[Continued from Part 1]

Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion attributes Christianity’s decline in the U.S. to: 1) the political polarization which has sucked churches into its vortex, 2) the sexual revolution that has undermined the plausibility of Christian faith and practice for an entire generation, 3) the globalization that has made the exclusive claims of Christianity seem highly oppressive, 4) the materialism and consumerism that undermines commitment to anything higher than the self, and 5) the alienation of the cultural elites and culture-shaping institutions from Christianity.

What can we do about the decline of Christianity—if anything? This question has literally triggered an entire generation of books and blogs. Douthat’s book is mainly descriptive and critical. He even admits that the book was “written in a spirit of pessimism.” Yet he rightly responds that for any Christian, “pessimism should always be provisional.” So in his last chapter he very briefly proposes four factors that could lead to the “Recovery of Christianity.”

First, he speaks of the “postmodern opportunity”—the same relativism and rootlessness that has weakened the church is also proving exhausting rather than liberating to many in our society. Even in the academy, postmodern theory is now widely seen as being in eclipse and there is no “next big thing” on the horizon. Douthat wonders about the possibility of a kind of revolution from above, that is, a revival of Christianity among cultural elites. 

Second, he notes the opposite impulse at work, the “Benedict option” being put forward by many—a new monasticism that does not seek engagement with culture but rather the formation of counter-cultural communities that “stand apart…and inspire by example rather than by engagement.” Ross suggests that these first two measures should not be seen as completely opposed and, indeed, could benefit by being paired with one another, otherwise engagement can become accommodation and being an “example” can become separatism and sectarianism.

His third factor he calls “the next Christendom.” By this he means that the explosively growing Christian churches of the former Third World could evangelize the West. Under the first two proposals Ross can name some existing efforts that hold promise, but this factor is much more than a dream. In European and North American cities there are already literally thousands of new churches and missions beginning under the leadership of African, Latin American, and Asian Christians.

His last proposal is that “an age of diminished [economic] expectations”—along with the devastation of the sexual revolution and the exhaustion of postmodern rootlessness—could lead to the masses again looking to Christianity for hope and help. A church that could welcome them, he warns, would have to have three qualities. First, it would have to be political without being partisan. That is, it would have to equip all its members to be culturally engaged through vocation and civic involvement, without identifying corporately with one political party. Second, it would have to be confessional yet ecumenical. That is, the church would have to be fully orthodox within its theological and ecclesiastical tradition, yet not narrow and harsh toward other kinds of Christians. It should be especially desirous of cooperation with non-Western Christian leaders and churches. Third, the church would not only have to preach the Word faithfully, but also be committed to beauty and sanctity, the arts, and human rights for all. In this brief section he sounds a lot like Lesslie Newbigin and James Hunter who have described a church that can have a “missionary encounter with Western culture.”

What do we think of his proposals? It is worth noting that each of these positive measures takes aim at one or two of the factors that have led to decline. The Benedictine option seeks to break the hold of political polarization on the church. The postmodern opportunity aims to re-engage the cultural elites. The next Christendom has already strongly undermined the contention that Christianity is just an extension of Western culture and imperialism. And if there is an “age of diminished expectations,” it could erode both the materialism and even the sexual licentiousness (which always works best in the midst of material plenty) that has undermined faith. 

But how successful will these be? I don’t know, but I think these are the right strategies and responses to make. Why? First, each of the proposals addresses one of the five barriers to faith in our culture, and so we should at least attempt to deal with them. Second, though treated briefly, these are essentially the same ideas that others such as Newbigin and Hunter have proposed. That confirms them in my mind. Third, as many readers know, I simply think these are features of a Biblical ministry.

Near the very end of this book, Ross Douthat (whom I have not met as of this writing) very kindly used our Redeemer Presbyterian Church as a good example of some of the things he was proposing for the church in our time. When I read it I was startled, then humbled, then strongly overwhelmed by a sense that, for all God’s kindness to us over the years, we at Redeemer were so far from realizing our goals and aims. It actually discouraged me for several days until I noticed a little quote by G.K. Chesterton that Douthat cites near the end of his book. In The Everlasting Man Chesterton surveys the many forces over the last 2000 years that threatened and should have destroyed Christianity. “’Time and again,’ Chesterton noted, ‘the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs.’ But each time, ‘it was the dog that died.’”

All quotes taken from Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012)

Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, is very helpful for Christians seeking to understand why the Church is in decline in the U.S. Before the book’s publication I gave a high-level look at its basic theses. In these next posts, I’ll share more details of Ross’s proposals and interact somewhat with his material.

Ross Douthat speaks of “five major catalysts” for the decline. First, he points to the political polarization between Left and Right that drew many churches into it. Mainline Protestants and some Catholics were pulled into line with the political positions of liberalism, while the evangelical churches (and again, some Catholics) became instruments of conservative political policy. He writes: “Issues that were swiftly turned to partisan ends by politicians in both parties…divided churches against one another as no controversies had since slavery.” As Robert Putnam has demonstrated in American Grace, this has greatly weakened the credibility of Christianity in the culture. Since so many parts of the Christian church are now strongly tied to one end of the political spectrum or the other, it means each branch of Christianity can be dismissed by a majority of the population (moderates and those on the other end of the spectrum) as partisan pawns. It has been particularly damaging to see white evangelicals voting overwhelmingly in the opposite way as black evangelicals. This has all given rise to a broadly held perception that religion is really not about God and the Bible but about politics.

We should keep in mind that in the 1950s, the two great enemies were the fascism of Hitler and the Communism of Stalin and Mao—both movements that had severely persecuted their national churches. Marxism was of course intensely atheist. And so in the average American’s mind, religion and Christianity were associated with freedom and democracy while secularism and atheism were not. Today, post 9-11, that has been completely reversed. In the average American’s mind religion and fundamentalism are associated with political extremism and terrorism. They are now seen as the enemies of pluralistic, western society.

