How to React to the Fall of Rome – Part 2
In the previous post we saw that the ancient church's view of a historical phenomenon (namely, the Roman Empire) shifted dramatically within the space of a few generations, on account of their particular experiences with that empire.
I would suggest that we have seen something somewhat similar take place over the past few generations up until our day--though not with an empire, per se.
I think it is particularly interesting to see how many Christians lament over the end of modernism the way Jerome mourned the fall of Rome. So many of us weep over modernism as if it was a Christian creation, designed for the spread of the gospel--God's chosen means for reaching the world.
In reality, there is little that is further from the truth. In and of itself modernism was never a friend to the gospel. Secular modernist philosophers and scientists have always used modernism as a means of attacking and discrediting the claims of the Christian faith.
For all the ways that modernism has provided a platform for displaying the truthfulness of Christianity (text criticism, archaeological studies of ancient cities, much of creation science, etc.), it was never a 'Christian' view.
The trustworthiness of Christianity in a modern mindset boils down to little more than making a 'case for Christ' logically. The trouble is that Christianity, by its very nature, will not fit in these categories.
All that we are as Christians is based on the claim that Jesus Christ was entirely God and entirely man, lived a perfect life fulfilling God's law, suffered and died to take on the curse of the law for us who receive his righteousness, and that God really did physically and literally raise him from the dead.
But here's the deal: I can't prove that to you in a scientific way. I can point to evidences, but that's all. There is something necessarily personal and experiential (existential?) about the Christian faith. What we believe is not relativism, because our believing does not determine whether something is true or false, but our faith is what saves us.
In other words, it's something personal, internal, 'unprovable' that makes all the difference in the world. That's what our religion is based on. This is the kind of thing that modernists can't grasp. They want something to touch, to examine, to test, to prove.
So what then? Do we rejoice over the fall of Rome? Do we rush off to align ourselves with the newest invaders who have come to expose Rome's weaknesses? Do we embrace all that is postmodernism with open arms?
I suggest that we do what Augustine did. We use this opportunity to look around and evaluate from the perspective of eternity. What about modernism was evil and passing? What was good? What reflected God? How was modernism used for the spread of the kingdom?
And then, we ought to begin asking some careful questions about the 'empire' that is coming upon us. How can we use its strengths and its weaknesses to further the cause of the kingdom? How does postmodernism provide ways for the gospel to go forth that modernism never would?
In the end we must remember that neither modernism nor postmodernism is 'God's perspective.' These philosophical mindsets are of man, and they will pass. We need to examine the world around us closely so that we can see how to better hope in, trust in, and point to the world that is to come.
On the ‘Inadequacy’ of Language
I've often come across (and myself even flirted with) several forms of the notion that language is entirely 'inadequate' to describe God. In fact, I still in many ways find this to be true. No language can exhaustively declare the reality, the beauty, the holiness of our Triune God.
What is unfortunate, however, is how often people in our day will take their queues from neo-orthodoxy and give up on propositional language at all to describe God. God becomes one meant to be experienced rather than spoken of.
I have found some observations from Vern S. Poythress on this topic to be quite helpful, so I thought I'd post them for your pondreing as well.
On what basis are we to make judgments about adequacy and inadequacy ... ? What could we mean by saying that human language is inadequate to talk about God ... ? In what way is it "inadequate"? And what do we expect talk about God ... to be like? Our expectations and definitions of "adequacy" ... are themselves shot through with values, with preferences, desires, standards, and perhaps disappointments at goals that we set but are not reached. Where do these values come from? If God is Lord, we ought to conform our values to his standards. Hence there is something intrinsically rebellious about negatively evaluating biblical language [for its adequacy as "God talk"].[1]
He continues, pointing out the self-defeating nature of these notions of the uselessness of language to speak of God:
How does the objector obtain the necessary knowledge about God, truth, and cultures in order to make a judgment about the adequacy of language for expressing theology and truth, and for achieving cross-cultural communications? How does he do this when he himself is largely limited by the capabilities of his own language and culture?[2]
You are my God, my Life, my Holy Delight, but is this enough to say of you? Can any man say enough when he speaks of you? Yet woe betide those who are silent about you!
