the-word-became-flesh-november-december-1994

For a FREE poster-size copy 01 this ad, contact the Seminary.

Managing Editor ..

modern REFORMATION

S~raMcR~ynolds : .

. . ton.itioutingSc:holar~

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

, Dr. John Armstrong .

Dr. Steve ,y1.Baugn .' .

Dr. J~ml=s BoiCe .

, Dr. Q. A.Carsori' :

The gev. KrlOX th~mblin

Dr., Bryan' CHapell '

Dr. Daniel Doriani

.The Rev.J. Ligon puncaQ ' . Dr. Tim~thy c;eorg~ . '" " Dr. W. Robert GOdfrey .

Dr. John Hannah .'.

Dr: Darryl G., Hart ·.'

Dr. Cad E; H~ tlenry , TheRev.' Mkhael · S~ Horton .

RobertK6Ib'·.·'·· . , ' Dr.. Allen Mawhilln'ey ," Dr. Joel Nederhood Dr. Roger Nicqle The, R~v. KltnRiqdlebarger Dr. RoO Roser:rbladt Dr..RobertPreus .

Dr. R. ,C. Spro,ul :" Dr. Rob~rt Strimple Dr. V\!illem A~>VanGenieren Dr. Gene E. Veith. ' " Dr>David Wells

The Word

Became Flesh

Inside th is Issue

Page 2

Christ and the Human Experience: The God-Man versus the Man-God Michael S. Horton

Page 3

The Greatest Drama Ever Told Dorothy Sayers

Page 7

Theology from the Bottom Up, God from the Top Down Rick Ritchie

Page 8

0;.

CURE. Board of Directors DouglasAber)drot~ .

JohrlC: Beauman Cheryl Biehl Dr.. W.R()~bert yodfr.ey Richard,Hermes, ' The R,~v. Mi<:hae) s. Ho{~?n Or. RobertP'reus ," .

Dr, Luqer Whitlock "

CHRISTIANSUN'iT,ED

lor Rf.FORMATioN

Page 14

C. S. Lewis's Introduction From St. Athanasius on the Incarnation

Page 18

The Reformation and the Arts Gene E. Veith

Page 21

The Incarnation and Multi-culturalism D. G. Hart

Page 25

.;

© 1994Allrightsreserved., is a non-p~ofited'ucationarf;undatio(1 ',: com mitted to communidWng the insights of the 16th ' ~entury Reformation to the 20th century church. For morelnfQrmation~ call 714-956'-2873, or write us

CURE

at:

CHRISTIANS UNITED

What Herod Means to Me Eric Casteel

for REFORMATION

2221 .East Win~tonRQad ' S,u,iteK, Anah~im,CA · 92806 '

"

'.',

'

SUBSCRIBE ' TO

m odernREltORMATION

l .~800-956~,2644

Inside: CURE Events & Resources What Still Divides Us? A Protestant & Catholic Debate modernREFORMATION

Popular Back Issues

(page 17)

(page 27)

In

Th is Issue

topic of this issue has been on a lot of minds lately for a good reason. God created us in his own image, and he is the Great Artist. And yet, one conclusion I have come to after many of these discussions is that we have confused a very important biblical distinction between creation and redemption.

On one side, there are those who are uncomfortable with creation. That means, in practice, that they are uncomfortable with the idea that non~ Christians can bring glory to God by their creative efforts, and with the notion that Christians can enjoy this shared realm of common grace as a gift of God even if it is not specifically "Christian. " So, we expect our musicians, painters, and writers to produce "Christian Art," justified by its evangelistic or churchly usefulness. What often results from this confusion is bad art and bad theology. On the other end, there are those who are so comfortable with creation that they raise it to the level of redemption-even speaking of art as if it were "sacramental" (a means of grace). Both confuse creation and redemption for different reasons, but with the same effect.

When we make this confusion, however, we are confusing heaven and earth, the sacred and the secular, worship and entertainment, ministry and business. The "Christian Artist" feels the need to preach or evangelize in his or her music, but the confusion of "reaching the lost" and selling CD's makes it difficult to do either with attention to excellence and

T

HE

integrity. Why can't we enjoy a night out at a "secular" concert as an end in itself? In Reformation Christianity, "glorifying God and enjoying him forever" refers to both creation and redemption~ spheres, so that it is considered more honoring to God to enjoy a really good evening at the opera or Eric Clapton concert than an evening of "preachy" music with a tacky commercial style and an Arminian presentation of the "gospel. " As I said in a recent panel discussion of this topic, when it comes to the point of having to use discernment while being entertained, I'm more worried about Carman than Clapton!

If we clearly distinguish creation and redemption, we can have Christians who can once again create art in the real world, with no other divine mandate than to do it well, and we can have worship services that are rooted in redemption, not entertainment in the guise of "ministry. " Bach often signed his compositions, whether for use in church or for use in the concert hall, "Soli Deo Gloria" ("To God Alone Be Glory"). The compositions might have had two different uses (Bach understood the distinction between worship and entertainment), but both had the same aim ofglorifyingGod. To glorify God as entertainment, ­ it need not be specifically "Christian, " but our worship music must be! May we once again see the legitimacy of art and pleasure as a sphere of divine approval, without corrupting either art or religion with the confusion of creation with redemption, or vice versa. Merry Christmas!

â&#x20AC;˘

Bach often signed his compositions, whether for use in church or for use in the concert hall, "Soli Deo Gloria" ("To God Alone Be Glory").

2

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

modern REFORMATION

Michael S.Horton

Christ and Humanity

The God -Man versus the Man-God

But this is my doctrine; ... By ladders of rope I learned to climb many a window and with nimble and with nimble legs I climbed high masts... Not good, neither evil, but my taste, as to which I have neither shame nor concealment. Here lies my way-where liesyours? I answeredthemwhich inquiredofme'theway.' For the way--existeth not! Thus spake Zarathustra.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra!

Christians are often critical of the Enlightenment, especially for its rationalism.

Descartes shifted the seat of authority from Scripture, tradition, and the church to the inner world of the individual mind: "I think, therefore I am." Everything else is up for grabs, but I can be certain that I exist because of my rationality.

And yet, we tend to be greatly influenced by the reaction to this way of thinking in the form of Romanticism-the 19th century movement that shifted the foundation of knowledge from the self s reason to the self s experience and intuition. While we would be hard-pressed to locate in our hymnals today anything like, "You ask me how I knowhe lives? I cannot be sure that he lives today, but he was a historical person who can be studied, "we do have the Romantic version, "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart. " The Christian response to the Enlightenment, after all, was two~ fold: The orthodox attempted to meet the scientific and historical objections head~ on, by employing reason and historical arguments, while the pietists accepted a truce with the Enlightenment if the latter would simply concede to the former the territory marked "spiritual. "So, secularism was awarded the public world of real facts, real history, and real time and space; the religiously inclined were awarded the Liechtenstein of religious experience. Immanuel Kant ( 18th century) , reared in pietism where religion was considered primarily a matter of the heart anyway, told us that religion belonged to the "noumenal" (spiritual) realm-out of reach of rational, historical, or evidential inquiry, while the "phenomenal" realm included the actual facts of history and science that can be verified as having actually happened. Eventually, this reworking of Plato's distinction between the realm of "Idea" ( the perfect form in heaven) and "Matter" (the imperfect copy on earth) led to the notion that the religious idea was unknowable VANGELICAL

apart from personal experience and the history of Christ described by the apostles was seen as the "spiritualization" of the real facts concerning this extraordinary man.

Christianity was beyond the limits of rational inquiry and the "myths" of Jesus' early life were part of a "spiritual" history-very different from, say, the history of the Gallic Wars.

Modem liberalism was the product of the pietistic settlement and, in fact, most of the architects of theological modernism were pietists by orientation, background, and temperament.

Friederich Schleiermacher (18th century), father of modern liberalism, sought to make Christianity relevant for the "cultured despisers" ofhistorical , orthodox faith. He did this by linking Christianity to Romanticism, a matter of the heart, rather than a matter of creed or historical tru tho The classical doctrines of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ-his incarnation, vicarious death and resurrection, ascension and second coming-were all pieces of unnecessary baggage that were standing in the way of the poets, sentimentalists, and moralists of the day. Much like the ancient Greeks, who demanded a gospel of moral wisdom rather than "Christ and him crucified, " the generation of Goethe found the Christian Gospel "foolishness" and "a stumbling block. " Why was that Gospel a stumbling block? If we can answer that question, we may come closer to understanding why Christmas does not make much sense in the modem (or postmodern) world.

The Greeks worshipped gods who knew how to get things done. They were powerful, courageous­ sometimes to the point of brutality. But they were also compassionate. The archetypical image of the deity was the Olympian-the athlete-powerful, fit and trim, ready to take on all~ comers. Victory was the chief avenue to deification, and generals, caesars, and athletes were incarnations of these divine attributes. Evil was attributed to matter in a myth of creation in which the realm of pure spirit (Idea, the Mind) was related to deity and pure matter was related to the demonic. The "Fall, " NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

3

By assuming our

in Greek religion, was the result of the spirit's having tumbled from the spiritual realm to the temporal, physical "prison" of earthly existence. The Platonic tradition especially emphasized redemption as an escape from the earthly, temporal, ¡ material, and sensual to the heavenly, eternal, spiritual, and rational.

Much of the New Testament was written with this cultural context in mind, especially as many itinerant "evangelists" were enjoying a growing popularity for their blending of Greek mysticism with biblical Christianity.

Paul, in fact, refers to those in Corinth who thought their seeker, sensitive version of the Gospel was more relevant as the "super, apostles" (2 Cor 11) .

This hybrid emerged as the heresy of "Gnosticism, " which comes from the Greek word gnosis, or knowledge. By "knowledge, " these early heretics did not intend the sort of data that comes from historical, scientific, or material facts, but an allegedly superior knowledge based on spiritual intuition and revelation.

With this background, we can understand why John declared that "many false prophets have gone out into the world. " "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God, " he said: "Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world" (1 Jn 4: 1-3). Even before the Christian message gets to the Cross, the scandal to the Greek mind already appears in the Incarnation itself. If the spirit<ual is good and the material is evil, how could a good God create matter, much less become material? To say that God became human is fine,ifby that one means that he adopted a human soul or that he appeared to have a human body and human characteristics. But the axiom, "God became flesh" was tantamount to saying, "God became what is essentially evil. " Thus, Gnosticism flourished as a way of denying the incarnation (literally meaning, "in, fleshing") while sounding spiritual and very religious to those who sought some connection to the divine within themselves. By following Jesus, one could become truly enlightened and eventually rise from the crude, earthly existence into which he had fallen to the higher life of the spirit.

While this synthesis of pagan mysticism and Christianity was officially eschewed, it has always had its adherents throughout church history, especially in the mystical traditions. But it received its greatest impetus in the triumph of "modernity. "Let me briefly explain what is meant by this.

humanity, Christ dignified our humanity and proved that there is nothing wrong with matter or human nature in itself, as God created it, but that evil and sinfulness are to be ascribed to the perverse will and desire of the creature.

4

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

During the Late Middle Ages, an Italian mystic by the name ofJoachim of Fiore created a scheme in which history was divided into the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and the Age of the Spirit. The Old Testament, ____ corresponding to this first age, is distinguished by its cruel, harsh deity who ordered the slaughters of entire people groups. We know the Age of the Son as the period in which the "good God, " Jesus Christ, softened the harsher features of the Jewish deity. In the appearance of Christ, we learned about grace for the first time, and the church was founded, with its "material" way of worshipping God through sacraments (bread, wine, water) and words (Scripture) . But an even greater stage of historical development yet awaited: the Age of the Spirit, when the institutional church would be eclipsed by the universal brotherhood of man and the Word and sacraments would be rendered unnecessary by the intuitive life of the Spirit.

Joachim's commentary on The Revelation was quite popular, especially among the Spiritual Franciscans, a group that was convinced that the institutional Church of Rome had become so worldy and corrupt that even the monastic orders (including the world, denying followers of St. Francis of Assissi) were synagogues of Satan.

While officially condemned, Joachim's teachings nevertheless gained wider popularity during the Renaissance, as great humanists such as Petrarch detected the Greek, Platonic mysticism inherent in the system and heartily approved its emphasis on religion as "spirituality" rather than dogma, creed, history. Petrarch envisioned the Renaissance as the Age of the Spirit, when the divinity in every person would realize a universal religion of spiritual peace and harmony. ronically, the period of the Reformation, far from squelching this reasoning, accelerated its prominence. The Reformers themselves opposed the "Manichaeans" (i. e. , another name for "Gnostics") in the form of the Anabaptists. These heirs of the medieval sects often argued that the Word and sacraments had been superseded by the Spirit. Dubbed the "Radical Reformation, " leaders of this movement, such as Menno Simons (namesake of the Mennonites) was refuted by Calvin for the former's doctrine of the "heavenly body" of Jesus. Arguing that the Virgin Mary was merely a "channel" or "conduit" through which God came to earth, Menno denied the reality of the virgin birth and, therefore, the true humanity of Christ. Against the Polish Reformer, John a Lasco, Menno asserted, "that there is not a letter to be found in all the Scriptures that the Word assumed our flesh; or that the divine nature miraculously united itself with our human nature. "1 Calvin replied to the Anabaptist revival of Gnosticism or Manichaeanism by walking through the scores of biblical passages which describe the humanity of Christ.