Second, he points to the sexual revolution and the birth control pill that made it possible. “Before the sexual revolution,” Douthat writes, “a rigorous ethic of chastity and monogamy had seemed self-evidently commonsensical even to many non-Christians.” Why? The fear of “illegitimacy, abandonment, and disease.” But the pill changed all this. “Over the course of a decade or so, a large swath of America decided that two millennia of Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality were simply out of date.” The arguments against the traditional ethic had been around for centuries, but the hard reality was that sex produced babies and so the only really safe sex was married sex. The pill swept that argument away. Now far more people wanted (and were free) to believe these arguments for extra-marital sex because of “the new sexual possibilities” that the birth control pill afforded.

The importance of the sexual revolution for the loss of Christianity’s credibility can’t be over-estimated. For centuries individuals have justified and rationalized sex outside of marriage, but this had never occurred on a culture-wide basis as it now did in the West. Today there are enormous numbers of professing Christians, including card-carrying evangelical believers, who simply have stopped practicing the Christian sex ethic. It is seen as unrealistic and even perverse by thousands of people who identify as believers. This is massively discrediting and makes Biblical faith implausible to hundreds of millions both inside and outside the church.

The new sexual view of the world is one of the main barriers today to belief in historic Christianity. Most apologetics books (including mine!) give a chapter to each of the main objections to the faith, and yet few address what is almost the number 1 “defeater” for young skeptics—the regressive and supposedly unrealistic Christian view of sex and homosexuality.

The third factor has been the dawn of globalization and the impression that Christianity was imperialistically “western”. After World War II, the “Third World” de-colonialized—dozens of former Western colonies were given their freedom. “To celebrate the new global civilization was to celebrate the eclipse of European dominance…[and] to cast a cold eye across the many sins of Western civilization.” This occurred during the 1960s through the 1980s with the rise of academic studies of colonialism and western imperialism, through books about U.S. genocide toward Native Americans (e.g. Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee), through discovery of southern white churches’ resistance to Civil Rights (e.g. The 1988 film Mississippi Burning), and to the uncovering of the history of the European church’s support of anti-Semitism in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Meanwhile “the more the world was swept up in the drama of decolonialization and Third World empowerment, the more tainted Christianity seemed by its centuries of association with the now-discredited imperial projects of the European West.” Out of “Christian guilt” over all this, the number of professing Christians who were willing to say that their faith is the one, true faith plummeted. Globalization has seemed to support those who attack Christianity’s claims to uniqueness.

The fourth factor in Christianity’s decline, according to Douthat, is the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity that generally works against faith. This explanation was striking to me personally. Most religious-cultural analysts do not go here, but I found this argument persuasive. John Wesley was famous for his insistence that whenever a society (or a portion of society) becomes more wealthy, Christianity loses its power. Why? One underrated reason for the decline in the quality and quantity of those pursuing the ministry as a vocation is that other professions now provide far more wealth and status (as they did not 50 years ago). Another is that Biblical Christianity actually contains a very trenchant, powerful critique of greed and acquisition, as it does of sexual immorality. Just as the sexual revolution makes it hard for people to stomach one part of Biblical wisdom, so a highly materialistic society makes it hard to stomach the other. In addition, the consumerism of our culture is so pervasive and powerful that it has shaped American Christians’ attitude toward the church—namely, it makes the church irrelevant. Americans are conditioned to think of themselves as customers of goods and services, and churches as vendors that can be used or discarded on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. Douthat adds that in a materialistic society people are extremely mobile and they tend to commute long-distances to work. “Religious community proved harder to sustain in the new commuter society than it had been in an America of small towns and urban neighborhoods.” That’s right. In a society of increasing wealth, human community becomes less important for sustaining your life. Both church and neighborhood becomes superfluous.

The fifth and final factor in Christianity’s decline is the loss of the elites and the academic and cultural institutions they control. In some ways all of the other four factors have had their most powerful impact on what Christopher Lasch called the “knowledge classes”—the most educated and affluent, and this in turn magnifies secularization, because this class controls the media, newspapers, and networks, the academy, publishing, the arts, the most powerful and rich foundations, and much of the government and business world. Here Ross sounds a lot like Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy) or James Hunter’s To Change the World. He argues that the educated and affluent have “gained the most from the new sexual freedoms and…suffered the least from their darker repercussions.” They were more cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, and well-traveled, and so they held more intensely to the view that religion was culturally narrow and imperialistic. The result is that the cultural elites have not merely “rejected” the faith. “Orthodoxy was less rejected than dismissed, reflexively, as something unworthy of an educated person’s intellect and interest.”
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All quotes taken from Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012) pp.65-81

I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript of Ross Douthat’s new book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (The Free Press, 2012), slated to be released April 17 of this year. I am going to honor the publisher’s request that I not quote or review the book until it is published because it is still being edited. Nevertheless, I want to interact with Ross’s basic ideas because I think they are provocative and because this is essential reading for all Christians seeking to understand Christianity’s relationship to culture in the U.S.

Everyone agrees that our culture has become far more secular and hostile to Christian faith over the past two generations, but what are the factors causing that change? Many in the evangelical and Reformed world see the decline starting in the early 20th century when most of the mainline denominations and their affiliated academic institutions and foundations fell into the hands of theological modernists and liberals. But it can’t be as simple as that. In his first chapter Douthat looks at four figures—Reinhold Niebuhr for powerful mainline Protestantism, Billy Graham for rising Evangelicalism, Fulton Sheen for popularly engaged Catholicism, and Martin Luther King, Jr for the prophetic African-American Church of the Civil Rights era—who at mid-20th century showed the cultural and institutional strength of nearly all branches of Christianity. But by the beginning of the 21st century all four branches of Christianity are fragmented, declining, and in disarray, while the number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation or even belief in God steadily climbs. Robert Putnam nuances this a bit in American Grace when he argues that the mainline church began declining first, in the late 60s and 70s, while the Evangelical church began doing so by the 90s. Catholics have been battered with a different set of problems and so has the African-American church, but they are also definitely losing influence and people.