I may never be able to describe God completely, but may that never stop me from spending every last breath he gives me declaring his goodness and his glory!
[1] Vern S. Poythress, “Adequacy of Language and Accomodation,” in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible, ed. Earl D. Radmacher and Robert D. Preus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 353.
[2] Ibid., 354.
What About Other Religions?
I've gone back and forth a bit on this issue, so if you've thought about it, I'd love some input. Here's the question: How much value is there in other world religions? How much time should we spend studying them? When we study them, how should we study them?
Before I went to college, I was of the mindset that there was very little value in getting to know other religions in a meaningful way. For good or for ill, by the time I was done at Heritage, I had come perilously close to being convinced that we needed to know other religions. Buddhists were asking better questions than Christians. Many Muslims are more devout than Christians. World religions like Hinduism, Sikhism, even the Bha'i people, had accumulated great wisdom over the centuries, and Christians would do well to learn from them.
Or would we?
Once out of that environment, I began to realize that there were some serious inconsistencies in the ways that I thought. My good friend Rielly had taught me some about the import of the noetic effects of sin (the effects of sin on the mind). My belief in the doctrine of original sin and mankind's total inability also seemed to be at odds with finding wonderful positives in godless, man-made religions.
Today I was pondering a little bit more what exactly I believe with regards to elements of truth in other religions, and how we should react to / interact with them, and I got to thinking about the Bible.
Obviously, things are pretty clear in the Old Testament. God was straight-out against his people having anything to do with the godless nations around them. But much of the crowd at my college seemed (if not always with words, then with attitudes and hermeneutics) to dislike this 'God' and this 'ethic' of the Old Testament and were very happy to proclaim that we have advanced far beyond that type of thing now.
So what about the New Testament?
This is where I got stuck. We have Paul's interaction with the pagan philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts, which seems to be the thing that everyone seems to appeal to in order to make their point on this topic. Remarkably, everyonse seems to have their own take on his this interaction should impact our interaction with other religions and our apologetics today. I'm wondering: what other New Testament texts do we look to here? What texts have you found helpful?
What about Jesus? Many emerging-types like to claim that they are 'red letter Christians', not 'Paulians', so we should deal with Christ. They claim that his harsh words were always for the religious hypocrites (Pharisees), never for anyone else. But it seems to me that Jesus would often use the 'Gentiles' / 'nations' (ie. 'pagans') as a negative example. In other words, 'Don't worry, because that's what the pagans do.' Or, 'Don't just love your brother, because that's what the pagans do.'
Am I wrong? It would appear that Jesus felt free to hold up the false religions as examples of godless 'morality', whose standards and thoughts ought to be avoided at all cost. As I said, I've gone back and forth on this, so I am open to being wrong again. If you've thought about this already, please advise.
The Abandonment of Christian Atonement
Christians never cease to amaze me. In our contemporary 'conversation' we find people rejecting the idea of penal substitution, the imputation of righteousness, justification by grace alone, through faith alone, etc., etc., etc.
The thing that really bothers me about this is the arrogance with which such historic Christian doctrines are tossed aside in such a cavalier manner. We are told that these ideas of God being 'angry' and desiring to make his Son pay the 'punishment' as a 'substitute' to give us a 'forensic', 'legal' righteous standing before God are western, modern, and un-nuanced. We are told that for hundreds of years we've been reading the New Testament through the eyes of Luther, rather than first-century Judaism.
Bogus.
Below is an excerpt from the Epistle to Diognetus, written in the second-century AD, one of the earliest extant apologies for the Christian faith outside of the New Testament. In this section the author discusses the nature of the atonement, as taught in the New Testament. What this is an attempt to show is that the abandonement of penal substitutionary atonement which accomplishes justification (including the imputation of righteousness) by grace alone through faith alone is not just an abandonment of modern, western Christianity, but is an abandonment of historic, biblical Christianity at its very core.
