SUMMER 2014
EVANGELISM, JUSTICE & THE KINGDOM OF GOD Joe Boot
THE JUSTICE EXCHANGE PART 1
AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY
LIBERTARIAN MARXISM
Scott Masson
George Grant
Andrew Sandlin
BECOMEan
EICC BUILDER The EICC exists to equip, strengthen and encourage Christ’s Church for faithful witness to the life- and hope-filled message of a full-orbed Gospel. The Ezra Institute was founded in 2009 and since then has depended on the prayer and financial support of a small group of supporters and volunteers. The EICC Builder program is being established to broaden and strengthen this support base, thereby extending the reach and impact of the EICC’s teaching ministry. EICC Builders are those individuals and families who have made a commitment to pray regularly for the ministry as well as to give to the EICC on a monthly basis. This regular monthly support will enable the ministry to develop teaching resources, to host training events, to invest in print and Internet-based publishing, and to be adequately staffed. Will you become an EICC Builder so that the ministry might be further strengthened and expanded? Becoming a builder is easy; simply complete the attached donor card and mail it back to us in the postage paid return envelope provided. Your tax receipt will be issued and mailed to you at year end. On behalf of the board and staff of the EICC we thank you in advance for your prayerful consideration. The Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity Providing credible answers to the challenges of unbelief in our day Teaching and preaching a world-transforming Gospel message Applying biblical truth to every aspect of life
EZRA INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY 9 Hewitt Ave. Toronto, ON M6R 1Y4
SUMMER 2014
General Editor
JOSEPH BOOT EICC Founder
JOSEPH BOOT
3
Editorial Ryan Eras
4
Evangelism, Justice & the Kingdom of God Joe Boot
11
Authentic Christianity George Grant
16
Libertarian Marxism Andrew Sandlin
23
The Justice Exchange: Part 1 Scott Masson
30
Ministry Report Randall Currie
34
Resource Corner
Jubilee is provided without cost to all those who request it. Jubilee is the tri-annual publication of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity (EICC), a registered charitable Christian organization. The opinions expressed in Jubilee do not necessarily reflect the views of the EICC. Jubilee provides a forum for views in accord with a relevant, active, historic Christianity, though those views may on occasion differ somewhat from the EICC’s and from each other. The EICC depends on the contribution of its readers, and all gifts over $10 will be tax receipted. Permission to reprint granted on written request only. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement Number: PM42112023 Return all mail undeliverable to: EICC, 9 Hewitt Ave., Toronto, ON M6R 1Y4, www.ezrainstitute.ca
SUMMER 2014
To receive Jubilee please visit, www.ezrainstitute.ca/jubilee Or write to us: EICC, 9 Hewitt Ave., Toronto, ON M6R 1Y4. jubilee@ezrainstitute.ca
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 12 PAGE NO.
“JUSTICE”
IS
A
PARTICULARLY
favourite word of many within and without the church. We talk of doing justice (Jer. 22:3; Mic. 6:8), seeking justice (Isa. 1:17), working justice (Ps. 103:6). We are told that questions of justice are a factor in the products we buy, the places we visit and the officials we vote for. Our Lord commands his people repeatedly to not pervert justice (Ex. 23:2; Deut. 16:19; Job 34:12), and even describes himself as “a God of justice” (Isa. 30:18). Clearly, justice is something that is not merely important to God, but an indispensable aspect of his holy character. It is particularly important, therefore, that we understand and seek after the true nature and correct interpretation of justice, and this means choosing a side. We must first recognize whose standard of justice is correct, and then seek to conform our own standards to it. There is a great deal of intellectual confusion and competition over this matter, over not merely which one, but whether any one interpretation can be preferred to another, whether it can be known, or whether it even exists. Sometimes the same word is vested with wildly different meanings. The stakes are high; there is no zero mark on the scales of justice. An action, policy, or law must be either just or unjust. Logically and historically, sinful, unbiblical standards of justice can only produce injustice, and that harvest is plentiful.
there can be no artificial separation of doctrine and action. Andrew Sandlin traces the historical journey of Libertarian Marxist ideology from the 1960s to the present day, demonstrating that issues of justice are cultural markers as much as they are political. Contrary to the biblical view of justice, many contemporary advocates have come to think of justice not as equal treatment, but as the production of equal outcomes for all, which has led us to a culture of “democratic tyranny.” By holding fast to a biblical view of justice, and practicing biblical love towards God and neighbor, we can resist this cultural trajectory. In Part 1 of his two part article, Scott Masson articulates the development of Cultural Marxist ideology, identifying the origins of such confused and confusing terms as “social justice” and “tolerance,” and the insidious, repressive meanings these terms have come to accommodate. Again, the only way for Christians to resist such cultural hegemony is to fear God rather than men, and to proclaim and abide by the whole counsel of God. George Grant explains how welfare is the responsibility of the church, and not the state. By demonstrating care and compassion for the poor and downtrodden, historic Christian love is something that is primarily lived, not felt.
3
RYAN ERAS
RYAN ERAS is Director of Administration at Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Ryan holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Toronto, where he focused on bibliographic control and the history of censorship. He has served in various educational and support roles, providing bibliographic research and critical editorial assistance for several academic publications. He lives in Toronto with his wife Rachel, and their two daughters, Isabelle and Joanna
Thankfully, we can be sure that a correct interpretation both exists and is discernable. Based on God’s character, we can reasonably expect that he has given us abundant evidence in his holy Word as to the right meaning and application of it. The application of God’s justice in the public sphere – social justice as opposed to criminal justice – is a question spoken by many, but defined and answered by few. This edition of Jubilee focuses on these questions and seeks to point readers back to the Word of God as the only true standard for justice. Joe Boot explains how a biblical vision of justice must be connected with the theory and practice of evangelism, demonstrating that
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
SUMMER 2014
PAGE NO.
4
REV. DR. JOE BOOT REV. DR. JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias for seven years as an apologist in the U.K. and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. A theology graduate of Birmingham Christian College, England, Joe earned his M.A. in Mission Theology with the University of Manchester and his PhD in Christian Intellectual Thought with Whitfield Theological Seminary, Florida USA. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, Why I Still Believe and How Then Shall We Answer. His latest book, The Mission of God, is a tour de force of biblical cultural theology, expounding the mission of the church in the 21st Century. He is Senior Fellow of the cultural and apologetics think tank, truthxchange in Southern California and lives in Toronto with his wife Jenny and their three children Naomi, Hannah and Isaac.
SUMMER 2014
EVANGELISM, JUSTICE
and the KINGDOM
OF GOD
Extracted from Joe Boot, The Mission of God, (Toronto: Freedom Press), 2014. THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE word ‘evangelism’ reveals that it centres upon the propagation of the evangel, the good news that was manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. The English word ‘gospel’ literally means ‘good news.’ Furthermore, the synoptic gospels add that this gospel is ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ (Matt. 4:23). This kingdom terminology is scattered liberally throughout the New Testament (Matt. 9:35; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43; John 3:3). Clearly, the doctrine of the kingdom is central to a biblical understanding of evangelism.1 Since a kingdom requires a king, Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom is here, that it has come near and that it is now advancing in the world is also a declaration that the reign of God, our sovereign, has broken into the world visibly. Jesus’ earthly ministry further demonstrated that this good news was not merely a piece of abstract information to be communicated; it involved a concrete manifestation. The kingdom coming near meant forgiveness of sin, healing of the sick, freeing of the demon-possessed and care and concern for the materially and physically poor, the oppressed and the outcast. It even meant the breaking down of old social barriers between Jew and Gentile, signalling the end of alienation and division within the human family (John 4:7–27). Not only was the good news of the kingdom an announcement of the reign of a just and merciful God, it was also a declaration of victory over the world and all of its sin, evil and injustice. To all who feel worn down by sin or suffering, by trial or tribulation, Christ proclaims the victory of his kingdom as a source of new hope: “take
courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The evangel declares and demonstrates that this eschatological hope is not just a future hope, but also a present reality. In noting the movement from the messianic ministry of Jesus to its eschatological fulfilment in the Christian community, Walter Klaiber points out how the church is to carry on this mission: It lives this mission in its service to the sick, the helpless, the captive and the needy…. Evangelism befitting the gospel is evangelism in service of this invitation. It relieves those of whom too much is demanded. It liberates the captive. It heals the sick and worn down and gives new courage to those who have failed. But it does that not on its own authority, but rather in the name of Jesus. “Naming the name” is the most important function of evangelism in the context of the integral mission of the church.2
This is the essence of evangelism – ‘naming the name’ by proclaiming Christ’s Lordship, extending the gospel invitation, and continuing Jesus’ ministry by bringing deliverance, hope and liberty to a world dominated by sin. Biblical categories can distinguish, but do not separate (dualism) the physical and the spiritual, the outer and inner life. Christ’s rule extends over every aspect of life; the Christian faith is comprehensive. His kingdom rule cannot be confined to inner piety but embraces all existence and brings life in all its fullness as indicated by our Lord in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” This being the case, we should expect to see our evangelistic efforts affecting the social and moral character of individuals, families, and society, indicating the visible presence of the kingdom. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Kingdom of God
Evangelism, when conceived in terms of the kingdom, is thus intimately related to eschatology –the direction of God’s activity in history – which will ultimately be the new heaven and new earth. This narrative of God’s activity reveals Christ’s mission as the inauguration of a kingdom now within the reach of all those who will repent and believe the gospel. The work of evangelism then, at the very least, is inviting people to respond to the announcement of the kingdom in the terms laid out by the king. In reformed thought, evangelism is history and world-affirming; the gospel declares Christ’s universal providential government and cosmosrenewing intentions.3 Thus, we must repudiate all notions of evangelism that are intent on purely inward, pietistic concerns, seeking to escape from this world into heaven rather than seeking his kingdom coming “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Evangelism is not only about saving souls, but about declaring Christ’s redemptive activity for the whole person – what he has done, is doing and will do. This declaration mirrors the three interrelated aspects of the kingdom that has come, is come, and will come. The all-encompassing nature of the kingdom means that in our confession and proclamation of Christ’s Lordship, nothing is left out. David J. Bosch rightly points out that for the early church, “the idea of ‘religion as a private affair,’ of divorcing the ‘spiritual’ from the ‘physical,’ was an unthinkable attitude in light of the all-embracing nature of God’s reign ushered in by Jesus.”4 The modern evangelical tendency to reduce evangelism to a form of ‘eternal fire insurance marketing’ seriously impoverishes our ability to capture a vision of the Messianic kingdom that the evangel is meant to announce and embody. Johannes Verkuyl correctly emphasizes this comprehensive nature of the kingdom: God’s goal in his mission is his messianic kingdom. The kingdom does not only address the spiritual and moral needs of a person, but his material, physical, social, cultural and political needs as well. For this reason Jesus came not only as one who preached but also
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
as one who served (diakonos). He made the signs of that kingdom appear: the blind saw, the crippled walked, lepers were healed, the hungry had food to eat, and the lonely discovered they were no longer alone.5
This kingdom power at work in the life of believers does not end with love for God alone but embraces love for neighbour also. The love of neighbours proves love for God genuine (Rom. 13:8–10).6 Yet, it would be a serious mistake to jettison or in any way minimize the proclamation of Christ’s atoning work and his unequivocal call to repentance and faith, and attempt to replace it with the alleviation of some temporal physical need. This approach falls short of heralding the reign of Christ. Biblically, evangelism has an inescapable verbal dimension centred upon the Christian’s witness to the truth of the gospel events that includes an invitation to obey the gospel, aimed at evoking a personal response from those to whom we speak. Only when the salvation and Lordship of Christ is acknowledged and the fruit of repentance is visible is it true that the kingdom has come and “salvation has come to this house,” as demonstrated by Zacchaeus in Luke 19:2–9. So evangelism, understood in the light of the kingdom, must hold the proclamation and demonstration of the good news in dynamic tension, with temporal priority given to the eternal dimension in the biblical paradigm. These are not two separate components of evangelism (making known good news) that have an autonomous life of their own, but inseparable and interwoven aspects of the church’s task in the world. To strive for political justice, the rights of the unborn, the falsely accused, or to give physical aid to the needy are clearly distinguishable, in principle, from proclaiming the redemption of Christ in the cross, but they cannot and must not be artificially separated. In the same way that faith without works is dead, so words without deeds are empty and deeds without words are mute. This does not mean that deed and word must always come together mechanically to be authentic, but rather that the believer’s deeds and witness are to be consistent in every aspect of life. The preaching of a gospel of righteousness
5
“The work of evangelism then, is inviting people to respond to the announcement of the kingdom in the terms laid out by the king. ”
“The preaching of a gospel of righteousness cannot be divorced from the practice of justice and righteousness.”