In his second chapter, Douthat attributes the change to five major social catalysts that have gained steam since the 1960s: 1) First, the political polarization that has occurred between the Left and Right drew many churches into it (mainline Protestants toward the Left, evangelicals toward the Right). This has greatly weakened the church’s credibility in the broader culture, with many viewing churches as mere appendages and pawns of political parties. 2) Second, the sexual revolution means that the Biblical sex ethic now looks unreasonable and perverse to millions of people, making Christianity appear implausible, unhealthy, and regressive. 3) Third, the era of decolonization and Third World empowerment, together with the dawn of globalization, has given the impression that Christianity was imperialistically “western” and supportive of European civilization’s record of racism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism. 4) The fourth factor has been the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity and consumerism that always works against faith and undermines Christian community. 5) The fifth factor is—that all the other four factors had their greatest initial impact on the more educated and affluent classes, the gatekeepers of the main culture-shaping institutions such as the media, the academy, the arts, the main foundations, and much of the government and business world.

How does Ross Douthat’s analysis compare with some older thinkers? Lesslie Newbigin blames the marginalization of Christianity in the West on the outworking of the 18th century Enlightenment—which promoted the sufficiency of individual human reason without faith in God—for a great deal of the shift. In this he understands historical patterns as being caused by ideas and intellectual trends working their way out through a society’s institutions. I see no reason why Newbigin’s history-of-thought approach and Douthat’s sociology-of-knowledge approach cannot both be right. A third kind of analysis could easily find the faults within the church itself. As H. Richard Niebuhr points out in his essay, “The Independence of the Church”, the church becomes weak and even corrupt whenever it becomes successful in a culture. This is an important factor to add. For example, why did the mainline and the evangelical church get co-opted by American political parties and lose credibility? Wasn’t this due to a lack of robust, vital orthodoxy within them? If all these approaches are right and complementary, Christianity in the West has been the victim of “a perfect storm” of trends, factors, and forces.

In the last post, we talked about a number of recent books that critique both the Cultural Transformationist and the “Two Kingdoms” approaches to Christ and culture. But for many churches and Christian leaders the issues are more practical. Is the mission of the local church to evangelize and produce disciples? Or is it to do justice and transform culture? Or is it an equal emphasis and combination of both?

Those who talk more of justice and cultural engagement are fearful of social marginalization. Without that emphasis, they believe, non-Christians in their settings will see the church as a useless and divisive institution that should not be tolerated. Those who stress evangelism and discipleship talk instead of the reality of limited resources. It would simply overwhelm the local church to try to meet the endless economic and material needs of the city, they say. Besides there are plenty of agencies doing that, while the church alone is calling people to conversion through faith in the gospel. So the church should use its limited financial resources almost exclusively on evangelism and the ministry of the Word.

How do we resolve this? First, we should establish that the ministry of the Word is the priority for the local church. The first thing I need to tell people when they come to church is “believe in Jesus,” not “do justice.” Why? First, because believing in Jesus meets a more radical human need and, second, because if they don’t believe in Jesus they won’t have that gospel-motivation to do justice in the world. So the first priority of the local church under its elders is to make disciples, not to do housing rehabilitation or feed the poor.

However, the church must disciple and support its members so they “love their neighbor”, integrate their faith in their work, and seek a more just and wholesome society and culture. This means that within the church there must be a great deal of teaching, preaching, and emphasis on how to be Christian in the public sphere and how to be loving servants in our neighborhood. And of course there should be strong “diaconal” or mercy ministry within the congregation to meet the economic and material needs of members. Nevertheless, while the church disciples its people to help the poor and be Christian film-makers, the congregation should not, for example, own low income housing nor start a film production company. So, we hold that the institutional church should give priority to Word ministry. However, we also teach that Christians must do both word and deed ministry in the world, and the church should equip them to do so.

What about the idea of “limited resources”? Most of the money Redeemer members give for mercy ministry within the congregation and service to the needy out in the city comes through annual special offerings and designated giving. One special offering is taken at Christmas and goes to diaconal ministry within the church. Another special offering is taken at Easter and goes to Hope for New York, a Christian 501(C)3 birthed out of Redeemer that does all sorts of mercy and justice ministry in the city. A lot of other giving to mercy and justice comes from our membership through individual gifts. Many Reformed churches have funded diaconal ministry this way over the centuries, with second or “special” offerings taken on communion Sundays or on other special occasions for the diaconal fund. The money was then used to meet needs inside the congregation and in the neighborhood. Meanwhile basic Word ministry is funded from regular offerings and not from special or designated giving.

This works very well. The special offerings do not cut into the regular offerings very much. They are generally new monies over and above regular giving. The existence of dynamic and compassionate ministry to the needy draws out giving that would not come if you did not give people the opportunity to give as their hearts direct. So Word ministry and acts of service are not an “either-or.” It is not a zero sum game. In fact, I have seen that when people see a church caring about its community in tangible ways, there is a lot of goodwill, and it makes people more willing to give to the regular offerings as well. So there is no trade-off. We have found that if you fund mercy-justice in this way, it only increases the overall giving to Word ministry.

What about the charge that “we don’t have the money or resources to feed all the hungry”? But we do not have the money or resources to “take the gospel to every creature” in the city either. We do what we can with what we have.

