In The Nick of Time

When answering theological questions, one of the thorniest problems that we face is deciding what counts as evidence. To be sure, we affirm the absolute authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures and, in the case of questions about the church, the finality of the New Testament in all matters of faith and order. Simply believing in the Bible’s authority and sufficiency, however, does not tell us how the text ought to be brought to bear upon our questions.

One very common way of using the Bible is to look for examples of the kind of thing that we are asking about. These examples are then treated as permanently binding. Theological literature abounds with references to the examples or even the “uniform pattern” of Scripture.

The argument is a weak one. Scripture contains examples of all sorts of things, some good and some bad. The mere fact that someone did something is no indication that God wants that thing to be done by others at another time. Even when the example is viewed positively in the text, it may be an isolated instance. One would not appeal to Abraham’s treatment of Isaac in Genesis 22 as a universal pattern for relationships between fathers and sons.

An “is” never constitutes an “ought.” Sound theological method draws a sharp distinction between historical narrative and didactic requirement.

This distinction does not render the examples of Scripture irrelevant. When the Bible communicates a didactic principle, then we may legitimately observe the examples in the text to see how the principle looks in practice. By studying the examples we may also discover something about the rewards of obedience or the consequences of disobedience. By themselves, however, the examples of Scripture are not binding. Historical narrative always needs to be interpreted and applied by didactic discourse.

For the first time in eight years I am not the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Early last November I initiated a process of transition that came to completion at midnight on June 30.

Why leave the presidency? I have both positive and negative reasons. I shall mention just two.

On the positive side, I have for some time experienced an increasing concern for a different area of ministry. My training and gifts are more academic and literary than they are organizational and political. While both kinds of gifts and functions are important, the community that I serve (Baptist fundamentalism) has a far fewer number of writers than it has politicians.

This imbalance has resulted in a network of individuals, churches, and institutions that has been much more effective at perpetuating (and sometimes enforcing) loyalty to slogans, organizations, and leaders than it has been at explaining ideas and working through their implications. Flaccid thinking has led, first, to a very tenuous grasp of core principles and, secondarily, to an increasing inability to apply those principles to new and changing circumstances. This is the situation that I most wish to address, and I have slowly become convinced that I cannot address it effectively from the position of president.

When I accepted the presidency of Central Seminary, I entertained rather a facile notion of how the position would function. In my naivety, I thought of a seminary president as a senior faculty member, an institutional coordinator, and a theological anchor. I believed that I had seen this model exemplified in presidents like Rolland McCune and Douglas McLachlan. During and since the era of their presidential service, however, the expectations and official functions of a seminary president have changed.

Christian primary and secondary education (sometimes called “Christian Day School”) became popular among fundamentalists during the 1970s. While some have alleged that the Christian school movement was a response to racial integration,¹ it was more likely a reaction against the increasingly vicious secularism of public education. For a generation, many Christian parents sent their children to Christian schools, even when the cost of tuition meant significant financial sacrifice.

Over the past decade, however, most Christian schools have begun to decline. Administrators speculate about the reasons, but at least a few seem pretty obvious. These are generalizations that will not hold in every instance. Certain tendencies, however, can be observed more often than not.

First, Christian schools have not typically produced a better academic product than public education. True, the average test scores from Christian school students are higher than those of public school students. That is partly because public schools are required to accept students (including special education students) whom Christian schools uniformly reject. Take the top ten percent of graduates from the typical Christian school, and compare them to the top ten percent of graduates from the typical public school, and you will likely find that the public school graduates are better prepared.

A second reason that Christian schools are in decline is because they do not generally produce a better quality of Christian. Granted, the environment of a Christian school does shield its students from the most brutal influences of the secular school environment, such as rampant drug use and open promiscuity. It also grants Christianity a normative status, so that a student’s faith is not overtly and constantly under attack. Nevertheless, graduates of Christian schools do not seem to be noticeably more spiritually minded than Christian graduates of public schools. The real test is in what happens to Christian school students after they graduate. How many of them are walking with the Lord five years later? The proportions do not seem markedly higher for Christian school alumni than for other Christians of the same age.

You remember John Bunyan—author of Pilgrim’s Progress and other works. Well, I’m sitting here looking at a full-page, 11x14 inch (my version of it) chart drawn by Bunyan entitled “A MAP SHEWING THE ORDER & CAUSES OF SALVATION & DAMNATION.” It’s a fascinating piece of work.

The title appears in scrollwork festooned with streamers at the top of the page. Centered directly beneath is a triangle representing the Godhead. From that point, the chart divides into two sides, separated by a long center column labeled “The Passage Into and Out of the World.” At the top of this column (“Beginning”) is a circle with Adam above, then Abel on the left side and Cain on the right. At the bottom of the column (“The End”) is another large circle divided between the glory of paradise on the left and the flames of hell on the right.

