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POPULAR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM ❘ ISLAM, AFRICA, AND THE GOSPEL ❘ STACKHOUSE ON INCLUSIVISM

MODERN REFORMATION Jesus Among other Christs

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MODERN REFORMATION

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Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Department Editors Mollie Z. Hemingway, Between the Times MR Editors, Required Reading Ryan Glomsrud, Reviews Michael Horton, Final Thoughts Staff | Editors Jason Ching, Digital Production Assistant Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Contributing Scholars Peter D. Anders James Bachman S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson Bryan Chapell R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Adam S. Francisco W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes Craig Parton John Piper Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul A. Craig Troxel Carl Trueman David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith David F. Wells William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2009 All rights reserved.

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Jesus Among Other Christs 14 Nathan the Naive In a postmodern culture of religious relativism and subjectivism, can the gospel be true if it’s not true for all of us?

by Michael Horton Plus: Lessing’s Parable

20 The Real Christ Has Stood Up Can a confessing, evangelical Christian affirm both trinitarian Christianity and popular religious pluralism?

by Peter D. Anders Plus: The Plurality of Religious Pluralism: Clarifying the Terms

26 Jesus, Muslims, and the Gospel What do Muslims know about Jesus?

Using the Injil, the author shows how we can witness to them through their own texts and through the true Gospel writers.

by Adam S. Francisco

30 The Gospel and Africa If a disillusioned West is turning to Africa for authenticity, how much more do they need to rediscover Christian truth?

by Stephen Roberts

33 “For the Sake of the Story” Should we trust C. S. Lewis? The author examines his “doctrines” of second-chance theology and inclusivism/implicit faith.

by Donald T. Williams

37 Athanasius Again A hot Sunday morning in a Unitarian Universalist church impresses upon the author the continued need for doctrine.

by Eric Bierker

12 Celebrating Calvin Ten ways modern culture is different because of John Calvin.

by David W. Hall PHOTOS BY ISTOCK, COMPOSITE BY LORI COOK

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In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 4 Common Grace page 8 | Borrowed Capital page 10 | Interview page 40 Required Reading page 44 | Reviews page 45 | Final Thoughts page 52

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IN THIS ISSUE

Listen to him!

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esus’ later Galilean ministry (especially as recounted in Mark 8 and 9) is a bit of a rollercoaster for his inner circle of disciples: Peter, James, and John. Peter, especially, can’t seem to find any solid footing. First, of course, he is given the biggest “attaboy” in history after his divinely revealed confession of faith in Jesus’ Messiahship. But in nearly the same breath, he is rebuked by the Master after he sought to realign Jesus’ thinking to conventional wisdom about the victorious messianic life that Peter expected and Jesus kept rejecting. After rebuking him, Jesus teaches Peter, the other disciples, and the crowd that still surrounded him (popular opinion not yet having turned against Jesus) about the necessity of suffering and death as the central points of the Messiah’s mission and the life of his followers. But just when suffering and humiliation seemed to win the day, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain and gives them a taste of his divine glory veiled by the Incarnation—held out now as the power of Jesus’ coming resurrection and the transformation of his followers. The glory cloud of God’s presence shrouds the mountain and God commands Peter and every other observer there on that mountain and down through history, “Listen to him!” In three words, God sets the stage for all future religious conflict: there is only one voice to which men and women can give heed and that voice belongs to God’s beloved Son, his chosen one.

The Bible, however, does not assume that this command from the very voice of God will be followed. The rest of the books of the Bible, in fact, operate under the assumption that God’s people will confess and witness their faith in pluralistic situations, where Jesus is just one of many competing messiahs, all looking for their market share of religious devotion. It’s in that vein that we offer this issue of Modern Reformation.

The six feature articles of this issue are devoted to helping you listen to Jesus and convey his message to those in your circles who need to hear the voice of this Good Shepherd. First up is our editor-in-chief, Michael Horton, who examines both the nature of pluralism and its cost (specifically, the objective hope of the gospel).

Regular MR contributor Peter Anders follows with his article on the necessity of a trinitarian confession in a pluralistic world. The four remaining articles flesh out the big ideas of the first two articles by examining what Islam has to say about Jesus (by Adam Francisco); how Africa is providing a stage for a recovery of the uniqueness of the gospel message (by Stephen Roberts); how even well-loved and respected apologists, such as C. S. Lewis, sometimes fudge on the uniqueness of Jesus (by Don Williams); and discovering what happens when our good ideas run afoul of sound doctrine (by Eric Bierker).

Peter, James, and John walked back down the mountain with Jesus after his transfiguration, and the narrative of Mark’s Gospel seems to pick up speed as the entire story culminates in Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. The very voice of God spoken in and through Jesus sustains the infant church and propels it out into the world, eventually upending the pluralistic empire that sought to silence Jesus’ voice. We hope this issue of Modern Reformation encourages you to engage with those around you who would relegate Jesus to just one of many competing voices in their own life. As more and more professing Christians (even in our Reformational denominations) fall prey to the suffering-free siren of pluralism, it is more important than ever to recover and renew our particular hope in Jesus Christ.

Eric Landry Executive Editor 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

NEXT ISSUES June/July 2009 Calvin 500th Anniversary Issue July/August 2009 A Feast in a Fast-food World

LETTERS y o u r

Thanks for reprinting the article by Don Eberly: “Common Good and Common Grace: Christians at the Crossroads in the Public Square” (October/November 2008). It was a fascinating read. I have increasingly been sensing discomfort over the last decade or so as regards how we as evangelicals approach politics. This article succinctly helped me put it all together— it helped what I was feeling mature better in my understanding.

James K. Hunt Pastor to Singles Council Road Baptist Church Bethany, Oklahoma

Thank you so much for this onetime complimentary issue (October/November 2008). Coincidentally, we heard on the radio three different sermons this past Sunday on this very issue. All three sermons were from different denominations—Church of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist, and Evangelical Lutheran—and all three challenged Christians not to comingle the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man on the issue of politics. We were pretty encouraged in hearing this uniform message from three different denominational leaders.

When we receive each issue of Modern Reformation, we begin reading from cover to cover and we can’t get enough of it. Keep up your great work.

Dan and Lynne Farmer Bangor, Maine

The article “Clashing Narratives” (September/October 2008) appears to align Christian orthodoxy with “evangelical objectivism,” “our objectivist concept of Christian orthodoxy.”

My very limited knowledge of objectivism—a philosophy set forth by Ayn Rand, an atheist, while setting forth objective truth—seems overall to not fit

well with biblical truth. I realize there are those who call themselves Christian Objectivists and with the inclusion of the subject article in Modern Reformation, I cannot help but ask where Modern Reformation stands on the subject of objectivism and biblical truth?

Joyce Lonsdale via e-mail

Author’s Response I understand that the use of the terms “objective,” “objectivist,” or “objectivism” conjure up connections with the philosophical school of thought associated with Ayn Rand, among others; probably in the same way that my use of “subject,” “subjectivist,” etc., might find connections with the existentialism associated with Kierkegaard. I reiterate, however, what I said in the article: that the objectivist orientation as I am describing it flows out from our response to the Word of God that addresses us as something new and unexpected as it creates for us the new capacity for apprehension and obedience. This address is (must be) understood as logically prior to our response, and therefore ought not to be understood as conditioned by our response. The central argument of the article was that, this being true in terms of our confession, we ought not then to proceed to condition this address ourselves in our response to it by transforming its essential content in accordance with criteria that reside in the subject (my own feelings, experiences, reason, culture, ideology, etc.). Rand’s philosophical objectivism may or may not have points helpful in the articulation of the message of the gospel. However, to take this philosophical construct as a necessary prior context for receiving and apprehending the Word of God, and then for formulating our response to it would run contrary to this basic point of the article.

I have no prior methodological in-

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vestment in Rand’s objectivism per se; but like any other philosophical school of thought, it may lend us concepts or language helpful in the articulation of our witness to the Word—that is, it may serve as a helpful handmaiden to this task, or it may not. This is something I will leave for you to determine.

Peter D. Anders

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

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PC(USA) and ELCA Going LGBT? The 2.3 million members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the 4.7 million members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are weighing whether to open their clergy rosters to non-celibate homosexuals.

In June 2008, a majority at the Presbyterians’ General Assembly supported amending the constitution to strike language mandating that ordained ministers, elders and deacons uphold confessional standards of the church, including the requirement to live in fidelity within the covenant of marriage or chastity outside of it.

In order for the change to take place, a majority of regional presbyteries must approve of the change. Nationally, a majority of the presbyteries who have voted have rejected the change.

On Feb. 19, 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America released a seven-year study into sexuality, an offshoot of which was a separate report on whether homosexuals in open relationships could become ministers.

While the church has ordained gay clergy, the church body has required celibacy. The report recommends a way to ordain people in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, samegender relationships” as pastors. To do that, voters at the August church-wide assembly would have to adopt a fourpart resolution. First, they must agree that the church is committed to allowing congregations to accept samesex relationships. Then they must decide whether the church should permit people in such relationships to serve as clergy. Then they will be asked to agree that all church members will respect each other’s consciences on gay clergy. Finally, a vote would be taken to permit differing standards in different geographic areas.

Believers in Evolution?

More than one-thousand Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations participated in the fourth Evolution Weekend on the 200th an-

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niversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Churches held forums or featured sermons on evolution.

Michael Zimmerman, who founded the annual event, said participation has grown about 30 percent every year.

“You can be at ease with your faith and the best that modern science has to offer,” Zimmerman, a biology professor and dean at Butler University in Indianapolis, told Religion News Service.

The Rev. Ledyard Baxter preached a sermon at Old Steeple Community Church in Aquebogue, New York, called “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Evolve.”

Liberal mainline churches were most likely to celebrate the occasion.

The Episcopal Church even offered downloadable bulletin inserts highlighting Darwinism.

Calvin in 3-D! Geneva’s International Museum of the Reformation is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of John

Notable Quotables “The all-you-can-eat buffet is now stigmatized; the sexual smorgasbord is not.”

—Mary Eberstadt, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writing in Policy Review, about how society has become puritanical about food and licentious about sex.

“There’s probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

—A new ad campaign by the United Church of Canada, to counter an atheist ad campaign on buses that says, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

“Disney stories have replaced Bible stories in the Western world. Consumer culture has delivered great material benefits but it is now taking over our spiritual needs as well. ‘Hakuna Matata’ is not another way of singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ Nor is it the way to find happiness.”

—Benedictine Abbot Christopher Jamison, author of Finding Happiness: Monastic Steps for a Fulfilling Life.

“I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible.”

—Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the British government’s Sustainable Development Commission, explaining that families should be restricted to two children, with abortion part of the population control effort to protect the environment.

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OHM-La-Di, OHM-La-Da More than forty years ago, the Beatles studied transcendental meditation in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the two surviving members of the band, reunited for the cause with a planned benefit at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

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By the Numbers

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80. Percentage of American teenagers who believe they are “ethically prepared” for life in the real world, while 40 percent believe they have to “break the rules” to succeed, according to a poll conducted by Junior Achievement.

Proceeds from “Paul McCartney and Friends: Change Begins Within” will go to the meditation-promoting David Lynch Foundation to teach transcendental meditation to 100 million children around the world. They plan to bring meditation classes to students at public schools in the United States.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died last year.

Obama’s Assault on Life

Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images News

Calvin, one of the founding fathers of the Protestant Reformation, with a 3D simulation. “A Day in the Life of John Calvin” simulates Calvin speaking directly to visitors. Sixteenth-century engravings, objects, and books are also featured.

Visitors from around the world are expected to visit Geneva this year to mark the special anniversary. The World Religious Travel Association has designated 2009 the “Year of Faith Tourism” to promote travel by religious adherents.

Switzerland isn’t the only country marking the occasion. The anniversary has combined with the global credit crunch to revive interest in Calvinist morality, according to a report from Reuters.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende wrote an article discussing the modern relevancy of Calvin’s teachings. “If the credit crisis makes anything clear, it shows we need to strengthen the moral anchors of our economy,” he wrote. “At its core this is also a moral crisis, caused by greed, money-mindedness and egoistic trading.”

The religious daily Trouw offered readers a chance to assess their Calvinist credentials. Agreeing with the statement “I should work harder” and disagreeing with “I like to dine in luxury” boosts one’s score.

Political forces fuel the most recent moral outpouring as well, according to Reuters. The Dutch government has cracked down on marijuana-selling coffee shops and prostitution. Some are pushing for restrictions on Sunday shopping.

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Within days of his inauguration, President Barack Obama lifted the socalled “Mexico City” ban on sending taxpayer funds to groups that perform abortions overseas. A few weeks later, he announced his plan to rescind recent Bush administration regulations protecting medical professionals who have conscience objections to performing abortions.

Then he selected prominent abortion rights supporter Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas to be his nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department. Sebelius has

3. Percentage of American teenagers who see members of the clergy as ethical role models, according to the same poll.

60. Number of assisted suicides committed in Oregon in 2008, a record high since the state passed the Death With Dignity Act. A total of 401 Oregonians have died under the law.

86. Percentage of women who are affiliated with a religion, compared to only 79 percent of men, according to an analysis of the data from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey performed by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Women are also more likely to have absolutely certain belief in a personal God, pray at least daily, say religion is important in their lives, and attend worship services at least weekly.

146,663,972. Membership of the top 25 churches in the U.S., down 0.49 percent since 2007. Those experiencing the highest rate of loss are the United Church of Christ (down 6.01 percent), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (down 3.01 percent), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (down 2.79 percent), the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (down 1.44 percent), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (down 1.35 percent).

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routinely opposed or vetoed several abortion-related bills, including a bill requiring sanitary conditions in abortion clinics, which she vetoed in both 2003 and 2005. In 2008, she vetoed a measure to strengthen the state’s existing parental notification law. Over the past three years, she vetoed measures requiring explicit medical reasons for late-term abortions, requiring abortion providers to report what necessitated a post-viability abortion, and adding prosecutorial manpower for violations of existing prohibitions on lateterm abortions. Sebelius has been asked by her Roman Catholic bishop to refrain from presenting herself for communion on account of her stances.

By the time Obama announced taxpayers would be forced to fund scientists’ latest experimentations with human embryos, there was no escaping the difficulties pro-lifers face in working with the Obama administration.

Graded By God A community college public speaking professor refused to grade the presentation of one of his students and told him to “ask God what your grade is.” In a lawsuit claiming religious discrimination, student Jonathan Lopez claimed Professor John Matteson also called him a “fascist bastard” and refused to permit him to finish his openassignment speech about how God had changed his life.

The suit says Matteson told students they could leave if they were offended, and when no one left he dismissed the class. Lopez claims that the teacher also threatened to have him expelled when he complained to college administrators.

Lopez and his attorneys are seeking financial damages and also seek to strike down a code at Los Angeles City College forbidding students from making statements deemed “offensive.”

Focus on Retirement James Dobson resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family, but will con-

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tinue to host the nonprofit’s flagship radio program, write a monthly newsletter, and speak out about moral issues.

The resignation lessens his administrative burden and is the latest step in a succession plan that began six years ago when Dobson stepped down as president and CEO. “One of the common errors of founder-presidents is to hold to the reins of leadership too long, thereby preventing the next generation from being prepared for executive authority,” Dobson said in a statement.

“Though letting go is difficult after three decades of intensive labor, it is the wise thing to do.”

Dobson’s radio show reaches an estimated 1.5 million U.S. listeners daily.

Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has an annual budget of $138 million and 950 employees.

Vatican Navigates Schism with a Holocaust Denier

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Pope Benedict XVI revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust provoked outrage.

Among the bishops from the Society of St. Pius X was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who said he did not

believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the September 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan.

French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in the 1970s as a protest against modernizations in the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Williamson’s comments had nothing to do with the pope’s decision to welcome the schismatic bishops back into the fold. He said, “These are declarations that we don’t share in any way.”

In a letter sent to followers of the society, the director Bishop Bernard Fellay said, “Thanks to this gesture, Catholics attached to tradition throughout the world will no longer be unjustly stigmatized and condemned for having kept the faith of their fathers.”

He added that the society welcomed an opportunity to talk with the Vatican “to explain the fundamental doctrinal reasons which it believes to be at the origin of the present difficulties of the church.” Lefebvrists disagree with the Vatican on the nature of the church, on religious freedom, and on the evil of anti-Semitism.

But the revocation of the excommunication was met with outrage throughout the world. The AntiDefamation League said in a statement that the action “undermines the strong relationship between Catholics and Jews that flourished under Pope John Paul II and which Pope Benedict XVI said he would continue when he came into his papacy.”