What about the concern for “relevance”? If the church is giving a priority to Word ministry, will our city think us useless? No. We have shown how a church can give priority to the Word and nonetheless show great concern for the poor in its message and raise lots of financial and human resources for the poor in its ministry. And the better the church’s ministry of the Word, the more it will fill the city with mature Christians doing “salt and light” work, tackling the needs of the needy in sympathy and service. The local church and its Lord can and should get a lot of credit for that.

[This was posted today on Redeemer.com.]

I am grieved that New York City is planning to take the unwise step of removing 68 churches from the spaces that they rent in public schools. It is my conviction that those churches housed in schools are invaluable assets to the neighborhoods that they serve. Churches have long been seen as positive additions to communities. Family stability, resources for those in need, and compassion for the marginalized are all positive influences that neighborhood churches provide. There are many with first-hand experience who will claim that the presence of churches in a neighborhood can lead to a drop in crime.

The great diversity of our city means that we will never all agree completely on anything. And we cherish our city’s reputation for tolerance of differing opinions and beliefs. Therefore, we should all mourn if disagreement with certain beliefs of the church is allowed to unduly influence the formation of just policy and practice.

I disagree with the opinion written by Judge Pierre Leval that: “A worship service is an act of organized religion that consecrates the place in which it is performed, making it a church.” This is an erroneous theological judgment; I know of no Christian church or denomination that believes that merely holding a service in a building somehow “consecrates” it, setting it apart from all common or profane use. To base a legal opinion on such a superstitious view is surely invalid. Conversely, I concur with Judge John Walker’s dissenting opinion that this ban constitutes viewpoint discrimination and the use of public schools raises no legitimate Establishment Clause concerns.

A disproportionate number of churches that are affected by this prohibition are not wealthy, established communities of faith. They are ones who possess the fewest resources and many work with the poor. Redeemer has many ties with those churches and their pastors, and our church community invests time and resources to assist them to be good neighbors in their communities.

Let them be those good neighbors. I am hopeful that the leaders of New York City and the legislators of New York State will see the value of a society that encourages all spheres of culture—the church, government, education, business, etc—to work together for human flourishing.

Dr. Timothy Keller
Senior Pastor
Redeemer Presbyterian Church

In my last blog post, Coming Together on Culture, Part 1: Theological Issues, I said that, despite all the division over Christ and culture in the Christian church today, I perceived that some people in each camp were listening to the critiques and were incrementally making revisions that moved them closer toward the other camps and positions.  I highlighted the Transformationist and Two Kingdoms views, arguing that each model had some imbalances, but that many were recognizing them and incorporating insights from other models. You can see what I wrote here. Most of the critiques I gave the Transformationist side came from the Kuyperians themselves. (See James K.A. Smith’s recent book Desiring the Kingdom and the exchanges in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought here.)

The post generated some resistance. Michael Goheen, a noted author from the Kuyperian movement, made a comment on our website. He said that he and co-author Craig Bartholomew (along with others), while solidly in the Transformationist camp, had “appropriated the work of Newbigin and would espouse a more missional Kuyperianism. That is social engagement is not first of all to change society—that may happen but…the goal…is to witness to the Lordship of Christ over all areas of public life and to love our neighbor as we struggle against dehumanizing idolatry.”

Meanwhile, Michael Horton, a prominent Two Kingdoms (or 2K) theologian, posted a blog in response to mine, similarly resisting my depiction of the Two Kingdoms position. Although six years ago he wrote: “There is no difference between Christians and non-Christians with respect to their vocations….” and “there is no ‘Christian politics’ or ‘Christian art’ or ‘Christian literature,’ any more than there is ‘Christian plumbing,’” he now writes: “Nothing in the 2K view entails that ‘Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a ‘distinctively Christian way’ or ‘that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society.’” Then, after reminding us that no political movement can “transform the kingdoms of this age into the kingdom of Christ” he added that nevertheless Christian-led social reforms were good things. Horton confirmed the importance of Kuyper’s distinction between the church as organization and organism, and finally expressed appreciation for the conversation.

These two writers, despite their valid concerns about caricature, seem to me to provide evidence that indeed there may be a “coming together on culture” among Christians. Mike Goheen’s emphasis, still clearly within a Kuyperian model, has incorporated many insights and critiques from other sources and brought a balance to the whole “Christian worldview” way of engaging culture. And Michael Horton’s comments either clarified or slightly modified the often-heard 2K remarks that there is no distinction between the way Christians and non-Christians work in the world. His gracious spirit shows that this conversation can go on and the various approaches can learn from each other.

I don’t think you can tell it from reading on the internet, but among many younger leaders with Reformed and evangelical convictions there may be a slow convergence coming on the subject of the mission of the church and the relationship of Christ and culture.

On the surface, the Reformed and evangelical world seems divided between “Cultural Transformationists” and the “Two Kingdoms” views of these things. Transformationists fall into fairly different camps, including the neo-Calvinists who follow Abraham Kuyper, the Christian Right, and the theonomists. Though different in significant ways, they all believe Christians should be about redeeming and changing the culture along Christian lines.

On the other hand, the Two Kingdoms view believes essentially the opposite—that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society. Again, there are very different camps within this stance. The Reformed and Lutheran proponents of the “2K” view believe that Christians do their work in the world along side of non-believers on the basis of commonly held moral standards “written on the heart” by natural revelation. Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a “distinctively Christian” way. The Neo-Anabaptists are much more pessimistic than Reformed 2Ks about the systems of the world, which they view as “Empire”, based on violence and greed. However, both groups reject completely the idea that “kingdom work” means changing society along Christian lines. Both groups believe the main job of Christians is to build up the church, a counter-culture to the world and a witness against it.