He begins with the Old Testament history: "For the blessing is promised neither in heavenly seed nor in the phantom of a man, but in the seed of Abraham and Jacob. Nor is an eternal throne promised to a man of air, but to the Son of David and the fruit of his loins. "Calvin

I

modern REFORMATION

emphasizes the historical genealogies and the Jewishness Enlightenment optimism, progress, and faith in of the Son of Man to defend Christ's human descent. humanity, the triumphant note was drowned out by the Further, Jesus was "subject to hunger, thirst, cold, and dirge ofdespair. Apart from God, reason would triumph, other infirmities of our nature. " He "expiated in our the Enlightenment promised, but the failure of that flesh" the debt we owed. "And Matthew does not here enterprise was written on the subway walls. Apart from describe the virgin as a channel through which Christ the Word, ¡language would explain everything; the flowed. "By assuming our humanity, Christ dignified our . philosophers and English professors promised. But that humanity and proved that there is nothing wrong with optimistic sentiment gave way to deconstructionism matter or human nature in itself, as God created it, but when the experiment failed miserably. Now, there is no that evil and sinfulness are to be ascribed to the perverse such thing as universal human rationality; language is will and desire of the creature. 2 merely a clever tool of the oppressor in subjugating the n other words, the Jewish world view is diametrically less fortunate by rhetorical foolery.

Yet, in spite of the sins of the fathers leading the opposed to the Greek outlook. Throughout the Old Testament, God is involved in matter: He creates children to repentance, "postmodern" intellectuals both the heavens and the earth, rules both in providence continue to live off of the borrowed capital of their even after the Fall, and redeems his people in time, despised parents. The tie that binds the rationalists of history, and the world, not from time, history, and the the Enlightenment, the inward poets of Romanticism, world. The Jew was not at all uncomfortable with his and the existential cries of the Postmodernists is Gnosticism. Much as they might reject the sentimental humanity; he did not chafe at the prospect ofhis physical, time-bound existence or as the ancient Greek or modem optimism of their forebears, those today who glory in the existentialist, but saw this world as the stage or "marvelous term "postmodern" (the very name suggests indebtedness theater" (Calvin's phrase) in which God's glory was to the notion of progress) nevertheless view this world, demonstrated through providence and redemption. Not not as a theater of God's activity, but as an alien place only did God the Son become flesh; he redeemed sinful where spirit is imprisoned in matter, time, and history.

Like the ancient Gnostics, modem liberals have been flesh (the body as well as the soul), and the whole ashamed not only of the Gospel of the Cross and person, body and soul, is involved in sanctification (cf.

Romans 6) and final resurrection and glorification (cf.

Resurrection, but of the Incarnation itself. They have tom the so- called "Christ of Faith" from the "Jesus of 1 Cor 15) .

History, " and insisted that the truth of Christianity lies The elements of the Radical Reformation and the Renaissance, however, which mediated this ancient in its inward effects and experiences, not in its external heresy of Greek mysticism became the bricks that would historicity and earthly reality. Rudolf Bultmann, for lay the foundation for the Tower of Babel we have now instance, evidenced the typical pietistic background of twentieth- century apostasy by declaring that even though seen collapse before our very eyes: modernity.

The Gennan philosopher G. W. F. Hegel ( 1770­ the resurrection did not occur in history, the important 1831) was heavily influenced by the vision of}oachim of thing is that it occurred in his heart, in his own personal Fiore and employed his brilliance in the creation of a Christian experience. By escaping this world through philosophical system that emphasized the evolution of spiritual inwardness, hedonism, or consumerism, the postmodem Gnostics are no happier with being human humanity from matter to spirit, body to mind, the lower to the higher. "God" is this evolutionary ascent toward which than were the poets who preceded them. The difference is, they all of history is moving, so that finally all will be "God" and have given up on the "process" "God" will be all. Through a winding spiral of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, history would progress toward its ofevolution from matter to spirit, final destination. Gnosis-secret knowledge gained from from human to divine-at least, this dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis-would at least in principle.

Most of the German liberal be achieved apart from an extemal authority.

From this project we have inherited the trinity of theologians praised the Greek "modernity": the ideas of progress, rationalism, and influences upon Christianity "md despised the Jewish, following optimism. Ironically, these ideas are not self- evident in Nietzsche's own disdain for the nature, or discernible in history, no matter how modem intellectuals defended their "rational beliefs" against latter: '" Sin, ", he declared, "is a Jewish feeling, aJewishinvention, religious "superstition. " in view of this The Enlightenment project aided in the building of and, background, ... Christianity has the French and American republics and altered the British and German monarchies. Hegel's evolutionary actually attempted to' judaize' the whole world. How far it has view of human history from matter to spirit is the foundation of Darwinism, the social sciences, and Marxist succeeded in Europe is best seen in the degree of strangeness that thought. But it is the foundation of many of the Greek antiquity-a world without conservative American attitudes and beliefs as well.

After two world wars and the tragic consequences of a feeling of sin-still has for our

I

The modern American does not want to welcome a god who becomes part of the human situation; he wants to escape his humanity and "realize himself" through going within or going without for that divine spark.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

5

sensibilities. " "For a Greek, " he concluded, the idea of sin and grace "would be both laughable and shocking. "3 Thus, every conceivable category of Christianity was an offense to the pagan, as it is to the modem American-and for many of the same reasons. The modem American does not want to welcome a God who becomes part of the human situation; he wants to escape his humanity and "realize himself' through going within or going without for that divine spark. The Incarnation, the Cross, Judgment and Justification-these are ideas, we are told that do not work anymore in the contemporary context. Therefore, we must change the Christian message to answer the questions that modem ( and postmodern) people are asking. That is to ask Christianity to become a guide to the quest for self fulfillment-a Greek rather than Jewish quest indeed.

We began with Nietzsche's quote about climbing ropes to the high masts, refusing to accept a creaturely place down below. The German nihilist spoke of a "Superman" who would eventually replace humanity in the wake of the "death of God. " Hitler and Stalin took Nietzsche up on the idea and we have found it appealing ever since. The "will to power" is the will to become gods. "Each man would be God, if he could be, " said Nietzsche. We may not have the power to become supermen, but we do have the will. It is in us ever since the Fall of the first Adam, the first man who wanted to become God. o what does all of this have to do with Christmas?

Plenty. First, against Greek wisdom and its Gnostic offshoots, Christianity affirms a good creation by a good Creator. Sin and evil are understood in moral, not metaphysical, terms. This is important especially in our day, as the metaphysical dualism of the Gnostics, Manichaeans, sectarian enthusiasts of old, and secular enthusiasts of the modem era, is often assumed also by many evangelicals who are obsessed with the "spiritual warfare" project inspired by Frank Peretti's novels and the Vineyard, oriented ideas of Peter Wagner, Neil Anderson, and a host of popular writers. Furthermore, the biblical Fall is not from light to darkness or spirit to matter, or heaven to earth, but from obedience to disobedience and the consequences are not that the spirit must endure a prison offlesh, time, and history, butthat the wonder and beauty of this created freedom in this glorious world cannot be enjoyed as God intended because of our own depravity as well as the depravity of others.

The biblical message is not one of God and the children of light versus nature and the children of darkness, with the "good guys" and the "bad guys" engaged in struggles with territorial spirits to decide the battle for God. Nor is the Christian to distinguish between a "spiritual" part of life and a "secular" or "worldly" side, as if "spiritual" really meant "non, material. " Even the growth of an evangelical sub, culture, disdaining the world even as it apes the tackiest forms of worldliness, is a sign of a high discomfort level not with sinfulness, but with being truly human. But redemption, then, in the Christian scheme, is not salvation of the individual soul or spirit from this earthly, historical, bodily existence, but the salvation of

s

6

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

this world and the redemption of time and history, where the incarnation and resurrection ofthe God~ Man accomplish the victory that all human attempts at progress toward the heavenly and the spiritual have failed to accomplish for the would~ be Man~ God. To say that a man became a god is nothing more than the Greeks would have wanted to believe, as Schleiermacher's "cultured despisers" insisted in their emotive hymns to their own deification. That is a victory!

A triumph on the part of humanity! A man endured the trials and tests of material and historical existence and, rung by rung, climbed the ladder to the mast of heaven itself. At last, the underdog wins by the end of the movie and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. But to say that God became man by humbling himself, enduring shame and even the wrath of God himself, and then gained victory­ not by progress, but by regress; not by ascent into heaven, but by descent to the earth and hell, flies in the face of the whole human enterprise.

Thank God it does. This Christmas, let us also beware of the ahtichrists and false prophets who deny that Christ has come in the flesh, even in the subtlety of carols that try to get us to believe of the Divine Infant, "No crying he makes. " For in Christ, God not only reconciled us, but entered into our own time~ and~ space history and made sense of suffering, death, evil, and justice. Let us embrace this world as God did and does, and patiently await the consummation, when our Brother, no longer the baby in the manger, will judge evil and make all things new. 0 1 The Incarnation of Our Lord (1554), trans. by L. Verduin and ed. by J. c. Wenger, Complete Works of Menno Simons, p. 829.

2 Calvin, Institutes, 2. 13. 1-3.

3 The Gay Science, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (NY. : Random House, 1974).

For Further Reading: Philip Lee, Against The Protestant Gnostics ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

David Walsh, After Ideology (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) and Barrs, On Being Human (Downers Grove, IL: IVP) .

Hans Jonas , The Gnostic Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1958, second ed. reprint in 1991).

St. Irenaeus, Refutation and Overthrow of the 'Knowledge' Falsely So Called (usually known as Against Heresies). This may be found in The Ante, Nicene Fathers set, volume I, or in a variety of other collections of early church classics.

Michael S.Horton is president of CHRISTIANS UNITED for REFORMATION. Educated at Biola University and Westminster Theological Seminary, Michael is a Ph.D. candidate at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and the University ofCoventry and is the author/editor of eight books, including The Agony of Deceit (Moody Press), Made In America:The Shaping of American Evangelicalism (Baker Book House), Putting Amazing Back Into Grace (Baker Book House), and Beyond Culture Wars. ,

'

,

' 6ecomea Frienq/ 'tnn keeper, , 'Or ,~'rch itect! '}61nus Today > 8.00~9S 6-2 644

m odernREFORMAT!ON

Dorothy L. Sayers

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged

Is the Official Creed of Christendom FFICIAL Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as a bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine-dull dogma, as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect ofdogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man-and the dogma is the drama.

That drama is summarized quite dearly in the creeds of the Church, and if we think it dull it is because we either have never really read those amazing documents, or have recited them so often and so mechanically as to have lost all sense of their meaning. The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: What think ye of Christ? Before we adopt any of the unofficial solutions (some of which are indeed excessively dull) -before we dismiss Christ as a myth, an idealist, a demagogue, a liar, or a lunatic­ it will do no harm to find out what the creeds really say about him. What does the Church think of Christ?

The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: ThatJesus Bar, Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth , was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God "by whom all things were made. "His body and brain were those of a common man; his personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon or fairy pretending to be human. He was in every respect a genuine living man.

He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God"-he was God. Now, this is not just a pious commonplace at all. For what it means is this, amongotherthings: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is-limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death-he [ God] had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine.

Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the wors t horrors of pain, humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he plrtyed the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

Christianity is, of course, not the only religion that has found the best explanation of human life in the idea of an incarnate and suffering god. The Egyptian Osiris died and

rose again; Aeschylus in his play, The Eumenides, reconciled man to God by the theory of a suffering Zeus. But in most theologies, the god is supposed to have suffered and died in some remote and mythical period of prehistory. The Christian story, on the other hand, starts off briskly in St. Matthew's account with a place and a date: "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of herod the King. "St. Luke, still more practically and prosaically, pins the thing down by a reference to a piece of government finance. God, he says, was made man in the year when Caesar Augustus was taking a census in connection with a scheme of taxation. Similarly, we might date an event by saying that it took place in the year that Great Britain went off the gold standard. About thirty, three years later (we are informed) God was executed, for being a political nuisance, "under Pontius Pilate"-much as we might say, "when Mr. Joynson, Hicks was Home Secretary. " It is as definite and concrete as all that.

Possibly we might prefer not to take this tale too seriously-there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of Divine character walking and talking among us-and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, "heard him gladly"; but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that he talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of his friends to hand him over quietly to the police, and we tried him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, "thanking God we were rid of a knave. " All this was not very creditable to us, even if he was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about him, it was more discreditable still; for the man we hanged was God Almighty.

So that is the outline of the official story-the tale of the time when God was the under-dog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull-this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.

If this is dull, then what, inHeaven'sname, isworthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore­ on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe.

It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and Sayers continued page 28 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

7

Ri ck Ritchie

Theology from the Bottom Up,

God from the Top Down

F I were Hindu, a turbulent airplane flight would be enough to make me reconsider my polytheism. To which god would I tum for my deliverance?

Kali? Ganesha? Vishnu? I suppose I would be at least thankful that my gods were distinguished by function rather than territory. There would be no announcement that we were flying over the left bank of the Ganges river and entering Krishna's airspace. No, the Hindu gods are not said to be limited by territory. But then which one is responsible for air travel? Which one did the old stories identify as the Patron Sahib of flying carpets?