SUMMER 2014
6
Kingdom of God
“Notably, the actual proclamation of the evangel is then an act of justice in itself. For what does the call to repentance and faith mean if not justice for God, where he is truly given what is his due – love and worship with heart, mind, soul and strength?”
SUMMER 2014
cannot be divorced from the practice of justice and righteousness. So, the church is to continue in the footsteps of the Lord, who is the fulfilment of all the law and prophets, in heralding his comprehensive kingdom rule and enlisting others to join the community which will reign with him. The glory of the good news is that here and now, when men and women turn to Christ, when evil and injustice are overcome in his name in terms of his word, the ‘gospel of the kingdom’ breaks in and this happens most visibly in and through God’s church.7 The church of Jesus Christ is central to the Missio Dei (Mission of God), not peripheral. Thus, the missio Christi, manifest by the new humanity in Christ, must have a deep concern for public justice,8 since Christ’s rule will hold sway over all things: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). As John Stott notes, “the church is meant to be the kingdom community, a model of what the human community looks like when it comes under the rule of God, and a challenging alternative to secular society.”9
the faith, and gradually de-emphasizing social action, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the likes of the Clapham Sect in England, and Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney in America, had been a high priority. The second point which Stott notes was the parallel development of what was called the social gospel. This view, interpreting salvation purely as the regeneration of human relationships, advocated a form of ‘Christianized communism,’ seeing the kingdom as synonymous with the humanization of society in terms of their social theory. But as Stott notes concerning the kingdom:
RECOVERING THE FORGOTTEN PARADIGM
In a further relevant observation, Stott notes the popular spread of dispensational and premillennial eschatological schemes (over against the historic Puritan post-millennial view), through J.N. Darby and the Schofield Bible, which presented this world as beyond redemption, sinking into darkness until the coming of Christ and his literal millennial reign on earth. This led in many cases to an evangelical withdrawal from social and cultural engagement.
This vision of God’s mission has historically been recognized by large segments of the evangelical confessional church. However, the effect of the rise of various strands of liberalism and millennialism began to undermine the essential unity of the task of proclaiming and embodying the gospel of the kingdom, justification and justice together. This process has been called “The Great Reversal” by historian Timothy L. Smith regarding the changing attitude and approach of evangelicals toward issues of justice and compassion.10 Stott identifies several primary factors triggering the change.11 First, the blossoming of theological liberalism in the early twentieth century, which denied many orthodox tenets of faith, was marked by its concern for ‘social action’ or ‘social justice.’ However, the underlying theo-drama of liberalism posited a direct identification of the kingdom of God with the ‘humanization’ of the world into a utopia here and now. This was understandably intolerable to evangelicals, who reacted by defending the ‘fundamentals’ of
Without a new birth it is impossible to see it, let alone enter it. Those who do receive it like a child, however, find themselves members of a new community of the Messiah, which is called to exhibit the ideals of his rule in the world and so to present the world with an alternative social reality. This social challenge of the gospel of the kingdom is quite different from the social gospel.12
In an effort to respond to this reversal, in July 1974, at Lausanne, Switzerland, the International Congress on World Evangelization was held. Recognizing the need to address the question of the relationship between evangelism and social engagement, representatives from 150 nations endorsed the Lausanne Covenant. Sections four and five of this document dealt with the nature of evangelism and Christian social responsibility, declaring that both evangelism and socio-political involvement are part of our Christian duty. But, as Stott notes, it makes no attempt to relate them.13 Stott optimistically referred to the congress as, “the turning point for the worldwide evangelical Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Kingdom of God
constituency.”14 The effect of Lausanne still being felt in November 1996, when National Assembly of Evangelicals drafted Bournemouth Declaration which included following conclusion:
was the the the
We recognize that no area of life is outside God’s sovereign rule. We take the incarnation and transforming work of Christ as our model for engagement. We affirm our commitment to releasing Christian people for involvement at all levels of society.15
Although Bosch rightly sees a danger in leaving these elements ‘unrelated,’ as though each has a life of its own when viewed as ‘components’ of mission,16 there is at least an effort at Lausanne to reinforce the importance of both manifestations of the kingdom. What is missing is the genius of the thought of the Puritans to effectively relate these elements together in a seamless garment, knitted with exclusively biblical presuppositions.17 So, if evangelism can be defined as the proclamation and manifestation of the ‘gospel of the kingdom’ in word and deed, then these two fruits of the kingdom cannot be separated, nor one set over against the other. They are theologically distinguishable, but interrelated and interconnected like grapes from the same vine, because Christ’s kingdom is a total, comprehensive reign. Therefore, when justice is understood in kingdom terms, the church’s pursuit of justice among human beings (love and justice for neighbour), as well as justification with God (love and justice for, and from God) will not detract from one or the other, but rather complement and reinforce each other. Notably, the actual proclamation of the evangel is then an act of justice in itself. For what does the call to repentance and faith mean if not justice for God, where he is truly given what is his due – love and worship with heart, mind, soul and strength? Likewise, when God’s people seek justice for others, they are imitating their creator in seeking the right order of love – loving their neighbour as much as they love themselves.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
DEFINING JUSTICE AND THEORY OF THE KINGDOM
THE
SOCIAL
It is striking that the definition of ‘justice’ is so rarely addressed by theologians in the field of missiology, especially given that it is such a frequently discussed theme of the discipline. Few subjects are more popular in contemporary theological literature, even in evangelical seminaries today, than the theme of ‘social justice’ and the need to ‘do justice’ and transform laws and social order so that what are called ‘structures of injustice’ are not allowed to persist. All such arguments presuppose a standard of justice; obviously justice must rest upon some criterion or another. Yet for many ‘Christians’ writing on the subject, as open antinomians, the Bible, “cannot tell us what justice is or how we can exercise it.”18 This necessarily means that something other than God’s word defines justice for them. In biblical faith, however, law and justice are inseparable. In society, when law does not express justice, it no longer commands respect and obedience. Society left without justice becomes suicidal, as Proverbs 8:36 makes clear concerning the wisdom of God’s law: “he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”
“In society, when law does not express justice, it no longer commands respect and obedience. Society left without justice becomes suicidal.”
For Scripture, then, justice is quite literally a matter of life and death for any society. The social disaster of our age is that civil governments have abandoned true justice and separated law from justice. In fact, the view of many jurists today, is that neither law nor justice have anything to do with morality, let alone religion. In this view, law – and thereby our approximation of justice – is simply what the state enacts. The modern state has conflated positivistic law and justice, rendering justice merely an aspect of the state. This contemporary humanistic view means that justice is no longer basic to law and society by virtue of being a part of the fundamental order of things created by the sovereign God. Instead, justice is at best a social policy and so justice is what the state does. This serious error makes it all the more important that when Christians speak about justice, they have some idea what the biblical view is, and some SUMMER 2014
7
8
Kingdom of God
understanding of how humanism has departed from the Christian view of justice.
“Justice here requires impartiality and due restitution irrespective of race, social status or creed; justice is to give people their due, be that punishment, protection or care.”
Clearly the meaning of justice must either be grounded in God or human beings as our referent. From the Christian standpoint either the justice of God or human imagination about justice will govern our social relationships. Consequently, attempts to define justice apart from God’s law lead quickly to rationalistic moral theories and relativism – laws are then merely social beliefs that have triumphed and have no connection with true justice. For biblical faith, justice is something that is revealed by God that is intrinsic to his character and nature. This revelation is found in distorted form in the human conscience and human traditions (Rom. 1:32; 2:14–16), but with clarity in God’s law-word, supremely in the person of Christ – the only perfectly just man to walk the earth. Indeed, Paul tells us that in the gospel, “God’s righteousness (justice) is revealed” (Rom. 1:17). Consequently, our concerns for ‘justice’ must be pursued from a Christian standpoint; and only if this is biblically rooted is God’s righteousness being truly revealed in our gospel. Inevitably, the pursuit of justice takes many forms, personal, familial and societal, inescapably involving engagement with the polis (city or state) to see unjust laws, statutes and judgements that oppress, abuse and propagate injustice revoked and replaced with righteous laws and judgement. It is therefore obvious that the church must define the source of law and justice so that we might be able to identify and oppose injustice. Reformed and Puritan thinker, the late Greg Bahnsen shows that this challenge has been basic to the life of the church from the beginning: As the early church formulated its creeds it simultaneously reformulated civil law. Such a correlation was inevitable since, against the ancient pagan tradition that located the source of authority and morality in the polis, orthodox Christian creedalism asserted the sovereignty of the creator over history and the incursion of the Messianic God-man into history. Thus the early creeds were a
SUMMER 2014
declaration concerning, not only theology proper, but eschatology and ethics; the course of history and the source of ethical authority were both found in the…ontological Trinity.19
This is a pivotal observation. The early churches’ vision of ‘social’ justice (or rather public justice) brought them into conflict with the statist establishment of their day, because they proclaimed the Lordship of the messianic king over all things (including the imperial authority) and therefore rested the notion of justice and law upon the Christian creed. Another way of speaking about social or public justice is social order, and social order, of necessity, is based on a social theory. Every social theory, Christian or not, has a creedal basis; that is, it presupposes some form of ultimate concern, a religious perspective. Behind every religious perspective is a god, whether ‘incarnated’ by the state or in Christ the Lord. The foundation of social order is sovereignty. Sovereignty can be either transcendental or immanent, resting either in God or being an attribute of man and his order. Basically, the two conflicting concepts are between God’s sovereignty and the claimed sovereignty of the state.20 This is important because the ground on which we stand for justice, the means by which we pursue justice, the motive behind why we strive for justice and the end toward which the struggle tends, will determine whether it is consistent with the gospel. It is in facing these questions that contemporary missiology, in my opinion, has been woefully lacking in self-criticism. In the Bible, the original meaning of the word justice is coextensive with righteousness, so they are interchangeable or related themes that often come together in the same verse (Ps. 33:5; Job 37:23). They are related terms because justice is an aspect of God’s righteous character, as are mercy and compassion.21 In the Old Testament a ‘just’ person is simply a righteous person who does what is right in accordance with God’s revealed law (Ezek. 18:5-9). Likewise, in the New Testament, the Greek word dikaiosyne, can be legitimately translated as ‘righteousness’ or Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Kingdom of God
‘justice.’ Thus one could adequately translate Matthew 5:6 as referring to the blessed ones who hunger and thirst after ‘justice’. Equally, Matthew 6:33, using the same word, exhorts us to seek first the kingdom of God and his ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness.’ The word clearly has both a vertical (God-oriented) and horizontal (peopleoriented) dimension because it is tied to God’s law. The common Hebrew term for justice, mishpat is found more than 200 times in the Old Testament, and its central meaning is rule of law: “You shall have the same rule (mishpat) for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 24:22). Justice here requires impartiality and due restitution irrespective of race, social status or creed; justice is to give people their due, be that punishment, protection or care. Consequently, the religious meaning of the term is inescapable. Even the Latin word justus from which we derive our English term justice literally means ‘upright.’ In the ancient world, justice likewise implied giving a person his or her due; if they have not received it, an injustice has occurred. According to Aristotle, justice could be understood in general terms of universal justice, encompassing the ideas of virtue, charity and morality, and also in terms of particular justice. This had three basic elements, which, for the sake of discussion, remains a useful categorization: commercial justice is concerned with fairness and honesty in economic exchange; remedial justice is concerned with criminal and civil law; and distributive justice is concerned with apportioning goods and burdens among human beings.22 In the Bible, God’s law alone defines justice, righteousness, mercy and love, and deals with all these questions of remedial justice as well as economic exchange, distribution and charity. All these areas of righteousness or justice are important in Scripture and clearly address such contemporary problems in the West as violence (including the pandemic of sexual violence in pornography), exploitation through kidnapping and enslavement, poverty, the collapse of criminal justice; fatherlessness and the destruction of the family (leaving ‘welfare orphans’ and widows), rampant moral degeneracy, murder of the unborn, the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
9
legalization and normalization of homoeroticism and prostitution, and physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia (amongst many other social ills). In spite of this, many missiologists, when referring to the ‘struggle for justice’ almost always have a narrow distributive justice in mind. This distributive justice is usually called ‘social justice.’ Ronald Nash notes, “social justice is viewed as that species of distributive justice concerned with the distribution of burdens and benefits within society as a whole, a distribution that is usually controlled by political authorities.”23 As we will see, the concept of social justice in these terms has little relationship to biblical justice. Social justice claims to be essentially democracy – the people’s voice as God’s voice – and involves a victimization mentality – blaming a bad environment or certain groups or classes within society for systemic injustice and inequality because of unjust social and political structures that are perpetuated by the powerful and oppressive. Typically in this vision, everyone has the alleged inalienable right (as a matter of ‘justice’) to equal access to land, resources, education, opportunity for betterment, marriage, a good job, adequate income as well as various social services, and increasingly a right to positive outcomes in all these endeavours. This everexpanding litany of demands does not define justice but merely presents a modern doctrine of entitlements. It must be asked, for example, whatever the merits of universal education or social services, what this has to do with being just and giving a person what they are morally due in terms of Scripture or the ‘rule of law.’ Social theory and the Bible’s material authority are critical issues here because a significant number of Christian thinkers calling for ‘social justice’ seem to ignore semantics and context in seeking out biblical proof texts to support their social theory; often failing to distinguish the different types of ‘justice’ the Scriptures are referring to. As Nash observes concerning the typical misuse of the Bible:
“This ever-expanding litany of demands does not define justice but merely presents a modern doctrine of entitlements. It must be asked, for example, whatever the merits of universal education or social services, what this has to do with being just and giving a person what they are morally due in terms of Scripture or the ‘rule of law.’”