Bishop Williamson apologized in a statement to the pope, to the church, and to “survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich,” but Lombardi said the apology didn’t meet the expectations set forth by the Vatican.

The Vatican secretariat of state said that Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,”

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or Holocaust, or he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop.

Assemblies of God’s Palmer Steps Down John Palmer resigned as general secretary of the General Council of the Assemblies of God after confessing to “a one-time incident that involved ethical misconduct and an inappropriate interaction with a woman that did not involve any physical intimacy,” according to an announcement by the Pentecostal denomination based in Springfield, Missouri. The general secretary maintains records about churches and congregations.

He was replaced by James Bradford, pastor of Central Assembly of God in Springfield. General Superintendent George Wood, who holds the church body’s top position, said, “The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians is an ever present reminder of the appropriate relationship the church should

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now have with John, and the guard we must have over our own lives: ‘Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.’”

The denomination says it has more than 12,300 congregations in the United States with 2.8 million members and adherents.

Putting Politics Aside to Help the Poor America’s religious groups agree that the sinking economy must be the government’s top priority, according to a new analysis of a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The analysis found that strengthening the nation’s economy was rated the most pressing issue for the government by 83 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 88 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 85 percent

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of Americans unaffiliated with any religion.

A group of eighteen conservative and liberal Christian leaders and policy experts created the Poverty Forum to propose ways to help the poor. The group, founded by liberal evangelical Jim Wallis and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, divided members into pairs to tackle health care, education and family policy. Policy suggestions range from increasing the minimum wage to funding fatherhood initiatives.

Join the Conversation!

Have you ever considered writing for Modern Reformation? Here’s your chance!

We’re reintroducing many of our old departments and we want your words to be featured in them.

“Open Exchange”: A forum for reader response.

If you’ve ever read an article printed in our pages and thought that something else needed to be added, this is the place for your contribution.

“Ex Auditu”: Examples of Christ-centered sermons.

Christ-centered preaching is sadly rare in all our circles. Have you heard or preached a good sermon?

Send in the transcript to give others a model to follow.

“Preaching from the Choir”: Perspectives on music in the church.

Beyond the old “worship wars,” we want to give people a way to think about the music we sing in formal worship contexts and in our private worship. Draw attention to the resources that matter.

“Family Matters”: Resources for home.

Catechism resources, ways of teaching theology to children, help with holiday themes: this is the place to direct others to resources you’ve found helpful in your efforts to be faithful at home.

“Borrowed Capital”: Witnessing to Christ in our age.

Where do you start in your witness for Christ? How do apologetics play a role in your evangelism?

Got a story or a helpful idea? Share it with others in this space.

“Common Grace”: God’s truth in art and culture.

God gives gifts to both believer and unbeliever. How do we see those gifts expressed in the art and culture surrounding the church? In this space, we want to hear from artists and cultural observers looking for glimpses of grace in life.

Intrigued? Ready to write? Send your 650-word essay (Ex Auditu sermons can be longer) to editor@modernreformation.org.

Be sure to tell us in which department you think your essay belongs and send all your contact information.

If we decide to run your work, we’ll extend your subscription by one year.

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The Noahic Covenant, Common Grace, and the Character of God

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s Christians we often encourage one another to love unbelievers by remind-

words of Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remains, ing each other of the breadth of God’s purposes in Christ. After all, we rea- seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and son, these people may be elect. There is nothing wrong with this train of winter, day and night, shall not cease.” In other words, thought, but it is noteworthy that this is not the reason Jethe normal patterns of nature occur only because of the sus gives why we should love unbelievers. Instead, he tells Noahic covenant. This is important because it reminds us us to love them in order to be sons of our Father in heavthat no human being relates to God in anything but a en, who is “kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). covenantal way. All living human beings are inherently ob“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and jects of covenantal grace simply by virtue of being alive. sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). John Of course, the purpose of this new covenant is entirely Calvin wrote, “All the creatures of God, without exception, different from the old. No longer is a tree of life held out as are the objects of his love.”1 Of course, as Michael Horton a reward for obedience. Now the promise is that “never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (9:11). Neverwarns, “This does not lead us to conclude that God’s love theless the text itself makes it clear that the purpose of the and care for everyone in common grace is the same as his covenant is not merely negative. Genesis 9:1 makes it starlove and care for his elect in saving grace.”2 Nevertheless, tlingly clear that God holds a positive attitude toward the huthat love is real. What is important to realize is that comman race. In the words of Calvin, God “looks upon his own mon grace demonstrates God’s genuine attitude of goodgifts in them, and is thereby excited to love and to care for ness and mercy toward all people, an attitude concretized them.”3 It is not that the Noahic covenant frees man to live in the Noahic covenant.

Genesis 9 is full of echoes of the gifts of creation, behowever he wishes. As many Jewish and Christian theologinning with the amazing declaration that God “blessed gians have recognized, the references to murder, capital punNoah and his sons” as he blessed Adam and Eve (9:1; ishment, and implicitly to government represent God’s concf.1:28). God repeats the command to “be fruitful and multinued moral demands upon the human race.4 Common tiply and fill the earth” (9:1; cf. 1:28). He again gives grace does not remove law; it simply provides a stay of judgmankind dominion over all creatures (9:2; cf. 1:28) and ties ment. But God’s blessing of humanity in Genesis 9 is also in the giving of animals for food with the earlier giving of fascinating in light of the fact that no reference to redempplants for food (9:3; cf. 1:29–30); and he reaffirms the sigtion appears in that chapter. While Abraham and his seed nificance of the image of God (9:6; cf. 1:26). These reset aside in Genesis 12 may know Yahweh personally, the semblances make it clear that Genesis 9 constitutes a grarest of the human race knows God only through the Noahic cious version of the covenant of creation in Genesis 1–2. covenant, to which the blessings of nature testify.

This alone is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that all This gracious attitude is reflected in the Psalms. Psalm human beings receive blessing in this covenant, but Gen104 praises God for his sustenance of the creation, including esis 9 does not leave this conclusion implicit. God declares “wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine that he makes his covenant with “you and your offspring and bread to strengthen man’s heart” (Ps. 104:15). This after you, and with every living creature that is with you, praise comes explicitly within the context of the Noahic the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with covenant, as in verse 9 the psalmist notes regarding Yahyou, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast weh and the waters, “You set a boundary that they may of the earth” (Gen. 9:9–10). Even more vividly in Genesis not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.”

9:15, God speaks of the covenant as “between me and you Psalm 145:9 adds, “The LORD is good to all, and his mercy and every living creature of all flesh,” and in Genesis 9:16 is over all that he has made.” as “the everlasting covenant between God and every living It is precisely because the Noahic covenant reflects God’s creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (cf. 9:17). The unigenuine graciousness that it demands a response from huversality of the covenant is expressed in the universality of man beings. It contains obligations, both implicit and explicit (Gen. 9:4–7), and lasts only “while the earth remains” its sign, the rainbow. The Noahic covenant, therefore, is the (Gen. 8:21–22). God’s graciousness to the wicked will not basis for all the gifts of nature. This is made explicit in the 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

last forever. Isaiah 24 presents this dynamic impressively.

Yahweh threatens to punish the earth because the peoples “have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.” This is almost certainly a reference to the Noahic covenant because that is the only “everlasting covenant” made with the earth in Scripture (cf. Gen 9:16).5 The result of the earth’s disobedience is said to be earthquakes and the opening of the windows of heaven (Isa. 24:18–19), as well as the diminishing of the markers of day and night, undoing the promises of the Noahic covenant.

The call of common grace is clearly described in the New Testament. For example, in Acts 14:15–17, Paul appeals to pagans in Lystra to turn in worship to their creator. He notes that though God allowed the nations to “walk in their own ways” he “did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17).

In Acts 17, Paul declares in his sermon to the pagans in Athens that God governed the nations “that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:27). He even refers to those outside of the covenant of grace as “God’s offspring” (Acts 17:29).

These passages are noteworthy because they demonstrate that when preaching to those outside the covenant of grace Paul assumed his hearers were receptors of grace. He based that assumption on God’s grace in fulfillment of the Noahic covenant, and he recognized that this grace was intended for the purpose of leading human beings to seek God. In other words, it was well meant. Peter’s second letter illustrates the New Testament’s general perspective on the flood. In 2 Peter 3, the apostle writes that the reason the judgment foreshadowed by the flood does not come is because God desires that “all should reach repentance.” He then indicates that when the final judgment does come, the Noahic covenant will be undone: “The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Pet. 3:10; cf. Rom. 1; Matt. 24:29–38).

It is the covenant of common grace that gives meaning to the history outside of the covenant of special grace. The implications of this thesis are far greater than can be explored here, but one thing must be stressed: every human being has significance as God’s covenant creature and will be judged accordingly. As Van Til reflected, “To say that the facts of rain and sunshine in themselves do not tell us anything of God’s grace is to say in effect that the world and what is therein does not speak forth the revelation of God.”6 Near the close of his dissertation on Calvin’s view of common grace, Herman Kuiper marvels at how “Calvin never seems to grow weary of telling us that...God loves the human race and shows concern for its welfare.”7 He adds, “Calvin subscribed to the very natural idea that God does good unto men because He Himself is good and beneficent; that God performs acts of kindness, because He Himself is kind; that God does deeds of mercy because He is merciful;...he evidently believed that God grants gifts of common grace because He is gracious.”8 That human beings have responded with universal

ingratitude and wickedness cannot gainsay the graciousness of God. On the contrary, human intransigence merely makes that grace all the more glorious.

Matthew Tuininga (M.Div., Westminster Seminary California) will begin doctoral studies this fall in political theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife Elizabeth attend Escondido United Reformed Church in Escondido, California.

John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 16, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 398–99.

2Michael Horton, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 118.

3Calvin, Commentaries, 1.295.

4For example, see David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998), 40.

5For a defense of this interpretation, as well as for an insightful discussion of Isaiah 24 within the context of the book as a whole, see Steven D. Mason, “Another Flood? Genesis 9 and Isaiah’s Broken Eternal Covenant,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32.2 (2007): 177–98.

6Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977),115.

7Herman Kuiper, Calvin on Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Smitter, 1928), 182.

8Kuiper, 205.

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Speaking Of…

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henever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in such slight esteem, we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself. ….Those men whom Scripture calls ‘natural men’ were, indeed, sharper and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

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BORROWED CAPITAL c u l t u r a l

a p o l o g e t i c s

The Problem is the Problem

T

he gospel solves a problem and therein lies the pitfall. Which of the world’s many problems does it claim to solve?

The Bible explains it in clear terms: God is mad at sinners, not irrationally mad but justly angry. Romans 1:18 says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Wrath. Good, old-fashioned wrath. The word appears over two hundred times in the Bible, almost always referring to God’s wrath toward people. “God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day” (Ps. 7:11, NIV). This was the bad news that the church used to preach, and the wider society seemed to have a better grasp that God did not accept them as they were. People used to be offended by the gospel; now they yawn.

Our generation is filled with Pilates, a man who had problems but who was not interested in any that Jesus came to solve. He exemplifies the problem that Christianity confronts—it solves a problem that few people are interested in.

Christians intuitively know this, so many have figured out that the way to reach people who are not interested in what Christianity solves is by appealing to the problems people care about. There are many people who are looking for moral or character reform. Many want to be better husbands or wives or parents, to be more diligent on the job, or more engaged citizens of the world.

Churches have become diligent students of the world, astute to its expressed needs, but this doesn’t necessarily bring people closer to salvation. Many people are interested in love without caring about their sin before God. They want peace but don’t care about the hostility between God and them, or direction but find God’s forgiveness irrelevant. These goals make me look noble-minded, unlike the gospel, which solves a problem that puts me in a very bad light.

The church’s evangelistic appeals show what kind of problem we’re trying to solve. Consider the famous dictum: “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your live.” It tells us the main problem is that we are not loved and that we lack direction. I’m reminded of my Campus Crusade days when I used the Four Spiritual Laws to witness to the president of a fraternity. He was popular, successful, and had a clear plan to be an emergency room doctor. He did not trust the gospel I presented. Only God knows why, but in hindsight, it seems to me that this man was not looking for love or direction. It may be that he rejected an appeal that was irrelevant to him. Our problem is not that no one loves us; it is that we are guilty. The gospel addresses everyone, those who feel loved and those who don’t, those who have direction and 10 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

those who don’t, those who seek character reform and those who couldn’t care less, those who are seekers

and those who are not seekers.

One reason people don’t solve their character flaws is guilt, yet often the church’s first offer is to improve their character before it deals with the real issue. If I feel guilty for not being a good dad, I can take a course that teaches me true masculinity and better fathering skills. Unfortunately, this easily turns into a trap. I feel guilty (because I really am guilty before God!), but the church teaches me how to be a better person. The solution to guilt is not moral reform but forgiveness. The cart is before the horse.

Some Christians have suggested that felt needs is a useful strategy. If you appeal to people on the basis of sin, you’ll drive them away before they have a chance to hear the gospel.

It’s better to appeal to their concerns to gain a hearing. After all, people came to Jesus for physical healing and in the process were forgiven as well. However, the Gospels show us that Jesus did not heal people to keep the message of sin from driving them away. First, Jesus healed people to fulfill Old Testament prophecy and to confirm his message and himself as God’s messenger. Matthew 8:16–17 says, That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

Jesus was clear that sin was always the real issue, as the story shows of the paralytic brought by his friends through the roof of a house (Matt. 9.1–8). When he sees their faith, the first thing he does is to forgive the man’s sins. The healing follows to prove to the skeptical scribes that he really has the authority to forgive sins.

Second, Jesus was aware that the crowds followed him because of felt needs alone, and his approach was to drive these people away. After the feeding of the five thousand, the crowd looks for Jesus. When they find him, Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. (John 6:26–27a) Jesus urges them to turn their attention away from earthly

concerns toward eternal life, which requires forgiveness of sins. Later, Jesus turns the issue of felt needs on its head by teaching the crowd about the bread of life. He completely ignores their stomachs and focuses on himself, “the bread that came down from heaven.” This proves to be too much: many of his disciples are offended and no longer follow him. Yet he is unperturbed about the felt needs crowd.

There are dangers in emphasizing felt needs, because solving other problems easily distorts the gospel. The history of God’s people shows how hard it is to hold onto the real problem and not let the temporary travails of this life drown out what it means to be forgiven in God’s court of law. A number of denominations have gravitated to solving some other problem in the world besides guilt before God, and in the process have ended up losing the entire gospel. People especially want healing from their hurts.

Recently I heard an eloquent sermon whose first point was that people need to acknowledge their past hurts to come to God and be saved. This seems psychologically sound; our culture has been obsessed with the goal of bringing to consciousness every instance where we have been hurt. Many Christians have developed evangelistic appeals based on this premise. However, the Bible does not evangelize this way.

The obstacle that separates us from God is our guilt, not our hurts. What develops in people who are taught that their hurts are the biggest issue in their life? Does it make them humble? Does it give them a new appreciation for how great our God is? Does it make them want to love other people? No, its tendency will always be to make them full of themselves.

It reminds them of other people’s shortcomings. It makes them sensitive to how they feel rather than to what God says about them. Thinking about my hurts does not make me keen about my guilt before God. It encourages me to look to myself and weigh my feelings. Thinking about my guilt encourages me to look to God and take stock of myself against the yardstick of God’s justice.

One sad thing about losing the problem is that it shows how little confidence the modern church has in the gospel.

We don’t really believe it will change the world. God, however, anticipated this doubt. Romans 1:16 has turned out to be a prophecy to our generation: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Why would someone be ashamed of the gospel? Sometimes shame results from the scorn of the world, which has ever belittled Christians for believing in a book that seems hopelessly out of touch, yet that is not the shame Paul anticipates here. He anticipates someone being embarrassed because they think the message is ineffective.

A message in an old book appears to be a flimsy means of changing the world, so different in tenor from the loud and splashy enterprises in which most people put their confidence.

Next to the in-your-face nature of the media, the gospel is much too unassuming and quiet. Here again, the Bible anticipates what a generation impressed by loud action would need to hear in our day when it describes the work of Jesus Christ in Isaiah 42:2–4:

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; the coastlands wait for his law.

The gospel is that work of God so gentle it will not break a bruised reed nor quench the faintest wick, because the gospel is how grace, the kindness of God, makes its way in the world. The gospel is inaudible to people who don’t grasp its relevance; it is barely audible to a church that doubts its relevance. When God’s people lose the problem, they lose the gospel and must turn to felt needs, to the storm or earthquake they think is necessary to save the world instead of the whisper that Elijah knew.