This is no doubt a gross oversimplification of Hindu thought. I am sure a well~ read Brahmin priest could explain how, rightly understood, Hindu thought was free of such discrepancies. But I would probably believe that while the Brahmin was rendering an accurate account of his own opinions, he was misrepresenting majority Hindu opinion, much like the liberal minister who denies the Virgin birth and yet claims to speak for Christianity as a whole. She may be sincere, but she is not representative.

One of the great advantages of Christianity is its belief in only one God. The early church used this teaching to its advantage in making converts among the polytheists of the Roman world. Now not only a well~ versed spiritual elite, but unwashed Rufus and Julia knew whom to pray to in distress. What a relief to tum from worthless deities to "the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them" (Acts 15:15)!

The Scandal of Excl usivity

But there is a catch. While the New Testament faith is presented as universal and all~ embracing, it is also particular and exclusive. It does worship God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and insists that this Creator can be known from his general revelation in Creation. It also claims, however, that access to this cosmic Lord is only available through faith in the sufferings and death of a Palestinian carpenter, an individual who is known from God's special revelation in Scripture. Having one God has always been a winning point. Offering only one way to God has been more of an embarrassment, however. There have always been those--often our famous theologians and churchmen-who have sought to tone down the particularity of the faith in interests of maintaining its universal appeal.

8

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

Theologians have a long history of building universal theologies which ignore the exclusivity of the Christian revelation. At first, this was merely a besetting sin of individual theologians (such as Origen). It took time for this sin to be institutionalized. This required the growth of an institution which could be so corrupted ( the theological faculty of the university), and the growing appeal of thinkers whose philosophies were more and more hostile to Christianity.

When the medievals rediscovered many of Aristotle's works, theologians incorporated much of his thought into their massive systems. His thought was so pervasive in academic culture that theologians had to come to terms with him or lose their audience. Most tried to ensure that what they borrowed was compatible with the Christian revelation in Scripture. Some, however, included the observations of Aristotle even when he contradicted Scripture.

They did not believe they were setting the word of man against the word of God, but saw Aristotle as a witness to indubitable philosophical principles. Aristotle was merely a good guide to the general revelation of which St. Paul spoke in Romans chapter one. These theologians just thought they were being honest when they accurately reported what they found in the two revelations. Perhaps differing positions could be reconciled in a way beyond the imagination of the theologian. Their critics were more wary. Aristotle discussed theology in his Metaphysics ( probably the first known use of the term). He claimed to set forth how God must be by necessity. The critics believed that God was in a better position to reveal his nature than a pagan philosopher. Autobiography was more valuable than speculation.

As time wore on, the temptation to make more concessions to philosophy became more unbearable for more theologians. An argument could at least be made that Aristotle was a careful observer of natural revelation who only fell short where God's natural revelation trailed off.

He could find the traces of the divine in nature, but not traces of the Trinity. The fact that a Pagan school of thought had been taken so seriously by Christian theologians set a precedent, though. Other thinkers whose ideas were more devastating to a Biblically faithful theology were given . the same privileged status. The defense was even the same.

Theologians who ignored these thinkers would lose the opportunity to speak to the culture. Truth was sacrificed to universal appeal.

modern REFORMATION

Special revelation restricts the possibilities for The words "Weare good parents who love all our pandering to current fashions of opinion. If God has children, " are warm words, but they offer cold comfort given to man a written revelation what is a theologian to to the child who has just failed miserably. At this point do but to accurately teach what has already been revealed? the only words capable of sustaining hope are "We love There are only two possibilities open to the panderer. you anyway, and will redeem this situation for you. " One is the outright abandonment of the Christian These words assume the reality of failure and take the revelation. This is not a very popular move. Even those . cost of forgiving it and repairing its consequences into who wish to be pandered to desire to regard themselves account. They offer hope to the defeated. The more as Biblical. The second option is to place Scripture general sentiments turn out to be weaker in comparison. alongside of other sources of revelation, such as reason At first the pluralistic gospel sounded better because it applied to all. Now we see that it is weaker because it can and experience. This is often quite successful. only speak to those not yet defeated. To those who truly need it, it has nothing new to say to their situation.

Grace as a First Principle Dozens of generations of Christians have been offended When grace is a first principle, it ceases to have the last by exclusivity and rejected its rigor. The advantage that word. the modern theologian has over his predecessors is that For grace to be a first principle, it must be written so much time has elapsed since the faith was first into the fabric of the cosmos. But the cosmos, of which delivered to us. Somewhere in the writings of every age we are a part, is where we encounter our problems. is material supporting a pluralistic Christianity. Much When we are in the midst of woe, the last thing we need better to present a broad Christianity as the ancient faith to be told is "Cheer up! God has revealed himself in the than as a newfangled evasion of truth. Old prayers are makeup of the world as a gracious God! " If this is the helpful to this end, for they are esteemed for their good news, then the suffering are bereft of help, for antiquity. Who is not moved by the beauty of the God' s self~ revelation in the world looks anything but Anglican prayer which begins with the address" Almighty gracious to a sufferer. To equate creation as we find it and everlasting God, who hates nothing that thou hast with good news is for some to equate unredeemed made... "? The words come from a passage in the suffering with gospel.

Wisdom of Solomon, an Apocryphal book considered Saved with the World from the World uncanonical by Protestants. It reads: For you love all things that exist, And abhor none of the What we need is a redemption to take place in this things that you have made; For you would never have cosmos by someone from outside. And this is what formed anything if you hated it.And how could anything Christianity offers, but at the cost of another scandal. have endured, ifyou had not willed it, Or what had not been Aside from its teaching that redemption is exclusive, called forth by you have been preserved? But you spare all, Christianity is most often attacked for its pessimistic view because they are yours, Lord, love,r of life, For your of the world. What is so ironic is that both of these scandals are necessary for true hope to emerge. It is by imperishable spirit is in all things.

(Wisdom of Solomon 11:24-12: 1) 1 avoiding the so- called scandals of Christianity that we All that comforts is not Gospel. There is an create a truly dark picture of the world.

When we reject exclusivity and say that all human inconsistency between the implications of this passage beings are in the same state before God, the hidden and the world in which we live. Since God has made us, if God hates nothing he has made, then he doesn't hate implication is that people cannot experience a change in us. In that case we don't need a special revelation to tell status before God. When we reject a pessimistic view of the world and say that the present state of the world is us that God loves us. It is known to us as a law of reason.

Although this seems to increase our certainty of his love fundamentally good, the hidden implication is that for us, it really tells us nothing about what kind of care those who live in unrelieved suffering are experiencing we can expect from him. If God hates nothing he has God's favor as truly as the prosperous. Together, these made, but he allows disasters to befall other people he implications mean that there is no hope of escape from a bad situation. I could wish myself cut off from the has made, he might allow ultimate disaster to befall us.

The prayer which seemed to be good news turns out to be "favor" ofsuch a God and excluded from his worshippers!

Contrasted with this set of beliefs, exclusivity doesn't bad news after all.

The real problem with a pluralistic gospel which look so bad.

Pessimism about the present state of the world is not claims that all are saved in principle is this: It has nothing a denial of the goodness of creation. The key thing that to say to those who need good news most. While the light of such a principle may shine brightly in prosperity, it must be remembered about Christianity is that it teaches must inevitably be dimmed by misfortune, obscured by that the world was created good, and that mankind fell pain, and extinguished by death. My point is not to paint into sin, and corrupted the world. If we speak of being a bleak picture of life here. It is true that most lives are saved "from the world, "we mean that we are being saved not characterized by unremitting gloom. My point is that from the corruption infecting both it and us. Salvation these realities eventually overtake all, and it is precisely is world- wide, however, as we are told that the creation will be "liberated from its bondage to decay" (Romans when they do that the love of God must be meaningful.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

9

8:21). In Christianity the ethical gulf is not between good souls and a bad creation. Both humans and the rest of the creation are corrupted and capable of being redeemed.

Some Christian writers have managed to give the wrong impression, however. In his book The One, the Three, and the Many, Colin Gunton argues that many writers in the ancient church contributed to the corruption of the Christian doctrine ofcreation by combining biblical teachings with those of Platonism. Although St. Augustine is listed as the main culprit in the Platonizing of our doctrine of creation, Gunton's comments on Origen are' more to my point:

While [Origen's doctrine] is certainly not-not quite­ the gnostic negation of the world against which Irenaeus fought, there are signs that he treats the temporal order as instrumental to human salvation-as a rather unfortunate pedagogic necessity-rather than in some way itself also redeemable. 2 Origen's teaching that human souls existed in a pre~

married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. 3 No; when the modem world rejects Christianity, it ends up by creating a secular version of Christianity, with a secularized version ofour insufficient doctrine ofCreation thrown in! Communism, for example, sacrifices the temporary good of the individual to the perceived long, term good of the State. Ironically, while it can be shown that the modem world had good reasons for criticizing a faulty doctrine of Creation , it has managed to outdo the church in causing ruin with this same doctrine.

When we try to do theology from the top down, we begin by discussing God as we believe that he must be according to our own reasoning. When we do this, we may hope that we resemble Aristotle or other ancients.

We forget that Aristotle is sub~ Christian. Even moreso, we forget that Aristotle never had to make sense of the Incarnation. It hadn't happened yet.

The ancients who tried to construct a top' down theology with an Incarnation ( ofsorts) were the gnos tics.

Their very style of theology led to a different style of

T

he real problem with a pluralistic gospel which claims

that all are saved in principle is this: It has nothing to say to those who need good news most. Wh iIe the Iight of such a principle may shine brightly in prosperity, it must inevitably be dimmed by misfortune, obscured by pain, and extinguished by death.

material state and became embodied temporarily did not catch on widely. His exaltation of the eternal over the temporal did. Creation has since been seen as a training ground for eternity, a place where people are prepared for heaven, with little value in itself.

It is Gunton' s contention that this lack ofappreciation for creation is one ground for the modem world's rejection of Christianity. Many people see God's handiwork in creation and marvel. They are interested in it and wish to interact with it. A religion which denies the goodness of this marvelous realm is seen to be morbid or even death, loving. And so people reject suffering under a corrupted version of Christianity for the sake of enjoying a corrupted creation.

The rejection of Christianity is not followed by a golden, age of world, affirming bliss, for the modem world is incapable of returning to its pre, Christian past.

As C. S. Lewis said:

It is hard to have patience with those Jeremiahs, in Press or pulpit, who warn us that we are 'relapsing into Paganism'. It might be rather fun if we were. It would be pleasant to see some future Prime Minister trying to kill a large and lively milk,white bull in Westminster Hall.

But we shan't. [This rejIects] the false idea that the historical process allows mere reversal. ...A post'Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a 10

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

gospel writing. Although the four Christian gospels do report what Jesus said, they are primarily accounts of what he did. In contrast, the gnostic gospels are a (mostly, false) report of what Jesus said, with little account of what he did. According to this teaching, what Jesus did was relatively unimportant. Gnosticism was salvation through information.

What Gunton offers as a solution to the world, denying teaching which has corrupted our church and society is St. Irenaeus's more biblical model where Creation is redeemed along with her human creatures:

in Irenaeus no major contrast is drawn between the perfection of the timeless eternal and the imperfection of the temporal. That would have been to concede too much to gnosticism. 1 Gunton equates a false view of creation with gnosticism. This false view of creation leads to false ideas about redemption. What the original intention was for creation will have a lot to say about how it is to be fixed.

If, as thegnostics say, creation was a botch, up job which imprisoned the uncreated soul of man in a body, then a certain pattern of redemption follows. It will be un, Christian from the start, because it seeks to restore man to a past which Christianity says he never had. We never were disembodied souls. And the body is no prison. And Creation was no botch, job. But given this gnostic

modern REFORMATION

~

understanding ofcreation, how will the gnostic redemption be achieved? By inducing the higher, non~ created element in man to renounce his createdness. By saving man from the evil universe. This is gnostic redemption.

According to some observers, similar teachings are to be found in Protestant churches where you would least expect them. In his book The American Religion, religious . critic Harold Bloom argues that Southern Baptist 5 piety resembles that of gnosticism. With their teaching of the "soul's competency in religion" (which sounds like the gnostic meeting of the uncreated human soul with the uncreated divine) and wit~ their emphasis on the vision of walking alone with the resurrected Jesus in a garden ( a vision which Bloom claims takes the place of the cross) , Bloom argues that Southern Baptists resemble gnostics more than Protestants, or even Christians.

Now Bloom is more concerned with religious imagination than with doctrine. As aself~ avowed gnostic, he is not reticent about labeling a Protestant church gnostic, for to him that is no insult. This is not hard evidence one could use in a heresy trial. This broad sweeping view of a style of piety is very helpful though in inducing us to ask whether it might be possible to get swept into a non~ Christian piety even as we profess orthodox doctrine. Do our actions imply a false view of creation? he solution is to make certain that the structure of our practice matches the structure of our doctrine. If both we and the world are fallen, while we cannot expect to find anything in ourselves or creation which is untainted by corruption, neither need we despair of people or creation being used by God as instruments of redemption.

When I hear professing Christians attacking "the institutional church, " I suspect gnosticism. This is not to say all church criticism is bad. The charges being just, I have no qualms about people being critical of an individual church or denomination. We live in a fallen world where even churches are subject to sin. It is when the inherent sinfulness of institutions per se is contrasted to the supposed inherent goodness of individuals that gnosticism is present. Both individuals and institutions are corruptible, and either can be the agent of corruption or sanctification for the other.