Some of these verses refer not to distributive justice but to remedial justice. This is clearly true SUMMER 2014
10
Kingdom of God
in the case of Exodus 23:6 which warns against depriving the poor man of justice but makes it obvious that the justice in view is that found in a court of law.24
Deuteronomy 16:19–20 instructs us concerning the role of judges:
“God requires the rule of his law, not our emotions or personal preferences, to govern us.”
You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Clearly what God requires of us is a strict obedience to his standard of justice and his standard only. Showing partiality to the rich or poor and the acceptance of bribes are attempts to pervert justice and are therefore all unacceptable because God requires the rule of his law, not our emotions or personal preferences, to govern us.
1
R. Bowen, So I Send You: A Study Guide to Mission (London: SPCK, 1996), 60–62. 2 W. Klaiber, Call and Response: Biblical Foundations of a Theology of Evangelism, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 48. 3 R. J. Rushdoony, Leviticus: Commentaries on the Pentateuch (Vallecito: Ross House, 2005), 1–2. 4 D.J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991, thirteenth printing October 1998), 48. 5 J. Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 211. 6 Rushdoony, Leviticus, 224–225. 7 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 377. 8 Most missiologists use the term ‘social justice’ which does not have a Christian but a Marxist origin. I therefore use the term public justice to refer to the vision of justice conveyed in Scripture. 9 J. Stott, New Issues Facing Christians Today, 3rd ed. (London: Marshall Pickering, 1999), 28. 10 Stott, New Issues, 8
SUMMER 2014
11
Stott, New Issues, 8-11. Stott, New Issues, 9. 13 Stott, New Issues,12. 14 Stott, New Issues,12. 15 Stott, New Issues,13. 16 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 412. 17 See Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 173–186. 18 Davies, ‘Rough Justice?’, 54 19 Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 3rd ed. (Nacogdoches: Covenant Media Press, 2002), 1. 20 R.J. Rushdoony, The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church, 3rd ed., (Vallecito: Ross House Books, 1998), 182. 21 Righteousness/Justice (Tsedeq), rightness, righteousness what is right or just or normal, rightness, justness (of weights and measures) righteousness (in government) of judges, rulers, kings of law of Davidic king, Messiah of Jerusalem as seat of just government of God’s attribute righteousness, justice (in case or cause) rightness (in speech) righteousness (as ethically right) righteousness (as vindicated), justification (in controversy), deliverance, victory, prosperity of God as covenant-keeping in redemption in name of Messianic king. 22 R.H. Nash, Social Justice and the Christian Church (Lima, OH: Academic Renewal Press, 2002), 30–31. 23 Nash, Social Justice, 31. 24 Nash, Social Justice, 70. 12
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Authentic Christianity: WORD & DEED Excerpt from Bringing in the Sheaves: replacing government welfare with biblical charity, (Franklin, TN: Ars Vitae), 1995. Reproduced with permission.
THE MENACE OF MAN Rise up, O men of God! Have done with lesser things; Give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of kings. Rise up, O men of God! The church for you doth wait, Her strength unequal to her task; Rise up and make her great! -William P. Merrill
America’s war on poverty has been and continues to be a dismal failure. The federally funded welfare program has become an incessant reminder that gross mismanagement, fiscal irresponsibility, misappropriated authority, and escalating calamity are the inevitable results of a society that attempts to solve complex human problems apart from the clear instruction of Scripture. The welfare program cannot be reformed. Even a radical restructuring of the entire system from top to bottom would be inadequate. The reason? Welfare is not essentially or primarily the government’s job. It never has been. And it never will be. Welfare is our job. It is the job of Christians. According to the clear instruction of Scripture, there is only one way to win the war on poverty— get the government out of primary welfare provision. And get the church back in it.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
GOOD SAMARITAN FAITH
Notice, I said get the church back in it. For centuries, Christians have been the primary agents of charity and compassion in Western culture. From the first century forward to the founding of the American colonies, Christians took the lead in caring for the hungry, the dispossessed, and the afflicted. This was, in fact, the hallmark of authentic Christianity. Even the enemies of the church begrudgingly admitted that there was something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that compelled the Christians to perform extraordinary feats of selfless compassion. For instance, during his short reign as emperor in the fourth century, Julian the Apostate tried to restore the paganism of Rome’s earlier days and undermine Christianity. But he just could not get around the Christians’ works of love. Indeed, in urging his government officials to charitable works, he said, “We ought to be ashamed. Not a beggar is to be found among the Jews, and those godless Galileans feed not only their own people, but ours as well, whereas our people receive no assistance whatever from us.”1
PAGE NO.
11 DR. GEORGE GRANT
DR. GEORGE GRANT is the author of nearly three dozen books on history, politics, theology and social issues, including the best-selling Grand Illusions, The Micah Mandate, and Killer Angel. He is the director of King’s Meadow Study Center, and instructor at Whitfield Theological Seminary, and a Teaching Fellow at Franklin Classical School.
Christ modeled a life and ministry of compassion to the poor. He was forever mingling with them (Luke 5:1-11), eating with them (Luke 5:27-32), comforting them (Luke 12:22-34), feeding them (Luke 9:10-17), restoring them to health (Luke 5:12-16), and ministering to them (Luke 7:18-23). He even went so far as to use the dramatic words of Isaiah to summarize and epitomize His life’s purpose. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
SUMMER 2014
12
Authentic Christianity
It is not surprising, then, that His disciples, those called to “conform themselves to His image” (Rom. 8:29), would similarly place a high priority on the care of the poor. Even a cursory glance through the New Testament “hall of fame” reveals a startling level of commitment to ministries of compassion.
“Even the enemies of the church begrudgingly admitted that there was something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that compelled the Christians to perform extraordinary feats of selfless compassion.”
Tabitha, for example, was a godly woman whose chief occupation was “helping the poor” (Acts 19:36-41). Barnabas was a man of some means who made an indelible mark on the early Christian communities, first by supplying the needs of the poor out of his own coffers (Acts 4:36-37), and later by spearheading relief efforts and taking up collections for famine-stricken Judeans (Acts 11:27-30). Titus was the young emissary of the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 8:23) who organized a collection for the poor Christians in Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8:3-6). Later he superintended further relief efforts in Corinth and delivered Paul’s second letter to the church there, all on his own initiative (2 Cor. 8:16-17). When last we see Titus, he has taken over the monumental task of mobilizing the Cretan church for similar “good works” (Titus 2:3, 7, 12; 3:8). The Apostle Paul himself was a man deeply committed to “remembering the poor” (Gal. 2:7-10). His widespread ministry began with a poverty outreach (Acts 11:27-30) and ultimately centered around coordinating the resources of Churches in Greece and Macedonia for relief purposes (2 Cor. 8-9). In the end, he willingly risked his life for this mission of compassion (Acts 20:17-35). The Good Samaritan is the unnamed lead character in one of Christ’s best-loved parables (Luke 10:25-37). When all others, including supposed men of righteousness, had skirted the responsibility of charity, the Samaritan took up his mantle. Christ concluded the narrative, saying, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). These early Christian heroes fully comprehended
SUMMER 2014
that “the religion our God and Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (Jas. 1:27). They knew that true repentance evidenced itself in sharing food and sustenance with the poor (Luke 3:7-11). And they understood that selfless giving would be honored and blessed (Luke 6:38; 2 Cor. 9:6-8) as a sign of genuine faith (Jas. 2:14-17). THE DIACONAL FUNCTION
Biblical teaching concerning the believer’s obligation to the poor permeated the thinking of the early Christians. They knew that if they were kind and generous to the poor they would themselves be happy (Prov. 14:21). God would preserve them (Psalm 41:1-2). They would never suffer need (Prov. 28:27). They would prosper (Prov. 11:25). They would ever be raised and restored from beds of sickness (Psalm 41:3). On the other hand, to refuse to exercise charity to the poor would have meant hurling contempt upon the name of the Lord (Prov. 14:31). And for such an offense, they knew that their worship would have been rendered useless (Isa. 1:10-17) and their prayers would have gone unanswered (Prov. 21:13). They knew that they would in no wise escape punishment (Prov. 17:5). The result was that every aspect of their lives was shaped to some degree by this high call to compassion. From the ordering of their homes (Rom. 12:13) to the conducting of their businesses (Eph. 4:28), from the training of their disciples (Tit. 3:14) to the character of their worship (Jas. 2:2-7), they were compelled by the Author and Finisher of their faith to live lives of charity. This is nowhere more evident than in the way their churches were structured. Besides the elders, who were charged with the weighty task of caring for the flock (Acts 20:28) and ruling the affairs of the congregation (Heb. 13:17), those early fellowships were also served by deacons – or more literally, servants. According to Acts 6:1-6, the deacons were charged with the responsibility Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Authentic Christianity
of coordinating, administering, and conducting the charitable function of the church. It seems that because of the spectacular growth of the Jerusalem church, the distribution of food to the needy had gradually become uneven and inefficient. A number of the Grecian widows had been overlooked. Since this situation was entirely unacceptable, the Twelve gathered all the Disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:2-3). Thus, these seven men, or deacons as they would later be called (1 Tim. 3:8-10), had as their primary duty the oversight of the poverty ministry of the Church. This was the essence of the diaconal function. All throughout church history, the diaconal function has been more or less faithfully carried out by men of passion, conviction, and concern – by men like William Olney and Joseph Passmore. Olney and Passmore were deacons for many years at London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle during the pastorate of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Their busy ministry in service to the needy involved the administration of almshouses, orphanages, relief missions, training schools, retirement homes, tract societies and colporterages. In a lecture to young Bible college students in 1862, Olney stated, “Deacons are called of God to a magnificent field of service, white unto harvest… Ours is the holy duty of stopping by the way, when all others have passed by, to ministrate Christ’s healing. Thus, we take the Good Samaritan as our model, lest the pilgrim perish.”2 To that same audience, Passmore said: It is ironic indeed that our type of diaconal faithfulness comes not from the life of a disciple of our blessed Lord. Nay, not even is our type from the ancient fathers of faith, the Jews. Instead, our type is from the life of a Samaritan. Mongrel, as touching doctrine, this Good Samaritan is all
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
of pedigree as touching righteousness. Oh, that the Church of our day had such men. Oh, that the church of our day bred such men, men of unswerving devotion to the care of the poor and broken-hearted. Oh, that the church of our day was filled with such men, men driven by the Good Samaritan faith…offering both word and deed, the fullness of the Gospel.3
Sadly, in our churches today we have virtually lost all sight of the diaconal function. Instead of meting out the succor of compassion to the needy, our deacons spend most of their time sitting on committees and launching building drives. Instead of spending and being spent on behalf of the needy, instead of modeling the Word-and-deed Good Samaritan faith, our deacons are waxing the floors of the fellowship hall or dusting the dampers, pew by pew, “and goodness knows what other trifles.” Consequently, the hungry, the naked, the dispossessed, the unloved, and the unlovable are left, at best, to their own wits, or at worst, to the benign benevolence of the war on poverty’s welfare bureaucracy. The condemnation written by John Calvin in 1559 is just as applicable in our own day as it was in his: “Today the poor get nothing more of alms than if they were cast into the sea. Therefore, the church is mocked with a false diaconate…there is nothing of the care of the poor nothing of that whole function which the deacons once performed.”4 LOVE IS SOMETHING YOU DO
The Good Samaritan faith and the mandate to care for the poor and afflicted is by no means the sole domain of the diaconate. God desires us all to display the Good Samaritan faith by offering the needy a Gospel of Word and deed. The testimony of Scripture is clear: all of us who are called by His name must walk in love (Eph. 5:2). We must exercise compassion (2 Cor. 1:34). We must live lives of service (Luke 22:2430). We must struggle for justice and secure mercy, comfort, and liberty for men, women, and children everywhere (Zech. 7:8-10).