However, over the last two or three years, several publications have been produced that critique both the Two Kingdoms and Transformationist views. And these books and articles are pointing in a similar direction and are being carefully read and discussed by a wide number of younger leaders. I’m thinking of Don Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited, James Hunter’s To Change the World, Dan Strange’s articles (the latest being “Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology” in Themelios, vol 36 issue 2) and Miroslav Volf’s Public Faith. All these works consider the two positions, as they are commonly held today, to be seriously unbalanced.

Transformationism is seen as too triumphalistic, coercive, naïve about sin, and often self-righteous. It does not appreciate sufficiently God’s common grace given to all people. It may not prepare Christians well to make common cause with non-believers for the common good, or to appreciate the goodness of all work, even the most “menial” kind. It is criticized for putting too much emphasis on the intellect—on thinking out your philosophical world view—and not enough on the piety of the heart and the reordering of our loves. It is critiqued for putting too much hope in and emphasis on Christians taking political power and not enough on their being a faithful presence in the professions and existing cultural institutions.

The Two Kingdoms approach is seen as too pessimistic about the possibility of social change. Paradoxically, many holding this position are also too naïve and optimistic about the role of common grace in the world. They argue that Christians can work beside non-believers on the basis of common moral intuitions given to all by natural revelation. But Dan Strange in Themelios writes that this idea of common standards does not work well in cultures that have never known Christian influence, and, therefore, “What is often taken as evidence of general revelation…in our Western culture may actually be rather the historical influence of special revelation, biblical law, and the gospel.” In short, the Two Kingdoms approach gives too little weight to the fact that every culture is filled with idols, that sin distorts everything, that there can be no final neutrality, and that we need Scripture and the gospel, not just natural revelation, to guide us in our work in the world.

The aforementioned writers call Christians to new balances that honor the insights of both views and avoid the mistakes. One of the balances is between the church and Christians living in society. While the mission of the institutional church is to preach the Word and produce disciples, the church must disciple Christians in such a way that they live justly and integrate their faith with their work. So the church doesn’t directly change culture, but it disciples and supports people who do. Another balance has to do with society’s cultural institutions. Rather than taking them over, or avoiding them as a corrupting influence, or treating them with indifference—Christians are to be a faithful presence within them.

As I said, if you look at the internet you get the strong impression that the Reformed and evangelical world is divided over this issue. I’m sure that is true to some degree, but I’m not sure how sharp the division really is. Many already stand in a middle space between the two, and the authors who have argued for the middle way are being read widely and carefully by the younger Christian leaders I meet. And even though the authors I’ve named do not have identical positions—some are more friendly to one end of the spectrum or the other—my informal analysis of the situation is that these books are slowly bringing churches toward one another not only in their theorizing on this subject, but also in their practice. We’ll look at the practical aspects in the next post.

7. Everybody’s Rule: Only God sees the heart—so remember the gospel and stick to criticizing the theology.

As I read through what these men and others have said about the importance and the danger of polemics, one theme came up so continually across their statements that I could not attribute it to any one person.  That theme is about the evil of ad hominem arguments, the strategy of passionately attacking the person himself rather than engaging his doctrine and views. Gillespie warned against “acrimony… in the manner of expression.” If you have zeal, Gillespie, said, let it be expressed in the overwhelming force and power of your Biblical and logical arguments. “It is but in vain for a man to help the bluntness of reason with the sharpness of passion… let not a man cast forth a flood of passionate words when his arguments are like broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Much criticism today is filled with scorn, mockery, and sarcasm—“sharpness of passion”, rather than careful exegesis and reflection. Gillespie says such an approach is not persuasive.

But no one has written more eloquently about this rule than John Newton, in his well-known “Letter on Controversy.” Newton says that first, before you begin to write a single word against an opponent, “and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing.” This practice will stir up love for him and “such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write.” Later in the letter Newton says, “Be upon your guard against admitting anything personal into the debate. If you think you have been ill treated, you will have an opportunity of showing that you are a disciple of Jesus, who ‘when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.’ ” It is a great danger to aim to “gain the laugh on your side,” to make your opponent look evil and ridiculous instead of engaging their views with “the compassion due to the souls of men.”

In the end, Newton strikes this same balance that we saw in Lloyd-Jones and others. He says that it is “a laudable service to defend the faith once delivered to the saints: we are commanded to contend earnestly for it, and to convince gainsayers.” But almost immediately he added, “yet we find but very few writers of controversy that have not been manifestly hurt by it.” Why? He answers:  “Either they grow in a sense of their own importance, or imbibe an angry, contentious spirit, or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those things which are the food and immediate support of the life of faith, and spend their time and strength upon matters which are at most but of a secondary value. This shows, that if the service [of doing polemics] is honorable, it is dangerous. What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights, and to which the promise of his presence is made?”

In short, our purpose in controversy should be to persuade our opponents, lovingly but forthrightly challenging them. What we often see instead is a form of polemics in which opponents are caricatured and mocked, and base motives are imputed to them. Those taking more theologically conservative views are branded ‘self-righteous’ and those with less conservative views are called ‘sell-outs.’ In this approach, persuasion is not the purpose at all. Rather, the goal of polemics is to “rally the troops”—to gain stature in the eyes of some constituency, and maybe to grow your fan-base—by objectivizing and marginalizing your opponent. While many people conduct this kind of polemic in the name of Biblical truth, it is ironically more in line with Nietzschean postmodernism, which sees all discourse as not about truth and persuasion but about the accrual of power.

Is it possible for the Christian church today to get past this division between people who do polemics destructively and those who want to avoid polemics altogether? One way to do it is to go back to these authors that I have perused so lightly. I would even ask seminaries to consider at least one course in “Polemical Theology” which would not simply list the errors that need to be refuted, but which would teach students how to go about theological dispute in a way that accords with Biblical wisdom and the gospel.