When I hear the sacraments disparaged for being external rather than internal, I suspect gnosticism. Granted, if iri a given case no faith in Christ accompanies the reception ofthe sacrament, it will not have been efficacious.

Gnosticism has crept in, though, if we believe the external is worthless because it is created. According to Christianity, our souls were created, too, by the same God who created the water. He can sanctify a soul, and sanctify water. He set apart a soul by means of water that has been set apart with his word (Eph 5:26).

It can be said that God saves us with the world from the world. There are two ways this can be taken. On the one hand, out of the corrupt creation of which we are a corrupt part, God redeems us along with the creation. It is like D~ day, where the invader wishes to liberate all

T

that he encounters, be it people or places-not like the raid on Entebbe, where individuals are rescued from a in which place they do not belong. We are saved "with the world" by being saved "alongside" the world. On the other hand, God uses the corrupt creation in our redemption. The Bibles printed on less~ than~ perfect paper communicate the word of life. The water of baptism, though it may contain dirt and chlorine can convey the forgiveness of sins. We are saved "with the world" by being saved "by means of the world. "

God from the Top Down It turns out that Christianity's exclusivism in salvation and pessimism toward the world together make it possible to say something truly hopeful to man. It also turns out that our view of the world is not so pessimistic as some of our brethren have made the world suppose. Our optimism for the world's future lies beyond the world, but as was said earlier, the shape of redemption is partly determined by the shape of the original creation.

Lewis says that the descent ofGod in the Incarnation is a "familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. " A "faint analogy" to this pattern can be seen in vegetabl~ life where a seed falls from a fair tree into cold soil to become another tree. A stronger analogy is found in animal generation, where there is a "descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum. "In the dark womb begins the "slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the Ii ving, conscious baby, and finally to the adult. " In fact, this is more than a "faint analogy, " but in many points, the very process Christ underwent: In the Christian story God descends to re~ascend. He

comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre~human phases of life; down to the very roots and sea~ bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. 6 The biological account indeed expresses the descent of God, but Lewis reminds us of the heroic element as well, for God freely chose to undertake this task. Lewis likens God to a diver first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid~

air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death~ like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover.7 The vivid imagery that Lewis uses to capture the force of the Incarnation may be unfamiliar to us, but the content is Scriptural. It is reminiscent of the Kenosis hymn in the second chapter of Philippians, where we are told that Christ "made himself nothing" and "humbled himself, " and that afterwards God exalted him.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994 . 11

If both we and the world are fallen, while we cannot expect to find anything in ourselves or creation which IS untainted by corruptiofl, neither need we despair of people or creation being used by God as instruments of redemption.

At each point in Christ's story, we can derive comfort from the relationship which is set forth between Christ and the world he came to redeem.

Not just what he said,

or even what he did,

but what he was for us is important in each stage. We often forget to think about it in this way. InoneofhisChrist~ mas sermons, Martin Luther proclaimed the comforthe derived from Christ's infancy. No~ tice how Luther says we can read the character of God from the fact that God conde~

scended to be an infant:

Let us, then, meditate upon the Nativity just as we see it happening in our own babies. Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother. What can be sweeter than the Babe, what more lovely than the mother! ...Look at the Child, knowing nothing. Yet all that is belongs to him, that your conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. To me there is no greater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort?8 Like Lewis, how concrete the languagel But here Luther speaks of the reality, not its analogy. Where Lewis uses vivid imagery to convey the method of rescue, Luther uses it to portray the rescuer.

How different is this divine infant from the God of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, the typical product of a redemption by knowledge. Harold Bloom says that he cannot even referto Eddy's "vision" of God. He calls it a "notion, "

because her God is the ultimate product of that long process in which the [God of the Old Testament] 9, a God who was an exuberant personality, has been vaporized into a gaseous entity. 10 This Child in the lap of his mother is anything but a gas. It doesn't require a careful comparison of doctrines to realize that Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science is not Christian. Just compare our concrete image to her vague notion. Mrs. Eddy does not learn ofher God from earth, where his revelation can be made meaningful to us, but from a place beyond earth where all is meaningless.

Other religions are insufficient because they try to understand God not as he has revealed himself in a particular word of Gospel, but as he is available to everybody in the word of Law written on creation (or in the case of Mrs. Eddy, as he is available only to her in 12

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

a realm she has invented). And law demands human achievement. The irony is that a top~ down theology leads to a bottom~ up redemption.

God has come to us and told us his name. He has taken on flesh. He has stepped into the world to redeem our situation when he did not need to. The strange thing is we think we can find more comfort in a distant deity, a vague notion, a faraway ruler. It is because we fear that a more active God would only step in for the sake ofdoom.

One of the comforts of the gospels is that they show us that things are better. The exclusive revelation, whose exclusivity embarrasses us so much, portrays the God of the universe lying in a manger for our sakes. I will happily be confined to this vision of God. I want no other.

Grace as the Last Word Grace is not a principle or a law from God, but a word from him. The distinction is important. A principle is true irrespective of audience. Grace is something which enters particular situations to change them. One of the best ways of illustrating this difference is by contrasting two kinds of passages.

The Sermon on the Mount, though it might contain some Gospel, is a Law passage. It presents God's standard ofrighteousness to the world. It is not spoken to indi viduals privately. It is a message for the crowd. When and where he spoke it makes little difference. By a lake, in a synagogue, or on the mountain, the message is the same. It is the Law, Moses, an old message which Jesus does not invent, but clarifies.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, though it might contain some Law, is a Gospel passage. It presents God's grace to particular sinners. It is not addressed to a multitude, but to individuals. When and where Jesus spoke the message matters greatly. It is spoken to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law who muttered against Jesus for eating with tax~ collectors and sinners (Luke 15: 2). The message is that the so~ called righteous are the hard~ hearted older brother in the parable, and Jesus their father, inviting them to rejoice that their stray brethren have returned to him.

While the Gospel was old news in a broad sense (known since the garden of Eden), it was a new word to the situation of the Pharisees and sinners. It turns their world inside~ out.

Law was addressed to crowds, Gospel to individuals.

But what about us? We have only the written Scriptures to go by. If the Law is general and the Gospel individual, does only the Law pertain to us? Surely that would be awful! Or is the Gospel proclaimed to us individually in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, apart from Scripture? That solves one problem, but makes assurance questionable. How would we know we had heard the voice" of the Holy Spirit rather than the voice of our own desperate hopes? Or does the gospel pertain to us because it is really general and not individual? Were those lucky enough to be around Jesus during his earthly ministry the recipients of a special kind of Gospel?

It is to be admitted that the parables spoke grace to individuals living in Jesus' time. They do not speak directly to us in exactly the same way. For them to apply

modern REFORMATION

to us, there must be a principle of application. This does not put Gospel parables in the same category as Law~ preaching, however. The Law is true for all, at all times, in all places. Gospel parables apply indiscriminately to the individuals who fit them. The Prodigal Son parable has one word of grace for the Prodigal, and another for his older brother. At different times we may find ourselves in the shoes of either brother. While Gospel passages such as we find in the parables apply to many people in different ages, there is still a particularity to them which is foreign to the Law. ut what about the Gospel's ability to break into a situation from the outside? Can that happen today? It most certainly can. Kenneth Bailey relates how tells how the Parable of the Lost Sheep caused a stir in communist China.

B

is, it must start with the God who is revealed in Scripture, the God who walked on earth as the Person of Christ. This binds us to a particular revelation which may offend us with exclusive claims. When we are offended, we must remember that there is a bright purpose to these claims. Christ's earthly mission allows us to understand heavenly things. Jesus reveals himself to us as a father who wants his sons back. If we submit to a theology which works from the bottom up, understanding the heavenly Father from the earthly Christ, we find a God who comes from the top down to rescue us. In distress we call upon him, not just because he is the only God, but because he is our God. 0

1 The Apocrypha: An American Translation by Edgar J. Goodspeed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), p.

199.

[Is] it wise to leave the ninety~nine and wander away 2 Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many searchingfor the one? Christian missionaries have debated (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 81.

3 C. S. Lewis, "De Descriptione T emporum" in his this point with Communist dialecticians in China. Indeed, Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University it is the shepherd's willingness to go after the one that gives Press, 1969), p. 10.

4 Gunton, p. 80. the ninety~nine their real security. If the one is sacrificed 5 Bloom does not limit this gnosticism to Southern in the name of the larger good of the group, then each Baptists, but extends it to most evangelicals. The Southern individual in the group is insecure. He knows that he too Baptists are the focus of his writing at this point, since they is of little value. If lost, he too will be left to die. When the demonstrate these characteristics more clearly than others.

This makes Bloom more sympathetic to them (at least the shepherd pays a high price to find the one, he thereby moderates), not less. offers the profoundest security to the many. II 6 C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: MacMillan, 1960) , This Parable broke into a situation where people had p. 111.

7 C. S. Lewis, Miracles, pp. 111-112. received "grace as a first principle" from their communist 8 Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther leaders. The first word which the government spoke to (New York: Mentor Books, 1977) p. 277.

9 Where I have inserted bracketed material, Bloom had the citizens was comfort. The communist leaders told the words" the original Yahweh of the JWriter. " Bloom accepts their citizens that: the welfare of all citizens was so the documentary hypothesis, and believes the Pentateuch had important that individuals would be sacrificed to it. This multiple authors, the so- called "J Writer" being one of them. was a message ofgood news excluding nobody-until any The J Writer is said to have written those parts of the Pentateuch which call God "Yahweh" as opposed to "Elohim" citizen found himself on the wrong side of the party. But or some other name. Bloom has even published a work called God had a better message. Instead of offering a word of The Book of j, where he suggests the writer is a woman. Since grace to "the masses, " he spoke of the Shepherd's love I do not accept the documentary hypothesis, I took the liberty of altering the quote (and admitting it) , since if the Pentateuch for the lost sheep. really speaks of only one God, I think Bloom would still have In the dialog with the Chinese dialecticians, we to admit that he has "an exhuberant personality. " 10 Bloom goes on to say that Philo of Alexandria, the can see that the Christian missionaries presented a father of Western theology, would be justly punished if in hell superior understanding of grace. But we must remember ¡ he were subjected to the companionship of Mary Baker Eddy. that this grace is not just a good principle which allows us 11 Kenneth E. Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal (St. to do things better. If it were, a good ou tcome for the Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973), p. 20.

story would require that the Communist government be nicer to dissenters. God's Gospel is better, however. He does not merely offer advice to incompetent shepherds on how better to care for sheep. He can rescue his lost sheep from bad shepherds. He can even rescue us from the bitter fallout ofman~ made substitutes for his Gospel, those which were formulated in response to a corrupted doctrine of creation!

Christianity offers to the world one God at the cost of two scandals. One is the exclusivity of grace. The other is pessimism toward the world. These two scandals are the mirror images of the actual Christian claim.

World~ pessimism is God~ optimism, and the exclusivity of grace is the individuality of the word of grace. Because the Gospel is not a timeless principle, it can begin to be true in the midst of a hopeless situation.

Theology needs to work form the bottom up. That

Rick Ritchie is a staff writer for CHRISTIANS UNITED for REFORMATlON and is acontributing editor to Christ the Lord: The Reforma tion and Lordship Salvation. He is a graduate of Christ College Irvine and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

13

Eric Casteel

What Herod

Means to Me

E are all Herod. We would-every one of us-snuff out the cries of the Babe in its mother's arms rather than have to hear His words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. " Forgive us, indeed. We will have

none of that.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chiefpriests and scribes ofthe people, he inquired ofthem where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem ofJudea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land ofJudah, are by no means least among the rulers ofJudah; for from you shall come aruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." When they had heard the king, they set out. ...And having been warned in adream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road...

When Herod ~aw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." (Mt 2: 1­ 9a, 12, 16-18, NRSV) II)

Weare all Herod, not because we seek to slaughter innocent children, but because we seek, by killing the truth of words, to kill the Word. Herod did not want the words of the prophets concerning the coming King to be true, so he sought by his own measures to see to it that they were rendered meaningless by destroying truth.

Today, not having the Christ child around, we have other methods of ridding ourselves of truth. Rather than attempting to kill the Christ child, we try to kill the 14

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

words about him. We do this either by substituting our feelings for the facts of Scripture, or we subject those words to endless reinterpretation: "What Jesus means to me... " We, like Herod who chose not to heed the inevitability of Micah' swords, do not choose to heed the plain statement of the Baptist: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world"(John 1:29). We have this thing about reinventing truth. And it is a very deadly disease.

Part and parcel of a new Reformation will be the return to the practice of allowing the words of Scripture­ indeed, of any writing-speak for themselves. This was true of the sixteenth century Reformation. Luther's many introductions to books of the Bible deal as much with interpretation as they do with translation. The value, in either case, was placed on the words of Scripture, both as simply words and as the words ofGod. It was not unusual for this shift to occur in Luther's time because it had been happening in other fields whose primary sources were ancient texts which had long been ignored in favor oflater commentaries, such as the works of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero and Hermogenes. The emphasis, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century humanists said, was to be on the originals, not on later translations or commentaries. And so with biblical studies. It was time to turn away from the scholastic commentaries, and the stifling work of the theologians of the Sorbonne, and back to the basic message ofScripture.