13
“According to Acts 6:1-6, the deacons were charged with the responsibility of coordinating, administering, and conducting the charitable function of the church.”
“Jesus reduced the whole of the law, and thus, the whole of faith, to love—love toward God and then love toward man. But, at the same time, Jesus defined love in terms of law. In one bold, deft stroke, He freed the Christian faith from subjectivity.”
SUMMER 2014
14
Authentic Christianity
In Matthew 22, when Jesus was asked to summarize briefly the law of God, the standard against which all spirituality is to be measured, He responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the Law and the Prophets.”
“Biblical love is not a naïve, guiltprovoked sentiment. Biblical love is not a feeling. Biblical love is the compulsion to do things God’s way, living in obedience to His unchanging, unerring purposes. ”
Jesus reduced the whole of the law, and thus, the whole of faith, to love—love toward God and then love toward man. But, at the same time, Jesus defined love in terms of law. In one bold, deft stroke, He freed the Christian faith from subjectivity. By so linking love and law, Christ has unclouded our purblind vision of both. Love suddenly takes on responsible objectivity while law takes on passionate applicability. This sheds a whole new light on what it means for us to “walk in love.” If our love is real, then it must be expressed; it will be expressed. If our love is real, then action will result because love is something you do, not merely something you feel. Love is the “Royal Law” (Jas. 2:8). It is a law that weds Word and deed (Jas. 2:14-26). Authentic Christian faith, according to Jesus, is verifiable, testable, and objective because it is manifested in a verifiable, testable, and objective love. Thus, Jesus could confidently assert that love is the final apologetic (John 13:34-35). And Paul could argue that all effort for the Kingdom is in vain if not marked by love (1 Cor. 13:1-3). And James could disavow as genuine any and all loveless, lawless, workless faith (Jas. 2:14-26). True faith gets its hands dirty in the work of compassion because that is the way of love. Faith cannot be personalized, privatized, and esoteric because love cannot be personalized, privatized, and esoteric. True faith moves out into the push and shove of daily living and shows forth its authenticity via love.
SUMMER 2014
It is not surprising then to find that Scripture repeatedly mentions love evidenced in faith in contexts that focus on service to the poor—the hungry, the dispossessed, and the lonely. “He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him” (Prov. 14:31). “He who is generous will be blessed, for he gives of his food to the poor (Prov. 22:9). “The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor; the wicked does not understand such concerns (Prov. 29:7). “We know love by this that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:16-18). This is the faith, the love-evidenced faith, the Good Samaritan faith, the Word-and-deed faith, the authentic Christian faith to which God has called us. DOING THINGS GOD’S WAY
To facilitate such a faith of compassion, God not only gives us commands to love objectively, but He gives us structures within which to love objectively. We find those structures in the law (Ex. 22:21-24; Lev. 19:9-10), in the Prophets (Isa. 32:6-8; Jer. 21:11-12), in the Gospels (Luke 14:12-14; Matt. 25:31-46), and in the Epistles (2 Cor 8:1-9; Gal. 6:2-5). Living illustrations of those structures in action are woven into the narrative sections of Scripture (Ruth 2:2-18, 1 Kgs. 17:7-16), into the historical sections (Acts 4:32-35), into the poetic sections (Ps. 15:1-5; 72:12-14), into the liturgical sections (Isa. 1:1118), and into the didactical sections (Matt. 6:114; 2 Cor. 9:1-15). The reason Scripture is so specific about the implementation of charity is precisely due to the unique interrelationship of law and love. Biblical love is not a naïve, guilt-provoked sentiment. Biblical love is not a feeling. Biblical
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Authentic Christianity
love is the compulsion to do things God’s way, living in obedience to His unchanging, unerring purposes. It is law’s motivation. Thus, Biblical love does not strike out blindly in search of “truth, justice and the American way.” At the same time, Biblical law is not a prison of rules and regulations. Biblical law is the encoded mercy, grace, and peace of God. It is love’s standard. Thus, Biblical law does not lock us into heartless, soulless exercises in social control. Law and love are inseparable, working in tandem to the glory of Christ and His Kingdom. And when they are evidenced as such, the needs of the poor will be met by faithful adherents of authentic Christianity—in Word and deed. BRASS TACKS
Welfare is not essentially or primarily the government’s job. Welfare is our job. It is the job of Christians. The hallmark of authentic Christianity, from the first century forward, has been its compassionate care of the poor and afflicted. Even a cursory examination of the ministry of Christ, and that of His disciples, reveals this as a dominant theme: primary service to the needy is to be assumed, not by the state, but by the believer.
and blood. As His disciples, we, too, must love, not “with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth” (1 John 2:18). Not surprisingly, then, Scripture provides specific patterns for implementing love in the hard reality of daily life. Law and love are, thus, coordinated, ensuring the care of the poor and the authenticity of the Gospel. The law-love patterns of Word and deed are the Good Samaritan faith, the authentic Christian faith.
1
Ulrich Teitelbaum, Dissenting voices: a punctuated legacy of protest in the Christian era, (New York: Yolem Press, 1971), 364. 2 J.W. Harrold, The Diaconate, (London: Gospel Seed Publications, 1926), 88. 3 Ibid., 92. 4 John Calvin, trans. John T. McNeill, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1098.
“The hallmark of authentic Christianity, from the first century forward, has been its compassionate care of the poor and afflicted.”
In fact, so central was welfare to the task of the disciples that even the structure of the church was custom-designed to facilitate its efficient execution. Thus, the office of deacon was established. Of course, the work of caring for the needy is not simply and neatly relegated to the agency of the diaconate. Under its leadership, all believers are to live out the full implications of the Gospel. All believers are to walk in love. Love is not just a sweet and soppy sentiment. Love is something you do. Christ’s life was a crystal-clear translation of this fact into flesh
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
15
SUMMER 2014
LIBERTARIAN
MARXISM:
PAGE NO.
16 REV. P. ANDREW SANDLIN
REV. P. ANDREW SANDLIN is a fellow of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He is an ordained minister in and Executive Director of the Fellowship of Mere Christianity, Preaching Pastor at Cornerstone Bible Church-Santa Cruz County, Faculty of Blackstone Legal Fellowship of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and De Jong Distinguished Visiting Professor of Culture and Theology, Edinburg Theological Seminary, and is President of the Center for Cultural Leadership. He founded CCL in 2001. An interdisciplinary scholar, he holds a B.A. in English, history, and political science (University of the State of New York); he was awarded an M.A. in English literature (University of South Africa); he has taken doctoral work in English (Kent State University); and he holds a doctorate in Sacred Theology summa cum laude (Edinburg Theological Seminary). He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. Andrew is married to Sharon and has five adult children and three grandchildren.
SUMMER 2014
Dictatorship of the Eglitarian This article is adapted and reprinted from P. Andrew Sandlin, Libertarian Marxism: Dictatorship of the Egalitarian, (Mount Hermon, CA: Center for Cultural Leadership), 2011.
self-centered; they didn’t care about the nation or the society. But the liberal elites had the good of society at heart. Therefore, they should be the ones governing it.
INTRODUCTION
Of course, people won’t follow you just because you’re smart or claim to be virtuous. You have to force this self-centered herd to follow you. The only way to do that is by capturing politics, or the state. The state (unlike the family and church and businesses) can use guns and prisons to force people to do things. That’s why the liberal elites were centralized statists. It was their only way to guarantee success for their economic vision.
I want to discuss where we are culturally in the United States and in Western culture. I could begin in any number of places, but I’d like to start with the 1960s. I start with the ‘60s not because there was an idyllic Christian culture before then. There was plenty of depravity in the 1930s and 1780s. But nobody can deny that the ‘60s ushered in a radical social transformation. Both the liberals and the conservatives know this. The liberals love the ‘60s, and the conservatives hate the ‘60s. They both agree that since the ‘60s, things have been dramatically different in our nation. What changed in the ‘60s? Lots of things, but I want to hone in on one big change that began in Paris in 1968. The change that happened there has fanned out. It has shaped all Western societies, including the United States. To understand that change, we need to understand what things were like before. Specifically, let’s talk about how the liberal elite thought before 1968. PRE-’60S LEFTIST ELITE: POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION
The vast majority of the Western elites in the twentieth century were centralized state elitists. They believed that the few, the wise, the virtuous – people like themselves, of course – should be controlling the culture. Most other people were
This is why a large number of them fell in love with the Soviet Union, even as early as the 1920s. Here at last was a society run by people who cared about justice for everybody. It wasn’t a free society, but it was a just society. The problem with the free society, according to the elites, is that it wasn’t the just society – just, of course, as defined by the elites. When you have millions of people making all sorts of self-serving decisions, you can never predict just what might happen. There could be chaos (at least in the mind of the elites), particularly economic chaos, which is what they were really worried about. You would end up with booms and busts. You’d end up with some people rich and other people poor. You’d end up with some unintelligent people having more money than some very smart people. That just wouldn’t be fair – fair, of course, as defined by the elites. By contrast, the Soviets had a firm grip on society. They believed that the workers, called the proletariat, should rise up and take control of Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Libertarian Marxism
the means of production. Business owners (they were called the bourgeoisie) were just greedy, selfserving rascals who didn’t care about the workers. They should be thrown out of their offices and thrown into prison and even killed. Then the workers would control the economy and redistribute all the goods and services equally, and then everything would be fair. Marx called this the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course, the proletariat weren’t actually equipped to do this by themselves. They needed smart and wise people, a revolutionary elite to lead them. This is just what Lenin and Stalin did. The workers weren’t smart enough to protect their interests. They didn’t know how to think for themselves. But the revolutionary elite would do their thinking for them. You can see how this paradigm would appeal to Western liberal elites (they weren’t quite revolutionary elites like Lenin and Stalin, but they were cultural elites). That’s why they kept supporting the Soviet Union even after that society’s tortures and purges and murders and other atrocities were exposed. The Soviets, you see, were basically on the right track, but got a little excessive at times. Their heart was in the right place. They wanted the just society. This is precisely what the liberal elites over here in the United States wanted. PARIS RADICALS AND THE SHIFT OF THE ‘60S
By the ‘60s, this infatuation with the Soviet Union was changing. The elites weren’t turning away from their elitism. But they were turning away from the Soviet Union. This is especially true of the new generation of elites, the student radicals, notably those in Paris. Why were they getting fed up with and losing interest in the Soviet Union? Why? Two main reasons. First, the Soviets had developed a bureaucracy that was squashing the revolution. They created a massive state apparatus that rewarded party leaders. These party leaders didn’t look much different from the successful capitalists Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
in Western societies. It may be hard to conceive of this fact, but the student radicals thought the Soviet Union was very much like the United States! Moreover, the Soviets had squashed revolutionary dissent in Hungary in 1956 just as they were to do in Czechoslovakia in 1968. These dissidents in Eastern Europe weren’t capitalists. They were socialists who wanted to be freed from the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union sent in tanks to squash them – literally. The student radicals in Paris abhorred that heavy-handedness.
17
“Of course, people won’t follow you just because you’re smart or claim to be virtuous. You have to force this self-centered herd to follow you.”