The left side of the chart is devoted to the covenant of grace. This covenant rests upon election and leads to effectual calling, the operation of the Holy Spirit, the conviction of sin, and many other steps. Each step is detailed in its own circle on the chart, and the circles are connected (rather like a flow chart) with a white “line of grace.” Banners contain biblical proof texts, and at the bottom of the chart the elect soul is welcomed into glory by an angel who declares,

Come, weary saint,
Come into light;
Thou didst not faint:
Walk thou in white.

If the Bible is God’s Word, then why does it come to us as such an (apparently) random collection of diverse literature? In one place we find stories, in another we find legal codes, and in another, epic poems. Here we read correspondence and there we discover verses of song. Some documents contain didactic reasoning, but others give us apocalypses.

Would it not have been better if God had simply sent us an inspired and inerrant systematic theology? Or better still, He might have given us two lists: one of propositions about Himself and the other of commands for us to obey. Would not life and faith be simpler?

Nevertheless, we have been given the Bible. God is the one who gave it. God is the one who inspired it. God is the one who commands its use. Why is the Bible that we have better than a systematic theology (however perfect) or a list of propositions and obligations?

The fundamental reason is that no list of discursive propositions can possibly communicate the multi-faceted nature of God’s glory. God is infinite in His majesty and, consequently, infinitely variegated in His splendor. Part of the purpose of the Bible is to help us glimpse the many dimensions of God’s grandeur.

That would be difficult—perhaps impossible—to do with mere theological propositions. True, God could give us a proposition to the effect that His glory has many dimensions. We could read such a proposition and intellectually affirm it without ever beginning to glimpse the glory itself. God does not simply want us to know and affirm that He is glorious, He wishes us to behold His glory. He wishes to place Himself on display.

More than that, God wants us to know Him. That is not at all the same thing as knowing about Him. We can learn about Him from propositions. We can gather theological data, categorize it, and publish theologies. Nevertheless, however much data we amass, it will do us no good unless we know Him.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.

H. Richard Niebuhr has provided the paradigm for discussions of Christianity and culture. In his seminal volume, Christ and Culture, he articulated five “ideal types” that are now widely employed in this conversation: Christ against culture, the Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture.

Critiquing these categories has become a cottage industry in the theological village. It seems that one way of gaining one’s theological spurs is to offer a new evaluation of Niebuhr. Naturally, the explanations and criticisms have varied in their usefulness.

One of the most frequently heard is that Niebuhr’s categories do not fit real-life individuals, and that several of Niebuhr’s examples seem strained. This criticism would be more telling if Niebuhr had meant to provide a taxonomy rather than a typology. Since ideal types are supposed to represent logical possibilities, however, it is not surprising that few “pure” examples of any type can be found.

A more responsible criticism is that Niebuhr’s typology is incomplete. One recent evaluation of Niebuhr’s work, a volume by Craig Carter (Rethinking Christ and Culture, Brazos, 2007), offers a sustained argument to this effect. Carter suggests that Niebuhr’s discussion assumes “Christendom,” i.e., a cultural situation that has been created by the sustained political and social enforcement of Christian domination. Since Christendom is now disintegrating, Carter presents a series of alternative types for Christians to employ in the future. Unfortunately, Carter’s discussion is skewed by his Anabaptist assumption that non-violence and non-involvement in the state are requirements for Christians.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

No work exerts more influence upon the way that contemporary Christians discuss culture than H. Richard Niebuhr’s book, Christ and Culture. Niebuhr’s categories have become standard for professing Christians from liberalism on the Left to fundamentalism on the Right. One might well disagree with Niebuhr’s typology, but no reputable discussion of Christianity and culture can ignore it.

Niebuhr himself developed his classifications over several decades. He intended the book to provide a typology that describes logical possibilities rather than a taxonomy that classifies observable phenomena. He found the notion of a typology (or “ideal types”) in sociologist Max Weber, from whom he also borrowed his original two classifications. Weber had posited that Christianity could be classified socially as either church or sect. This distinction had been repeated by Ernst Troeltsch, who had added a third type (mysticism). Niebuhr dropped Troeltsch’s third type and renamed Weber’s original two categories. What Weber and Troeltsch had called a church, Niebuhr called a denomination. What they had called a sect, he called a church.

This distinction was important for Niebuhr in an early work, The Social Sources of Denominationalism. As Niebuhr used the term, a church is relatively small, personal, inward looking, perfectionistic, and generally drawn from the lower social classes. In contrast, a denomination is part of the accepted social order and appeals to the intellectual and ruling classes. Denominations tend to work downwards through the social order while churches criticize the social order from outside. Importantly, Niebuhr observed that affluence and influence tend to transform churches into denominations. This observation suggested that church and denomination represented the two poles of a spectrum of possible positions in the relationship between Christianity and culture.