It was the return to original words that led to the Renaissance. It was the return to the words of the Word that resulted in the Reformation. Today, we are far from the words, and far from the Word.

We have, in our day, a Jesus who is a great marketing manager, 1 our great moral example, Z or a Buddha of Buddhas or some such new age nonsense. He can be a god who wants us to be wealthy, or a sort of marionette deity who we order around telling him to "heal this, destroy that, fix this dent in my car and­ while you're at it-raise my chicken from the dead, will you?" He can be anything but the "Word made flesh. " The reason for this is really quite simple. We don't want anything which we cannot revise, edit, rewrite, paint over, or reconceptualize whenever we come up with a new metaphysical theory. Herod just wanted to King.

But we have bigger plans. We want to be the controllers of truth: we want to be God. 1

modern REFORMATION

The greatest revolts against God occur in the areas of language. Language is, after all, the primary tool of cognition. That is, we think in words. 3 And since Christianity is primarily a religion centered around the acts of God in Christ which were witnessed by those around him and subsequently passed on in words to the next generation ( rather than being centered around our actions, behavior, or morality) ,4 it should come as no surprise to us that this is the case: God has always been most concerned with facts that can be conveyed with words, not with emotions transmitted by who knows what kind of celestial ooze. (Certainly someone will object here: "Christianity is a religion of the heart, not the intellect. " The only response to this is that this is a false dichotomy. The Bible does not put the heart in opposition to the intellect. Indeed, in the Bible and all of classical literature, the heart was seen as the seat of the intellect, while the seat of the emotions was the stomach or bowels. So, in vitingJesus into one's heart is correct if one means by this that Jesus comes into the person's intellectual life. If, however, what is meant is the liberal, romantic or gnostic notion of some type of emotionally~ experienced "intimacy with God," then it is entirely false. However, this is not to say that Christianity is entirely unemotional. Genuine Christian piety is very emotional. But I will deal with this later. ) It is when we start playing with words that God gets really angry. Think for instance of the serpent in the garden who twisted God's words (Gen 3). Think of Christ's words to the Pharisees when they corrupted the Law (Mt 23). Consider the warnings in Deuteronomy (4:2) and Revelation (22: 18) concerning adding to or taking away from the Scriptures. And consider whence comes revival in the nation ofIsrael? When Ezra returns to the words of God and reads the Torah to the people (Neh 7-8) . God will not have his words twisted or ignored. The Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde suggests that it is when we start inventing new language about God that we are exposed as sinners: "Developing speech that seeks to make a god amenable to our projected hopes and dreams is no different from making a god of wood or stone or bronze: it is simply idolatry, and it is born of unbelief. " 5 First, we talk about a god as if we believe in one, but then we start fashioning our own language

about him, as if we could create God in our own image.

How on earth can we believe in a God that we can rewrite? Have we not, in such a case, simply redefined the word "god"? Whatever he is (we tell ourselves) , he certainly is not the creator, sustainer or redeemer. He is not what he calls himself. He/ She/ It is what we call him/ her/ it. Unfortunately, having given Christianity over to being a "relationship" or a "way of life" instead of the belief in the historical fact that Christ died for the sins of the world and that those who believe this will be saved from the wrath ofGod and eternal punishment, we have put our feelings before God's words. At this point, we are going to have to question which god is which, and wonder how we are to differentiate between them. And if we can't decide whose feelings are more important, we are going to be forced either to ignore the differences, or we're going to have find out what God has to say for himself.

Language is a divinely sanctioned thing.

Consider the biblical emphasis­ "And God said, 'Let there

be light,' and there was light" (Gen 1: 3).

"No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe" (Dt 30: 14).

"By the wordofthe Lord the heavens weremade, andall their host by the breath of his mouth" (psalm 33:6).

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

(Psalm 119:5)

"In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God." Oohn 1: 1)

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have

seen his glory, and the glory as ofafather's only son, full ofgrace

and truth." Oohn 1: 14)

"By faith we understand the worlds were prepared by the word

of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not

seen." (Hebrews 11:3)

The clear correlation in Scripture between God's word

and the person and work of Christ can never be overemphasized (see esp. ColI : 15-17). In fact, without this connection, Scripture means nothing. Creation, the old Lutheran dogmaticians held, was perverbum-through or by means of the word. Creation was accomplished through the word of God. And this means that creation was both through the spoken word that God uttered-ClAnd God said ... "-and through Christ, the hypostatic Word through whom God the Father speaks. 6 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

15

How can we, then, as beings created by an act of spoken words, turn our backs on the medium by which we were made? It is here where our rebellion goes deepest. We turn our backs on words by going to feelings and emotions. "The Lord told me .... " Really? How? Did you hear an actual voice? Were these just impressions?

God gets pretty serious about using actual words, you know. And the proof of this is in the Incarnation. God is so concerned about being concrete, clear, and fully understood that he became flesh. The Creator stepped into his creation for the express purposes ofmaking himself known, ("Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us, " Luke 2:15) and "to reconcile to himself all things, whetheronearthorinheaven, bymakingpeace through the blood of his cross" (Col 1:20) . motions do not make the facts. But the fact that Christ said to the Father, "Forgive them... , " will stir the emotions of the Christian who knows his or her sin. David said to God, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit" (Psalm 51. 12). There's nothing cold and unemotional about that. Consider, too, the words to these two songs, one a contemporary "Praise" ditty, the other an eighteenth century hymn: I can hear rain, it's falling on my rooftop

God's words, "What Jesus/ this passage means to me is... " as too many church, goers do. And we must take exceeding care not to lose our respect for language, as many textual critics and literary theorists have done, saying that words can have no inherent meaning because language is an arbitrary human invention. We must be careful of all these things because, as George Steiner says, "Language seeks vengeance on those who cripple it."9 Forde says that the hidden God-in Lutheran theology, the God of wrath-hides behind words ready to strike when we start messing around with them. 10 Often I think his vengeance takes the shape of Romans 1, where God simply turns people over to their lusts.

God will allow the critic to believe that language has no real meaning, which will in turn throw that person into an ugly and consuming abyss. 11 It is when we encounter this in our daily lives that we, as followers of the Word, must intervene on behalf of others. And when I say intervene, I am speaking of our tasks as apologists and evangelists. When we encounter this kind of relativism, we must be quick to ask that person, "WHY?" "If language is meaningless, why do you use it?

Why do you expect me to understand you? And, if language really is meaningless, then you are absolutely alone in this world, because you have no guarantee that l' m understanding you at all. " Words mean something because Sending those shivers down my spine God created the world with words through the Word, that same Word which became flesh.

Ooh it makes me feel good Now someone might notice a little bit of circularity So near to you in my argument, here. After all, l' ve said that language And I remember...the first time 7 is meaningful because God says (in written words) that or:

words mean something. But 1'm assuming that those Let us love, and sing and wonder,

written words (Scripture) are meaningful. This part of Let us praise the Saviour's Name!

He has hushed the Law's loud thunder,

my argument is covered, however, by John Warwick Montgomery's resurrection apologetic, which can be He has quenched Mt. Sinai's flame:

found in Human Rights and Human Dignity (still in print) He has washed us with His blood,

or The Shape of the Past (out of print). But I will He presents our souls to God. 8

The latter indeed stirs the heart of grateful sinners, for it summarize it here-however ungracefully-for those displays an understanding of the Grace of God which the not familiar with it.

There is a collection of historical documents which writer ofthe hymn-the same who penned AmazingGrace­ had experienced deeply. It can and frequently does bring speak of a man named Jesus, a Jewish rabbi who seemed tears to many a singer's eyes. The former is probably not to be preaching things which were in conflict with Jewish fit to be sung in a singles bar, but it is passed off as worship beliefs. He was brought to trial by Jewish leaders in a Roman court, was crucified in brutal Roman fashion, music. and was killed. Three days later, a group of his friends God's creative act guarantees our speech. That is, began to claim that he was again alive. In fact, at least we can trust language because it is something invented, not by us, but by God and given to us. Personally, and four of the nine writers of these documents claim that I won't put too much emphasis on this as it is mere they themselves saw the risen Jesus. One of the other supposition on my part, I believe that the ability to use writers says that at the time he was writing, at least 251 people were still alive who had seen Jesus alive again. language is part of the imago dei-the image of God­ which Scripture says that we as his creatures bear (Gen This group of people-these Christians, as they were 1:26,27). And, as it stands, it is something which is on called-quickly became very troublesome to Jewish loan to us. Or, as the line from the great hymn 0 Sacred religious leaders. This man who was touted as the long­ Head, Now Wounded says, "What language can I borrow awaited Messiah-the promised redeemer ofIsrael-was to thank you... ?" Language is not ours to do with as we said to be alive again. So, these leaders naturally did what anyone would do in the face of such ridiculous please. Words belong to God, just as the Word is God. We must be extremely careful then in creating new claims: they brought out the body of the crucified rabbi names for God, as feminist theology seeks to do. We to disprove the claims.

History records all of these events except for the very must be careful in offering our own interpretations of

E

16

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

modern REFORMATION

last one. No one ever did produce a body. No one ever disproved the resurrection of Christ, even though it would have been the easiest thing in the world to disprove. His disciples could not have stolen the body, I because there was a Roman guard at the tomb. And \~ besides, eleven guys who have just seen their leader brutally executed are not likely to have the wits or energy to try and overcome or outsmart a Roman guard.

When we examine these documents further, we see that this man clearly claimed to be God. Coupled with all of the eyewitness testimony regarding the resurrection ofjesus, we can reasonably conclude that this man Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, just as the Roman soldier at the cross confessed. Jesus was God. At this point we look at what he said regarding the words of God and the Scriptures. Christ affirms all of the history of the Old Testament, including the fantastic stuff like Jonah and the Whale. All of the words are vindicated. All of the words are trustworthy. fear for the next generation that distrusts words, a generation which George Steiner believes is already upon us. 12 It sounds absurd and impractical, but what if we do decide that words don't mean anything?

Will we stop speaking with one another? Will we become rebelliously silent against words which we are told mean nothing? Closing our ears to one another presupposes that our ears are already closed to God. The truth is, however, that we are trying desperately to kill words, so that we won't have to listen. If we can ignore words, then we can ignore what is written on our hearts. And we can ignore Christ's words from the cross. Forde is right. Messing around with the words exposes us as sinners.

We must be careful to defend facts over feelings, and the primacy of the speaker over the hearer, else the "Word became flesh" for no reason. Why flesh if emotional experience could have done the job? The reason for our being forgiven had flesh and blood, and he cried. Our infant Saviour cried. Our grown Saviour cried (out of real, emotional grief). All of the human senses could perceive him. Also, he told us the meaning of his coming using a tool which all of humanity shares: language. The reality, necessity and importance of these can never be over~ emphasized. To deny them is to deny the Incarnation, even if only accidentally. 13 But the Word really did become flesh. Physical. Empirical.

Sensible. The prostitute really heard the words, "Neither do I condemn you," and she really knew what they meant. The babe in the manger whom we call Emmanuel, God with us, is meant not to be erased or ignored, but worshipped and adored. 0

I

say the words that I am thinking. For a related discussion, see Max Black, "The Labyrinth of Language," Reclaiming the Imagination. ,ed. Ann E. Berthoff, (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/ Cook, 1984), pp. 72-83.

4 Ironically, secular historians can see that this is the core of Christianity better than some professing Christians: "From the very beginning, Christianity was a 'historical' religion, seeing the world as a stage for divine action, and the life of Christ as God's supreme intervention in its affairs. " Stephen T oulmin and June Goodfield, The Discovery of Time, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p.56.

5 Forde, Gerhard, "Naming the One Who is Above Us, " Speaking the Christian God-The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Alvin F. Kimel, Jr. , (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1992), p. 114.

6 Preus, Robert D. ,The Theology of Post~Reformation Lutherianism, V2, God and His Creation, (St. Louis: Concordia, 1972) , pp. 171-172.

7 Faison, Chris, "The First Time, " Standing on the Rock, Copyright 1994, Maranatha! Music, 38597-1020-2.

8 Newton, John. "Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder," From Book III of the Olney Hymnbook.

9 Steiner, George, "The Retreat from the Word," A Reader. (New York: Oxford UP, 1984), p.301.

10 Forde, op. cit.

11 For a brilliant reaction to the current state of literacy studies in American universities, see the essay in Lionel Trilling in Gertrude Himmelfarb' s On Looking Into the Abyss­ Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp.3-26.

12 Steiner, George, Real Presences, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

13 In theSpirit~FilledLife Bible, ed. Jack Hayford (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), a study note on Genesis 3: 15, written

by Mr. Hayford, says of the promised Messiah, "He will be completely human, yet divinely begotten. " (p. 9) One hopes that Mr. Hayford is advocating the ancient heresy of adoptionism only by accident and a very careless use of words. But he has, neverthelesss, denied the historical idea of the Incarnation: God became Man, fully man yet fully God. Eric Casteel, a communicant in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, is a graduate of California State University in Long Beach, California.

1 Barna George Marketing the Church: What They Never Taught You about Church Growth (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1988), p.50.

2 Finney, Charles, Systematic Theology, (Bethany House) 3 Of Course, we think in all sorts of other ways, too. But language is one of the few ways in which we can concretely '---...-/ reproduce our thought processes into something outside of us which others can experience. I can not always reproduce on paper a picture which I see in my mind's eye, but I can always I

I

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

17

c.