Mark Honegger is associate professor of linguistics in the English department at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana. He also attends Trinity Bible Church in Lafayette, where he teaches Sunday school.

Father, We Praise Thee Father, we praise thee, now the night is over; active and watchful, stand we all before thee; singing, we offer prayer and meditation; thus we adore thee.

Monarch of all things, fit us for thy mansions; banish our weakness, health and wholeness sending; bring us to heaven, with thy saints united; joy without ending.

All-holy Father, Son, and equal Spirit, Trinity blessed, send us thy salvation; thine is the glory, gleaming and resounding through all creation.

—Gregory the Great

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Celebrating Calvin Ten Ways Modern Culture Is Different Because of John Calvin

by David W. Hall Collegial Governing: The Senate

5

Calvin argued long and hard that government should not and could not do everything; it had to be limited in its task and scope. If it was not, it would run aground as in the time of the Hebrew prophet Samuel.

Calvin’s sermon on 1 Samuel 8 addresses one of the most widely expounded passages about political thought in Scripture. His 1561 exposition discusses the dangers of monarchy, the need for proper limitation of government, and the place of divine sovereignty over human governments. It is an example of Calvinism at its best, carefully balancing individual liberty and proper government.

Calvin began his sermon on 1 Samuel 81 by asserting that the people of Israel were—even at the last minute prior to electing a king—still free to change their minds; such freedom rendered the kingship optional. Then Samuel warned them “that the king who will reign over them will take their sons for his own purposes and will cause much plundering and robbery.” Calvin preached that “there are limits prescribed

by God to their power, within which they ought to be satisfied: namely, to work for the common good and to govern and direct the people in truest fairness and justice; not to be puffed up with their own importance, but to remember that they also are subjects of God.” Calvin’s calls to submit to the governor were not without limit. God established magistrates properly “for the use of the people and the benefit of the republic.” Accordingly, kings also had charters to satisfy: “They are not to undertake war rashly, nor ambitiously to increase their wealth; nor are they to govern their subjects on the basis of personal opinion or lust for whatever they want.” Kings had authority only insofar as they met the conditions of God’s covenant. Ac-

cordingly, he proclaimed from the pulpit of St. Pierre, “[S]ubjects are under the authority of kings; but at the same time, kings must care about the public welfare so they can discharge the duties prescribed to them by God with good counsel and mature deliberation.”

The republican-type plan suggested by Jethro (Exod.18) appears as an innovation that did not originate in the mind of man, thought Calvin. Other commentators, ranging from Aquinas and Machiavelli to Althusius and Ponet, viewed Jethro’s advice as a pristine example of federalism or republicanism. Commenting on a similar passage in Deuteronomy 1:14–16, Calvin stated: Hence it more plainly appears that those who were to preside in judgment were not appointed only by the will of Moses, but elected by the votes of the people.

And this is the most desirable kind of liberty, that we should not be compelled to obey every person who may be tyrannically put over our heads; but which allows of election, so that no one should rule except he be approved by us. And this is further confirmed in the next verse, wherein Moses recounts that he awaited the consent of the people, and that nothing was attempted which did not please them all.

Thus, Calvin viewed Exodus 18 as a representative republican form.2 Geneva’s smallest Council of Twenty-Five was also known as the Senate.

This Genevan beacon, whose sermonic ideas later reached the shores of America, enumerated from the Samuel narrative the ways kings abuse their power and he distinguished a tyrant from a legitimate prince in these words: “A tyrant rules

The very name of John Calvin stirs up controversy. For those who have been primarily on the negative side of the divide—and for those on the opposite ridge— Modern Reformation is featuring a series in 2009 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Genevan Reformer’s birth (July 10, 1509). Rather than focus on biography or theology, this series looks briefly at ten areas of culture irrevocably transformed by the influence of Calvin and his band of brothers and sisters.

Love him or hate him, he was a change agent. We think for the better.

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only by his own will and lust, whereas legitimate magistrates rule by counsel and by reason so as to determine how to bring about the greatest public welfare and benefit.” Calvin decried the oppressive custom of magistrates’ “taking part in the plundering to enrich themselves off the poor.”

The character of Calvinism is exhibited in this (and other) sermons that advocated limited government. Calvin was correct that individual responsibility was a good speed bump to a government taking over more than it should. He altered the trajectory of governance, no less.

Decentralized Politics: The Republic

6

One of the procedural safeguards of the 1543 civic reform—a hallmark of Calvinistic governing ethos—was that the various branches of local government (councils) could no longer act unilaterally; henceforth, at least two councils were required to approve measures before ratification.3 This early mechanism, which prevented consolidation of all governmental power into a single council, predated Montesquieu’s separation of powers doctrine by two centuries, a Calvinistic contribution that is not always recognized. The driving rationale for this dispersed authority was a simple but scriptural idea: even the best of leaders could think blindly and selfishly, so they needed a format for mutual correction and accountability. This kind of thinking, already incorporated into Geneva’s ecclesiastical sphere (imbedded in the 1541 Ecclesiastical Ordinances) and essentially derived from biblical sources, anticipated many later instances of political federalism. The structure of Genevan presbyterianism began to influence Genevan civil politics; in turn, that also furthered the separation of powers and provided protection from oligarchy. The result was a far more open and stable society than previously, and Calvin’s orientation toward the practical is obvious in these areas.

The process of Genevan elections itself was a mirror of Calvin‘s view of human nature and the role of the state. In one of the earliest organized democratic traditions, Calvin’s fellow citizens elected four new syndics (commissioners) from a slate of eight for an annual term. Various levels of councils were then elected by the citizens.

This Calvin-shaped polity, which appeared to be either liberal or daringly democratic for its day, provided checks and balances, separation of powers, election by the residents, and other elements of the federal structure that would later be copied as one of Geneva’s finest exports. Additional features of federalism, including an early appellate system, were developed by the late 1540s. Not only was Calvin’s Geneva religious,4 but she also sought the assent of the governed to a degree not previously seen, leading the world to new and stable forms of republicanism. At the very least, one should acknowledge “the rather striking correlation, both in time and in place, between the spread of Calvinist Protestantism and the rise of democracy.”5 In keeping with the teachings of Calvin,6 elected governors perceived themselves as having a duty to God, one that compelled them to serve the public good and avoid pursuing personal benefit. This notion of selfless political duty owed much of its staying power to Calvin, and it soon became an integral

feature of Genevan public culture. Municipal officials were not full-time salaried employees in the time of Calvin, and the combination of checks and balances between the various councils required government to be streamlined and simple. Political offices in Geneva, in contrast with medieval and some modern customs, were not profitable for office holders. Service in such offices was even avoided by some, requiring the threat of a fine if a citizen refused to serve after election.7 Geneva became the chief laboratory for the implementation of many of Calvin’s republican ideas. As such, her local political model yields hints about the character of Calvinism, complete with its tendency to limit government.

Features such as limited terms, balance of powers, citizen nullification, interpositional magistracies, and accountability were at the heart of New World governments—which further amplified Calvinism to other generations and locales.

Many ideas that began with Calvin‘s reformation in Geneva and later became part of the fabric of America were cultivated and crossbred in the seventeenth century. Customs now taken for granted, such as freedom of speech, assembly, and dissent, were extended as Calvin’s Dutch, British, and Scottish disciples refined these ideas.

David Hall (Ph.D. Whitefield Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia, and executive director of Calvin500 (www.calvin500.org). He is the author of several books, including The Legacy of John Calvin (P&R, 2008), and The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lexington, 2005).

Quotations in this section are from Douglas Kelly’s translation of Calvin‘s Sermon on 1 Samuel 8 in Calvin Studies Colloquium, eds.

Charles Raynal and John Leith (Davidson, NC: Davidson College Presbyterian Church, 1982).

2For more support of this thesis, see my “Government by Moses and One Greater Than Moses,” Election Day Sermons (Oak Ridge, TN: Kuyper Institute, 1996).

3E. William Monter, Calvin’s Geneva, (Huntington, NY: Krieger, 1975), 72. In 1542, the General Council adopted this proviso: “Nothing should be put before the Council of Two Hundred that has not been dealt with in the Narrow Council, nor before the General Council before having been dealt with in the Narrow Council as well as the Two Hundred” (translation by Kim McMahan).

4In early Massachusetts, church attendance was sanctioned. Absenting oneself from church in Reformed Geneva drew a fine. E. William Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–1605 (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 79.

5Robert M. Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Democracy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1970), vii.

6Monter observed that Calvin did not so much purpose to instruct the existing magistrates “as to show others what magistrates are and for what end God has appointed them.” Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–1605, 58.

7Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–1605, 57.

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

Nathan the Naive: Pluralism, Postmodernism, and Playing to the Gallery

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N A T H A N

T H E

N A I V E

H

ow many times have we heard that relativism is synonymous with postmodernism? Whether celebrated by friends or assailed by critics, postmodernism is getting a lot more credit (and discredit) than it deserves in contemporary Christian conversations. On the more “Emergent Church” side of things, breaking out of an era of rigid dogmatism and religious intolerance is a sign that we are finally coming of age: hence, post-modern. On the more conservative side, postmodernism equals a denial of truth and a descent into spiritual, moral, and theological anarchy.

It is hard to deny that many convictions one could take for granted in evangelical circles are now worn lightly, if at all, and that even the very idea of right and wrong answers belongs to the dustbin of “modernism.” However, if we go back to the leaders of the Enlightenment—the epitome of modern thought—we quickly learn that there is really nothing “postmodern” about religious relativism and subjectivism.

Postmodernism or Most-Modernism?

In his latest book, Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices (Thomas Nelson, 2008), Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren tries to show that when we see Christianity as practices rather than as a system of belief, there are lots of convergences with other religions. The book concludes, What if there is a treasure hidden in the field of our three great monotheisms, long buried but waiting to be rediscovered? And what if the treasure is a way...that can train us to stop killing and hating and instead to work together, under God, joining God, to build a better world, a city of God? What if our suffering and fear are not intended to inspire deadly cycles of defense and counterattack in a vain search for peace through domination, but instead, what if they can serve to break and soften us like a plowed field after rain so that the seed of God’s kingdom—a few notes of God’s eternal harmony—can grow within us and among us? This is my hope. And this is our hope. Amen.

McLaren still includes himself among those who acknowledge Christ as the Savior of the world (though “salvation” is redefined in the process). Nevertheless, by moving what matters most about Christianity—its public, particular, unique, and exclusive claims—indoors to the realm of inner experience and spirituality, he exhibits the characteristically modern allergy to the scandal of the particular.

I’ll never forget a series of lectures by a formerly evangelical professor at Oxford. His basic thesis was that all religions—in their most mystical versions (often considered heretical by the establishment)—were really saying the same thing. After his concluding lecture, a few of us—a Muslim, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and I—went to the pub and agreed that he had basically dismissed everything that was important about each of our religions and replaced their M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 5

ernism do not often realize the depth of their commitment to modernity. I am not worried by the deep down to be most true—is our inner sense of threat of postmodernism as much as by the threat of most-modGod’s existence and our moral duty to love God and ernism: the well-worn assumptions of modern relativism dressed our neighbors. up as the latest fashion.

It is not uniquely postmodern to particular beliefs with his own particular beliefs (characacknowledge that our religious convictions are conditioned teristic of a white, middle-aged, Western, liberal Protestant) by our social, cultural, and linguistic location. All of that that he assumed to be universal. In the name of tolerance is evident enough in Lessing’s parable of pluralism, Nathan and the pure religion of Gotthold Lessing’s Nathan the Wise the Wise. But to move from the obvious fact of our socio(see my sidebar “Lessing’s Parable” on page 19), he exhibited cultural conditioning to the conclusion that culture is a source intolerance toward any particular religion and its own disof divine revelation along with Scripture is a characteristinct claims. (For a good definition of religious pluralism, tically modern (liberal) move. see Patrick Smith’s sidebar on page 24.)

My own reservations about the post-conservative evanThat which is universal—that which we all know deep gelical project echo the criticisms of Harvard’s Harvey Cox down to be most true—is our inner sense of God’s existence

by Professor George Hunsinger of Princeton Theological and our moral duty to love God and our neighbors. In othSeminary: er words, it’s law (Rom. 1–2). However, the gospel is totally foreign, an external Word brought to us by a herald One problem with Cox’s analysis, which many will that announces God’s free forgiveness in Christ. Turn away be sure to note, is that there really is nothing “postfrom this particular series of mighty acts of God in histomodern” about it. At best it simply rearranges the furry, outside of us, to universal religious experience and niture in the old modernist room. Perhaps theology morality, inside of us, and you turn the law into gospel and is just getting around to appropriating Marx’s insights the gospel into law. about how the poor are exploited and Lessing’s inOf course you can find a lot of family resemblances sights in Nathan the Wise about the plurality and unamong Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in terms derlying unity of religions, but that hardly seems any of practices: they pray, cherish sacred texts, participate in reason to dignify the affair with an exalted term like sacred rituals, and they all say that they aim at inculcat“postmodern.” After all, why have modern skeptics ing greater love and peace. Of course, the sharpest divibeen so skeptical if not largely because their encounter sions appear when it comes to systems of belief. Howevwith religious pluralism convinced them that all reer, that is exactly where Christianity becomes most interligious truth claims are arbitrary?1 esting—and it transforms the meaning of our practices in the bargain. The story it has to tell to the world is not told Trying to harmonize revelation with human experience, in different ways in other religions. It is strange, unfamilwhether that of the individual or of culture, is doomed from iar, and at first irrelevant if not offensive. The inner world the start. As Hunsinger observes, of mysticism and pietism has always been a refuge from the clash of competing claims about objective truth, but the The Christ of natural theology is always openly or segospel isn’t a claim about how I feel or how I live—or even cretly the relativized Christ of culture. The trajectoabout how I think. The gospel radically transforms our feelry of natural theology leads from the Christ who is not ings, thoughts, and practices; but only because it is not about supreme to the Christ who is not sufficient to the Christ anything that is done by us or in us. It is not a claim about who is not necessary….”God may speak to us,” me at all. It is the Good News about God’s practices, not wrote Barth, “through Russian communism or a flute mine; his thoughts and feelings toward me, not mine toconcerto, a blossoming shrub or a dead dog. We shall do well to listen to him if he really does so.” No such ward him. It does not well up within us, but comes to us object, however, can ever be allowed to become a from outside. source of authority for the church’s preaching, for no In spite of the oft-repeated claim that postmodernism such object can have independent revelatory or episembraces the scandal of the particular against modtemological status. Only by criteria derived from the ernism’s obsession with the universal, the particular one authentic scriptural voice of Christ can we know claims of Christianity continue to be suppressed in the purif God might be speaking to us in those ways or not.2 suit of some supposedly universal religious experience. John Lennon’s “Imagine” (see sidebar on page 18) may be the He concludes by appealing to Jewish scholar Michael ballad of postmoderns, but it is simply another verse in the Wyschogrod: “Wanting to assimilate theology into the forhymn of modernity—basically a re-telling of Lessing’s paraeign mold of the surrounding culture, Wyschogrod suggests, ble. Evangelical celebrants of a kind of “pop” postmod-

That which is universal—that which we all know

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is an essentially Gentile aspiration.”3 With pietism and fundamentalism as their only resources, many post-conservative evangelicals today skip over some of the most edifying witnesses to Christ in the modern era who refused the rationalist-irrationalist choices of this era.

If their conservative nemeses demonize postmodernism, their only recourse is to lionize it. Only as we know what we believe and why we believe it as Christians are we able to recognize God’s common grace in the worst of times and the common curse that believers and unbelievers share in the best of times.

It is certainly true that we are more aware of other religions today. My next-door neighbors are Muslims and some of our closest friends are agnostics. As the cultural and religious diversity of our neighborhoods change, non-Christians are no longer remote “others,” but friends. But the fact of pluralism does not entail that we all worship the same God by different names and in different ways.

Rewriting Lessing’s Play The problem with the most-modern narrative is that the gospel’s claims are of an order entirely different from what Lessing, Kant, and other modern (and allegedly postmodern) thinkers imagined. To make this point, I have to revise Lessing’s play.

There is only one true ring, but it is one that the emperor gave to the first father to wear as a sign of his regal dignity—and faithfulness to his imperial commission. However, this first father cursed the ring and tried feverishly to remove it from his finger. When this failed, he covered it with mud and worked to pry the magic stone from its setting. Now the ring—once glowing with the luster of royal patronage—bore only a consciousness of the emperor whose benevolence he had spurned.