Niebuhr expanded this distinction in The Kingdom of God in America. Dealing specifically with American Christianity, he identified revivalism with church and liberalism and its social gospel with denomination. He noticed, however, that the Puritans fit neither of these categories neatly. Their approach to culture suggested the possibility of intervening steps between denomination and church.

It was a remarkable conference. They had no business. They passed no resolutions. They delivered no institutional reports, made no sales pitch, and received no offering. They simply preached and taught the Bible and enjoyed one another’s company. Oh, and they gave away books.

The meeting was the annual Conference on the Church for God’s Glory at First Baptist Church of Rockford, Illinois. First Baptist has hosted this conference every May for several years. The gathering has grown every year and is now attended by nearly two hundred registrants (plus church members and some others). While a few more could squeeze in, the crowd pretty well fills the church’s auditorium.

No wonder. This conference provides an infusion of fresh air into the ecclesiastical atmosphere of Illinois. It is not about issues so much as it is simply about biblical ministry. The preaching is almost exclusively expository and the preachers are almost all pastors (as opposed to institutional executives). They bring the perplexities of their recent experiences with them, and they challenge one another with biblical answers. They do not set out to provide scintillating displays of pulpit pyrotechnics. Instead, they set out just to preach the Scriptures.

Many of the attendees are old friends, but there is not a whiff of clannishness about the meeting. Both hosts and attendees are genuinely excited and appreciative of everyone who comes. In fact, the church makes a practice of praying for registrants by name during the weeks leading up to the conference.

Every version of parachurch politics is left outside. This conference is hosted by a single church, and it is not a large church. Consequently, it is not likely that attending the Conference on the Church for God’s Glory will be a major career boost. The movers and shakers do not attend, and consequently the meeting is not one where a person goes to be seen.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

As Matthew Arnold envisioned it, high culture is the effort to “know the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Culture and Anarchy). It consists of those products of civilization that are deliberately meant to preserve, shape, and propagate human ideals and mores. It is encountered in libraries, academies, museums, and concert halls. It includes philosophy (broadly defined), the humanities, belles-lettres, music, the visual arts, and the performing arts. High culture can be contrasted with traditional or folk cultures as well as with popular or mass culture.

Each major civilization has produced its own high culture. Typically, high cultures have centered upon worship—not surprisingly, since every culture is the incarnation of a religion. From this center, however, each culture has gone on to examine the enduring aspects of human life: birth and death, comedy and tragedy, love and marriage and childbearing, hearth, home, valor and friendship, among others. They also explore answers to the perennial questions such as the nature of existence, truth, freedom, justice, duty, goodness, and beauty.

Christian leaders have been ambivalent in their opinion of high culture. Saul of Tarsus imbibed deeply from the high cultures of his day, but after his conversion he refused to rely upon cultural sophistication as a strategy for advancing the gospel. Even then, however, he clearly employed his cultural skills in the composition of his epistles. Tertullian, rejecting philosophy as only a trained rhetor could, asked “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” Others, such as Clement of Alexandria, followed by his pupil Origen, virtually subordinated Christian doctrine to the major philosophies of their day.

This ambivalence has a reason. On the one hand, the content of the various high cultures has often militated against Christian perspectives. On the other hand, the articulation of Christian perspectives seems to require mastery of the very disciplines that are perpetuated within high culture. The utterly unlettered or completely bumptious have only rarely made much of a contribution to Christian thought or sensibility.

One moment they said, “peace and safety,” but then came sudden destruction like a thief in the night. For Osama bin Laden and his entourage, calamity struck in the form of American helicopters and US Navy Seals. After a few moments of frenetic terror, bin Laden was dispatched into eternity.

The world has not mourned his slaying. Quite the opposite. When news of his death broke, crowds gathered spontaneously, breaking into impromptu celebration and song. A Philadelphia baseball game came to a halt as fans, and then players, burst into cheers and chants.

Why such jubilation? Why celebrate a human death? It would be easy to dismiss this elation—and some have—as a coarse expression of American triumphalism, as if America were the studio audience and bin Laden were an especially unpopular guest on the Jerry Springer show. A few Christian pundits have worried whether such jubilation is compatible with Christian love and the desire for reconciliation.

Those who experience such concerns should spend a few hours pondering the ferocity of Psalm 137 or reflecting upon the taunt against the king of Babylon in Ezekiel 28. They might even consider the ground of the encouragement that Paul offers in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9. The sensibilities of these and similar Scriptures cannot be confined to some different dispensation. What they express is a legitimate aspect of the life of faith, and we deny or suppress these expressions to our detriment.