatriots. Taken to the extreme, patriotism, ethnicity, language, customs, or just about anything else can explode into a Manichean vision of a final battle between Darkness and Light. There were socioeconomic differences as well. The Hatfields were wealthier and better connected than the McCoys, but not so far apart that their daily lives didn’t intersect. At those intersections, superiority and resentment bred the narcissism of small differences.

Group narcissism is seductive, especially when people feel like the folks in the next neighborhood over are threatening their future. We have a created instinct to identify with others because they are different, interesting, and challenge us to grow in ways we wouldn’t have if left

in our own stew. But in our sinful condition this good instinct is warped, and we’d prefer to be in our own silo with people who think, look, act, eat, feel, and dream like us. I need other people to justify me, to assure me of my righteousness, and that even in my self-indulgence disguised as “righteous indignation,” I am not alone.

European settlers in America were able to unite around the cause of independence—the otherness of the Old World with its failed civilization. Through kidnapping on a massive scale, they sought to form a permanent other whose very skin could be represented as encoding a difference that made them “special.”

This is the narcissism of small differences, but differences nonetheless. A biblical doctrine of creation says that difference is God’s good, true, and beautiful intention in creation. Uncorrupted Adam exclaimed at God’s creation of Eve, “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23).

Very different, yet one. “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,” Paul told the philosophers, “having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26–27). Diversity from unity should lead us back to the ultimate Unity who is simultaneously Three Persons. We can therefore never get back to a unity that isn’t also a communion of distinct persons. If we don’t like difference, then we don’t like God. Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation

and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

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