Arraigned before his imperial lord, the father realized what he had done—and expected death. There was indeed a sentence of judgment: on him, his wife, his heirs, and on the whole realm entrusted to his care. Much to his surprise, however, the emperor promised to send his own son who would fulfill the commission that the first father had refused to complete, restoring his family’s fortunes and rebuilding his ruined realm. Finally, the imperial son arrived, but instead of being welcomed he was rejected, beaten, and killed. Yet it was the emperor’s intention all along to restore his kingdom by these means. Fulfilling the first father’s commission and taking upon himself the first father’s sentence, the imperial son was raised by his own father from the dead and from his own robe of conquest innumerable gowns were sown and given to all who would wear them to his festive celebration.

Switching now from uninspired parable to inspired prose, we meet the apostle Paul before the Athenian debating society as he makes his closing argument: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assur-

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ance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).

Lessing’s false humility is evident in his conclusion. Pretending to be the “modest judge” who must give way ultimately to a wiser judge in the future, he has already played the latter’s part throughout the parable. However, he—the modest judge—is actually judged as a pretender by Christ.

“The times of ignorance [that] God overlooked” are now over. Something has happened in history that cannot be undone. The Son of God has appeared in the flesh—in our history. Fulfilling the law that we have broken, bearing the curse that we deserve, and being raised to the right hand of the Father, he alone possesses the authority to condemn and to save. Jesus Christ is not just a name that Christians happen to use for the one divinity worshipped by all peoples. Rather, it is “the only name in heaven and on earth by which we may be saved” (John 1:12; 14:13; 20:31; Acts 2:21, 38; 4:12; Rom. 10:13; Phil. 2:9; Col. 3:17; Heb. 1:4) and his redeemed community is visible only where sinners gather in his name (Matt. 18:20).

In Lessing’s parable, there is one promise and it is all law: love the one God whom all decent people worship and love each other. Of course, this is universal religion, which God implanted in the conscience of all his image-bearers in creation. Apart from special revelation, we cannot know why we feel guilty and why we die; but everyone has a sense of God’s existence, power, goodness, and justice. Like all natural theologies, however, the Enlightenment religion stops here. With our first parents after the Fall, we all naturally flee God’s presence to cover our nakedness with fig leaves. Denying special revelation (i.e., the gospel), these thinkers thought it impossible to believe what one did not already know deep down. They are not hearers of news but seers of “clear and distinct ideas.” And in this way, they close themselves off from the glad tidings of joy for all people who believe. Though corrupted, every religion does indeed grasp something important of this universal moral consciousness. Not only Judaism and Islam, but Buddhism and Hinduism—even Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Madonna—have a sense of their obligation to love “god” and their neighbors.

But that’s not news. It certainly isn’t good news, at least for those who know that they have broken that covenant.

The gospel rests upon the fact that Jesus Christ was raised by the Father from the dead on the third day. Jewish and Roman authorities agreed that Jesus had been crucified, that he died and was buried. They also agreed that the tomb was empty after three days. All of this can be proved from Roman as well as Jewish sources. Where the interpretations diverged was on the question of what happened to Jesus’ body. According to Jewish and Roman authorities, his body was stolen by his disciples (despite the strong Roman and Jewish guard posted in order to prevent that possibility). And what are we to make of the willingness of the disciples themselves, who by their own characterization cowardly fled the scene of Golgotha, to publicly proclaim the risen Christ and embrace the most horrible forms of martyrdom? The apostles testified before Roman authorities by reminding them of the events of which they M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 7

“Imagine” were fully aware and inviting them to interview living eyewitnesses.

There have been myriad unbelievers down through the ages who have denied the possibility of such a miracle.

Many arguments have been crafted to deny God’s involvement in nature and history—and even his existence.

But no one has yet been able to offer a plausible alternative to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is not surprising that those who deny this historical fact would look away from the scandal of the cross and resurrection to universal ideals of spiritual and moral practice as definitive of pure religion. What is surprising is that anyone who does profess faith in Christ’s triumph would see anything else as more interesting.

As Paul said in his Mars Hill address, this is the question that faces us all. It is not a question of whose religion works best in the long run, which is more helpful, or which produces the greatest benefits for the greatest number of people. It is a question of whether Jesus rose from the dead.

That is the question that pulls all others into its wake. The gospel addresses our deepest (though suppressed) existential anxieties about life, death, guilt, and judgment. Arguments and evidence may persuade the intellect; but the gospel is not only true, it is “the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). Whether one believes in the resurrection or not, the fact that Christianity exists as the announcement of that news distinguishes it not only quantitatively but qualitatively from all religious claims. The story that the Bible tells of creation, fall, redemption, and Christ’s return in judgment and deliverance at the end of the age to make all things new doesn’t just describe the real world, it is the real world. If it is not true for all of us, then it isn’t true for any of us. ■

By John Lennon

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).

My sweet lord...

I really want to see you Really want to be with you Really want to see you lord But it takes so long, my lord…

George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 76.

2Hunsinger, 80.

3Hunsinger, 255.

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Imagine there’s no Heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one

“My Sweet Lord”

By George Harrison

I really want to know you (hallelujah) Really want to go with you (hallelujah) Really want to show you lord That it wont take long, my lord (hallelujah)…

My lord (hallelujah) My, my, my lord (hare krishna) My sweet lord (hare krishna) My sweet lord (krishna krishna) My lord (hare hare, gurur brahma, gurur vishnu, gurur devo, maheshwara) My sweet lord (gurur sakshaat) My sweet lord (parabrahma) My, my, my lord (tasmayi shree) My, my, my, my lord (guruve namah) My sweet lord (hare rama)

Lessing’s Parable

by Michael Horton Nathan the Wise—Which One is the True Religion? is the title of a play written in 1778 by Gotthold Lessing (1729– 81), an influential German writer of the Enlightenment era.

Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, with Christian crusaders threatening Muslim-controlled Palestine, the play has the Muslim leader Saladin asking Nathan the Wise which is the true religion, so that he too can make his own choice. Nathan replies with a parable.

A man in the East once had a priceless ring—so magical that “he who wore it, trusting its strength, was loved of God and man.” Entrusting the treasure to his favorite son on the pledge that he too would pass it down to his favorite son, each heir would be favored regardless of his birth. “At last this ring, passed on from son to son, descended to a father of three sons; all three of whom were duly dutiful,” and, consequently, whom “he must needs love alike.”

Over time, the father could not help but promise each of the three sons the ring, depending on which son he was favoring at the moment. Finally, as he lay dying, the father— grieved at having to wound two of his sons, but a man of his word—sent secretly for a jeweler to make two more identical rings. Approving the jeweler’s masterful reproductions, the father calls his sons to his side and confers his blessing— and a ring—on each one in turn. Then he dies.

Nathan continues, “What happens then you can predict— scarce is the father dead when all three sons appear, each with his ring, and each would be the reigning prince. They seek the facts, they quarrel, accuse. In vain; the genuine ring was not demonstrable—almost as little as today the genuine faith.” Saladin replies that the three religions—unlike the three rings—can be clearly distinguished: “down to their clothing; down to food and drink!” Nathan replies, “In all respects except their basic grounds.”

Are they not grounded all in history, or writ or handed down? But history must be accepted wholly upon faith—not so? Well then, whose faith are we least like to doubt? Our people’s, surely? Those whose blood we share?

The ones who from our childhood gave us proofs of love, who never duped us, but when it was for our good to be deceived? How can I trust my fathers less than you trust yours? Or vice versa, can I demand that your tradition should spurn that mine be not rejected? Or turn about again: The same holds true of Christians. Am I right? Saladin cannot but agree, “By Allah, yes!”

Nathan continues: the sons sue for the true (original) ring in court, each swearing to the judge that he had received the ring directly from his father’s hand. And, of course, all three were right. All received the father’s promise long before they were given their ring. Nevertheless, each son, owning the father’s promise for himself, turns on his brother as an enemy and traitor to the father. “Thus said the judge: unless you swiftly bring your father here

to me, I order you to leave my court. Think you that I am here for solving riddles? Would you wait, perhaps, until the genuine ring should rise and speak?”

Recalling the legend that the ring has magical power to make its wearer loved by God and man, the judge asks, “Who is most loved by the other two? Speak up! You’re mute? The rings’ effect is only backward, not outward? Each one loves himself the most? O then you are, all three, deceived deceivers! The genuine ring no doubt got lost. To hide the grievous loss, to make it good, the father caused three rings to serve for one.” Ordering the sons to leave his court, the judge offers parting advice: “If each one from his father has his ring, then let each one believe his ring to be the true. Perhaps the father wished to tolerate no longer in his house the tyranny of just one ring!” Henceforth, “Let each aspire to emulate his father’s unbeguiled, unprejudiced affection! Let each strive to match the rest in bringing to the fore the magic of the opal in his ring!” The parable concludes, “I bid you, in a thousand thousand years, to stand again before this seat. For then a wiser man than I will sit as judge upon this bench, and speak.

Depart! So said the modest judge.”

Evidently, of course, the modest judge is Lessing. Lessing’s contemporary, Immanuel Kant, was not much for parables, but in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, he carried forward the assumption that hidden beneath the accumulated myths, histories, scriptures, dogmas, and worship practices of particular religions was a pure religion of universal morality. “Ecclesiastical faiths”—the cause of division and wars—are but the outer garments that if stripped away disclosed the brightness of this “pure religion.”

There is no reason to deny that Lessing’s parable possesses a compelling logic. If, as Lessing wrote elsewhere, there is an ugly ditch separating the “necessary truths of reason” and the “accidental truths of history,” there is no reason to deny that the pure religion of morality is universal—known by everyone deep down—and that the ecclesiastical faiths (like creedal Christianity) are dispensable. For all of Jacques Derrida’s impressive criticism of modernity’s dichotomies and hierarchies and his concern to rescue the scandal of the particular from modernity’s obsession with the universal, his later writings repeat Kant’s preference for pure religion over against ecclesiastical faiths. Derrida speaks of a “messianic consciousness”—the universal experience of looking toward the future in hope—that must never yield to the arrival of any particular messiah. And his contrast is even defended with the same arguments as Lessing and Kant: the one brings universal peace, while the other issues in division and violence.

It should be noted that the paragons of modernity did not actually transcend dogmatism, but deepened it. In fact, as an unacknowledged dogmatism, and simply assumed without any verification, it possessed an especially violent kind of rigor that led to its own crusades in the pursuit of “progress.” Millions more were sacrificed on the altar of a supposedly emancipated reason and in the name of scientific progress than in all of the religious wars combined.

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

The Real Christ Has Stood Up: Popular Religious Pluralism and the Implications of Trinitarian Christianity

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ust the other day I heard the song by George Harrison called “My Sweet Lord” on the radio. Beyond the simple delightfulness of the tune typical of a Beatle, there is something about this particular song that always makes me pause to focus and reflect. I think it has something to do with its honesty, and its almost desperate longing and desire. This is a song of worship, even as it identifies the object of worship as transcending the traditional expressions of praise in the religions of both East and West. (See sidebar on page 18 for lyrics.) In a general sense, the song is an invitation for us to see our particular religious traditions not as ends in themselves, but as serving the higher end of knowing a God who stands equally “behind” them all. It’s interesting that George Harrison’s close friend and fellow Beatle John Lennon wrote another immensely popular song along the same lines: “Imagine.” This song expresses the same feelings of longing and desire; although here we are invited to envision a society of justice, peace, and freedom that transcends the oppressive and divisive institutions of government, ideology, and religion that are also mistaken as ends in themselves.

It seems to me that together these two songs have come to provide our culture with a simple yet significant and po-

etic expression of what might be called “popular religious pluralism.” (For a good definition of religious pluralism, see Patrick Smith’s sidebar on page 24.) When I say popular I don’t mean superficial, I mean widely held. John Lennon may have apologized for his off-the-cuff statement — taken out of context in America at the time—that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but that doesn’t change the fact that in defining the beliefs of our contemporary Western culture, he may have been close to right. This was impressed on me while watching the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, when Peter Gabriel sang “Imagine” on a world stage to the response of thousands of affirming cheers. The fact is, and recent data supports this, the popular vision of religious pluralism as expressed in these songs is now the more widely held in our culture, even among professing Christians, and even among professing conservative or evangelical Christians.1 This is testimony to the power of this religious vision and to a hope that is deeply desired in our troubled world. The vision that the real Lord stands “behind” even our religious traditions and institutions, and that human society can therefore also progress beyond them is a profoundly resonating and hopeful vision indeed.

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My point here is not to minimize the power of this popular vision. It ought not to be caricatured as merely a superficial self-contradicting slogan of postmodern culture.

The popular religious pluralism that I’m talking about really can reflect a sincere longing for the divine and an appropriate dissatisfaction with the current state of world affairs. In fact, far from being easily dismissed, this popular religious pluralism has actually become entrenched in our culture as a higher expression of religious exclusivism. This religious vision unites all the particular religious visions.

This religious narrative makes sense of all the particular competing religious narratives. All the hope expressed in the world’s religions is fulfilled together in the ultimate hope of religious pluralism. It is left only for the sincere adherents to the particular religious traditions of the world to accept this one tradition as ultimately true and normative.

This is the only way in which it will work, the only way in which the religious pluralist vision and hope can be realized. To focus on only one of these particular religious traditions as true and to make that one tradition normative is to impede the progress of humanity toward that ultimate goal as expressed by both Harrison and Lennon.

How should we respond to this popular religious pluralism now so pervasive in our culture and churches? As a Reformed and evangelical Christian, I see the basic theological task of the church as witness. Thus, the first and most important question for me is whether or not the church is being a faithful witness to the Word of God today. For this reason, I think the more critical issue to address is the widespread and growing affirmation of this position in our churches—in other words, the Christian acceptance of religious pluralism as the normative context for Christianity. Stated in a way more directly relevant to our present topic, the question is: Can a confessing, evangelical Christian affirm both the vision and hope of orthodox Christianity and the vision and hope of popular religious pluralism at the same time? Even more specifically: Are the positions of religious pluralism and orthodox trinitarian Christianity compatible or mutually exclusive? I will seek to answer this theological question with a brief outline of orthodox trinitarianism as that simple yet significant and poetic confession of what it means to be a Christian.

The Meaning of Christian Trinitarianism imply stated, trinitarianism is the truth that God is one, and that this one God is our Father revealed to us in God the Son our Savior and in the communion of God the Holy Spirit. Our Christian trinitarian confession of faith results from our saving encounter with this one living God in the message of the biblical gospel concerning Jesus Christ. In this most basic Christian truth and experience, we see at once our God in both unity and distinction. From the beginning of our engagement with Holy Scripture, heard and read within the community of faith, we learn of the one God and all his dealings with us in these terms. God’s work of creation is understood in terms of God the Father who is the ultimate source of all creation,

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God the Son who executes the decree to create, and God the Holy Spirit who manifests the divine presence in the creation (Gen. 1:1–3ff; Ps. 104:30; John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16). God's work of redemption is understood as God the Father's electing plan to redeem the world through the sending of God the Son into the world to accomplish the redemption that God the Holy Spirit applies to you and me (John 3:5–8, 16; 6:38; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:9–10; Heb. 10:5– 14; Titus 3:5). Our response has been to confess this knowledge of God in our own Christian lives as we think and talk about, pray to, worship, and serve the one true God in trinitarian terms. We know the Father in the self-revelation of the Son by the ministry of the Holy Spirit; we pray to our Father in the mediating name of the Son and with the testimony of the Holy Spirit; and we worship and serve the Almighty Father in the truth of the Son and in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Recognizing that both this unity and this distinction in God is clearly revealed in Holy Scripture as the normative authority for our Christian faith, the ancient church bequeathed to us two very effective terms for aiding our articulation of this biblical trinitarianism with precision and beauty. The first term, homoousia, concerns our understanding of the oneness of God even as we reflect on the distinctions among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With this term we affirm that the divine being (ousia) of the Father, the divine being (ousia) of the Son, and the divine being (ousia) of the Holy Spirit are identical (homo). When we say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are homoousia, we mean that they each possess the fullness of the divine being, and that they each possess the fullness of one and the same divine being! Many analogies have been offered throughout Christian history to try and help us conceptualize this truth, but they all fall short simply because no analogy of the created world can capture the reality of the divine being of God who is Uncreated Spirit.