But there’s a second and more important reason for the change in the liberal elites. The Paris students found a new and very different model. I’m talking about communist China. At this time, China was enduring the Cultural Revolution. What was it? By the early ‘60s, Mao, the Communists’ Great Leader, had been losing some of his power due to the disastrous fruits of his economic policies. To regain power, he fomented a cultural revolution to root out his competitors and enemies in the Party. Basically, this consisted in pressing teenagers and college students to tear around the countryside, wreaking havoc on anybody in authority – they captured and beat and attacked and humiliated their teachers and parents and other authority figures. They were personally loyal only to Chairman Mao, and in his name an entire generation lost years of education and maturity and destroyed some of China’s most gifted men and women. The student radicals in Paris latched onto this revolution. They preferred it to the old, tired revolution of the Soviet Union. The Chinese revolution wasn’t led by a bureaucracy. It was led by students. It was fresh and exciting. It was destructive. But the most significant thing about the Chinese revolution in the eyes of the Paris radicals is that it was a cultural revolution, not merely an economic revolution. It aimed to disrupt and upend and change people’s cultural consciousness, not just their economic condition. This idea was tailor-made for the Paris radicals. They became increasingly convinced that the SUMMER 2014
18
Libertarian Marxism
“the most significant thing about the Chinese revolution in the eyes of the Paris radicals is that it was a cultural revolution, not merely an economic revolution”
Marxist-Leninist revolution was just the start. It didn’t go far enough. Marxism wasn’t sufficiently radical. It had to press on and change the entire culture. It had to change the way people thought, not just how they shared their possessions. Economics was just the start. These young radicals came to believe that they must champion the marginalized in society – gays, blacks, women, immigrants, and prisoners. They came to believe that the very structure of Western society, not just the economic side, was oppressive. It wasn’t enough to change politics; that would be to exchange one tyrant for another. They had to change the culture itself. These radicals led protests in the streets of Paris. Some were arrested. After a time, the protests were followed by massive strikes from workers all over the country. For days, Paris came to a standstill. De Gaulle, the president, fled the country. These students influenced, and were influenced by, famous philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault. The strike ended when the government surrendered to many of the students’ demands, and the unrest ended. But things did not get back to normal. What changed for those students, and what changed for leftists all over the West as these ideas settled in, was a whole new way of looking at society. Little by little, leftist radicals came to believe that the world didn’t need just economic equality. It needed cultural equality. Marx and Lenin and Stalin wanted to erase economic differences between rich and poor. The student radicals wanted to erase cultural differences between men and women, between heterosexuals and homosexuals, between the religious and atheist, between the rule of law and the sentiments of culture, between criminals and law-abiding citizens, between nationals and foreigners, even between the sane and the insane. Michel Foucault and the students did a lot of research, particularly on prison life, to support their agenda. In the end, what they were trying
SUMMER 2014
to do was overturn all hierarchies. This is what true democracy (they believed) was all about. The founders of recent Western democracy, like the American Founders, meant by democracy that the government should be of, by and for the people. That’s not what the ‘60s radicals wanted. They wanted an altered cultural consciousness such that nobody would be made to feel inferior. There would be no one marginalized. Everyone must be made to feel and be treated as equal. They must even be thought of as equal. The radicals were committed to cultural brainwashing to accomplish this goal. You can see how they were radicalizing Marx. It wasn’t enough to equalize incomes; you have to equalize everything and everybody thought to be inferior. All hierarchies are bad. A hierarchy means somebody is more important and respected than somebody else. True democracy – not just political or economic democracy – means that everybody is entitled to the same esteem and respect regardless of age, sexual orientation, citizenship, criminality, religion, or mental condition. Soviet Marxism wasn’t radical enough. The Soviets still preserved distinctions between homosexuals and heterosexuals. They still looked at criminals as inferior. They preserved the older cultural distinctions. They may have eliminated many economic distinctions, but many of the cultural distinctions remained. The students radicalized Marx by leveling cultural distinctions, not just economic distinctions. The student radicals changed something else as well. Remember that the pre-’60s leftist elites were committed to a centralized state, like the old Soviet Union, to accomplish their economic goals. The new ‘60s elites lost faith in that sort of politics. Not that they weren’t statists; they become statists of a different sort. The older elites wanted the state to enforce economic equality. The newer elites wanted the state to guarantee cultural equality. The pre-’60s leftist elites had been committed to Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Libertarian Marxism
economic equality by means of political coercion. The ‘60s leftist elites believed in moral equality by means of cultural transformation. They didn’t want the state imposing this transformation. The state can’t change how people think. You can only change how people think by changing cultural attitudes. Cultural transformation is much more effective and longlasting than political transformation. You can change a government virtually overnight, but that doesn’t change peoples’ attitudes. And changing people’s attitudes is what the new elites became increasingly committed to. THE UBIQUITY OF LIBERTARIAN MARXISM
I’d like to call these new leftist elites and their successors Libertarian Marxists. This combination of words is meant to be intentionally incongruous and jarring. When we think of Marxism we generally think of a government that deprives people of freedom. This is the opposite of libertarianism. But the Libertarian Marxists don’t care if the state gives you freedom as long as the culture deprives you of freedom. In other words, there are more ways of getting your way in a society than by politics. The most effective way is by capturing the cultural consciousness. If the vast majority of people simply assume what you want them to assume –if they think your way is the right way and all other ways aren’t so much dangerous as they are simply irrelevant – you don’t need this state to enforce your views. This is precisely what the Libertarian Marxists have done. Moreover, their views then spread to the younger elites all over the West, particularly in the humanities departments of Western universities. And they have been wildly successful. Let me list some ways. First, think about feminism. Radical feminism began in the ‘60s. Of course, feminism had been around much earlier. The idea that women should be treated fairly and to some degree equally has a long and honorable pedigree. But political and legal equality weren’t what the new Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
feminists were after. What they were after was an entirely new view of what it means to be a man and woman. They came to believe that sex is a social construction. They even invented a new word usage for this. It’s called “gender.” You can have two sexes, but you can create six or eight or ten genders. They hated the idea that maleness and femaleness are rooted in nature – the way God created things. The radicals wanted to say that society creates “male” and “female.” The fact that men and women are biologically different is incidental.
“The older elites wanted the state to enforce economic equality. The newer elites wanted the state to guarantee cultural equality.”
This idea has wormed itself into our cultural consciousness. Today we have men depicted in movies as caring domestic nurturers at home and women as combat Special Forces Marines. It’s routinely assumed that anything men can do, women can do, and vice versa. It’s the leveling of all hierarchies. Second, think about homosexuality. As late as the early ‘70s, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. To say that today would be unthinkable. The vision of the Libertarian Marxists has won. Homosexuality is considered no different than left-handedness. Today we have an increasing number of American states permitting so-called samesex marriages. Let’s set aside the morality of this practice for a moment. Simply consider the fact that no civilization in the history of the world has permitted such a practice – even those societies in which homosexuality was rampant, like ancient Rome. The Libertarian Marxists didn’t accomplish this by forcing an intractable populace. In most cases, SSM was accomplished at the polls, very democratically. This wasn’t an example of political tyranny. It was an example of cultural hegemony.
19
“there are more ways of getting your way in a society than by politics. The most effective way is by capturing the cultural consciousness”
Libertarian Marxists have increasingly convinced society that homosexuality is not an alternative lifestyle, but rather a fully legitimate lifestyle, one among many, no one being more valid than another.
SUMMER 2014
20
Libertarian Marxism
Third, think about law. The philosophy of law has been degenerating in the West since at least the late nineteenth century, but this process was radicalized by the Libertarian Marxists.
“For the Libertarian Marxists, by contrast, the goal of law is to produce favorable outcomes”
The whole idea of the rule of law is that law is transcendent. It’s impersonal. It’s blind. It doesn’t fluctuate from case to case. But this demands hierarchy – absolute right and wrong, or least absolute legality and illegality. For the Libertarian Marxists, by contrast, the goal of law is to produce favorable outcomes. Law should be used to fulfill a social agenda. This is where sexual and economic and racial quotas come from. The older view is that law must always be sex-blind and color-blind and incomeblind. Neither rich people nor poor people, white people nor black people, men nor women, should be permitted to steal. Nor should the law give them preferential treatment in hiring practices and admissions policies. This is equality before the law. But Libertarian Marxists see this system as one privileging certain people. Therefore, they say that a legal system that creates equal outcomes is preferable to a legal system that treats people equally. Fourth, think of crime, criminals and the criminal justice system. Foucault tried to convince people that what society terms criminals are simply people who don’t fit into the acceptable codes of a society. There’s nothing absolute about crime. What the Libertarian Marxists have accomplished is to make society guilty of crime and the criminal the victim. Thieves steal because a society is economically unjust. Teenagers riot in London and Philadelphia because society doesn’t give them the lifestyles they’re entitled to. Somali pirates kidnap because the West has failed to lift their society out of poverty. Finally, think about multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is simply the global application of Libertarian Marxism. If we can overturn
SUMMER 2014
cultural hierarchies in a single society, if no single way of life or morality in a single society should be privileged, why then should any culture in the world be privileged over another? Who can say that the West is superior to central Africa? Who can say 20th century Britain is superior to Native American culture? Who can say that Christian culture is superior to Islamic culture? In this way, things in the past that we valued about Western culture – thrift, hard work, chivalry, abstract reason, classical music – all become symbols of Western arrogance and cultural imperialism. Why is a life of hard work and productivity to be preferred to a life of lounging and begging? Why are academic specialties like logic and mathematics preferable to basket weaving and gender sensitivity? Isn’t a primitive sub-Saharan dance just as valuable as Bach or Beethoven? Isn’t a simple New Guinea free verse just as beautiful as Shakespeare? Why should our culture be privileged? By what standard can we label some cultures superior and others inferior? This leveling of all hierarchies has been the wildly successful program of Libertarian Marxists. And it’s been successful not because Libertarian Marxists have elected politicians sympathetic to their agenda. They’ve been successful because they’ve deftly harnessed the levers of cultural influence – Hollywood, network and cable TV, public education, major foundations – to get their message out. That message has become an invisible ideology. By that I mean that the assumptions of Libertarian Marxists have seeped deep into the consciousness of the majority of people in the West. The point isn’t that the virtuous people should be fighting (for example) homophobia and male leadership. Just wait long enough and the people who hold these views will die off. They’re not dangerous, just mostly irrelevant. That’s why they don’t need politicians forcing Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Libertarian Marxism
their views on everybody the way Lenin and Stalin had to do. When you have captured a culture, politics isn’t all that critical. I think immediately of the haunting prediction of Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America. He was the famous Frenchman who visited America in the nineteenth century. He was a keen observer of our nation, and many of his predictions have uncannily proven true. He writes of the “tyranny of the majority.” This is a tyranny in democratic states that is more dangerous than the tyranny of the old despots. He writes: Fetters [chains] and headsmen [executioners] were the coarse instruments that tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has perfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothing to learn. Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as the will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of one man the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; but the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose proudly superior. Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The master no longer says: “You shall think as I do or you shall die”; but he says: “You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow citizens if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence worse than death.”
This is the democratic tyranny of the Libertarian Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
21
Marxists. We might call it the dictatorship of the egalitarian. If Marx wanted the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Libertarian Marxists want – and have achieved – the dictatorship of the egalitarian. They want a society in which equality dictates everything. COMBATING THE LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS
I’ve painted a drastic and bleak picture. Is the final success of the Libertarian Marxists inevitable? Can their view of culture be thwarted? The answer is yes. With God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26). His kingdom will win in time and history (1 Cor. 15:22–28). We may feel outnumbered. Isaiah 1:9 reads, “Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, We would have become like Sodom, We would have been made like Gomorrah.” But just as God overthrew the ancient Roman Empire and the mighty Soviet Union, he can overthrow cultures at war with his truth. Second, we must be careful not to suggest that the alternative to ‘60s radicalism is pre’60s conservatism. We must never mainly be conservatives. We’re mainly God’s people committed to his truth. There were plenty of faults with the pre-’60s conservative culture: traditionalism, racism, economic protectionism. That culture needed to change, that’s for sure; but the Libertarian Marxists weren’t the right people to change it. Third, and finally, cultural transformations can be overturned only by other cultural transformations. Nothing less will do. For instance, Libertarian Marxism won’t be overturned by political victories, for the simple reason that it wasn’t installed by political victories. It was installed by cultural victories. It was installed by changing the way people think, and subsequently act, about the individual, the family, the church, economics, technology, sex, music, law, and education.
“ When you have captured a culture, politics isn’t all that critical.”
“Libertarian Marxism will be overturned by something no less revolutionary. And that is Biblical Faith. That revolution is much bigger than the church, and to assume that church transformation produces cultural transformation is the height of naïveté.”
Libertarian Marxism will be overturned by SUMMER 2014
22
Libertarian Marxism
something no less revolutionary. And that is Biblical Faith. That revolution is much bigger than the church, and to assume that church transformation produces cultural transformation is the height of naïveté. Since the culture is much wider than the church, so the revolution must be much wider than the church.
“When you have captured a culture, politics isn’t all that critical.”
You and I can – and must – be part of that revolution. Every time a man and a woman take public vows to love and cherish each other, the husband taking the self-sacrificial lead and the wife following with persevering zeal, they are performing holy acts of cultural revolution. Every time a young single Christian commits to sexual abstinence until marriage and resists the sexual commodification of our society, that young Christian works to overthrow our culture of Libertarian Marxism. Every time a Christian attorney labors to protect families and churches from illegitimate government intrusion and hostility, he is acting as God’s revolutionary. Every time a Christian businessman or woman refuses unethical choices, even when that choice dampens the bottom line, he or she is combating Libertarian Marxism. Every time a Christian mother teaches her children that God is real and that Jesus is the only way of salvation and that obeying the Bible is the only hope of happiness, she is being a cultural subversive.