Yes, the gospel. John Newton puts his finger on the main reason that polemics go wrong. We do not think out the implications of the gospel of grace for the way in which we go about our disputes:

Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature and the riches of free grace. Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments. Controversies, for the most part, are so managed as to indulge rather than to repress his wrong disposition; and therefore, generally speaking, they are productive of little good. They provoke those whom they should convince, and puff up those whom they should edify. I hope your performance will savor of a spirit of true humility, and be a means of promoting it in others.

7. Everybody’s Rule: Only God sees the heart—so remember the gospel and stick to criticizing the theology.

As I read through what these men and others have said about the importance and the danger of polemics, one theme came up so continually across their statements that I could not attribute it to any one person.  That theme is about the evil of ad hominem arguments, the strategy of passionately attacking the person himself rather than engaging his doctrine and views. Gillespie warned against “acrimony… in the manner of expression.” If you have zeal, Gillespie, said, let it be expressed in the overwhelming force and power of your Biblical and logical arguments. “It is but in vain for a man to help the bluntness of reason with the sharpness of passion… let not a man cast forth a flood of passionate words when his arguments are like broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Much criticism today is filled with scorn, mockery, and sarcasm—“sharpness of passion”, rather than careful exegesis and reflection. Gillespie says such an approach is not persuasive.

But no one has written more eloquently about this rule than John Newton, in his well-known “Letter on Controversy.” Newton says that first, before you begin to write a single word against an opponent, “and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing.” This practice will stir up love for him and “such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write.” Later in the letter Newton says, “Be upon your guard against admitting anything personal into the debate. If you think you have been ill treated, you will have an opportunity of showing that you are a disciple of Jesus, who ‘when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.’ ” It is a great danger to aim to “gain the laugh on your side,” to make your opponent look evil and ridiculous instead of engaging their views with “the compassion due to the souls of men.”

In the end, Newton strikes this same balance that we saw in Lloyd-Jones and others. He says that it is “a laudable service to defend the faith once delivered to the saints: we are commanded to contend earnestly for it, and to convince gainsayers.” But almost immediately he added, “yet we find but very few writers of controversy that have not been manifestly hurt by it.” Why? He answers:  “Either they grow in a sense of their own importance, or imbibe an angry, contentious spirit, or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those things which are the food and immediate support of the life of faith, and spend their time and strength upon matters which are at most but of a secondary value. This shows, that if the service [of doing polemics] is honorable, it is dangerous. What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights, and to which the promise of his presence is made?”

In short, our purpose in controversy should be to persuade our opponents, lovingly but forthrightly challenging them. What we often see instead is a form of polemics in which opponents are caricatured and mocked, and base motives are imputed to them. Those taking more theologically conservative views are branded ‘self-righteous’ and those with less conservative views are called ‘sell-outs.’ In this approach, persuasion is not the purpose at all. Rather, the goal of polemics is to “rally the troops”—to gain stature in the eyes of some constituency, and maybe to grow your fan-base—by objectivizing and marginalizing your opponent. While many people conduct this kind of polemic in the name of Biblical truth, it is ironically more in line with Nietzschean postmodernism, which sees all discourse as not about truth and persuasion but about the accrual of power.

Is it possible for the Christian church today to get past this division between people who do polemics destructively and those who want to avoid polemics altogether? One way to do it is to go back to these authors that I have perused so lightly. I would even ask seminaries to consider at least one course in “Polemical Theology” which would not simply list the errors that need to be refuted, but which would teach students how to go about theological dispute in a way that accords with Biblical wisdom and the gospel.

Yes, the gospel. John Newton puts his finger on the main reason that polemics go wrong. We do not think out the implications of the gospel of grace for the way in which we go about our disputes:

Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature and the riches of free grace. Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments. Controversies, for the most part, are so managed as to indulge rather than to repress his wrong disposition; and therefore, generally speaking, they are productive of little good. They provoke those whom they should convince, and puff up those whom they should edify. I hope your performance will savor of a spirit of true humility, and be a means of promoting it in others.

Archibald Alexander, the first faculty member at Princeton Theological Seminary, was given the title “Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology.” That seems a bit startling to us, because the term “polemical” in our day has an almost purely negative connotation. However, in the original plan of Princeton seminary, Polemical theology was seen as a discipline separate from the positive exposition of systematic theology.

Alexander taught this as a distinct course that distinguished orthodoxy from all opposing views. If you look at the list of the subjects he covers, it is striking how much effort was given to help students discern and refute theological error. It is also striking that Alexander included in his course a lecture on “The evils of theological controversy.” In other words, he was concerned about two opposite errors—either refraining from polemics altogether or conducting it in an ungodly manner.

George Gillespie was a Scottish minister, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and a prominent controversialist, contending for Presbyterianism as the Biblical model for church government. And yet in the forward to “The Presbyterian’s Armoury” he wrote, “I have often and heartily wished that I might not be engaged into polemic writings, of which the world is too full already…” Again we see neither a shrinking from polemics nor any relish in it. Indeed, Alexander and Gillespie indicated that anyone who enjoys theological controversy, who makes it their main purpose and who feels virtuous as they do it, is in a bad spiritual state.

D.M. Lloyd-Jones once had a memorable encounter with T.T. Shields, the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, and a leading defender of orthodoxy against the growing liberal theology of the churches in Canada. Shields regularly attacked other church leaders in both his preaching and his writings. Lloyd-Jones shared virtually the identical theological positions with Shields, but he believed “that the Baptist leader was sometimes too controversial, too denunciatory and too censorious. Rather than helping young Christians by the strength of his polemics against liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics, Lloyd-Jones believed that Shields was losing the opportunity to influence those whose first need is positive teaching.” (I. Murray, D.M. Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, p.271). We should recall that Lloyd-Jones was quite willing to engage in polemics himself. He and John Stott clashed publicly over whether evangelicals should remain in the Church of England. (Lloyd-Jones said they should not.) And yet Lloyd-Jones opposed making polemics a major part of one’s ministry, and challenged Shields.