The second term, hypostasis, concerns our understanding of the threeness of God even as we reflect on the unity of God’s singular divine being. With this term we affirm that the person (hypostasis) of the Father, the person (hypostasis) of the Son, and the person (hypostasis) of the Holy Spirit are truly and eternally distinct. The reason why this term is helpful is because of the unique meaning it conveys in this context. Unlike how we might be inclined to think of what it means to be a person, this word as it was used in the ancient church tries to point us to an understanding of “person” as somewhere between totally separate components (such as the shell, white, and yoke of an egg), and merely alternating modes of something more basic (like the way H2O alternates among the modes of solid, liquid, and gas). Thus the Godhead is not established through a mere aggregate of three totally separate persons, nor is the Godhead something more basic, or standing “behind” these three persons as mere modes of its historical manifestations. God is one in three, three in one; and the one infinite Godhead is always in all eternity distinguished as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Again, possible analoM AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 2 1

this revelation actually discloses who he really is (Heb. 1:1–3; John 8:58). the Father is known in the Son; that everything Jesus Indeed, if this were not the case, if God in his revelation Christ made known about God and accomplishes “for did not reveal himself in this way, we would not know us and our salvation” is affirmed by his deity. who God actually is; and thus we would still have to look for the author of this revelagies have been offered, but the wholly other uniqueness tion standing “behind” it. But this is not the case! In Jesus of God breaks through them all.

Christ we have met God the risen Son incarnate, and we So, as biblical Christians we initially come to know God do confess with all of Holy Scripture and orthodox Chrisand subsequently to learn of God as the one God who pertian tradition that God the Son is homoousia with God the mits us to bear true witness to him as both unity and disFather. We testify with the apostle John that “no one has tinction. God is one divine community of being (homoouever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the sia) who eternally exists in three distinct and coequal perFather’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). In God’s sons (hypostasis). This understanding of the nature of God self-revelation in the Son we know in a strict sense that the flows from our sacred text and our shared experience; and medium through which the author of revelation makes it is always properly marked by wonder and amazement. himself known is not alien to himself. This would diminEven this very brief discussion of trinitarianism demonish a self-revelation and make the content of that revelastrates just how remarkable our Christian confession is tion a mere pointer to something else. But Jesus Christ is among the diverse teachings of the world’s philosophies and the content of this true and ultimate self-revelation of God, religions. As faithful witnesses to God in this world, we must in all the fullness of his divine being as God the Son inalways resist the impulse either to dismiss this trinitarianism carnate. For this reason alone does Jesus Christ point us as too abstract or impractical, or to attempt to work out its to God by pointing to himself: “Whoever has seen me has mysteries speculatively as if it were a logic puzzle. For God seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? has given us a revelation that is truly a self-revelation; and Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father because it actually reveals who God is, it is really God’s selfis in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my interpretation for us. Thus, when our Christian reflection own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his and confession are guided by this divine self-interpretation, works” (John 14:9b–10). In light of all this, I think at least it is most properly (and reasonably!) guided by what God three clear implications can be drawn in response to our has told us concerning himself. But the question remains: concerns about popular religious pluralism.

How does this Christian trinitarianism address our concern First, because revelation means that God assumes a form about Christianity’s compatibility with popular religious pluso that we humans can know who he is, we must underralism? We can now develop an answer by looking further stand that our true knowledge of God is only a result of diat the term homoousia and at how it helps us to understand vine self-accommodating grace. To know God in the way who our Lord actually is. he has permitted us to know him is to know him in both unity and distinction. Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son is The Implications of Christian Trinitarianism the visible revelation of the invisible God the Father, and his concept of trinitarianism becomes intelligible only therefore he must be distinguished from God the Father. if understood in the context of the Christian conYet because he truly and ultimately reveals who God the fession of Jesus Christ as the self-revelation of God. Father is, there is a necessary unity or identity of essence Here we are especially following the apostle Paul, who bears between them. Therefore, we must confess with the witness to Jesus Christ with phrases such as “declared with Nicene Creed that the Father is known in the Son; that power to be the Son of God” (Rom. 1:4), “the glory of God everything Jesus Christ made known about God and acin the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), “who being in very complishes “for us and our salvation” is affirmed by his denature God” (Phil. 2:6), “the image of the invisible God” ity; and that as the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ is worthy (Col. 1:15), and “God was pleased to have all his fullness to be worshipped and adored. dwell in him” (Col. 1:19). This testimony to God’s self-revSecond, because this biblical trinitarianism assures us that elation contains the idea of an identity of essence (hoeverything Jesus Christ says and does on earth is God speakmoousia) between the Father, who is the author of the reving and acting, it is only reasonable that our vision and hope elation, and the Son, who is the content of the revelation. should be grounded in his words and deeds. For this reaWhen we confess that the Father and the Son are homoousia, son, the normative context for our Christian vision should we are affirming this identity. We are confessing that God be the message of the gospel concerning Jesus Christ; the in all the fullness of his divine being is as much the connormative context for our narrative should be God’s retent of his self-revelation as he is its author; that God in demptive plan culminating in Jesus Christ; and the nor-

Therefore, we must confess with the Nicene Creed that

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mative context for our hope should be the promises of God made certain in Jesus Christ.

Third, and most directly related to popular religious pluralism, because Christian trinitarianism teaches that in the Incarnation of the Son there is a true and ultimate self-revelation of God, it is reasonable to take this self-revelation of God as definitive. This means that by definition Jesus Christ is the standard by which we determine the truthfulness of all other claims to divine revelation. To hold with religious pluralism that Jesus Christ is one of a number of different and even contrary revelations of a God who stands “behind” them all, is to hold that God has not revealed himself truly and ultimately in Jesus Christ, but at most only partially. This contradicts the concept of homoousia as the identity of essence that Christian trinitarianism affirms. God cannot be understood as having revealed himself in a different way in another self-revelation and still be the one who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. As trinitarian Christians, we have been graciously permitted to make the same confession as that of Simon Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Therefore, because Jesus Christ the Son incarnate is God, all other claims of divine revelation are to be assessed according to him.

The Way Forward for Trinitarian Christians o how should we respond to this? We began by asking the question: Are the positions of popular religious pluralism and orthodox trinitarian Christianity compatible or mutually exclusive? I think the above account of Christian trinitarianism shows that they are clearly not compatible on the grounds that divine revelation has been established once and for all in Jesus Christ alone. This leads us to two important applications.

First, since our basic theological task is faithful witness to the Word of God, the widespread and growing affirmation of popular religious pluralism as the normative context for Christianity ought to be reversed. There is no God standing “behind” God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and for this reason there is no God except the God who is with us in Jesus Christ, and there is no vision and hope that can lead us beyond the vision and hope that is established for us in Jesus Christ. Thus, Christians who are seeking to affirm both orthodox Christianity and popular religious pluralism together have an Elijah-on-Mount-Carmel type of decision to make (1 Kings 18:21).

Second, in affirming orthodox trinitarian Christianity, confessing evangelical Christians should not see themselves as having to bear some sort of heavy doctrinal burden. On the contrary, it is by grace that we have been gifted with this privilege and responsibility to speak and enact the liberating truth of our trinitarian Christianity in love. If our faithful witness to Jesus Christ is called to be prophetic overagainst a culture that chooses to reject it, then our marginalization will be for the sake of righteousness. However, this isn’t necessarily the case in an increasingly interconnected culture that is becoming more serious about interreligious dialogue. Because the new frameworks for this

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dialogue properly recognize the exclusivist nature of normative religious pluralism, they are careful not to stress adherence to this position as a prerequisite for participation.

Examples of these new opportunities for our engagement in interreligious dialogue are developing every day: from Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation and new university courses such as Yale’s “Faith and Globalization” (co-taught by Blair and Miroslav Volf) to the call for a renewed interreligious dialogue in America by President Obama in his first address at the National Prayer Breakfast.2 Let’s embrace these new opportunities for faithful witness with a winsome conviction that knows what we believe and why we believe it, and a sincere compassion that knows we are called to share all we have received.

Therefore, as we humbly, respectfully, and faithfully live out our Christian witness to the world, we should remember to focus and reflect on the fact that our faith and confession make no sense without this trinitarian theological context. In a world where a multitude of “christs” point us to a God who stands “behind” their philosophies, religious traditions, and revelatory claims, Jesus Christ has stood up to point us to himself as the definitive self-revelation of God. Jesus Christ is God, the light of the world, and therefore all other christs, visions, and hopes are assessed according to this light and the vision and hope that he has made sure. ■

Peter D. Anders teaches theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

See for example, the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, and related articles and analysis by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life at www.pewforum.org. When asked to choose between an exclusivist statement and a pluralist statement as most closely defining their religious views, 70 percent of the 35,000 Americans polled chose the pluralist statement. Included in this group were 83 percent of those who identified themselves as belonging to a mainline church, and 57 percent of those who identified themselves as belonging to an evangelical church. I am arguing in this essay that the type of religious pluralism best reflected by the pluralist statement is a version of John Hick’s position. How many of the respondents who chose the pluralist statement would actually hold to a more inclusivist position is unclear in this survey.

2President Obama’s February 5, 2009, speech, “This is my hope.

This is my prayer,” can be read online at www.whitehouse.gov.

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The Plurality of Religious Pluralism: Clarifying the Terms

By Patrick T. Smith A Not-So-Straightforward Question In many cases, reasonable dialogue is stifled due to lack of clarity concerning key terms in a discussion. Consider the case of two disputants discussing whether or not the claim that “Fred and Carmen have the same car” is true. After listening to the discussion, an outside observer rightly asks for clarification. “Is the word ‘same’ in the statement to be understood as meaning identical or similar?” This seems to be right-headed since the truthfulness of the statement is dependent upon what is meant by the term “same.” If the former understanding is correct, then the statement is an affirmation that the vehicle that Fred and Carmen share is one and the same with an identical vehicle identification number. It is also clear that if the latter understanding is in view, then the implication is that there are at least two vehicles of similar make or model that both Fred and Carmen have in common. What this shows is that the word “same,” like many terms in natural language, often suffers from a degree of ambiguity. Surely, ambiguity will never be fully eliminated from human discourse and it is not always destructive of meaningful dialogue. Even so, ambiguous terms can lead to a failure of communication.

Likewise, the term “religious pluralism” is somewhat ambiguous. How might we respond to the question, “What do we think about religious pluralism?” On the surface, it would seem to be clear that Christians ought to dismiss the notion out of hand and affirm in step with biblical teaching (John 14:6, Acts 4:12) and historic orthodoxy that Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation. However, depending on how the term “religious pluralism” is being used and understood, an indiscriminate rejection of the notion may be misguided.

To be sure, the claim being made is not to deny that Jesus is the Savior and the only means for humanity to be related to God. It is, instead, to highlight that some conceptions of religious pluralism are at odds with biblical teaching, whereas others are not. Therefore, it is important that we clarify our terms so that we can not only have a better understanding of the topic, but also have more meaningful and productive discourse with others concerning this volatile issue.

Clarifying the Concept Any discussion of religious pluralism is complex and can be addressed on many levels. First, there is the descriptive sense of the term. History is replete with examples of peoples and cultures having differing beliefs and practices concerning religion. While “religious pluralism” is often used to describe this state of affairs, it is more suitable to think of this as religious diversity. Undoubtedly, this is not a new phenomenon in our world. It has always been this way.

What is new in our contemporary setting is “the widespread 24 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

awareness of religious pluralism resulting from an unprecedented exposure to many different religious traditions.”1 Without doubt, this is due in part to the impact from extensive immigration, developments in the areas of travel, information technology via the Internet and global media outlets. When we narrow the scope to our North American context at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it cannot be denied that factually we live in a religiously pluralistic society. “It is virtually impossible today to live in a major Western city and not come into contact with some aspect of a major non-Christian religion.”2 We work with, live beside, and perhaps participate in civic activities with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and scores of other religious traditions. To many, this situation should not be considered “neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad.”3 It is simply a fact and so is descriptively true.

Another way to understand “religious pluralism” is in a legal sense that can best be described as religious freedom or religious liberty. The freedom of religious expression within the confines of a social political democracy is something that most would consider of tremendous value. We live in a society where religious freedom is protected by law. “Religious freedom is not a factual claim describing what people actually do. It’s a legal reality describing what people may do.”4 To ensure the rights of religious others to practice their religion within the limitations of a democracy is to be welcomed as opposed to some forms of unwarranted exclusion, marginalization, and religious intolerance that too often characterizes many parts of our world. Human beings are created in the image of God and, therefore, are intrinsically valuable. Thus, people should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their religious faith.

Being in support of this ought not to be of controversy to Christians. It is important to note that advocating religious freedom and tolerating religious diversity in our society is not the same as having to accept the content of the various belief systems as being wholly true or equal paths to God. Nor should affirming religious liberty be viewed as excluding interreligious dialogue. This is the case not only for the purpose of being more informed about another religion, but also for the purpose of persuasion. In a sense, all communication is persuasion of one sort or another. Undeniably, there are morally appropriate and inappropriate ways of engaging in interreligious dialogue.5 The last and more problematic way of understanding religious pluralism is when it is used as a philosophical theory about the nature of religion. We can think of this as philosophical or prescriptive religious pluralism. A basic or popular depiction of this idea is that “any (or perhaps all) religions lead to God or salvation. Following any religious path enables believers to reach the religious goal.”6 A more extensive and sophisticated expression of this idea is to be found in the work of prominent religious pluralist, John Hick, when he writes: [T]he great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different re-

sponses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place. These traditions are accordingly to be regarded as soteriological “spaces” within which, or “ways” along which, men and women can find salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment.7 It is this theoretical approach to religious diversity that has justifiably concerned Christians. If philosophical religious pluralism is true, then Christians have radically misunderstood the claims of Jesus Christ and the teaching of Scripture for centuries.

Whether in its more popular or more sophisticated forms, the implication of philosophical religious pluralism is clear: Philosophical pluralism has generated many approaches in support of one stance: namely, that any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong. The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism. No religion has the right to pronounce itself right or true, and the others false, or even (in the majority view) relatively inferior.8 Some General Concluding Concerns It is not the purpose of this brief essay to engage in a fullfledged critique of religious pluralism. Instead, it is to highlight the multifaceted nature of any discussion of this topic. Nevertheless, I want to conclude by simply raising three general concerns.

First, despite the distinctions made between the various ways of understanding religious pluralism, they are still often conflated. One well-known example of this is the statement by Hindu Swami Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893. He stated that he was “proud to belong to a religion that has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions to be true.”9 Though not a pluralist in a strict sense, his comment nevertheless exemplifies what is true for many—that one cannot accept religious freedom and social tolerance without embracing philosophical religious pluralism. This is simply false. It is difficult to consistently hold these two together.

Given that tolerance, as historically understood, is accepting of what one thinks to be erroneous, it seems difficult to say that we tolerate others and at the same time are required to embrace the content of tolerated beliefs and practices.

I think it is important and appropriate for Christians to insist that these are distinct issues, such that one can consistently affirm religious liberty while rejecting philosophical religious pluralism.

Second, some of the more common forms of philosophical religious pluralism are logically problematic. It is difficult to understand how all religions can effectively lead to the ultimate religious goal given that the various traditions make mutually exclusive and at times contradictory

claims about the nature of the ultimate reality, the human predicament, and the solution to this predicament. It would seem that any pluralistic model would need to have the resources to account for the contrary claims among the religious traditions.

Third, it contradicts the teaching of Scripture, and so ought to be rejected by Christians as a legitimate theoretical model about religious diversity.10 Clearly, more needs to be said concerning these matters and pertinent questions remain. While Christians, I think correctly, reject philosophical religious pluralism on solid biblical and philosophical grounds, there are no legitimate reasons to be opposed to religious freedom and to deny the reality of religious diversity. It is not a stand for orthodoxy to do so. It may seem to some that our acute awareness of religious diversity may be an obstacle for Christians. I think, however, we should see this reality as a tremendous opportunity for commending and defending the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a real sense, so to speak, the world community is at our doorstep.

Patrick T. Smith is assistant professor of theology and philosophy at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices, Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 1997), 4.

2Netland, 4.

3D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 17.

4David K. Clark, “Religious Pluralism and Christian Exclusivism,” in To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview, eds. Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 292.

5For an insightful discussion of these issues, see Netland’s Dissonant Voices, 283–314.

6Clark, 292. For a more robust critique of sophisticated religious pluralism by David Clark, see his chapter entitled “Christian Theology and the World Religions” in To Know and Love God: Method for Theology (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2003). For a more sustained philosophical and theological critique of religious pluralism with implications for Christian missions, see Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).

7John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 240.

8Carson, 19.

9As quoted in Netland, 16.

10Space limitations prohibit any sustained exegesis of many of the relevant texts. For good discussions of some of the key biblical passages concerning salvation being found only in Jesus, see James R. Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) and D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God. 1

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

Jesus, Muslims, and the Gospel

By Adam S. Francisco There are several revisionist theories regarding the origins of Christianity peddled in popular academic culture.