_____________________________________________________
But when our iniquity was fulfilled and it had been made fully manifest that its reward of punishment and death was awaited, and the season came which God had appointed to manifest henceforth His own goodness and power (O the exceeding kindness and love of God!), He did not hate us or repel us or remember our misdeeds, but was long-suffering, bore with us, Himself in mercy took on Him our sins, Himself gave up His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for the wicked, the innocent for the guilty, “the just for the unjust”, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for mortals. For what else could cover our sins but his righteousness? In whom was it possible for us, wicked and impious as we were, to be justified, except in the Son of God alone? O the sweet exchange, O work of God beyond all searching out, O blessings past our expectation, that the wickedness of many should be hidden in one righteous Man and the righteousness of the One should justify many wicked!
-- Taken from The Epistle to Diognetus, IX.2-5. The is one of the earliest extant apologies for the Christian faith, written in the second century ad, within decades of the death of the apostle John.
The Myth of Homophobia
I don't believe in homophobia.
I know there are people who don't like homosexuals. I know there are people who are incredibly uncomfortable with the thought of being "hit on" by a gay person. I know there are people with all kinds of bizarre ideas about what "causes" one person to be homosexual while the majority of people remain straight. But I don't believe in what is commonly referred to as homophobia.
People throw this word around as a term of derision at anyone who expresses discomfort or displeasure or disapproval with the prevalence, common acceptance, and forceful agenda-pushing of homosexuality. It somehow seems ironic for "them" to give such a derogatory label to those who disagree with them. Isn't it they who desire for openness?
The common use of this word "homophobia" is propaganda, plain and simple. If you disagree with the proposition that homosexuality is a "legitimate alternative lifestyle" then you are a homophobe. No one wants to be a homophobe. So if it's a choice between the two, people will just simply choose to accept homosexuality--not because they feel comfortable with it, but because they don't want to be labelled "bigot", "homophobe", "religious fundamentalist", etc.
Like any sin, homosexuality is built off of and continues to feed off of pride. If I can make everyone else accept my sin then maybe I'll feel better about myself and my conscience will quit bothering me.
The truth of the matter, however, is that homosexuality is sin. It flies in the face of all that God created humanity to be. It pushes men to not be men and women to not be women--but God created us to be those so that we could bear his image! Being gay destroys the image of marriage as a picture of Christ and his bride (if you read Eph 5 carefully you'll see that the marriage of Adam and Eve was designed in order to represent the relationship that God would one day have with his people... it's not like God saw marriage and then one day thought, "hey that's kinda like a metaphor for me and them!").
It is natural that what remains in us of the image of God would be repulsed by what is so blatanly ungodlike. This is especially true for Christians, because we have seen the wonder and the beauty and the infinite wisdom of God in his creation. We have seen from his word the kind of people--men and women distinct, yet equally wonderful--he wants us to be. We have seen that there are reasons for all that God requires of us, and that all these things are beautiful.
In this culture, in this day, in this city everyone says it is wrong to be repulsed by homosexuality. "Don't speak about it loudly... someone might hear." It has gotten to the point now where I've caught myself (a) not being repulsed by blatantly gay things around me, and (b) feeling bad when I am repulsed by it.
This must stop!
I'm not homophobic, but it grosses me out and I think it should! It is an abomination before the Lord, a perversion of the created order, and blatant, proud, boastful, haugty, flagrant sexual immorality in the heart of men and women who care nothing for God or the wonder and splendour of his righteousness and who presume on his patience and forebearance.
To speak of this sin as what it actually is is not homophobia and I will not be ashamed to declare that homosexuality is wrong. I don't hate anyone for their sin, but I will no longer shrink back from calling a spade what it rightly is... no matter what.
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