In their meeting, Shields asked Lloyd-Jones if he enjoyed reading the works of another contemporary defender of orthodoxy. Lloyd-Jones said that he seldom read the author, because, “he doesn’t help me spiritually.” Shields responded: “Surely you are helped by the way he makes mincemeat of the liberals?” Lloyd-Jones responded: “You can make mincemeat of the liberals and still be in trouble in your own soul.” This touched off an extended debate. At one point Shields said that he was only doing what Paul did to Peter—contradicting and opposing him. Lloyd-Jones responded “The effect of what Paul did was to win Peter round to his position and make him call him ‘our beloved brother Paul’ [2 Peter 3:15]. Can you say the same about the people whom you attack?” For this Shields had no answer. The simple fact was that his polemics were really designed simply to stigmatize and marginalize his opponents, not persuade them. Suddenly the younger Lloyd-Jones appealed to Shields in a bold way. In the 1920s, Shields had expected an appointment to McMaster University, but theological liberals blocked it. Lloyd-Jones pointed out that from that time it had changed the tone of his ministry. “Dr Shields, you used to be known as the Canadian Spurgeon, and you were…but over this McMaster University business in the early twenties you suddenly changed and became negative and denunciatory. I feel it has ruined your ministry. Why don’t you come back! Drop all this, preach the gospel to people positively and win them!” (Murray, p.273)

On the lips of someone else, this could be seen as an appeal to “just preach Jesus” and not care about sound doctrine. But it is hard to accuse Lloyd-Jones of that. Rather, Lloyd-Jones was standing in the tradition of Gillespie and Alexander. Polemics is medicine, not food. Without medicine we will surely die—we can’t live without it. This is why “polemical theology’ must be a required part of every theological curriculum. Yet we cannot live on medicine. If you engage in polemics with relish and joy—if polemics takes up a significant percentage or even a majority of your time and energy—it is like trying to live on medicine alone. It won’t work, for the church or for you. That was Lloyd-Jones’s message.

I fear that we are in a period in which many in the Christian church are dividing into extreme positions over the very conduct of polemics. On the one side there are seemingly more people than ever, especially through the Internet, engaging in polemics, and yet it looks to me like there is a large number of younger Christians leaders who are reacting to this as if polemics is a pure evil. We want “conversation”, never argument or apologetics.

In the next post I’ll give some ideas for a way that I hope could help some avoid the polarization that is occurring.

[Skip to Part 3, Part 4]

Dr Lloyd-Jones taught that we should evangelize with the gospel even as we teach and edify believers. Why? We must not preach as if everyone is a Christian, and we shouldn’t think that believers no longer need the gospel, but only more “advanced” instruction. He believed that church members needed to be exposed to the Gospel not only because some of them needed to realize they had never repented, but also because “all the people who attend a church need to be brought under the power of the Gospel.” (p.153)

There is a flip side to this. Lloyd-Jones not only calls us to evangelize as we edify, but also insists that we can edify Christians as we evangelize. Lloyd-Jones preached sermons in the evening that were primarily evangelistic and sermons in the morning that were primarily edificatory, but he insisted that his members come to both, and that preachers not make “too rigid” a distinction, because the gospel edifies and evangelizes at the same time. He wrote:

“I have often had the experience of people who have been converted, and have then gone on and grown in the Church, coming to see me some time later and telling me about what happened to them. What they have so often said is, ‘When we first came to the Church we really did not understand much of what you were talking about.’ I have then asked them what made them continue coming, and have been told again and again that, ‘There was something about the whole atmosphere that attracted us…we gradually began to find we were absorbing the truth…it began to have meaning for us more and more.’

….This is a very common experience; people at different levels seem to be able to extract, under the influence of the Spirit, what they need, what is helpful to them… [T]hey had continued to grow in their understanding until now they were able to enjoy the full service, the full message.” (p.127-128)

Lloyd-Jones’ Sunday sermons, even his more evangelistic ones, were very theologically rich, yet he was always careful to explain things with non-technical language. If you couldn’t understand the concept, it wasn’t because he was using technical language, but only because the Christian doctrine before you was unfamiliar and counter-intuitive to you. Why did he do it this way? Why were his evangelistic sermons not simpler; and why was it possible for people to slowly but surely find Christ through his edificatory sermons? It was because the basic way that he addressed believers’ questions and problems was always by pointing in some way to the truths of the gospel. That way, as believers were edified, non-believers could hear a gospel presentation. What was good about this, as noted above, is that as non-believers came to faith, they didn’t have to “graduate” to a whole different service. Yes, they might begin coming to the Friday night lectures on theology or Romans, but on Sunday they were able to both come to faith and grow in grace through rich expositions of the Bible.

When, in the early days of my ministry in NYC, I heard how expository and theological Lloyd-Jones’ evangelistic preaching was, and how evangelistic and gospel-centered his edificatory preaching was, it was an epiphany for me. I realized that the then-popular Willow Creek strategy of light “seeker talks” every weekend was misguided. Non-believers, especially in New York City, did not simply want light fare designed exclusively for them. They really wanted to know how this Christianity “worked.” Lloyd-Jones’ kind of preaching, which used the gospel to grow Christians and evangelize non-believers simultaneously, was the answer.

I also saw that there was an over-reaction against Willow Creek. Many conservative evangelicals deliberately moved to lengthy, didactic, expository teaching that assumed all present were Christians. In a sense, they moved Lloyd-Jones’ Friday night kind of teaching to Sunday morning and that was all that was offered. This was deadly too, as Lloyd-Jones himself argued (see the previous post). It produces smug, cold believers and confuses any non-believers who happen to show up. So the traditional American expository sermon was inappropriate for Manhattan as well. So many churches provided either sermons that were not theologically rich enough to convert anyone—or sermons that were not gospel- and heart-oriented enough to convert anyone.