One of the more pervasive ones claims that a number of legitimate yet competing understandings of Jesus existed in the first century. Some viewed him as a great moral teacher. Others saw him as a political activist. Still others considered him an apocalyptic preacher. At some point, the theory goes, men began to attribute a divine nature to him.

And in order to achieve ecclesial and political hegemony, they established this as the orthodox position.

This thesis is asserted in a variety of contemporary sources such as the various works of the Jesus Seminar, popular historical fictions like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and the scholarship of Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels. But it is not all that new. It was, in fact, proposed back in 1934 by the German scholar Walter Bauer (1877–1960) in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

Long before Bauer, however, apologists for Islam advanced similar arguments. For example, one of the most formidable and influential Muslim theologians, Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), argued that the original understanding of Jesus and Jesus’ understanding of himself was that he was merely a human prophet of Allah. Orthodox Christian Christology was a later development. Therefore, he concluded in the voluminous Correct Response to those who Corrupted the Religion of the Messiah, the “false religion of Christians is nothing but an innovated religion which they invented after the time of Christ.”1 It is tempting not to take such claims seriously. But consider this: contemporary Muslim literature on Jesus is increasingly asserting that Islamic Christology is supported by modern historical and biblical scholarship. The work of Louay Fatoohi, an Iraqi-born Christian who converted to Islam while attending university in Britain, is perhaps the 26 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

most recent example. In The Mystery of the Historical Jesus (Luna Plena, 2007) he draws upon the scholarship of Bauer, Ehrman, and several others, and argues that a critical examination of primary historical sources necessarily leads one to the conclusion that the Jesus of the Quran is the real historical Jesus.

A number of other sources advancing similar claims— from books to youtubeislam.com—have Muslims convinced that Western biblical scholarship has vindicated the claims of Islam.2 Some, such as What Did Jesus Really Say?, go so far as to suggest that, on account of current historical research on Jesus, “the most learned among the Christian community are slowly recognizing the truth and drawing closer to Islam.”3 This, it seems, is reason enough to take seriously the Muslim understanding of Jesus. But there are others. Demographically, Islam has experienced exponential growth over the last century. Around 1906, America’s “apostle to Islam,” Samuel Zwemer (1867–1952), estimated that there were about 200 million Muslims across the globe. Today, the number is around 1.3 billion. And while the Muslim population in America is notoriously difficult to assess—

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with figures ranging from 2 to 10 million—one thing is clear: the number of mosques scattered across the country has skyrocketed. In just 1990 there were about 30. In 2001, there were over 1,200. Today, it is estimated that there are over 2,000.

Sociocultural and attendant political challenges notwithstanding, this presents a unique opportunity for Christian outreach. In decades past, Christians had to travel overseas to find major Muslim populations where it was (and still is) illegal (and punishable by death) to proselytize them.

Now, many Muslims who come from countries with such restrictions live next door, attend schools, and work with us. In light of this, the possibilities for Muslim encounters with the gospel of Jesus Christ are and will continue to be an ever-increasing reality. Before addressing the issues surrounding such an encounter, though, a brief assessment of the Muslim understanding of Jesus is in order.

The Muslim Jesus esus figures prominently in the theological narrative of Islam. He was one of the 124,000 prophets Allah raised up long before the time of Muhammad, the last of the

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prophets, to provide ethico-religious and legal guidance for the nations of the world. Among these prophets, though, he stands out, with Moses, David, and Muhammad, as a messenger who also recorded Allah’s word in a book, called the Injil or (as it is commonly translated) Gospel.

The Quran depicts Jesus, in some cases, not entirely unlike the canonical Gospels. For example, Gabriel’s annunciation of the birth of a son to a virgin named Mary is recounted. She is also described as being related to Zechariah who, despite his wife’s old age, was promised a son later named John (the Baptist).

The Quran does not, however, give the geographical or geopolitical details of Jesus’ birth. There is, for example, no report of a census issued by Caesar Augustus at the time that Quirinius was governor of Syria. Neither does it record the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem with Joseph or the birth of Jesus in a stable.

Instead, it provides an ambiguous and contradictory description of Jesus’ nativity. It explains that, after Jesus’ conception, Mary withdrew to a remote place to hide her pregnancy. Eventually, she gave birth under a palm tree, and immediately thereafter—to comfort his distraught mother—Jesus spoke his first words, directing his mother to a stream of fresh water and some dates for refreshment. Afterwards, when Mary returned to her kin with a newborn child, she was not disgraced, for the infant Jesus explained how it was not through adultery but Allah’s miraculous intervention that she gave birth. “I am a servant of Allah,” the child Jesus declared, “He has given me the scripture and made me a prophet!” (Quran 9:16–33).

There are other miracles attributed to Jesus in the Quran.

Chapter 5:110 surmises that, in addition to speaking from the cradle, he was also able to breathe life into a bird made of clay, heal the blind and leprous, and raise people from the dead. But none of these should be understood as a product of his divine powers. They were nothing but miracles of Allah designed to bear witness to his prophetic vocation.

The Quran is quite clear that the Jesus described in its pages was nothing more than a human messenger of Allah. He was created by Allah in Mary’s womb, and although given the honorific title of Messiah and even referred to as the Word of Allah, it warns against attributing any divine properties to him.

Do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah anything but the truth. Jesus the Messiah, the son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah….Allah is but one God. Exalted is he above having a son.

(Quran 4:171) In fact, those who do attribute divine sonship to Jesus are guilty of the most heinous and unforgivable sin of shirk.

Such a profession is so serious that Muhammad called upon Allah to destroy such people, and enjoined Muslims to bring them unto submission through physical force as they carry out the timeless struggle to “cause Islam to prevail over M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 2 7

Friendship, acts of kindness, and genuine hospitality go a

Along with its condemnation of the confession of the deity of Christ, the Quran long way in fostering the right environment for effective has no room for the doctrine of the atonement. “Every soul evangelism. But it is the testimony of the Gospel writers draws its own merits; no one can bear the burdens of anthat provide the most reliable witness to the gospel. other” (Quran 6:164). Therefore, every human being will all other religions” (Quran 9:29–33). be judged on the basis of his or her own deeds. But the This irreconcilable difference with the biblical teaching Christian doctrine of atonement is not just theologically inon the person of Jesus is further complicated by the Quran’s correct; it makes no historical sense either, for the Quran different picture of Jesus’ mission. Islamic theology insists declares that Jesus was not crucified; nor did he die (4:157). that Jesus and the Gospel were sent to confirm that which Instead, he was raised up unto heaven where he awaits his was revealed in the Torah before him, as well as to provide final return on judgment day. At that time, the Quran says, ideational and legal guidance to his contemporaries, and he will turn his back on those who considered him divine. finally to announce and prepare humankind for the arrival of the last of Allah’s prophets.

Christians and Muslims t is here—particularly the denial of the crucifixion of JeJesus, son of Mary, said, “O Tribe of Israel, surely I am sus—that Islam poses one of its greatest challenges to the messenger of Allah to you, confirming what was Christianity. And Muslims know it! In a widely circulated revealed before me in the Torah, and bringing good book entitled Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction? Ahmed Deedat asnews of a messenger who will come after me, whose serted (with reference to 1 Corinthians 15:14), “If Jesus did name is Ahmad.” (Quran 61:6) NOT die, and he was NOT resurrected from the dead, there can be NO salvation in Christianity!...In a nutshell, No CruAhmad is another name for Muhammad, and Muslim apolcifixion!—No Christianity!”4 ogists insist that this passage is simply a reiteration of John This presents a major dilemma to Christian evangelism 14:16. They therefore contend that the helper or comforter of Muslims, for without the cross of Christ (and, of in the biblical text refers not to the Holy Spirit but to course, the resurrection) there is no evangel. This, Islam’s Muhammad. rejection of the reliability of the canonical Gospels, and the These sorts of arguments and the Quran’s general enperception that Muslims are tough nuts to crack, has led dorsement of the Gospel of Jesus raise some interesting many missiologists to emphasize the friendship approach problems. The Quran claims in a variety of places that the to Muslims. And there is much to be said for this approach.

Gospel confirms the Torah and anticipates the Quran. AlIt is indeed vital to establish a good rapport with Muslims. lah sent the Quran down to Muhammad, “confirming what At some point, however, Muslims need to hear the gospel came before it, and he sent down the Torah and the Gospel of the historical and biblical Jesus. Certainly a sinful and before this” (Quran 3:3). The issue that plagues Muslims fallen will sets up insurmountable barriers that the Holy apologists then is: why is it that the Gospel and the Quran, Spirit alone, working through a clear articulation of the particularly, teach contradictory theologies and have difgospel, can penetrate. But there are some (pseudo) factuferent versions of what they both purport to be real emal barriers that must be brought down, too. The most conpirical history? spicuous is, of course, the misunderstanding of the person and work of Jesus.

One of the most popular traditions asserts that the origOne could approach this in a number of ways. But a coninal Gospel of Jesus has been lost. Matthew, Mark, Luke, centrated apologetic will start with the very issue of the cruand John are erroneous redactions of the original. Some cifixion and death of Jesus. The strength of this method is deviously suggest that the Gospel of Barnabas—a forgery that it can—at least initially—avoid sticky theological isprobably inspired by a convert to Islam dating to no earsues!5 The question of whether Jesus died on a cross around lier than the fourteenth century—is the closest to the origA.D. 30 just outside of Jerusalem is at its most basic level inal source that we have. Other Muslim apologists argue an historical one. And there are a host of first-century litthat the text of one, some, or all of the canonical Gospels, erary sources testifying to it. There are eyewitnesses at the time of their composition, were accurate renditions (such as Matthew and John), companions of eyewitnessof the Gospel spoken of in the Quran. But, they continue, es (such as Mark and Luke), and several non-Christian acChristians have over the centuries altered the actual text. counts reporting the crucifixion and death of Jesus as a brute Still others claim that the text is basically sound. It is only historical fact (e.g., the Roman and Jewish historians [rethe interpretation of it that is not. All in all, they claim that spectively] Tacitus [56–120] and Josephus [37–100], Taleither the canonical texts or the interpretation of them has mudic literature, the Syrian stoic Mara Bar Serapion [fl. 73], been forced into a Procrustean bed of a later theology that and the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata [120–180]).6 divinized a human prophet named Jesus.

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There is no good historical reason to prefer the Quran on the matter of Jesus’ death—a seventh-century document (at best)—over the testimony of eyewitnesses and first- and second-century writers.7 In fact, a wide array of liberals, skeptics, and atheists agree, in John Dominic Crossan’s words, that Jesus’ crucifixion “is as sure as anything historical ever can be.”8 The resurrection of Jesus, too, can be shown to be an historical fact.9 But a detailed argument may or may not be necessary.10 If one can show the Quran to be untrustworthy on at least one aspect of the life of Jesus, it should very well prompt further questions about who he really was. The Christian should and must be prepared to address these questions. But the best strategy is simply to insist upon sticking with the primary sources for Jesus’ life and mission.

The goal should be to get Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John into the hands of Muslims. There they will see—from the testimony of those who were in the best position to tell us about Jesus—just who Jesus was and what he did. Friendship, acts of kindness, and genuine hospitality go a long way in fostering the right environment for effective evangelism.

But it is the testimony of the Gospel writers that provide the most reliable witness to the gospel. ■

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daspur: Islam International Publications, 2003). Also see the debate over the death and resurrection between John Warwick Montgomery and Shabir Ally, available in audio format: http://www.ciltpp.com/tap_deba.htm.

Speaking Of…

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or each man’s mind is like a labyrinth, so that it is no wonder that individual nations were

drawn aside into various falsehoods; and not only this—but individual men, almost, had their own gods. For as rashness and superficiality are joined to ignorance and darkness, scarcely a single person has ever been found who did not fashion for himself an idol or specter in the place of God….It is

Adam S. Francisco (DPhil, Oxford) is assistant professor of historical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary (Fort Wayne, Indiana) and author of Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics (Brill, 2007).

therefore in vain that so many burning lamps shine for us in the workmanship of the universe to show forth the glory of its Author. Although they bathe

Thomas Michel, A Muslim Theologian’s Response to Christianity: Ibn Taymiyya’s Al-Jawab Al-Sahih (Delmar: Caravan Books, 1984), 143.

2See Abdul Saleeb (with R. C. Sproul), The Dark Side of Islam (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), 9–14.

3Misha’al ibn Abdullah, What Did Jesus Really Say? (Ann Arbor: Islamic Assembly of North America, 1996), 66.

4Ahmed Deedat, Crucifixion or Cruci-Fiction? (Woodside, NY: Islamic Propagation Center International, n.d.), 2.

5A good apologetics text for dealing with theological issues is Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb’s Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002).

6See, among a host of others, F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).

7Although Louay Fatoohi has recently tried to suggest this in The Mystery of the Crucifixion: The Attempt to Kill Jesus in the Qur’an, the New Testament, and Historical Sources (Birmingham: Luna Plena, 2008).

8See Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 113–14.

9To see how one might advance this point vis-à-vis a Muslim, see Michael Licona, Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).

10Interestingly, some Muslims (mostly those in marginal sects within Islam) have accepted Jesus’ crucifixion but not his death.

See, for example, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s outrageous Jesus in India: Jesus’ Deliverance from the Cross and Journey to India (Gur1

us wholly in their radiance, yet they can of themselves in no way lead us into the right path. Surely they strike some sparks, but before their fuller light shines forth these are smothered.

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

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part from Christ, there can only be a “fleeting knowledge of God that quickly turns to

the vinegar of idolatry and superstition, however much they [Muslims] proclaim at the top of their lungs that the Creator of heaven and earth is God.” —John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

The Gospel and Africa Western Christians and non-Christians alike are spending more time and money than ever before combating the overwhelming tide of suffering in Africa. The level of dedication brings new life to nineteenth-century missionary David Livingstone’s view of service in Africa: “In this work I truly live; in this work I hope to die.” Although Africa is often seen as an object of missions and service, its influence on disillusioned youth in the West may far outsize its need.

The modernist quest for and promise of a utopian society in the West was utterly discredited by wars and corruption. The Vietnam War and Watergate scandal proved to be particularly destructive to American optimism. Postmodernism—the philosophical expression of this pervasive disillusionment—tore down the modernist structure, but has left nothing in its place.

Postmodern culture is skeptical of Christianity, largely because it aligned and accommodated itself to the modernist enterprise, often losing its distinctively spiritual voice in the process. Even so, postmodernism is unable to build a new cultural enterprise because it is inherently reactionary and deconstructive. The questions posed by African suffering prick the postmodern conscience, unlocking the sealed reservoir of thought that previously seemed impervious to the deeper questions of life. An apologetic opportunity is thus presented to Christians.

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Much of the present focus on Africa can likely be traced to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which a rebel tribe massacred nearly a million innocent civilians. Western inaction during that time was appalling, but it also had an awakening effect. Videos streamed across Western media outlets, showing rivers choked with the dead. Ten years later, the film Hotel Rwanda again confronted younger Westerners with the tragedy. It grossed over $33 million in the process, proving that it still resonated.

In Hotel Rwanda, a reporter explains to the main character, “If people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.” However, upon watching that movie, I vowed “never again” like many others my age. In the recent Sudanese genocide, coalitions of U.S. groups with vastly differing ideologies joined in making it an important public policy issue. Consequently, the United States has taken the lead in exposing and condemning the genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

AIDS and poverty have also become increasingly important issues. U2’s lead singer Bono has performed numerous benefit concerts for the African poor, raising untold millions. Former President George W. Bush also drastically increased the United States’ financial commitment to battling AIDS in Africa. Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, has his “P.E.A.C.E. Plan” that seeks to involve every Western church in the fight against poverty and AIDS. Even with added attention and action by the West, the enormity of the suffering in Africa is almost beyond imagination. In 2007, approximately 2.4 million people died from AIDS in Africa, according to UNAIDS. The International Development Research Centre reports 80 to 90 percent of the world’s malaria cases as occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in at least one million deaths each year.

Although these grisly realities continue to tug on Western heartstrings, they also force hard questions upon Western minds in a time of great intellectual upheaval.

The Christian postmodernist Donald Miller wrote of Africa’s influence on his spiritual journey in Blue Like Jazz.

When a friend asked Miller why Africans could perpetrate genocide while Americans seemed to prefer peace, Miller was faced with an uneasy answer: either Africans were inferior, or evil was an equal-opportunity employer of which all derive some business. Except by some unseen grace, Miller concluded, Americans could commit genocide.

All are depraved.

Although “the future is Africa” may seem a bit clichéd among Christians, it gains a whole new relevancy when placed in relation to the West’s stagnancy. Money, freedom, and power have not secured the happiness of the West.