How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It. New York: American Spectator, 2010. Kaiser, Charles. “How the 1960s Cured America,” http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-12/ opinion/1960s.era.baby.boomers_1_whitehouse-pill-constitution?_s=PM:OPINION (accessed October 11, 2011). Minogue, Kenneth. The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life. New York and London: Encounter Books, 2010. Sowell, Thomas. A Conflict of Visions. New York: William Morrow, 1987. Wolin, Richard. The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. -----. The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the ‘60s. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Professing and practicing Biblical Faith, in all of its glorious and gracious hierarchies, is the revolutionary alternative to Libertarian Marxism. And in the end, it – and it alone – will win.
Berlin, Isaiah. Karl Marx: His Life and Environment. New York: Time, 1963. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Codevella, Angelo M. The Ruling Class: SUMMER 2014
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
THE JUSTICE
EXCHANGE PART I
“You know, at some point you are killing life in the foetus in self-defence – of what? Of the mother’s health or her happiness or of her social rights or her privilege as a human being? I think she should have to answer for it and explain. Now, whether it should be to three doctors or one doctor or to a priest or a bishop or to her mother-in-law is a question you might want to argue…. You do have a right over your own body – it is your body. But the foetus is not your body; it’s someone else’s body. And if you kill it, you’ll have to explain.”1
This quotation is taken from the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, a certain Mr. Trudeau. Here is another quote from Mr. Trudeau: “The policy going forward is that every single Liberal MP will be expected to stand up for women’s rights to choose.”2 The reader might be forgiven for his confusion at this point. Apparently a mother does not need to answer or explain to anyone after all. Abortion is not ‘killing life in the foetus,’ a matter of public accountability. Mr. Trudeau declared that it was an absolute right, a fundamental Charter right. Furthermore, in this absolute assertion of group rights (women), individual rights, freedoms and responsibilities have been abrogated: to be an elected Liberal MP now means to be denied individual freedom of conscience and moral responsibility.3 The confusion of course stems from the fact that the second quote comes forty-two years after the first. The speaker is still the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and it is still Mr. Trudeau, but the speaker in the latter instance is Trudeau Jr. The purpose of juxtaposing statements from the two Trudeaus, father and son, at the outset of this article is to demonstrate four significant things Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
about the social justice movement of our day that we shall seek to understand. Firstly, within the short space of a generation, liberal thinking (and the politics of the left) have so dispensed with personal and political freedom of their Western heritage that the current position can only rightly be called illiberal,4 and its version of tolerance manifestly intolerant of Christianity in the public square.5 So pronounced is that change that Trudeau Sr. would not even be able to stand as an MP in his son’s Liberal party; indeed he would probably be denounced as an intolerant extremist, even though his policies actually constitute the ideological foundations of the son’s position. Secondly, because of the refusal of Christian leaders to oppose this in the public square and throughout all the organs of civil society, men such as Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron can mouth tenuous appeals of allegiance to the Christian faith (and many Christians will vote for them without sensing the moral conflict). “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Thirdly, having abandoned the guidance of Scripture on life and public affairs in the West, the sense of God’s predestination of history has been buried. This has incited politicians and the bureaucracy at their command to seize the predestining role, while simultaneously disclaiming responsibility to historical inevitability. Appeals to the urgent need to rectify alleged causes of social injustice which the “judgment of history” will later confirm are not appeals to future generations (let alone the Judge of all history), but rather the approval of an abstract future idea (history). It invariably
PAGE NO.
23 DR. SCOTT MASSON
DR. SCOTT MASSON is a Fellow at the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. A native of London, Ontario, Scott studied English and History at Huron College, U.W.O., before living abroad for 12 years. During that time, he pursued further studies in Germany and England. He gave his life to Christ in 1995, while a first-year doctoral student at the University of Durham, England. As Associate Professor of English Literature at Tyndale University College, Scott specializes in the areas of hermeneutics and literary theory. He serves as the Associate Pastor at Westminster Chapel and is involved in the start-up of Westminster Classical Christian Academy. Scott lives in Toronto with his wife Christa and daughter Grace.
SUMMER 2014
24
The Justice Exchange
ignores the actual events of history and even contemporary public opinion precisely because for the progressive, an eternal verity nullifies the actual events of history.6 Thus the Western political establishment is increasingly Gnostic in character, and immune to rational contradiction.
“Dr. Peter Jones has noted in Romans 1 the articulation of a general pattern of degeneration of mankind from God in terms of a truth exchange, a worship exchange, and a sexual exchange. Here we see its final development: a justice exchange. ”
Fourthly, as has been particularly evident in the overwhelming espousal across the political classes of fringe causes such as same-sex marriage,7 even in the face of strong opposition, antiChristian propaganda has so transformed the idea of the public good among those in public service that ‘social justice’ even opposes the natural (biological) order. It is no more unjust for sodomous relationships to be excluded from marriage than for men to be excluded from motherhood. However, the public belief that it is unjust demonstrates that the contemporary feeling of ‘justice’ is now directly related to policies that willfully flout a Christian civil order. Their sense of justice, as Romans 1:32 declares, “gives approval” to that. Dr. Peter Jones has noted in Romans 1 the articulation of a general pattern of degeneration of mankind from God in terms of a truth exchange, a worship exchange, and a sexual exchange.8 Here we see its final development: a justice exchange. A “righteousness from God is revealed” (Rom. 1:17) and yet in unrighteousness our culture approves its opposite. What is most striking though, and doubtless surprising to some, is that this departure from the political philosophy of liberalism is a direct result of the departure from the Christian understanding of personal and civic life under Christ’s Lordship, and the categories of thought bequeathed by Christian revelation on matters such as the relations of church and state, the importance of freedom of conscience, personal responsibility, etc... And yet it is precisely the departure from these Christian presuppositions, a departure which Trudeau Jr. inherited from his father’s generation and now shares in common with many of the people’s elected representatives throughout the Western world, which is garnering him a free pass from the media and the approval of the political, legal, educational,
SUMMER 2014
and dare I say it, religious establishment.9 Historical and biological fact, statements of personal conviction and even legal precedent are no longer obstacles to constrain the change which the progressives envision for us. We find ourselves in a position where radical contradiction and absurdity on the most basic notions such as life, liberty and law have become publicly acceptable because the status quo wrought since the 1960s is by all logic fundamentally absurd. With it, as the rule of power increasingly dictates the rule of law, a growing authoritarianism has come to mark public policy and civil discourse in Western democracies. It is a Humpty Dumpty world so trivial as to be considered literary nonsense within the genre of fiction, yet it expresses what Friedrich Nietzsche once famously described as the ‘will to power:’ “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
This was brought about in an astonishingly short space of time, and it seems to have accelerated in the past decade. In Mark Noll’s 2005 book What Happened to Christian Canada? …under the new Charter, Canadian legislation and jurisprudence have increasingly privileged principles of privacy, multiculturalism, enforced toleration, and public religious neutrality, even when such moves dechristianize public spaces in which religious language was once commonplace.10
Noll notes that this dechristianization has marked changes in the field of public education as well, where under the guise of social justice an unsuspecting generation is schooled against Biblical justice. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Justice Exchange
How did it come to this state of Humpty Dumpty rule? Of public nonsense presented as social justice? ANALYSIS
I’m old enough to remember the Cold War, and the strong tension I felt in Canada growing up between the Communists and what was called the free world. And I say ‘between’ quite deliberately because Canada of the 1970s and ‘80s had, because of the influence of Trudeau Sr. and the ‘New Left’ in Canada, positioned itself somewhere in the middle, a fact I’ll speak to later on. I remember watching the sudden and spectacular fall of the Berlin Wall on TV in 1989 as an undergraduate and studied in Germany shortly thereafter for three years. The fellow I shared student accommodation with for two years was a trainee surgeon from Leipzig, East Germany, who grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain. His comments on the striking similarities in the mindset between East and West, and my experience of university life in Düsseldorf form a part of this narrative. The spectacular and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc meant that Communism had almost overnight ceased to be a political threat. And there was also a sense that the New Left of the 1960s and ‘70s might also be on a path of terminal decline. Communism had clearly failed as a philosophy. Even in academia it became increasingly rare to meet an avowed Marxist (though while in Düsseldorf another one of my German friends, a Russian historian, told me of an old Marxist in his Russian class who was learning Russian “to read Marx in the original”). Indeed, one academic by the name of Frances Fukuyama wrote an influential essay a few months after the Berlin Wall fell entitled The End of History, rather triumphantly prophesying: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
25
Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.11
Around the same time, syndicated columnist George Will pronounced in Newsweek that “the Sixties are dead.”12 It seemed entirely plausible. And it is absolutely true that the New Left of the 1960s collapsed as a unified political movement with the fall of the Communist Eastern Bloc. But it remained active, particularly in the universities, and it radicalized (and even metastasized) in the form of “special interest groups.” Some of its influence, like political correctness, was already strongly in evidence even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it expanded its influence thereafter. If I used phrases like “inclusive language,” “multiculturalism,” “tolerance,” “reproductive rights,” “safe sex,” “safe schools,” “inclusive schools,” “diversity,” “sensitivity training,” and even today’s topic “social justice,” although we would find even those identifying themselves as politically ‘conservative’ rarely in opposition, we would all recognize their vague connection with the politics of the left. Yet I suspect we would be unable to point to a single source or thinker that promoted them.
“the New Left of the 1960s collapsed as a unified political movement with the fall of the Communist Eastern Bloc. But it remained active, particularly in the universities, and it radicalized (and even metastasized) in the form of “special interest groups.” ”
What I want to submit to you is that the cultural values embedded in these mantras are really simply expressions of a complex and broad-ranging ideology called Cultural Marxism. In fact, they are the expressions of a religious position that for lack of space I will not take the time to trace out here. Cultural Marxism, unlike its better-known political and economic counterpart, perdured well beyond the collapse of Communism, and to some extent made rapid advances when it did because it was generally accepted, as Fukuyama and many loudly asserted, that Communism and what it represented had ceased to be a threat to the West. And it has made continued advances in undermining Western society to this very day precisely because those who call themselves ‘conservatives’ and even ‘political liberals’ – and I’ll include many Christians among them – have continued to act as if Communism had only ever taken a political and economic form. It is as if SUMMER 2014
26
The Justice Exchange
“Since its inception the principal stated aim of Cultural Marxism, from which political correctness stems, has been the destruction of Western culture and in particular all vestiges of the Christian religion.”
what distinguished East and West had nothing to do with the fundamental cultural structures and civic institutions that presupposed and encouraged the good of the Christian faith and the family in promoting a just society, including the separation of powers and authorities, though the supremacy of God and the centrality of the family is plainly declared in Scripture and presupposed in the foundational documents of every country.13 Misdirected by the entirely specious terminology of political correctness, to avoid the potent charge of being intolerant the ‘mainstream’ of conservative politics has mistakenly pursued ‘fiscal conservatism’ as its raison d’être, abandoning the ‘divisive’ cultural and ethical issues of ‘social conservativism,’ and ceding social policy wholly to the progressives and the New Left’s notion of ‘social justice’.
happen at the time of the next pan-European war in the most advanced societies, and the call to the working men to sacrifice their lives for their countries.
And the reason that it is particularly relevant to our discussion here is that since its inception the principal stated aim of Cultural Marxism, from which political correctness stems, has been the destruction of Western culture and in particular all vestiges of the Christian religion. It has simply accelerated since the fall of the Berlin Wall from being a “long slow march” to a charge and a rout of its opponents. And having first made its advances in the realm of culture, we are now also witnessing the signs of political and economic collapse in the West, the levelling of all peoples which were from the beginning its intended outcome.
CULTURAL MARXISM – ORIGINS
To my mind, any discussion of social justice thus needs to deal with the influence of Cultural Marxism. Yet because it is largely an unknown field to most Christians, I will give a cursory summary of the movement.14 BACKGROUND: EARLY MARXIST THEORY
As most people know, Marx and his followers predicted that the proletariat (the working classes) would inevitably revolt and seize the means of production through a violent political revolution against the “reactionary” bourgeoisie as a prelude to a more equal and just society. It was social justice. Marx predicted that it would SUMMER 2014
Much to the chagrin of the Marxists, though the war happened in 1914, the revolution did not. When the First World War broke out, working men lined up in their millions to fight against their country’s enemies. The exception was in politically-backward Russia in 1917, at the end of the war. But the Russian revolution did not spread to the more economically advanced nations simply because the workers did not want it. Communism did eventually spread to the rest of Eastern Europe, but only by virtue of the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviets at the conclusion of the Second World War.