S. Lewis's Introduction

St. Anthansius

On The Incarnation

here is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modem books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modem book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because ofhis greatness, is much more intelligible than his modem commentator.

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modem books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

This mistaken preference for the modem books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but Mr. Berdyaev or Mr. Maritain or Mr. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy~ turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modem books. But ifhe must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modem 18

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

books. If you join at eleven 0' clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing ofwhat is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why-the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences ina modem book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard ofplain , central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. very age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook­ even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it.

Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united-united with each other and against earlier and later ages-by a great mass of common assumptions.

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century-the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that? "-lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past.

E

modern REFORMATION

)

~

People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made You will be thought a Papist when you are actually as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the not and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks ,- ­ \ endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, ~o ''----...J either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future -with the sheep~ tracks. would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, The present book is something of an experiment. The but unfortunately we cannot get at them. translation is intended for the world at large, not only for myself was first led into reading the Christian theological students. If it succeeds, other translations of classics, almost accidentally, as a result of my other great Christian books will presuITlably follow. In one English studies. Some, such as Hooker, Herbert, sense, ofcourse, it is not the first in the field. Translations Traherne, Taylor and Bunym, I read because they are of the Theologia Germanica, the Imitation, the Scale of themsel ves great English writers; others, such as Boethius, Perfection, and the Revelations of Lady Julian of Norwich, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, because they are already on the market, and are very valuable, though were "influences. " George Macdonald I had found for some of them are not very scholarly. But it will be noticed myself at the age of sixteen and never wavered in my that these are all books of devotion rather than of doctrine allegiance, though I tried for a long time to ignore his Now the layman or amateur needs to be instructed as well Christianity. They are, you will note, a mixed bag, as to be exhorted. In this age his need for knowledge is representative of many Churches, climates, and ages. particularly pressing. Nor would I admit any sharp division between the two kinds of book. For my own part I tend to And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them.

The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion some of these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the man is tempted to think-as one might be tempted who same experience may await many others. I believe that read only contemporaries-that "Christianity" is a word of many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their this is not 5'0. Measured against the ages "mere Christianity" way through a tough bit oftheology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive , self~ consistent, and inexhaustible. his is a good translation of a very great book. St. Athanasius has suffered in popular estimation ~ I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too from a certain sentence in the "Athanasian Creed. " I will familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met not labour the point that that work is not exactly a creed and was not by St. Athanasius, for I think it is a very fine me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, piece of writing. The words "Which Faith except every one now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish Spenser and Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in everlastingly" are the offence. They are commonly misunderstood. The operative word is keep; not acquire, or Pascal and]ohnson; there again, with a mild, frightening, even believe, but keep. The author, in fact, is not talking Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and Boebme and T raherne.

In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not about unbelievers, but about deserters, not about those safe-Law and Butler were two lions in the path. The who have never heard of Christ , nor even those who have supposed "Paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep it misunderstood and refused to accept him, but ofthose who out; it lay in wait where a man might have supposed himself having really understood and really believed, then allow themselves, under the sway of sloth or of fashion or any safest, in the very centre of The Facrie Queene and the Arcadia. It was, of course, varied; and yet-after all-so other invited confusion to be drawn away into sub~ Christian modes of thought. They are a warning against the unmistakably the same; recognisable, not to be evaded, the odour which is death to us until we allow it to become curious modem assumption that all changes of belief however brought about, are necessarily exempt from life: an air that kills From yon far country blows. blame. But this is not my immediate concern. I mention We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the "the creed (common\ Y called) of St. Athanasius" only to divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by get out of the reader's way what may have been a bogey and them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it to put the true Athanasius in its place. His epitaph is looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world. " despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an We are proud that our own country has more than once immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He { our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, "whole and undefiled, " when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back ~/ out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you from Christianity into the religion of Arius into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience.

I

T

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

19

None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

c. S. lewis contined: recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.

When Ifirst opened his De Incamatione Isoon discovered by a very simple test that I was reading a masterpiece. I knew v~ry little Christian Greek except that of the New Testament and I had expected difficulties. To my astonishment I found it almost as easy as Xenophon; and only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity. Every page I read confirmed this impression.

His approach to the Miracles is badly needed today, for it is the final answer to those who object to them as "arbitrary and meaningless violations of the laws of Nature." They are here shown to be rather the re~ telling in capital letters of the same message which Nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand; the very operations one would expect of him who was so full of life that when he wished to die he had to "borrow death from others. "The whole book, indeed, is

a picture of the Tree ofLife-a sappy and golden book, full of buoyancy and confidence. We cannot, I admit, appropriate all its confidence today. We cannot point to the high virtue of Christian living and the gay, almost mocking courage ofChristian martyrdom, as a proofofour doctrines with quite that assurance which Athanasius takes as a matter ofcourse. But whoever may be to blame for that it is not Athanasius.

Permission to reprint C. S. Lewis's introduction in St. Athanasius on the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 1993) has been granted by A. R. Mowbray & Co. Ltd. (England) and St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. Lewis's introduction may not be reproduced.

C. S. Lewis established himselfas one ofthe rrwstcelebratedcontemporary authors with his more than forty books, including Screwtape Letters, the seven~volume Chronicles ofNarnia, and Mere Christianity. He was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University ifCambridge and a Fellow ofMagdalen College, Oxford. Throughout his career runs the theme ofhis conversion from atheism to Christianity, leading Time magazine to describe him as "one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the English~speaking world."

LIGONIER'S 1995 T E XA S CONFERENC E • APRIL 27-29 • ARLINGTON CONVENT I ON CENTER

STIFlED ~. FJU1lJ ALONE Jerry Bridges • Steve Brown • Sinclair Ferguson Michael Horton • D. J ames K ennedy • R. C. Sproul Is there "another gospel?" Some evangelicals are showing signs of surrendering justification by faith alone doctrine upon which the church stands or falls -

the

in the interest of peace and unity. Has truth been sacrificed in the

process? In Paul's day, the Gospel turned the world upside down. It can do the same today. Join us April 27-29, 1995, in Arlington, Texas, as we explore the one and only Gospel, the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ.

FOR

20

MORE

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

INFORMATION CALL

LIGONIER

MINISTRIES TOLL FREE A T

1- 800 - 435 - 4343

modern R EFORMATION

Gene E. Ve ith

The REFORMATION

& The Arts

major controversy during the time of the Reformation involved the proper use of the arts. Despite the artistic glories of the medieval church, the Reformers believed that art was being misused, that it was obscuring the Gospel behind a haze of aesthetic experience. In some ways, the medieval approach to the arts, as condemned by the Reformers, is coming back among contemporary evangelicals.

The Reformation, however, did not stifle the arts.

Rather, in distinguishing art from religion, the Reformation liberated the arts, sparking an explosion of creativity and artistic excellence. Both the contemporary church and the contemporary art world have a lot to learn from the artistic heritage of the Reformation. 1

1ne j\jev\l Graven Images The popular religion of the late Middle Ages was centered around works of art. Unable or not allowed to read the Bible, ordinary folk learned what they knew of Scripture from stained glass windows and street dramas. While the priests would perform Mass in barely audible Latin behind the rood screen, ordinary worshippers would contemplate the statues and icons that filled the church. In the popular mind, special images of the Virgin Mary had special power, and multitudes would embark on pilgnmages to pay devotion to a miraculous shrine. Instead of viewing art for its aesthetic value, many medieval Christians viewed it for its religious value. In doing so, the message of the Gospel was often obscured.

Today's popular religion also centers around works of art. While most evangelicals-unlike medieval Christians­ are uninterested in the "high culture" of serious paintings, sophisticated music, and quality craftsmanship, many eagerly embrace the "popular culture" of the media and the entertainment industry. The kinds of art forms associated with today's popular culture-contemporary music, television shows, consumer- oriented communication­ define the so- called "evangelical style. "2 Today' s Christian bookstores typically have more "art" than books: shelves of religious knickknacks, plaques,

posters, and sentimental figurines; tapes and CD's of Christian rock, rap, and heavy- metal; videos of Christian thrillers, how- to's, and exercise routines; Christian T- shirts, toys, greeting cards, and gifts. If there is still room for books, most of them will follow the popular genres of the secular bestseller lists: Christian pop psychology, diet, and self- help; Christian romances, science fiction, mysteries, and horror.

Such art forms play an important role in contemporary Christianity. Many people find their religious experience not in congregational worship but in "inspirational" videos and contemporary Christian concerts complete with mosh pits and body passing.

During the Reformation, the controversies over art centered around the question of whether religious art violated the biblical injunction against the use of graven images m worship (Ex 20:4) . To their credit, the medieval Christians, though led astray, were led astray by high quality art. Even works of great merit, however, can become idolatrous when human expressions become substitutes for God' s revelation and when aesthetic pleasure is confused with spiritual truth.

The taste of contemporary Christians for the artifacts of the pop culture has a similar danger: The glossy creations of human authors, musicians, and media specialists often take the place of the Word of God. Aesthetic criteria­ such as how much we like something or how much we enjoy it-replace standards of theological truth. We say, "I really like that church, " instead of "I believe in what that church teaches. " We tell the pastor how much we "enjoyed" the sermon rather than how it convicted us of sin and of sal vation. We even discuss theology in aesthetic terms rather than the language of t ruth: we say, "I don't like the idea of Hell, " instead of asking whether there is such a place.

Even when today's religious junk is not idolatrous, it carries another danger. Much of today' s "inspirational" art and music might not teach false doctrine-though it often does-but it does trivialize and vulgarize the Holy One of Israel. Such carelessness about what is holy is, literally, profanity and is sternly warned against in Scripture. If our popular religious art does not violate the commandment against graven images, it risks violating the commandment against taking the name of the Lord in vain (Ex 29:7).

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

21

The Sacred and the Secular If you walk through an art museum, you will notice that the medieval wing is packed with religious paintings­ Madonnas, saints, and icons of Christ. When you get to the Reformation section-that is, art from northern Europe of the 1500' sand 1600' s-there is a Odramatic change.

Instead of Mary and the Christ child on a throne, you will see paintings of families, pictures of people at their workplace, and portraits of ordinary men and women. You may find a few biblical scenes in the Reformation gallery, but the biblical characters look like doughty German farmers or down, to, earth Dutch matrons instead ofidealized saints. The background is not beaten gold as in the medieval paintings, but realistic villages and forests. The Reformation art seems very secular.

Does this mean that the Reformation had no religious impact on the arts? Not at all. The Reformation's rediscovery of Scripture and of the Gospel inspired a new flowering of the arts. The Reformers saw little problem with secular art.

Ironically, their main complaint was against religious art.

The very secular quality of Reformation art, however, had a religious motivation. Paintings of families reflected the new awareness that marriage and child raising-as opposed to the medieval exaltation of celibacy-are high spiritual callings. The paintings of butcher stalls, farmers in their fields, and women at their spinning wheels reflected the Reformation insight that all vocations, not just the clerical ones, are ways of serving God and one's fellow human beings~ The portraits grew out of the Reformation emphasis on the individual. The realistic biblical scenes came from the realization that the Bible is not only true, in a down, to' earth way, but it is for and about ordinary people.

If the Reformation helped to secularize art, it did so not by eliminating the sacred, but by seeing even the secular sphere in the light of God's grace. Reformation art made the secular sacred. Today' s religious art, on the other hand, often does the reverse, making the sacred secular.

Christianity is presented as the key to having a happy family, finding success on the job, and feeling good about yourself. The overt subject may be religious, but the prime emphasis is on this world. In Reformation art, the subject may be secular, but-as in a painting by Rembrandt-it will be transfigured by spiritual light.

The Reformers as Art Critics In seeking to restore the Gospel and to place the Bible at the center of the Christian life, the Reformers attacked what they saw as the idolatry of the medieval church. In reaction to the devotion to images and the use ofart to promote false doctrines, many Reformers became iconoclasts, smashing stained glass windows and burning crucifixes, reliquaries, and triptychs. Nevertheless, Reformation iconoclasm was not intrinsically anti, art.

Calvin and Zwingli objected to the religious use of art, but not to art as such. "I am not gripped by the superstition of thinking absolutely no images permissible, " writes Calvin, "but because sculpture and paintings are gifts of God, I seek a pure and legitimate use of each. "3 Zwingli, an extreme 22

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

iconoclast, even permitted paintings of Christ as long as they were not in churches nor offered reverence.

According to Zwingli, "where anyone has a portrait of His humanity, that is just as fitting to have as to have other portraits. "4 Leo J ud, a colleague of Zwingli and a fellow iconoclast, distinguished between artificial images of God made by human beings and the true image of God made by God himself. In other words, those interested in seeing the image of God need only look at a human being, whom God himself made in his own image.

Portraits, therefore, paintings of ordinary men and women, became a means of contemplating the Divine Image. According to Jud, portraits depict "living images made by God and not by the hands of men. "5 As a result of this profound insight, portraiture flourished throughout the Reformed countries. The concept of the imago dei underlies the work of those painters known as the Dutch Masters, including perhaps the greatest Protestant painter, Rembrandt. In the face of his subjects-children, merchants, ordinary families­ the depths of their personalities are suggested, and one can discern their dignity and value as having been created in the Image of God. ot all of the Reformers were iconoclasts. After his condemnation by the Emperor, Luther came out of hiding at the risk of his life precisely to put down the riots of image burning and stained glass window smashing that had broken out in Wittenberg. Luther's rule for church art was to reject only art that interfered with the message of Christ. Images of Mary and the legendary saints were removed, with all of the attendant devotions and "works" associated with them. Crucifixes, depicting the all-sufficient atonement for sin, and other biblical paintings and church decorations were retained.