Rather, these materials have served as the very opiate of the masses that the materialist Marx had supposed of Christianity. They insulated the West from the harder questions of life and death, sin and redemption. Over time, the opiate wore off and the postmodern milieu that is consequently overtaking the West is pointing the young mind to Africa.

In the summer of 2007, I traveled to Malawi, Africa, with

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a team of seminary classmates to teach future pastors at the Josophat Mwale Theological Institute. While in the remote town of Nkhoma, we interacted with young adults from the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa—a surprisingly diverse hodgepodge of Westerners in a town that was somewhat removed from tourist hotspots.

Among the many new acquaintances, I befriended four Irish medical students who were spending their summer in a Malawian hospital. They had never met a man who cared about Christianity and were intrigued by my passionate defense of the gospel, the integrity of God’s Word, and the reality of sin and supernatural redemption. Their experiences largely consisted of interactions with a deadened Roman Catholicism and the hypocritical scandals of televangelists in America. Each night, they prodded me with questions about Christianity and we quickly forged a deep friendship as a result.

In their medical work, the Irish team witnessed an array of horrific images. Children died of malaria and other preventable diseases. One twelve-year-old boy fell into a fire and his body was left in the hospital corridor to be viewed by the grieving family—and my Irish friends. The most talented Malawian nurse at the hospital, who was several months pregnant, was hit by a bus one morning and instantly killed. Many a night the Irish team was tearyeyed, but none more than Eimir.

Eimir, like many other Westerners, attempted to drown out the traumatic images and realities with mindless entertainment such as her iPod. In her spare time, she sat in the shade of a rundown Malawian store, sipping a drink and listening to her music. She had no illusions about the world: it was inescapably ugly. Out of the vacuum of meaning created by that knowledge, she sought escape.

While not allowing me to get too close, Eimir did loan me a book that she enjoyed: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. The book was written in the form of letters from a grieving woman to her husband about their son, who had murdered fifteen classmates. The letters were her attempt to come to grips with why her son did what he did.

Despite the risk of giving away the ending, I’ll mention there is no philosophical resolution to the book. There were no answers, protagonists, or rays of hope. Something about life was irretrievably messed up. The book was quintessentially postmodern, like Eimir herself.

Sitting at a table one sunny afternoon with the Irish team, I asked an ambiguous yet searching question: Had their time in Africa changed them? Most of the team brushed off the question. “How about you, Eimir?” I asked my struggling friend. She meekly answered, “I’ve changed and will never be the same.”

One night, I found Eimir alone. “I know you say you have been changing,” I told her, “and I can see it.” She blinked away tears and, anticipating where I was going, responded, “I am not there yet.” On the final night that I saw the group, Eimir tightly and tearfully hugged me. The next morning, she went to church. And then she was gone.

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Instead of relenting to Paul’s persistent question, “Who will save me from this body of battlefield in which Christians may seize upon the ruined death?” they resort to campy, mindless slogans such as, “Yes notions of human goodness and point to that alien we can!”

But before they can give righteousness and atoning sacrifice of Christ. such an emphatic answer, the young must ask what it is Unlike many stirring stories of radical conversions, I did they wish to do in the first place. Can they join with the not see Eimir or the other students brought into saving faith optimists of ages past and construct a more utopian realby the sovereign working of God. Like fellow postmodity through sheer goodwill? If that is the question, then one ernists, Eimir was searching but she was “not there yet.” need look only to Africa. It is the progressive’s dirty little In 1955, prominent twentieth-century Christian apolsecret—the graveyard for fallacious claims and baseless opogist Francis Schaeffer began L’Abri, an intellectual retreat timism. An action as simple as holding an HIV-infected orsite of sorts in Switzerland that became a popular destination phan in Malawi will surely convince the young wanderfor disillusioned young Westerners making their way er that, no…we really can’t. across Europe. Bucking against the anti-intellectual currents The enigma that is Africa provides an apologetic batof his day, Schaeffer made it his mission to engage the young tlefield in which Christians may seize upon the ruined nowanderers who were cast aside by the mindless modernism tions of human goodness and point to that alien rightof his day with lectures and deep discussions. He knew that eousness and atoning sacrifice of Christ. And the intellecthe downfall of a given cultural paradigm often presenttual malaise that has swept over the West might find its ed vast opportunities for the church to present the un“consecration” (to borrow J. Gresham Machen’s term), not changing paradigm revealed in Scripture. in the hallowed halls of academia, but in the vast plains of While many Christians bemoan the rise of postmodpainful, inescapable reality. ernism and the fall of a moral, God-fearing society, there “Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but is an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover the spirialso all of human thought,” Machen asserted. This mentuality of the church and the rich intellectual capacities of tality was largely lost in the many intellectually vacuous those who are led by God’s revelation as the true source ecumenical and evangelistic movements of the twentieth of knowledge. Postmodernists care not one bit for hollow century. Instead, Christianity was often reduced to mere morality, petty platitudes, and rogue knowledge. Their resocial programs and “soul-winning.” “Christianity will injection of modernism is largely not a rebuke on the gospel— deed accomplish many useful things in this world,” though the gospel is always offensive—but a rebuke of an Machen noted, “but if it is accepted in order to accomplish intellectualism that Kant had untethered from any sense those useful things it is not Christianity.” (For these of meaning or telos. quotes and many of Machen’s greatest writings, see D. G. Thus, thousands of young Westerners stream into Hart, Selected Shorter Writings: J. Gresham Machen [PhillipsAfrica each year because it presents an authentic view of burg, NJ: P & R, 2004.]) the world. Human reason and goodness are unable to harIf biblical orthodoxy is to again be the hallmark of the ness the power of evil because they are each tainted by its church and piety its outflow, if the gospel is to once again power. Millions of dollars and effective social programs are offer more than therapeutic value to a world wallowing in overturned in one night by a flurry of machetes and a coup. misery, then the rich, intellectual resources of Christian docIt is in Africa that young Westerners can follow in the steps trine and history must again come to the fore. The cataof Descartes, shut themselves off in their own mental unilyst for such an intellectual renewal will likely be born in verse, and begin to think anew. the cradle of the early church: Africa. ■ Unlike Descartes, however, they know that knowledge does not form in a vacuum. That is where the demise of Stephen Roberts (M.Div, Westminster Seminary California) is a modernism began. Having cast off the shackles of modchaplain candidate in the U.S. Army Reserves and vice president of ernism, postmodernists are experiencing the world, seekJoy to the World, a nonprofit organization that is helping revitaling to unlock its secrets. Out of the chaos in Africa, postize poverty-stricken Malawi, Africa. He recently interned with the modernists find two enticing options for restructuring the National Center for Public Policy Research and has written for The ruins of the mind: Christianity and paganism.

Washington Times.

Paganism is no easy adversary. It is the defective code written on every human heart; the default for all who seek understanding and meaning. It purports to find the difficult answers within the world and human heart rather than pointing to their folly. In the postmodern ruins of modernism, paganism looks incredibly attractive to the young.

The enigma that is Africa provides an apologetic

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

“For the Sake of the Story”

Doctrine and Discernment in Reading C. S. Lewis

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o modern writer has gotten more Christian truth into more heads than C. S. Lewis. His works of popular apologetics are full of clarity, insight, and good sense; his fiction glows with high imagination and wholesome wisdom. No one is better at showing us the contours of the Christian worldview in all their sanity and splendor.

Yet when we move from that big picture to the details of specific doctrine, Lewis’s more knowledgeable readers are sometimes distressed to find that he is not an entirely safe guide. For example, he made vicarious penal substitution just one of many theories of the atonement in Mere Christianity, and not the one that was central to his thought (it was to Paul’s!).1 He rejected the doctrine of total depravity in terms that show he did not understand it.2 He had a high view of Scripture, but one that stopped short of affirming its inerrancy.3

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ture of the necessity of dying to oneself in order to live to lative point. You must not confuse my romances with my God. Yet the whole premise that creates the narrative framework by which these theses. In the latter I state and argue a creed. In the forgems are delivered runs smack up against a line of mer much is merely supposed for the sake of the story.”

New Testament teaching that is not only clear and forthright but just plain blunt: “It Such lapses are not central to the good points in is appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the judgLewis’s expository writings, and they often pass unnoticed. ment” (Heb. 9:27). “Behold, now is the acceptable time, beBut in his fiction, Christian motifs and their doctrinal imhold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). plications get incarnated more powerfully, for good or ill.

What are we to do with this?

The Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe portrays the substitutionary nature of the atonement more acInclusivism and Implicit Faith? curately than Mere Christianity explains it. On the other hand, he Last Battle is Narnia’s Book of Revelation. Narnia other passages may plant doctrinally unsound images in the has its Anti-Christ and False Prophet, its Final Aposminds of the unwary. tasy, its Battle of Armageddon, and its Last Judgment, Two such passages concern us in this essay. Both sugleading to the revelation of the new and true Narnia, Aslan’s gest doctrines that are problematic at best, yet increasingCountry. The seriousness of the issues facing the faithful ly popular among younger evangelicals. The passages are in the Last Days is presented well, and once again we get related in that both imply the possibility of a second chance a splendid vision of what heaven might be like: for salvation after death; one also suggests inclusivism, the notion of a salvation available apart from an explicit faith It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone in Christ as Lord and Savior embraced in this life. They are was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the found in The Great Divorce and in Narnia’s The Last Battle. ground and neighed, and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here.

A Second Chance after Death?

This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we he title of The Great Divorce refers to the great gulf that loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a litexists between Hell and Heaven. A busload of cititle like this. Bree-heee-hee! Come further up, come zens of Hell is allowed to visit the outskirts of Heavfurther in!”5 en. Lewis as narrator observes their interactions with various departed saints they knew in life, who try to persuade them to stay and go with them on toward the heart of HeavThis is Lewis at his best. But on the way to this inspiren, the mountains. He also records commentary on those ing moment we have a character, Emeth, who is a worinteractions from his own spiritual mentor, George Macshipper of Tash, the cruel and demonic false god of the Donald, now one of the saints in Heaven. Most of the visCalormenes. Emeth discovers after his death that he has reitors do not like it in Heaven or cannot bring themselves ally been worshipping Aslan all along without knowing it. to part from their sins, and so choose to go back to Hell.

When he meets Aslan after death, he expects to be rejected But one, a sensualist whose sensuality is objectified as a red by him as a Tash worshipper, but instead receives this lizard sitting on his shoulder, allows the lizard to be killed. speech: As a result, he is transformed from a ghost into a man, and the lizard is resurrected as a stallion. He mounts it and they Son, thou art welcome....Not because [Tash] and I are ride off toward the mountains together.4 one but because we are opposites, I take to me the The Great Divorce is full of splendors and spiritual insights. services thou hast done to him. For I and he are of My own favorite part is the way the “spiritual” world of such different kinds that no service which is vile can Heaven is portrayed as more real, more substantial, than our be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done familiar material world. Walking on the grass is like to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep walking on sharp knife-blades for the shadowy “ghosts” his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me he has truly from Hell; rain drops would go through the ones who do sworn, though he know it not....And if any man do not yet “belong” there like bullets. The Liberal Theologian a cruelty in my name, then, though he say the name and the Avant-Garde Artist who decline their invitations of Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his to stay are devastating portraits of the besetting intellecdeed is accepted....Unless thy desire had been for me tual pathologies of their kinds. The “divorce” between Heavthou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. en and Hell implied by the title is portrayed wonderfully.

For all find what they truly seek.6 The death and resurrection of the lizard is an intriguing pic-

Lewis wrote, “I have no doctrine on such a purely specu-

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Here we have not only an apparent postmortem conversion but also inclusivism in the form of the doctrine of “implicit faith”: the idea that some who have never heard the gospel can be saved by Christ’s sacrifice without explicit faith in him, if they follow the light they have. (What Lewis portrays in Emeth he had earlier explained in Mere Christianity: “There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.”7) Even more troubling is the absence of grace from Emeth’s acceptance by Aslan. The explanation given for the salvation of this “righteous pagan” has reference only to Emeth’s service, Emeth’s true desire and seeking; if Aslan’s unmerited favor has anything to do with it, it is not important enough to be mentioned. (So the passage at least has the virtue of illustrating the fact that what is called “implicit faith” is often really a misnomer for explicit works!)

We have already seen that Scripture gives no clear hope of any second chance for conversion after death; indeed, what it has to say on the matter points decidedly in the other direction. What one believes here and now has eternal consequences; this life is that serious. Inclusivism and implicit faith are more difficult. It is not easy to explain why a good God would enact a costly plan of salvation and then apparently leave the great bulk of the human race throughout its history excluded from access to the Good News, which is their only hope of redemption. And those who do not know the Law have general revelation. Could not the Holy Spirit use the witness of Nature and the Law written in their hearts (Rom. 1) to bring some of them to such a faith as that revelation makes possible for them? And might God not count such faith as righteousness? One must certainly sympathize with those who hope it might be so.

Nevertheless, two important considerations have kept most Christians who trace their roots to the Reformation from affirming such a hope as having any sure biblical grounds. First, the references to general revelation in Romans 1 are part of an argument the conclusion of which is that all human beings, both Jew and Gentile, are included under sin and rendered without excuse. General revelation is not presented as an alternate path to salvation but as that which condemns the Gentile, just as the Law of Moses condemns the Jew. To find an exception to that universal condemnation in Romans would be to make part of Paul’s evidence go against the tenor of his whole argument.

It is an exegetical ploy that has no traction once we attend to the train of thought as opposed to its individual propositions by themselves.

Second, as Christians in general and especially as Christian teachers, we have been entrusted with a very definite and specific message: God offers salvation to believing sinners who cast themselves upon Christ as their crucified and risen Lord and Savior. “If we confess with our mouths Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

As ambassadors of Christ, we are authorized and empow-

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ered to offer salvation on that basis to all who believe. Speculations about the hard cases, the fate of those who have never heard, are not part of that message. We have no authority to offer any other basis of hope outside of and beyond the message we have been given.

If you ask me, “What must I do to be saved?” I can only tell you, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” If you ask, “What must the unreached pagan do to be saved?” I have no scriptural warrant for changing the answer; he too must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you ask, “What if he never hears?” I can only tell you that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. I have been given the authority by God himself speaking in his Word to offer salvation to sinners on the basis of explicit faith in Christ. I have no authority to give anyone the hope or assurance of salvation on any other basis. What God does with the unreached will be in accordance with his justice, his mercy, and his wisdom, and if we find Emeths in Heaven I will be very happy indeed; but if I now offer them any hope of anything other than judgment apart from faith in Christ, I step outside of my authority and betray my commission. That is why the Westminster Larger Catechism has to give a negative answer to Question 60: “Can they who have never heard the gospel, and so know not Jesus Christ, nor believe in him, be saved by their living according to the light of nature?”8 Reading with Discernment ewis then, despite his many virtues as a Christian thinker and writer, has passages that encourage doctrinal perspectives that are biblically problematic, perspectives to which young evangelicals in their growing accommodation to the spirit of the age are increasingly susceptible. This we must recognize. But before we can respond properly to what Lewis was doing, we had first better make sure that we understand it. On closer inspection, the support for these questionable doctrines is sometimes less clear than it seemed at first.

For example, in the introduction to The Great Divorce, Lewis says, “I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell; and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”9 Are the passengers on the bus actually from Hell then or not? It’s hard to tell. Maybe Lewis was more concerned to portray the psychology of conversion in a setting that puts Hell or Heaven at stake and shows the contrast between them than he was to tell us whether or not an actual postmortem conversion is possible. This possibility is supported by a comment Lewis made to one Edward T. Dell, who had written to ask about Lewis’s doctrine in 1949. In response, Lewis wrote, “I have no doctrine on such a purely speculative point. You must not confuse my romances with my theses. In the latter I state and argue a creed. In the former much is merely supposed for the sake of the story.”10 This is an important distinction, and it does help a bit.

A “supposal” suggested is not necessarily a doctrine de-

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fended, and we must not automatically erect the one into the other. Unfortunately, as we have seen, some of the questionable doctrine shows up not only suggested in “romances” but also stated in “theses,” in a book in which Lewis had set out to expound and defend “mere” Christianity. He did not always succeed in doing so.