The workers’ refusal to embrace revolution willingly led to a great deal of soul-searching on the part of the Marxists. Some continued to seek to advance political and economic revolution explicitly under the guise of Marxism-Leninism. But the indirect threat was far greater and more pernicious. Two theorists in particular, Antonio Gramsci of Italy (1891-1937) and Georg Lukacs of Hungary (1895-1971), concluded that though their aims were laudable, Marx and Lenin were in error. Lenin had mistakenly thought that culture was ‘ancillary’ to political objectives. Yet the failure of Marxism-Leninism to appeal to the workers of the West proved that “cultural hegemony” needed to precede the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. It was not so much political society (the police, the army, the legal system) – the enemies of the MarxistLeninists – as civil society (e.g. the family, the education system, manners), i.e. the whole edifice of Christendom, that stood in the way of world-wide communism and the social justice it represented. Christianity had, after all, been dominant in the West for two millennia. The working class had been implicated in a system of structural oppression by assenting to civil society and its inherited notion of ‘common sense.’ It was the common sense of Christendom that Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Justice Exchange
would need to be subverted and deconstructed such that they were brought to dissent.
ridiculed parents and his country’s priests through a propaganda blitz.15
Gramsci concluded that the West would have to be de-Christianized not by violent revolution but by means of what he called a “long march through the institutions” so as to fundamentally rework the culture and turn it against the Christian faith. According to the Cultural Marxists, every ‘hegemonic’ cultural institution of civic society, starting with the traditional family, but including schools, the media, the arts, civic organizations, academia, and even the churches themselves should be brought on board. It was through their ‘cultural hegemony’ that the means of consent for the capitalist state was maintained, and until that consent was disrupted it could not be overthrown. In order for Communism to be realized, the Christian foundations of the West would have to be systematically uprooted and its institutions transformed so that they might realize what Friedrich Nietzsche had called ‘the transvaluation of all value.’
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
What Christianity exalted as common sense in civic society must thus become deplorable; what Christianity deplored must be exalted in order for revolutionary change to occur. Furthermore, Marx’s proletariat would also have to be reimagined. Rather than Marx’s hero, the working man, who was so much tied to the family, a Christian institution, and the ‘common sense’ of the West, Gramsci argued that a new proletariat would have to be created that included criminals, women, and racial minorities. Their structural oppression under the status quo would need to be emphasized. The even more influential Hungarian writer Georg Lukacs agreed with him, and through a programme of what he called “cultural terrorism” introduced radical sex education into Hungarian schools. Lukacs recognized that by attacking Christian sexual ethics he would undermine the family, and with it the Christian faith. He organized sex lectures with graphic illustrations instructing the youth in “free love,” as well as teaching them to mock Christian sexual morality and monogamy, and to rebel against both parental and church authority. He simultaneously Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
After Lukacs and his party were overthrown in Hungary by the invasion of the Romanian army, he turned up in Germany in 1923 as one of the keynote speakers of a “Marxist Study Week.” One of the organizers, a man of fabulous wealth, was so impressed that he used some of his millions to set up a think tank at Frankfurt University to promote his teaching. It launched as the “Institute for Marxism,” but, as was characteristic of the Cultural Marxists, soon changed its name to the more innocuous “Institute for Social Research.” Eventually it was simply called the Frankfurt School.
27
“Lukacs recognized that by attacking Christian sexual ethics he would undermine the family, and with it the Christian faith”
The Frankfurt School is the originator of what we now call political correctness, and the idea of multiculturalism. It might surprise Canadians that multiculturalism was not the brainchild of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, nor even distinctly Canadian. The Frankfurt School drew together such writers as Theodor Adorno (the most important), the psychologists Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich, promoters of feminism and matriarchy, and a young man by the name of Herbert Marcuse. But the influence of Cultural Marxism did not remain in Germany, thanks once again to a political event. Just as in Italy, where Mussolini had ousted Gramsci, and in Hungary, where the Romanians had ousted Lukacs, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party ensured the ouster of the Frankfurt School, the majority of whose members were Jewish, in 1933. I personally see the displacement of the Cultural Marxists by force into the West as an act of the Lord’s judgment – not upon the Cultural Marxists themselves – but upon a people who had become increasingly superficial in their adherence to the Christian faith, if not increasingly hostile to the authority of the word of God in every area of life. At any rate, with the help of sympathetic individuals at Columbia University, the Frankfurt School relocated to New York City. The consequence of this was to transfer the target SUMMER 2014
28
The Justice Exchange
“They made their impact known in the United States, and with the migration of Vietnam draft dodgers, even more strongly still in Canada, where it made alliance with the anti-Americanism that had always had some measure of cultural currency.”
of destroying Christian culture and Western civilization from Germany, where the Nazis were perfectly adequate to the task without help from the Cultural Marxists, to the United States. Most of the school would return to Germany to complete its work after the war, where Cultural Marxism was to become the unofficial ideology of the Federal Republic. When I lived in Germany in the early 1990s, the writings of the Cultural Marxists were everywhere to be found in the university bookstores. But before that happened, they made their impact known in the United States, and with the migration of Vietnam draft dodgers, even more strongly still in Canada, where it made alliance with the antiAmericanism that had always had some measure of cultural currency. In the concluding section of this article, I shall discuss how Cultural Marxism gained extraordinary influence in North America in particular, and sketch out some practical Gospel strategies for confronting it. Part II of this article will appear in the next edition of Jubilee.
1
Pierre E. Trudeau quoted in The Montreal Star, May 25, 1972. 2 Lee Berthiaume, “Trudeau says current Liberal MPs must vote pro-choice on abortion,” Ottawa Citizen, reprinted in Edmonton Journal, last modified June 18, 2014, http:// www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Justin+Trud eau+says+current+Liberal+must+vote+choi ce/9950912/story.html. 3 It is thus unsurprising that medical professionals are now under government pressure to deny their consciences as well. See Mike Schouten, “Doctors should be allowed to opt out of providing birth control pills or abortions,” National Post, last modified July 9, 2014, http:// fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/07/09/ mike-schouten-doctors-should-be-allowedto-opt-out-of-providing-birth-control-pills-orabortions/. 4 Clifford Lincoln, “Trudeau taking liberty from Liberals,” Montreal Gazette, last modified May SUMMER 2014
26, 2014, http://www.montrealgazette.com/ opinion/Clifford+Lincoln+Trudeau+taking+li berty+from+Liberals/9876406/story.html. This illiberal liberalism is being increasingly noted: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/ Illiberal-liberalism-7885 5 This is a point made by Rex Murphy: http:// fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/06/21/ rex-murphy-in-justin-trudeaus-world-christiansneed-not-apply/ 6 Thus six Democrat Attorneys General have refused to defend recent legal state bans on same-sex marriage, a practice defended by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who has stated that ‘state attorneys are not obligated to defend laws that they believe are discriminatory.’ In Canada, the Law Societies of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Nova Scotia voted to reject accepting Trinity Western University’s new Law School’s graduates because of the university’s Christian covenant. A strong majority of the lawyers in B.C. did the same, although its official Society approved them. It is, as Mark Penninga, director of the Association of Reformed Political Action, points out in his excellent article, not only a contradiction of the common sense of 9 years ago (same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005 in Canada), “what’s more, the 2005 Civil Marriage Act went so far as to say ‘nothing in this Act affects the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion and, in particular, the freedom of members of religious groups to hold and declare their religious beliefs.’ The law of the land means little if lawyers and judges think they are above it.” http://www.vancouversun. com/life/Opinion+lawyers+abide+religious+co venant/9933524/story.html 7 In the United States, the National Health Interview Survey, which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual. http:// www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr077.pdf 8 http://truthxchange.com/books/one-or-two/ 9 There have been some exceptions, such as this: National Post Editorial Board, “That’s not what the Charter says,” National Post, last modified May 16, 2014, http://fullcomment.nationalpost. com/2014/05/16/national-post-editorial-boardEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Justice Exchange
thats-not-what-the-charter-says/. 10 Mark Noll, What happened to Christian Canada?, (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2007), 11. 11 “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989). He followed the article up with a book The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). 12 “Slamming the Doors,” Newsweek, March 25, 1991. 13 Reference to Genesis 2 and Matthew 19. 14 The contours of this summary are taken from William S. Lind’s account of Cultural Marxism, entitled ‘Who stole our Culture?’ Cf. Chapter 10 of Ted Baehr and Pat Boone’s The Culture Wise Family: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World (Regal Books, 2007) http://www. wnd.com/2007/05/41737/ 15 The effectiveness of this two-pronged strategy after the relative failure of the theological liberalism of the academy to diminish Christian conviction is a point corroborated by Mary Eberstadt in her book How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (Templeton Press, 2013). She points out that it is only the combination of an attack on the family, the cornerstone of what Gramsci termed ‘civil society,’ with attacks on Christian doctrine that have proved effective in reducing Christian allegiance.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
SUMMER 2014
29
MINISTRY UPDATE PAGE NO.
30 RANDALL CURRIE
RANDALL CURRIE is a founding member of the trustee board of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and currently serves as the board chair. He also serves on the board of Westminster Chapel in Toronto, a church plant started in 2008. He is employed in the Investment Industry for a major Canadian investment firm and lives and works in Kitchener with his wife Giselle. They have four adult children.
MINISTRY MUSINGS AND UPDATE -
Summer 2014 Friends,
A Christian in Ontario might be forgiven these days for having something of a heavy heart. Recently Ontarians overwhelmingly affirmed the earlier Liberal party appointment of Kathleen Wynne as the province’s Premier. Ms. Wynne is a declared lesbian and same-sex “married” woman whose former government work included as Minister of Education. Her continuing cultural influence is to be lamented. The Toronto Star, in an online article entitled “Ontario election: Seven things Kathleen Wynne’s victory tells us about ourselves,” celebrates the victory. Here we find item four of seven. “We’re not just tolerant, we’re breaking new ground. Wynne flipped the re-election of the Liberal party into a vote for change. Ontario has elected the first female gay premier, “and what that says about us is that we’re progressive,” says Rahamim. On election night, Wynne told a cheering crowd: “This is a beautiful inclusive place that we live in.” She was almost giddy with excitement. “Anyone can be premier . . . We have so proven that tonight.”1
And what sort of world is this beautiful, inclusive and progressive place that we have all attained? Well, it is a world where questions of justice and morality are severed from their former relationship to God, the church or any transcendent authority. It is a world where these are seen as essentially psychological and political questions to be worked out in some sort of “social contract” that reflects our evolving (progressing) understanding of the human condition and need. Inevitably, as we are already seeing, it is a world of arbitrariness, unavoidably giving rise to coercion and tyranny. This is part and parcel of course of a massive re-orientation of the social order based upon an SUMMER 2014
exchanged lie about reality (Rom. 1). And it is finding its expression most notably in the realm of human sexuality, playing out in a widespread cultural rationalization for living with vice. In such a rationalization, no holdouts can be tolerated. Not Christian bakers, not Trinity Western Law School, not aspiring Liberal MPs who oppose abortion, and not least the church and the Christian family, the latter being a living breathing rebuke of the homosexual lifestyle. We are of course concerned with this and with other developments in the socio-political sphere, but not with elections per se as if we were a sort of right wing political organization with a losing dog in the race. Abraham Kuyper was correct. “In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative.”2 The EICC is not concerned to capture the machinery of the state, as if the kingdom of God is advanced via the political process. Our reason for being is to encourage, equip and strengthen God’s people, the church, in the hope that through the regenerating work and power of the Holy Spirit, they might grow in their understanding of what it means to seek first the kingdom of heaven and the righteousness of Christ, and to desire lives regulated in terms of God’s revealed will in Scripture. We are more than content to leave the fruit of that to the Lord, trusting upon his word alone that as we are steadfast and immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord, nothing done for his glory is done in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). We are reminded extra-biblically by Christopher Dawson that inextricably bound up within the Gospel and the Christian life is a godly vision for the social order: We cannot separate culture from religion any more than we can separate our life from our faith. As a living faith must change the life of the believer, so a living religion must influence and transform the social way of life — that is to say, the culture.3
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Ministry Update
All of life is inescapably religious in other words. Somebody’s god, religion, morality is going to be worshipped and granted authority, cultivated and lived out in history. Sadly, it has often been the non-believer who has grasped this most clearly; that true biblical faith and resulting notions of government and the social order will always rival humanistic faith and government (Ps. 2:3). The way forward then, to be crystal clear, begins ever and always with the gift of faith that comes by hearing the words of Christ (Rom. 10:17). The truth that Christ died for us (1 Cor. 15:3), and for our sins (1 Pet. 2:24), and in our place (1 Pet. 3:18) is applied to our unteachable hearts of stone by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (Tit. 3:5), who alone breathes life into things formerly dead (Eph. 2:1). From this river of life we receive grace and mercy, and are freed from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2) in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us (Rom. 8:4). This salvation, and the necessary good works that are its fruit, is to the glory of God alone, and the only way of human flourishing (Ps. 1, Ps. 19). “As we received Jesus Christ who is the Lord, so we now walk in him” (Col. 2:6). The only alternative to the loving kindness and goodness of God (Tit. 3:4) in this most gracious means of true salvation, which issues in the self-government of a people whose knee is bent in willing submission to the Lord, is statist humanism. Here salvation is by the state, and behaviour is modified via coercive power, all of which is no salvation (freedom) at all (Heb. 2:3).
church, the arts, the state and every other sphere. The Apostle Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 that every Christian is to be able to share and defend the hope of the Gospel. And that this begins not with an elite education in apologetics but rather with submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ: “… therefore, having set apart Christ in your hearts, always be ready…” Here Peter has in view a perspective about the Christian faith and life (the Lordship of Christ and the reign of God) which is basic to it, and which is the possession of all Christians he says. Limiting this hope to the existence of God, forgiveness of sins, personal salvation and some sort of inner spiritual destiny has been central to the church’s retreat from the public square over the last fifty years. And, dare I say, to the hollowing out of the church of engaged Christian men whose growth into spiritual maturity, men with chests, might have impacted the landscape considerably. The vision of the EICC now then, as when we began in 2009, is for an explicitly Canadian organization, serving first as a resource for the Canadian church, that is being equipped and strengthened to boldly, faithfully, credibly and graciously assert and defend the crown rights of Jesus Christ as “… the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15). Our efforts are directed at Pastors, church leaders and thoughtful Christians.