Luther, in a sermon on the subject, articulated an important principle of Christian freedom: "Although it is true and no one can deny that the images are evil because they are abused, nevertheless we must not on that account reject them, nor condemn anything because it is abused. This would result in utter confusion. " Some people worship the sun and the stars, says Luther, but this does not mean we should try to pull them from the skies. Some are led astray by women and wine, but this does not mean we should kill all the women and pour out all the wine. Images, Luther maintains, "ought to be abolished when they are worshipped; otherwise not. " "That yonder crucifix, " he continues, "is not my God, for my God is in heaven, but . . . this is simply a sign. " To be sure, many consider putting up an image to be a good work, a way to earn God's favor. For them, images are harmful, but "there are still some people who hold no such wrong opinion of them, but to whom they may be useful. . . We cannot and ought not to condemn a thing which may be any way useful to a person. "6 Luther appreciated the arts and his theology, in tum, was appreciated by artists. One of Luther's good friends-they stood as godfathers to each other's children-was the artist Lucas Cranach. His religious

N

modern R EFORMATION

¡~

.paintings, in marked contrast to the transcendent mysticism of the Middle Ages, are down to earth, locating biblical and spiritual events squarely in the ordinary, natural world. Albrecht DArer, one of the greatest innovators of realistic art, was a follower of Luther.

The great nonrepresentational art form of the Reformation was music. The Reformers from Luther to Zwingli reveled in music. "My love for music," said Luther, "which often has quickened me and liberated me from great vexations, is abundant and overflowing. " Luther ranked music as second in importance only to theology. 7 Music, praised throughout Scripture, involves no graven images whatsoever, yet it is art of the highest craftsmanship and aesthetic impact. The Reformation created an outpouring of music not only in the form of hymns (music with the content of the Word) but also in ~ instrumental music.

The Reformation's legacy to music finds its culmination in the piety and artistry of perhaps the greatest ofcomposers: Johann Sebastian Bach. A devout Lutheran, Bach would begin many of his scores with the Latin abbreviation for "Jesus Help. " He would end them with the Reformation slogan Soli Deo Gloria: "to God alone be the glory. " These inscriptions can be found not only in his church music, but also in his secular music.

Bach's fugues and minuets written for the court may have been secular, but they were born in prayer and praise.

Reforming the Arts

~j

Not many Christian bookstores today sell Bach CD's, Rembrandt prints, or for that matter the writings of Luther or Calvin. For some reason, contemporary Christians uncritically embrace the art of Hollywood and Madison A venue, while being averse to the art that actually emerged out of a biblical world view. Spenser, Herbert, and Milton are still lauded even in secular universities, but despite their fervent Reformation spirituality they are not read much by today' s Protestants.

These works of these poets, as well as those of the Reformation painters and the great classical composers, demand effort, attention, and reflection on the part of their audiences. A number of Christian artists are continuing in their tradition, creating works of hones ty , complexity, and quality, but they are often spumed by the contemporary church.

Cultivating taste may be an important survival skill for Christians. That contemporary Christians are addicted to pop music and pop art (music and art that recognizes no higher values than entertainment, commercialism, self-gratification, and shallow emotionalism) means that they are opening themselves up to a pop spiritual life. It is little wonder that many contemporary Christians insist on entertaining worship services, commercialistic evangelism, feel~ good sermons, and subjective spirituality. Pop art leads to pop theology.

Responding to quality is a valuable self~ discipline.

Becoming knowledgeable about the arts, practicing discernment-both theological and aesthetic-and

patromzmg excellence are ways that Christians can actively resist mediocrity and corruption.

To be sure, aesthetics is no substitute for faith. The sophisticated patrons of the symphony and the galleries often use art for their religion, looking to aesthetic experience for their values, meaning, and inspiration.

This kind of aestheticism may be sophisticated, but it is no less idolatrous than the most primitive superstition, insofar as human creations-however beautiful-are allowed to take the place of the transcendent God of Scripture. Ironically, when art becomes a substitute for God, the result tends to be not only bad religion but also bad art. The emptiness, immorality, and absurdity of so much of contemporary art is evidence of the spiritual condition of today' s art world, which stands in sore need of the Reformation Gospel. hristians who do not look to the arts for their religion, however, are freed to appreciate them as they were intended to be appreciated. In his discussion of Greek culture, classical historian Werner Jaeger points out that "it was the Christians who finally taught men to appraise poetry by a purely aesthetic standard-a standard which enabled them to reject most of the moral and religious teaching of the classical poets as false and ungodly, while accepting the formal elements in their work as instructive and aesthetically delightful. "8 What the . early church did for Greek culture, the Reformation reiterated.

This means that Christians can enjoy the whole range of the arts, but their standards should be high.

Christians-recognizing that art testifies to the human condition rather than necessarily to divine truth-can approach even the most secular art from a theological point of view, while also enjoying it from "a purely aesthetic" perspective. As for explicitly religious art, Christians can agree with a work theologically, while criticizing its craftsmanship. Christians can also disagree with its theology, while admiring its form. Work that is both theologically profound and aesthetically powerful­ the poetry of George Herbert, the music of Handel, a landscape byThomas Cole-should be treasured. Because our faith comes not from art, but from the Bible, we can approach the arts in a spirit of Christian freedom.

Because I have written extensively on Christianity and the arts, I often hear from Christian artists who tell me about their struggles in finding acceptance within today's church. A young woman wrote me about how hard she worked to suppress her artistic gifts. Her church led her to believe that if she really wanted to serve the Lord, she needed to give up her artistic career to become an evangelist.

She joined a parachurch organization and threw herself into witnessing programs. The problem was, she was unsuccessfuL She had neither the temperament, the talent, nor the people skills to be a home missionary. She came to realize, though, that what she was good at­ namely, art-was an ability that was given to her by God. She realized that she could serve God as an artist. In other words, she came to the Reformation understanding that being an artist is her vocation.

C

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

23

I know another artist and musician whose devotion to Christ led him into a career in contemporary Christian music. As he started studying Reformation theology, he became increasingly repelled by the shallow religiosity, false doctrines, bad quality, and sappy commercialism of so much of the contemporary Christian music industry.

He finally decided to switch to the secular music scene.

Today he writes love songs, blues, and ballads and sings them in coffeehouses and concert halls. His songs grow out ofa deeply biblical worldview , expressed with honesty and artistic integrity. His songs and his drawings speak freely of a faith that informs the whole spectrum of his life. He is a true Reformation artist. have found that there are many Christians who have discovered their vocation in the arts, whether in the church or in the secular arena. Many of them are frustrated with the opposition or indifference they have encountered from their fellow evangelicals, many of whom prefer tackiness and mediocrity to aesthetic excellence. These artists, who are bringing a biblical vision into contemporary culture, deserve the understanding and support of the church. Ordinary Christians, in tum, would find their lives enriched by cultivating their tastes.

The Apostle Paul's admonition to "approve the things that are excellent, "and to meditate on "whatever things are lovely [and] praiseworthy" (Phil 1:10, 4:8) must also apply to the arts. The Reformation teaches us how to avoid idolatry-whether that of the fetish worshipper, the aesthete, or the entertainment industry-while freeing us to enjoy the fullness of beauty that God structured into His creation and into the human soul. 0

I

1 Some of the material in this article is adapted from my book State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991).

2 See Kenneth Myers, All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989).

3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans.

Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), Book 1, Chapter 11, Section 12.

4 Quoted in Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven, CN: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), p. 171.

5 Quoted in Garside, p. 182.

6 Luther's Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 51: 84-85.

7 Ibid. , 49: 428.

8 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans . Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) , pp. xxvii-xxviii.

Dr. Gene Edward Veith}r. is Associate Professor ofEnglish and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University in Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and he received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas. He is the author of The Gift of Art: The Place of the Arts in the Reformation(Intervarsity Press), Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert (Bucknell University Press), Loving God With All Your Mind (Crossway) and Postmodem Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Crossway) .

,....... )\i.l~,tifi IQXL 910AM ' '. " B b~ton~ZE : 1260AM

Qhet~n11~ I~CSJ? .•·.JOO.·9FM

,..C~~~go~~JQ6~!FM

, ~lora~oSpting~ I~CiFr:r : l(}(}~?FM Dallas · KPB.C·170Mi

Denve,r:i<lU(S94.7FM

lflln§gt;Q.p;yyYWiM~:t l07;9: ·JWl· . '.; .~ ~QsAn~eles~A99. :S~M ' · Mcq()ol~~NE .I~~N .l.3;

6 0.Ml . 11od~sto, · GAI~()1V99.9 'FM

' MOPJ:~b111ety '~~F89~lFM

N~~YorkW,MGA 570AM

:paInida1'~;{JA I{AVC 10S.S AM .' ' · Phil~~elphia,WFIL S60AM Pitts. bu):g~WQlU) 101.SFM

' ]?oitland'ICpbQ 800AM ~~no/¢ais6nCity I(NIS .91. 3FM . . "~versideGi\I~FE 1240 AM San))ieg6URZ 1210AM ' SanFraricisco.KFAX 1100AM Seattle'I(GNW 820AM : §t.~01iisWCBW 104.9FM · . Ve~tukil'Si\ I(l)AR 98.3 FM Washingt9n .: p CWAVA 10S.lFM ...... ro.""', .•

.rS.~

••• •,...

al Talk Show '

Michael Horton Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt 9~RISTIANS UNITED for REFORMATION

·:·,2221 .East Winston Road Suite K Anaheim, California 92806 800-956-2644 24

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

modern REFORMATION

D. G. Hart

The Incarnation & Multiculturalism

Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he

might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of Cod, to

make expiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered

and been t~mpted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

Hebrews 2: 17-18

verses in the epistle to the Hebrews say some remarkable things about Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. And yet we may be oblivious to the significance of these verses because we have been so conditioned by our culture's habits of thought. No sane person who knows anything about the place of the evangelical and Reformed worlds of conservative Protestantism on the contemporary cultural map (i. e., the far right) would dare conclude that those who retain a high estimate of God's Word and of the teachings of the Reformation have become captive to the perils of political correctness. Yet even within many conservative Protestant communions and institutions the way many believers understand race, gender, and class, the holy trinity of political correctness, often conforms more to this world than to God's revealed Word. Let me explain.

During the course ofgoing through the morning mail I recently found in an issue of the American Historical Association's newsletter a forum on the propriety of Whites teaching African, American history. While no consensus emerged, the forum itself confirmed one of the principal follies of these therapeutic times. The dominant ideology of the established cultural institutions-the federal government, the universities, and large blocks of the leadership within Christian churches, whether mainline , evangelical, or Reformed­ says that it is impossible for an individual of a particular race, gender, or sexual orientation to understand the experience of someone different. This perspective, sometimes called "social constructionism, " holds that the conditions of knowledge change according to differences in gender, race, ethnicity, and whatever else distinguishes individuals in the census data. This is the outlook behind redistricting efforts designed to ensure the elections of various minorities, appointments by the Clinton administration to make the federal government look more like America, the expansion of the literary canon to include the voices of oppressed outsiders, and the hiring of African, Americans to teach university courses in African, American history. Conversely, the idea that the experience of a particular human being is HESE

somehow universal or representative-especially if that individual is White, European, male, or heterosexual­ is arguable if not downright foolish.

That followers of Jesus Christ would capitulate to such thinking is well nigh remarkable. Yet, evidence continues to mount which shows that Christians are more faithful to the dogma of multi, culturalism than to orthodox Christian teaching. Mainline Protestants have been at this game the longest. When those communions embraced the idea that Protestant orthodoxy was the product of a bygone age with little relevance for the knowledge and social arrangements of the modem world, mainstream Protestantism opened the door of the household of faith to arguments which denied that theological truth, religious practice, and ecclesiastical office transcend time and place. Still, evangelicals have made up for lost time. At many conservative colleges and seminaries one hears an increasing number of calls for greater racial and gender diversity within the faculty, student body, and curriculum. White male professors and the traditional canon, it is said, are neither representative nor affirming of people of color. Along the same lines run some of the arguments for women's ordination. After all, aren't women clergy much better equipped to address the needs of the church's largest constituency, other women? Church growth also follows the logic of multi, culturalism with its plans for planting congregations that will appeal to a particular age, gender, and/ or ethnic group. And much of the fracas about worship within evangelical circles-if only there were more opposition to the liturgy ofchildren's church which has come to be called "Praise and Worship"-surrounds the issue of whether traditional patterns of corporate worship are meaningless and hence oppressive to believers who have cu t their teeth on television, rock' n' roll, and Sugar Smacks.