In order to forge a new path—and knowing that New York City in the late 80s was more like mid-century London than anywhere else in the U.S.—I began listening to recordings of sermons by Lloyd-Jones and Dick Lucas, another London preacher who had a mid-week lunchtime service that included many non-believers. His evangelistic ministry was also expository, and his edificatory ministry also gospel-centered. (Dick attended the Doctor’s evening services as a young rector in London in the early 1960s.) To these two men I owe a debt I can never repay.

Gradually I developed a preaching ministry based on similar concepts of the nature of edification, evangelism, and the gospel. (I’ve written more on this subject in an article called Evangelistic Worship.) This in no way means I am copying their style of preaching. I am, of course, a Baby Boomer American. That means tones, emotional expressiveness, approaches to humor, uses of illustrations—are all widely divergent. But the basic philosophy of how to use the gospel is the same. I urge my readers to consider embracing it. That in no way requires that you try to copy my personal style either. It does require you, as a preacher, to understand and apply the gospel to the hearts of every listener every time.

First, Dr Lloyd-Jones insisted that we use the gospel as we edify Christians. In Preaching and Preachers, Lloyd-Jones warns preachers not to “assume that all…who are members of the church, are…Christians. This, to me, is the most fatal blunder of all.” (p.146) He goes on to say that many people have accepted Christianity intellectually but have never come under the power of the Word and the gospel and therefore have “not truly repented.” (p.150)

This is very significant. It is at the heart of the difference between the Old Side/New Side, Old Lights/New Lights controversy during the revivals in 18th century America. The Old Side and Lights insisted that what made you a Christian was, essentially, that you were in the church as a baptized, confessing member. They thought it inappropriate to make baptized, professing Christians consider that perhaps they were not regenerate. But here Lloyd-Jones comes down firmly on the side of the revivalists. He says that under real gospel preaching there will always be a steady stream of church members who, every year, come forward and confess that they had never understood the gospel and had, over the past months, finally repented and believed truly. “One of the most exhilarating experiences in the life of a preacher is what happens when people whom everybody had assumed to be Christians are suddenly converted and truly become Christians. Nothing has a more powerful effect upon the life of a church than when that happens to a number of people.” (p.152) Lloyd-Jones relates several intriguing cases. In one case, he tells of guest preaching at a church in Toronto in which an older lady, one of the biggest financial supporters and “pillars” of the congregation was led to see by his preaching that she was not a Christian. The preaching at that church had never revealed it to her, because the preaching was what the Doctor called “general expositions for believers”, helping them live a good Christian life, but mainly appealing only to the will, never going down after the heart and conscience.

Therefore, the Doctor warns about only exposing Christians to what he calls “general expositions” meant to teach, or “preaching morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis.” (p.35) Not only have many professing Christians never truly repented and rested in grace, but regenerate Christians need to constantly feel the power of the Gospel, and “almost” go through the experience of conversion again and again. (p.151) He adds, “If our preaching is always expository and for edification and teaching it will produce church members who are hard and cold, and often harsh and self-satisfied. I do not know of anything that is more likely to produce a congregation of Pharisees than that.” (p.153)

As I’ve said in previous posts, Lloyd-Jones’ advice is largely being ignored today. The emphasis even within the Reformed world tends to bifurcate in two directions, neither of which follow the Doctor. On the one hand, many Reformed evangelicals are (rightly) enamored with expository preaching, but it tends to be highly doctrinal and exegetical—it is not very life-related and, while there is some general concern to preach Christ from Old Testament texts, does not regularly recapitulate the gospel the way the Doctor calls us to do. On the other hand, there are the more liturgically oriented, who follow (whether they know it or not) the high church Calvinism of John W. Nevin rather than his contemporaries Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge of Princeton. Nevin was completely against assuming that baptized believers might not be regenerate. He stressed the long processes of liturgical worship and catechizing for shaping heart and mind, not preaching that called for self-examination and conversion. Lloyd-Jones is far more in line with the Princeton theologians.

In his Thoughts on Religious Experience, Archibald Alexander writes that Christians must be exposed to the gospel of grace versus works again and again, not only to bring people to justification, but to enhance sanctification.

When persons are truly converted they always are sincerely desirous to make rapid progress in piety….Why then is so little advancement made?  First, there is a defect in our belief in the freeness of divine grace. To exercise unshaken confidence in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon is one of the most difficult things in the world, and to preach this doctrine fully without verging towards antinomianism is no easy task and is therefore seldom done. But Christians cannot but be lean and feeble when deprived of their proper nutriment.

It is by faith that the spiritual life is made to grow, and the doctrine of free grace, without any mixture of human merit, is the only true object of faith. Christians are too much inclined to depend on themselves and not to derive their life entirely from Christ. There is a spurious legal religion, which may flourish without the practical belief in the absolute freeness of divine grace, but it possesses none of the characteristics of the Christian’s life. It is found to exist in the rankest growth, in systems of religion which are utterly false. But even when the true doctrine is acknowledged in theory, often it is not practically felt and acted on. “The new convert lives upon his frames rather than on Christ, while the older Christian is still found struggling in his own strength and, failing in his expectations of success, he becomes discouraged first, and then he sinks into a gloomy despondency, or becomes in a measure careless….ntil religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the Gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians….The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plenitude of mercy, and in all its absolute freeness.

Do we preach the gospel so clearly even when we are seeking to edify that there are always at least a trickle of people within our church who come to see that they never really believed? The purpose of every sermon, according to Dr Lloyd-Jones, is not to give information and general instruction but to preach the gospel and make it real to the heart. There’s a flip side to this, and we will look at it in the next post.