So the pattern, simply expressed, is evangelism that leads to real conversion that leads to obedience to all that Christ taught and commanded.
Our hope is to bring glory to God through Christian apologetics, writing and research, biblical worldview teaching and equipping for Kingdom mission. We seek to bring all human thought and action under the Lordship of Christ and His Word, shaping a comprehensive biblical faith that applies to all of life, rebuilding the intellectual framework of the Christian mind and social order.
Our concern at the EICC is with what appears to be a growing deficit in the ability of so many Christians to speak biblically, cogently and credibly to the challenges of unbelief in our day. This inability is both in terms of knowledge of Scripture and sound doctrine (Jude 1:3), as well as theological in terms of how the salvation victory, Lordship of Jesus Christ and the reign of God is to apply in history, first in terms of the individual, then the family, education, evangelism, law,
Jubilee is central to the effort. It is our tri-annual publication with distribution both domestically and abroad. The feedback is overwhelmingly positive and yes, we are aware that it does stretch the grey matter at times. The goal of the journal is to help the church engage meaningfully and biblically with the issues of our day. It is written primarily by scholars, but is intended for pastors, church leaders and thoughtful Christians. It is free and past issues are available online.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
SUMMER 2014
31
32
Ministry Update
The new website www.ezrainstitute.ca is proving effective for delivering teaching resources. The site was twelve months and a large investment in the making and contains hundreds of sermons, talks, articles, lectures and debates. It is updated regularly and even includes a blog of sorts by our founder Rev. Dr. Joe Boot. Sign up in the “Get Involved” section to be alerted when new content is added. Our Leadership Roundtable program for pastors, church leaders and educators continues in 2014. These events take place in smaller group settings of 50-60 where issues facing the church can be addressed in-depth and where helpful interaction between attendees as well as with the EICC speakers and Fellows is possible. These are days of fellowship and encouragement for leaders. Tell your pastor! The EICC Fellows program continues to expand and now includes Jeffery Ventrella of the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom in the US, as well as Andrew Sandlin of the Centre for Cultural Leadership. These men are gifted theologians and cultural analysts who give selflessly of themselves on behalf of the EICC. This past May, as in previous years, we cooperated with the Christian Legal Fellowship to bring about a week long summer school for gifted graduate and undergraduate students who are thought to have leadership potential in their respective fields. It is called the Christian Legal Institute and is designed to equip students and others to articulate a robust biblical worldview in a variety of vocations including law, politics, education, media, arts, medicine, and business. Attendees are challenged and trained to engage their peers and professors in discussions related to Christian involvement in public life and to be transformed in their thinking in addressing the issues facing our society. Testimonies like the following are common. “I consider my time at the (CLI) Christian Legal Institute to have been an intellectual revolution. It was as if a second half of my faith - my public mandate, to which I had been ignorant up to that point - was awakened, and I went back to
SUMMER 2014
law school with a new confidence both in my ability to challenge secular norms and in the truths upon which I stand as a Christian.” - CLI Participant
In August we participated in the Veritas Youth Conference bringing age-appropriate biblical worldview training and teaching to a weeklong program for teens. This year our annual conference is set to run at Bayview Glen Church in Toronto on November 15th. The heading is “The Mission of God” and we will be looking at the issue of social justice in some detail. Mark it on your calendar and plan to attend. While we are a Canadian organization first, the EICC’s message of a full-orbed Gospel of the Kingdom is finding fertile soil in a growing number of locales abroad. One such place is the UK as expressed in our recent work with Christian Concern (www.christianconcern.com), one of that country’s largest and most influential evangelical organizations. In addition to our support of Christian Concern by way of speaking and teaching, very early stage discussions about the possible distribution of Jubilee to their constituent base of many thousands are underway. Also in the UK, in September of this year, we will bring curriculum and teaching to the Wilberforce Academy. The Wilberforce Academy is aimed at students and young professionals with a passion to serve Jesus Christ in a variety of vocations including law, politics, education, media, arts and business. In the US we participated again this year in the annual think tank event sponsored by truthXchange, a California-based organization founded by Dr. Peter Jones. Peter is doing important work equipping Christians to understand and speak faithfully against the pagan creature worship of our day: www.truthxchange.com WE ARE OFTEN ASKED HOW PEOPLE MIGHT HELP.
Prayer: We would be encouraged and helped to know that the ministry was being upheld and supported in prayer. Specifically that the Lord would guard, protect and keep us as faithful heralds of his word so that the Gospel is not Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Ministry Update
brought into ill repute. That opportunity for the word of the Lord to be shared, along with the means to do so, would increase. And that through the faithful preaching of the Gospel, consciences would be quickened, minds would be illuminated, hearts would be softened, wills would be freed and lives would be changed both in direction and accomplishment for the Lord. Funding: Please consider joining our Monthly EICC Builder program. The EICC has been funded thus far almost entirely by a small group of its early founders and supporters as well as through a generous grant from a related church. This grant does not appear in the EICC’s financials as it is in the form of a salaried administrative support arrangement. The grant will have run its course by year end. Followers of the EICC will know that we are not an aggressive fundraising organization, and that is not about to change. We think it reasonable however to make known our need, and to explain how you might help. In short we must now establish a broader group of core supporters, sufficient in number that the load is more equitably shared. Initiative 1: Through our broad-based EICC Builder program we hope to initially identify just about 200 everyday Christians from across Canada who will commit to a monthly support amount of between $25 - $100 per. This base support would provide a substantial amount of our annual budget and would place the ministry on strong and reliable footings. Initiative 2: You may be a person who enjoys a level of economic prosperity such that an annual commitment of $2500 – $10,000 would be entirely possible. We believe that in Canada, there are at least two dozen Christian families who are fully capable of this, and who will stand with the EICC. These two groups, each at personally manageable levels of support, could establish the EICC as an important resource to the Canadian church. Under God, and working together, we really could plant the imperishable seeds (1 Pet. 1:23) of faith, peace and righteousness for our families, Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
for our nation, for our unbelieving neighbours. Perhaps you can help. Attached to this Jubilee is a donor card. You may use it to make a one-time gift to the EICC or to establish a recurring monthly donation via credit card. You may not be familiar with the EICC. If that is the case we would again invite you to our web site www.ezainstitute.ca where you will see our Mission Vision & Activities document. There you will find the character and purposes of the EICC explained more fully. On behalf of the trustees as well as our founder Rev. Dr. Joe Boot, we thank you for your prayerful consideration. I will leave you with these words of encouragement from Ps. 117. The LORD’s Faithfulness Endures Forever 1 Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! 2 For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD! For the increase of his government, Randall S. Currie, Board Chair
1
Linda Diebel, “Ontario election: Seven things Kathleen Wynne’s victory tells us about ourselves,” Toronto Star, last modified June 25, 2014, http:// www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/06/13/ ontario_election_seven_things_kathleen_ wynnes_victory_tells_us_about_ourselves.html. 2 Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 473. 3 Christopher Dawson, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 68.
SUMMER 2014
33
RESOURCE CORNER How Then Shall We Answer - Hardcover This book represents Joe Boot’s summa apologetica. Bold, imaginative and instructive, it is written for a general audience rather than for a specialized one. The prose is remarkable not only for evident wisdom in the field of apologetics but also for the distinctive way the author does it. With various imageries and anecdotes, Joe provides a clear, engaging articulation of a fresh set of perspectives on several topics. Full of biblical and theological insights, and written with an evangelistic heart, this book serves to nourish the faithful, stimulate good arguments for the seeker and build a strong rational basis for the causative relation between faith and reason, the former being the presupposition of the latter. With rigor and relevance, Joe constitutes a seminal apologetic that enables readers to grasp the signs of divine transcendence, and to apprehend, or rather to be apprehended by the beauty of Christ. (Dennis Ngien PhD, from the foreword)
Why I Still Believe - Softcover In Why I Still Believe, apologist Joe Boot provides a readable introduction to presuppositional apologetics for the average layperson. This approach assumes that the Christian and non-Christian come to the discussion of faith with worldviews--sets of presuppositions--that are miles apart, so that there is little common ground on which to build an objective argument of rational proof. In this conversational survey of his own intellectual and spiritual journey, Boot invites the non-believer to step inside the Christian worldview to see whether or not it makes sense. Along the way he builds a coherent argument for the truth of Christianity. He also examines the non-Christian worldview, showing how it ultimately fails to make sense of the world.
Searching For Truth - Softcover (also available in Urdu) This book provides reasonable answers to questions asked by people who have vague but deep longings to know God. Starting with basic human convictions about the world and moving ultimately to the need for salvation through Jesus Christ, Boot also addresses questions about suffering, truth, morality, and guilt. He offers answers to those asking for a credible and logical explanation of the Christian faith
How Then Shall We Answer Conference Series 2011 - CD Complete audio content from the second conference in the ‘How Then Shall We Answer’ Series. In this six disc audio CD package, Dennis Ignatius, Jeffery Ventrella, and Joe Boot tackle the question of Christianity and culture. Track titles are: The Meaning of Culture; Living in Sin...Well; Christ and Culture; The Greatness of the Great Commission; and the Closing Charge. Also included is an impromptu Q&A session with Jeffery Ventrella and Joe Boot.
SUMMER 2014
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Great Debate - DVD On January 30, 2010, in Cobourg, Ontario, Rev. Joe Boot and Dr. S Clare Rowson met for The Great Debate. Moderated by Bob Spooner, long time member of the Cobourg Municipal Council. The Great Debate examines the existence of God and the meaning of life.
How Then Shall We Answer Conference Series 2010 - CD The audio for the first conference in the ‘How Then Shall We Answer’ Conference Series. Topics covered in this six-disc set include: an understanding of the family in the context of God’s sovereignty and social design; the family’s calling under the Great Commission; the family’s history in Canada; bio-ethical issues, such as genetic engineering; the relationship between the Law of God and civil law; and the role of the State according to the Bible.
{ NEW } MISSION OF GOD: A MANIFESTO OF HOPE – HARDCOVER The Mission of God is a clarion call for Christians and God’s church to awaken and recover a full-orbed gospel and comprehensive faith that recognizes and applies the salvation-victory and lordship of Jesus Christ to all creation: from the family, to education, evangelism, law, church, state and every other sphere.
The Trouble with Canada...Still! A Citizen Speaks Out - Softcover Canada suffered a regime-change in the last quarter of the twentieth-century, and is now caught between two irreconcilable styles of government: A top-down collectivism and a bottom-up individualism. In this completely revised update of his best-selling classic, William Gairdner shows how Canada has been damaged through a dangerous love affair with the former. Familiar topics are put under a searing new light, and recent issues such as immigration, diversity, and corruption of the law are confronted head on as Gairdner comes to many startling— and sure to be controversial—conclusions. This book is a bold clarion call to arms for Canada to examine and renew itself…before it is too late.
FOR PRICING AND ORDERING INFORMATION online: www.ezrainstitute.ca
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
SUMMER 2014