Few Christians who champion these various forms of multi, culturalism seem aware of the tension between the politics of identity and the idea that lies at the foundation of the Christian faith-that a single, heterosexual, male, Jew who lived two millennia ago in Palestine has something in common not only with believers but with all humankind whatever their race, class, or gender. Yet) in this age of almost unanimous affirmations NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

25

of diversity we must remember that the Christian religion teaches and followers of Christ celebrate at Christmas the fact that the second person of the Trinity took human form and in doing so became just like us. According to the Heidelberg Catechism, the affirmation of the Apostles' Creed that Jesus "was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary" means that the eternal Son of God "took to himself... a truly human nature, so that he might become ... in all things like us as brothers except for sin" (emphasis mine). This is not the peculiar teaching of the Reformed churches but lies at the center, as Heidelberg's explication ofthe Apostles' Creed indicates, of all manifestations of trinitarian Christianity. Indeed, the doctrine of the Incarnation directly contradicts the prevailing orthodoxy of race, gender, and sexual preference that dominates American universities particularly and the culture more generally. hile it is remarkable how Christians have capitulated to the dogma of multi~ culturalism, even more remarkable is the way Christianity defies the outlook of our time. What is particularly poignant about the doctrine of the Incarnation is the location of the universality ofJesus' experience. Because of the apparently wide distance between Jesus and us, our temptation is to locate the universality of Christ's experience in his divinity. We might think that by transcending the particularities of the human condition, Christ in his divine nature-not in his ethnicity, gender, or class-identified with and represented the variety and di versity ofhuman experience. Yet according to Christian teaching, it was precisely in his human nature that Christ was able, as the author of Hebrews writes, to be made like us, to be tempted as we are, and to know our infirmities. According to Christian teaching, it is the spiritual dimension of human existence that transcends the parochialism of identity that balkanizes modem culture. Consequently, when Christians confess that the Son of God was conceived by the Holy Ghost and was born of the Virgin Mary we put our trust in the fact that the experience ofJesus Christ-his encounter with the demands of God's righteous Law, his temptation to disobey God's revealed will,his experience of the frailty and misery of the human condition-was in some fundamental way the same as that today of a married, African~ American female attorney living in Anaheim or a male, Korean~ American shop owner working on the lower east side of Manhattan.

This teaching has a significant implication for Christian witness and practice: The ultimate aspect of the human condition or personal identity is what connects us to the God who took human form. It is not race, class, or gender that determine our identity, but rather the spiritual component of our existence. Race, class, and gender may assist or impede one's efforts to secure a job within a university or the federal government, and these physical traits do surely affect how our neighbors and colleagues perceive and treat us. But Christ did not come to liberate individuals from the barriers that the political economy of a liberal democracy creates or from the

W

26

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

prejudices that are buried deep within the soul of western European culture. For he did not experience corporate capitalism, the industrial revolution, or the rise and fall of Christendom in the West and so could not know in his human nature our experience of it. Christ's Incarnation was not a means of fulfillment for rational, autonomous selves. Rather Christ took human form and was tempted to disobey God's Law in the same way that we are tempted.

He became just like us except without sin.

The Incarnation and the Gospel teach that what matters most in human experience is what is universal to the human condition. Christians confess that Jesus Christ knew what we experience not in our quest for political recognition or material security but rather in our temptation to sin. Political economies come and go, but what transcends them all is the fellowship between God and his creatures and the rupture of that fellowship because of our depravity. Indeed, the Incarnation, with its teaching that Christ knew our feebleness and frailty, should be a warning against allowing the categories of race, class, and gender to trump the doctrines of sin and grace. While the situation of human existence and the demands oflocal and international politics call attention to the differences among men and women, Christians must never lose sight of the universal and higher truths of spiritual life that have been revealed within the particularities of human culture. s we reflect on the Incarnation during this time of the year, we should acknowledge the remarkable antidote which Christianity offers to the senselessness of our materialistic and self, absorbed culture. Christ's identification with us, clearly taught in the epistle to the Hebrews, makes our current fixation on the politics of identity and our current understanding of individual self~ worth look trivial by comparison. A White man may not know the experience of a Black female. And Whites may not appear to be victims of the oppression to which minorities have been subject in North America. But then the Gospel comes along and says that all have sinned, that all people suffer from the oppression of guilt before God's holy Law, and that Christ knew or identified with this oppression by being tempted as we are and by bearing the guilt of our sins on the cross. We are on slim ground if we let the characteristics of race, class, and gender undermine or obscure this truth. For Christ, who is supposed to have been like us in all things, except for sin, is far removed from us if we follow the logic of multi- culturalism which says that the only thing a single, male, Jew who lived in first~ century Palestine has in common with Americans living in the late twentieth century is, at best, a pulse.

And if Christ is so different from us, then he really could not have identified with us and cannot set us free from our guilt and misery.

What is more, if we let the differences of gender, race, and class define what is good and valuable, in other words, if we let the standards of this world determine what a meaningful and enriching life is, then we lose sight of how great our salvation is in Christ. As

A

modern REFORMATION

James Henley Thornwell, the great Southern Presbyterian theologian, wrote over a century ago, the grace of the Gospel cannot be reduced to one's station in life, one's ancestry, one's net worth, or one's voting privileges.

Rather, the Gospel transcends all earthly and physical characteristics. And these benefits are enjoyed equally "by the martyr at the stake, a slave in his chains, a prisoner in his dungeon, as well as the king upon his throne. " How great the mercy of God and how blind we are to that greatness when we try to make it confonn to worldly standards ofself, esteem and the well, adjusted personality.

This is not to deny that the physical characteristics and cultural attributes that separate us from one another are real and do not in positive and negative ways affect our earthly existence. But we must never iet these differences obscure our common creation in God's image, our shared guilt before God's righteous Law, and our salvation through the second Adam, the man who was like us in all ways except for sin. Despite all the physical and social attributes that separate us from Christ, we mus t never cease to confess that Jesus was tempted as we are, that he knew what was fundamental to our experience as men and women created in the image of God. If we

fudge on that truth by allowing that African, Americans understand the Gospel differently than do whites, that women understand the Gospel differently than do men, that Koreans understand the Gospel differently than do Chinese, and so on, then we have made a mockery of Christ's identification with us. And if we have made a mockery of that truth then we are without hope.

As unlikely as it seems, Christ the bachelor, Christ the carpenter, Christ the Jew became like us-in every way like us-except for sin. This is the truth that multi, culturalism misses with its oppressively narrow fixation on physical characteristics and economic detenninants. And if we are to understand the saving work of Christ aright and put our trust fully in him we need to allow our Christian profession, not the ideology of multi, culturalism, to shape our understanding of human identity. 0 Dr. D. G. Hart is Head Librarian and Associate Professor of Church History and Theological Bibliography at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. From 1989-1993 he directed the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals and taught at Wheaton College. He earned his Ph.D. atlohn Hopkins University in American history and also did graduate work at Westminster Theological Seminary and Harvard Divinity School.

. •.. Ther(! •ha~l?een atri?'TlerUio~pushfo~:Pr0U!SUln:f5ariaRbrti4nCdth61icsto set

, a~ide their differ~nces i.~ ' iheinte!est, ' ()fa' broad,.base.d. Ch~istian.t~nity. ,, ' , ',' " '· .. While.weatCVRE ,also havea' d~ep desireJorsuchu~itYi U!eaffirrn t~t;lttrueun#y,'

, springs. onlYfromtrue . doctrine,.Pivehun4redyeafs .ap;~~ r;hristendqfnw~s. t(}rnap4rt, " ·. n.ot..,.by .· pride~ . greed,'· :01" Zinorarrce" ,:but.. byadearlj ~deiined. do~trinal.·.disagr.eerrtent. ;

.Two centra! principb-thatscr;ip.tu'r(! iJtone isq sufficient authority'andthat faith (dqne savesinnets-. ·' were deemed by,thousands,t o be .worth ,dyirygjor: B;th' the,,:::' .Refo~rsand Rome agreJ?4 tha~ th~very Go~p~l ai stqke..alldl?o(1i conSidered

was

.' ,:Jheother'sviewsblasphemousenoughtb. rrterit~XcQrrtrnu.nicatiotL " . .• .' ," .'.' . .,' ".'•• CURE believes that before~n.ity. theremustbe JdocirinafclgiiCY. Jnthe hope of deqrlydefining a~d clefe1'ldi-Tlg the ,h.istoricReformatiPn qoctrineso[$ola:Scriptu;a,.. . and sola fiM, we lravei,nvit~dthree leading Roman C~tfwlisapq:1Qgi$rs(Qdebatetlresi; .•. · , " Jss,yes.Morethanarehashi!lgQfoldarg14ments,thisde:bflte,wab~otonlY, se,ektotlarif;Y:" , "the i~sue'that 'divided the chu~ch ,ofold~t~eGospgl~butJo~ determin~what; if .," anything, has changed;.This is not just 'aquestiqn [or the }ii~t9ry' books; We ,sho..uld' ' .,' , notlorget what"divided.usthen,ifw~findthdtjt stat divi4es)~sn~w~ ' ',

·. •·.What.StilliDivide.s··lJs?·

IAf>rotestant & Roman Catholic []ebate , ~Friday; & Satur~qyMarch 3' &4/19;9' ~Lak~Ave'hue<;bng~egational.~ Ch'urch,pq';adepa/C.alifornia, . '

Forafree,brochul'e ca.llCLIR~' at800~ 9S6~2644."',

' "

.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

27

Sayers continued: recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, .he in no way suggested a milk~ and~ water person; they :objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, - and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company arid was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend ofpublicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the temple; he drove a coach~ and~ horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter ofother people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious~ minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if

us perfectly free to disbelieve in him as much as we choose.

If we do disbelieve, then he and we must take the

consequences in a world ruled by cause and effect. The

Church says further, that man did, in fact, disbelieve, and ¡

that God did, in fact, take the consequences. All the same, if we aregoing to disbelieve a thing, it seems on the whole to be desirable that we should first find out what, exactly, we are disbelieving. Very well, then: "The right Faith is, that we believe that Jesus Christ is God and man, Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Who although he be God and Man, yet is he not two, but one Christ. " There is the essential doctrine, of which the whole elaborate structure ofChristian faith and morals is only the logical consequence.

Now, we may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation, or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all. That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an

H

is body and brain were those of a common man; hi s personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon or fairy pretending to be human. Hewas in every respect a genuine living man.

He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God"-he was Cod. he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.

But he had "a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly, "and officialdom felt that the established order ofthings would be more secure without him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness. ((And the third day He rose again. " What are we to make of this? One thing is certain: if he was God and nothing else, his immortality means nothing to us; ifhe was man and no more, his death is no more important than yours or mine. But ifhe really was both God and man, then when the man Jesus died, God died too, and when the God Jesus

rose from the dead, man rose too, because they were one

and the same person. The Church binds us to no theory about the exact composition of Christ' s Resurrection Body.

A body of some kind there had to be, since man cannot perceive the Infinite otherwise than in terms of space and time. It may have been made from the same elements as the body that disappeared so strangely from the guarded tomb, bu t it was not that old, limited, mortal body, though it was recognizably like it. In any case, those who saw the risen Christ remained persuaded that life was worth living and death a triviality-an attitude curiously unlike that of the modem defeatist, who is firmly persuaded that life is a disaster and death (rather inconsistently) a major catastrophe.

Now, nobody is compelled to believe a single word of

this remarkable story. God (says the Church) has created

28

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994

astonishing drama indeed. Any journalist, hearing of it

for the first time, would recognize it as news; those who

did hear it for the first time actually called it news, and

good news at that; though we are apt to forget that the

word Gospel ever meant anything so sensational.

Perhaps the drama is played ou t now, and Jesus is safely

dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to

consider that once at least in the world's history those words

might have been spoken with complete conviction, and

that was upon the eve of the Resurrection.

Permission to reprint Dorothy L. Sayers "The Greatest Drama Ever Told," (Copyright 1963) from The Whimsical Christian (New York: Collier Books, 1987) has been granted by the Dorothy L. Sayers

estate.

Dorothy L.Sayers (1893-1957) was best known for her detective fiction, most notably the Lord Wimsey novels. A gifted medievalist, she also translated Dante's work and was the author of several collections

ofessays and six plays. If there were one word to describe Sayer's view

ofChristianity, it would be whimsy. Like C. S. Lewis, she saw that the

world was divided, not into many Christian communities, each professing more or less the same thing, but into two camps, the believers and the non~believers . The intellectuals like herselfwho believed in the Incarnation were considered whimsical, frivolous, capricious. But to

Sayers the fact that "God...was made in the year when Caesar

Augustus was taking a census in connection with a scheme oftaxation"

was the divinest whimsy, and the point on which she turned all of her apologetic thinking.

modern REFORMATION

"r

~uts

e nonsense" "Horton's book is superb and timely."

Os Guinness, author of The American Hour

"A very pertinent message for today; one that I do not hear enunciated very clearly elsewhere."

c. Everett Koop, Former United States Surgeon General "One of the strongest critiques of the church that I have read. A significant work at a very crucial time in the history of the church.

If we digest this message then maybe all of society will benefit."

John Perkins, Urban Family Magazine

"An important and impassioned plea. With the unsparing fervor of a true reformer, Horton points out that the evangelical churches are in no position to confront the world with its unbelief since there is so little interest in the substance of the apostolic faith within their own ranles. He paints an uncomfortable por­ trait, but one that could ulti­ mately lead to a genuine return to the Bible, that book so often invoked and so seldom lived."

Edward Oaks, New York University

Available at your bookstore, ' or tfr 1-800-956-2644

-Mark Noll, Wheaton College 1"'

.~ .

~~