If Lewis is not always a safe guide to doctrine, should we continue to give him the preeminent place he has had in our reading? Should we continue to recommend him at all? I would say yes, absolutely. Otherwise we should miss the wonders and glories I have already hinted at here, and many more besides.11 But we should be reminded that no extra-biblical writer—not even Luther or Calvin (and definitely not Donald Williams!)—should be read without the constant exercise of critical discernment rooted in Scripture as the plumb line of truth. As great as he was, C. S. Lewis was no exception to this rule. That is well and good for adults, who can read with discernment. But should we still give our children the Narnia books to read? No. Read them with your children instead! Then you can make use of an unparalleled opportunity to cultivate their receptivity to all that is true, good, and beautiful, while at the same time learning the biblical discernment you will be modeling for them.

Conclusion he same devotion to truth that requires me to dissent from Lewis at points also requires me to acknowledge my great debt to him. Without his influence, I doubt I would be a Christian today at all. If we learn to practice both receptivity and discernment, then he is one of those writers who can put us on the road that leads to the place described in the final paragraph of The Chronicles of Narnia:

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And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.12 ■

Donald T. Williams is author most recently of Mere Humanity: Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman, 2006), Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007) and The Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice, 2008). He is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Free Church of America who serves as professor of English and director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College, Georgia.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan, 1943), 57f.

2C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: MacMillan, 1967), 54–55; cf. Donald T. Williams, Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman, 2006), 63.

3Donald T. Williams, “An Apologist’s Evening Prayer: Reflecting on C. S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms,” in C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, Legacy, 4 vols., ed. Bruce L. Edwards (London: Praeger, 2007), 3:237–56.

4C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: MacMillan, 1946), 98–105.

5C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (1956; rpt. New York: Harper Collins, 1984), 213.

6Lewis, The Last Battle, 205–6.

7Lewis, Mere Christianity, 176.

8The Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms with the Scripture Proofs at Large, together with The Sum of Saving Knowledge (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1973), 157.

9Lewis, The Great Divorce, 7.

10The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931–1949, ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 914.

11For much more on this point, see Donald Williams, Mere Humanity.

12Lewis, The Last Battle, 228.

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Speaking Of…

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hen is all I have been seeing in this country false? These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts—were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”

“Or might ye not as well say, anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things? But ye’d do better to say neither. Ye saw the choices a bit more clearly than ye could see them on earth: the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give.”

“A dream? Then—then—am I not really here, Sir?” “No, Son,” said [the Teacher] kindly, taking my hand in his. “It is not so good as that....Ye are only dreaming. And if ye come to tell of what ye have seen, make it plain that it was but a dream. See ye make it very plain. Give no poor fool the pretext to think ye are claiming knowledge of what no mortal knows....”

“God forbid, Sir,” said I, trying to look very wise.

“He has forbidden it. That’s what I’m telling ye.”

—C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

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JESUS AMONG OTHER CHRISTS

ATHANASIUS AGAIN Little did I suspect when we walked toward King’s Chapel in Boston on a hot and steamy Sunday morning in midJuly, that our few steps to the pew would take me back to the fourth century. As my wife and I approached King’s Chapel, I scanned the church sign and noticed it was Unitarian. Architecturally, the church building looked Anglican. The stone church, made of Quincy granite, was opened in 1754.

Being vaguely familiar with the rise in the 1800s in New England of Unitarian Universalism (that is, all are eventually reconciled to God), I knew enough to know that there was probably a lot more to learn about the dichotomy between the sign and the structure. I sensed that there was a story within its walls.

The reason we selected this church? Pure convenience— it was across from our hotel. After a moment of indecision on the threshold of the entrance, we decided to go in. False teaching redoubles our efforts to affirm what is true and

to cast down that which is false. Sometimes hearing other religious perspectives—although errant—can be instructive and educational, allowing us to delve deeper into what we believe and why. Other perspectives may also spur a healthy self-examination of many of the inconsistencies in our own understanding of Truth and our own falling short of the biblical ideal.

I learned later, through my study after the service, that King’s Chapel was the first Anglican Church in Massachusetts. It became Unitarian (the first in America to do so) in the early 1780s when the acting minister, James Freeman, refused to read the sections from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer that prayed for the English monarchy (the Revolutionary War had left many of the ecclesiastical questions between the American and English Anglican church unresolved). He added, at the end of his statement, that he also could no longer assent to the Athanasian Creed: Jesus is both God and man and the sole way of salvation.

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(Rev. 20:10).

What made the sermon so excruciating to hear were we act like it; be as generous, kind, thoughtful, forgiving, her attempts to affirm that these words were authentic to and loving to others as God has been to us.

Jesus, yet she interpreted them in a way opposite to what orthodox believers have In short, Freeman was a Socinian who believed—in gendeclared throughout the centuries. We believe there is a teel and eloquent defiance of Holy Scripture—that Jesus judgment coming, with the lost going to hell/Lake of Fire was a man, a great moral man, but only a man; not a mewith the devil and his angels for eternity. The converse is diator between a holy God and sinful humanity. Instead, also true: that God is redeeming a people from all the naJesus was a model of who we can become. (Arians believe tions. It is Good News and Bad News—the goodness and that Jesus was neither God nor man, but a special creatseverity of God (Rom. 11:22). ed being who is also an example, but not our God/man savI have never watched someone trying to put a square ior who died as a substitute for our sins.) The end result peg into a round hole, but on this day (theologically speakof both postures? Self-deification—becoming God—deing) she pounded away essentially to the conclusion that termining ourselves what is true, the oldest temptation in none are lost, all are saved. It just wouldn’t fit the verses. the world planted in the Garden of Eden. Essentially agreeShe did grant that some would have to be in the fires an ing with Satan, “Did God really say...?” “awfully long time” before God would grant them delivKing’s Chapel then edited and published their own edierance from their own internal torment of soul-dis-ease tion of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with all referand/or the external purifying flames of God’s Dr. Benjamin ences to the British monarchy and the Trinity removed. In Spock-like pseudo-discipline: “Stay in the corner of Hades 1785, the congregation assented to the changes. Thus, King’s until you are sorry.” I thought, “Would not Jesus mention Chapel broke free from both her earthly and eternal king— that the torment would end if it were the case?” Adding and yet kept its name, which left me wondering who the to and taking away words from the Scripture is dangerous king was/is. business (Rev. 22:18–19).

After Freeman’s heterodox views reached his fellow clerIn a telling synchronistic sign between the spiritual and gymen, they implored the presiding bishop Samuel the temporal, as she continued to preach, the church grew Seabury not to approve his ordination. Bishop Seabury hotter and hotter. My wife looked like she was going to pass agreed with the clergy’s concerns; and on November 18, out, and the man who had ushered us in and had taken 1787, Freeman was ordained by the senior warden of King’s the collection had perspired through large parts of his blue Chapel. This created an unusual combination of King’s shirt. We were in a scorchingly hot church, hearing an aposChapel being Anglican in liturgical style/service, Congretate sermon where the windows were shut and both the gational in governance, and Unitarian in belief. chapel and the minds were darkened—leading to a suffoThe service at King’s Chapel on that hot Sunday in July cating and stifling darkened deadness where neither the sun was conducted by a visiting woman pastor whose bio in the of sound teaching shone nor the breeze of the spirit of truth church bulletin noted that she was “a lifelong student of blew. A parable of hellfire as good as Gehenna. comparative religion who has studied Sufi mystical Islam I admired her courage for taking on these verses; yet I for 18 years.” I therefore anticipated a sermon based on was frustrated and angered that she could literally misread some Sufi Koranic text. Instead she preached from the these verses so erroneously. I was also sad for her. I wantBible. I was surprised. The title of the message was “The ed the service to end to put all of us out of our misery.

Fire of Love” with the references for the sermon coming She stated that in early Christianity (the first four cenfrom Jesus’ teaching about the saved and the lost, heavturies), other interpretations of the Christian faith existed en and hellfire, eternal salvation and punishment: (that is historically correct, although she subtly suggested that these “lost Christianities” had more validity theologi• Matthew 13:24–30 (wheat/tares) cally than the orthodox creedal statements and doctrinal de• Matthew 13:36–43 (wailing and gnashing of teeth) cisions of Nicaea and Chalcedon). My argument to her in • Matthew 25:31–46 (sheep and goats: “Then he will a subsequent e-mail correspondence was that these “lost also say to those on his left hand, ‘Depart from me, Christianities” were lost for a reason; they were wrong. She you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for posited that the “orthodox” perspective prevailed prethe devil and his angels’”) dominantly through raw political power after the Council of Nicaea rather than biblical truth; that primarily coercive These are the most challenging verses to Universalism outmeans in the process of conversion rather than persuasion side of Revelation 20:15: “And anyone not found written were employed by churchmen after Nicaea until today. in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire” where James T. Dennison Jr. in his article, “Athanasius, the Son “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” of God and Salvation,” provides a more accurate picture of

Our salvation is sure and it helps the biblical witness if

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A T H A N A S I U S

what happened in the bitter fifty-year battle for orthodoxy: An inveterate defender of the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325), Athanasius has been revered by the church catholic for his unswerving insistence on the deity of the Son of God [author’s note: versus the Arians]. This insistence was not without cost. Five times Athanasius was banished from his church. He had to flee for his life, being protected or secreted by his friends. At several points in his career, it seemed as if he alone stood for orthodoxy hence the phrase Athanasius contra mundum (Athanasius against the world)....The upshot of all this revisionist ink is that Nicene orthodoxy triumphed after 325, not because it was biblical, not because it was right, but because of political might. The emperor Constantine was eager to consolidate his Christian political power through the display of his own magisterial theological savvy. Nicaea was the theological tool in advancing the imperial agenda. Revisionists quickly point out that it was not coincidental that Constantine attended the Council of Nicaea. He was there to advance his own “imperial theology.”

Dennison concludes by saying: Here is the fundamental bottom line. How can one who is not God, one who is a mere creature, save a multitude of sinners, or even one sinner? How can a creature satisfy the debt owed to the infinite God? Revisionists may rehabilitate Arius. But the person of the Son whom they represent is incapable of saving other sinful creatures. Athanasius understood this, and so we too stand with the great Alexandrian “Athanasius contra mundum” if necessary.

I think the perspective I heard that Sunday at King’s Chapel does legitimately challenge Christians to be exceedingly careful to not marry the gospel to the coercive nature of the state too closely. The separation of powers— what is known as Sphere Sovereignty—is not only a constitutional principle but is biblical. When the church has to resort to primarily political means to promote God’s truth, the battle is already lost. We are to be good citizens and participate in the political process. Yet we should also preach truth and practice “good works” in charity and volunteerism, and not think that voting for the “right” candidate, attending church faithfully, and listening to Christian music to be the fulfillment of the biblical imperative of being salt in a rotting world. Our salvation is sure and it helps the biblical witness if we act like it; be as generous, kind, thoughtful, forgiving, and loving to others as God has been to us.

We must not, however, succumb and be seduced by the “idol of tolerance” in our day, where we’d rather not be inconvenienced by the uneasiness of being labeled as a member of the Christian American Taliban who believe in right and wrong and say so; as if to protest the evils of our age, perhaps ungraciously at times, is somehow the precursor

A G A I N

of crashing planes into buildings killing thousands. To be silent in our age of rebellion is criminal.

Today, as in Arius’s and Freeman’s day, religious pluralism reigns. Even among those who attend outwardly evangelical churches, a majority of 57 percent believes that “many religions can lead to eternal life” (Americans Are Not Dogmatic About Religion, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life).

How any self-defined evangelical (a big subset of this audience) can believe contrary to John 14:6—“I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”—bedevils my mind.

In a recent sermon, our pastor cited a quote by Curtis White from his article, “Hot Air Gods” (Harper’s, December 2007): “What we require of belief is not that it make sense but that it be sincere…it is heresy without an orthodoxy. It is heresy as an orthodoxy.” The “hot air” of hell is horrifying, forever.

As our pastor preached within the walls of both our sanctuary and presented the “solas”—sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”), sola fide (“by faith alone”), sola gratia (“by grace alone”), and solus Christus (“Christ alone”)—the sun shone upon my face and a refreshing wind came through the open window and caressed my body and soul. I thought, “Thank you Lord for Athanasius.” Soli Deo gloria (“glory to God alone”)! ■

Eric Bierker is a high school guidance counselor and doctoral student at Temple University. He is also owner of College Transition Group (www.collegetransitiongroup.com), which helps students make the successful transition to college.

Speaking Of…

J

esus whom I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God. —Athanasius

M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3 9

INTERVIEW f o r

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An Interview with John Stackhouse, Jr.

How Can They Believe In the One of Whom They Have Not Heard?

Professor John Stackhouse, Jr., is the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is Making the Best of it: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is a senior advisory editor to Christianity Today and advisor to the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism. Editor-in-Chief and White Horse Inn host Michael Horton recently spoke with him on the topic of inclusivism.

Can you give a brief sketch of an evangelical or orthodox inclusivist and how that position differs from what traditionally has been understood?

Part of the problem here is that the term “inclusivism” is itself inclusive of several different theological points of view—most of which I myself disagree with as being insufficiently orthodox, and particularly as being insufficiently grounded in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

There are, for instance, people who call themselves inclusivists who say that as long as you are faithfully practicing some other religion, God will count that in your favor. I don’t think that’s true.

Do you think that’s a little closer to the position of Karl Rahner and the Second Vatican Council, for example?

Yes, I think there are some elements like that, and in some other thinkers as well who seem to think that sincerity of belief in at least a religion that we count as a good religion— and you can hear all those qualifications in the background, can’t you?—is what God is looking for. I don’t think that’s true. I think God is looking for what the Bible calls faith:

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faith in the one true God, faith in God as he has revealed himself to us, as both holy and merciful, and trust in God to provide for us a salvation that we cannot earn for ourselves.

Evangelical inclusivists believe, with all of our orthodox friends, that the only basis on which anyone is saved is not whether they practice their religion correctly— you can’t get saved by practicing even Christianity correctly. We believe we’re saved by the work of God based on the finished work of Jesus Christ and his life and death and resurrection and continuing ministry for us, and we put our trust in him. Where we have a disagreement then is over the question: does somebody actually have to know about Jesus, do they have to have the gospel preached to them, in order for them to understand it and respond to it in faith?

That’s what most Christians over most of Christian history have believed. Or, is it possible that the Bible suggests that some people will have encountered the true God in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, will have been convicted of their need for God and have trusted him sincerely in their hearts, but have

not yet heard about or encountered Jesus Christ by name? Those of us who are evangelical inclusivists suggest that that is a good way to understand the Bible.

What scriptural passages would you use to make that argument?

I think what we see partly is the theological expression of the gospel.

What is the way in which any of us understand how we come to God? We come through faith, as Hebrews 11 tells us, that those who come to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. We connect that with Jesus’ teaching that no one comes to him unless the Father draws him.

We believe with all orthodox Christians that God’s grace always has to come first—what theologians call prevenient grace—God draws us to himself; nobody would do that on their own without God’s mercy. And, particularly, we look at Old Testament examples of people who have not apparently heard of Jesus and yet are held up to us as examples of faith—most obviously Abraham, but many others as well—who put their trust in God as far as their theology has advanced about God and who trust him for their salvation. And so they are, in terms of their knowledge, before the time of Jesus. And we wonder then whether there are people elsewhere in the world today who—even though they live chronologically after Jesus—are liv-

ing before the message of Jesus has come to them, and might be in a position similar to Abraham or, more interestingly, Melchizedek, who is not of that same line of revelation and who also is identified as a priest of God Most High.

How would you respond to those who would say that the New Testament, especially Paul, interprets Abraham as looking forward to Christ, as the paradigm example of someone for whom Christ was the object of faith, even though that revelation wasn’t as clearly revealed as it became in the New Testament? How would you respond to someone who said that’s obviously different from the qualitative difference you have with someone who not only doesn’t see Christ as fully as New Covenant believers, but really doesn’t have Christ as the object of his or her faith?

I think that in the case of Abraham, even if we give Paul’s views a pretty strong and broad interpretation, I don’t know that most biblical scholars would think that Abraham actually had prophetic visions of the work of Jesus and actually saw him, so to speak, in the future as a clear historical figure. But even if he did, I don’t think most of us would then go on to say that everybody in Israel had such a clear sense of Jesus, and that it seems much more likely that the children of Israel came to whatever salvation they enjoyed because of their trust in Yahweh, the one true God, and in following God’s instructions to them.

Again, they didn’t earn their salvation—the blood of bulls and goats can never atone for sins—but they put their trust in God somehow to save them. And my sense is that many people today—in nonChristian situations and even in some Christian homes and some Christian churches—are perverse in their teaching and awful in the way they treat one another. For instance, I think of abusive homes or groups of Christians with bad theology where we trust that the light

of God’s truth—and not just of God’s truth in some propositional sense but the light of God’s own character—that God’s own person shines through by the power of the Holy Spirit such that people can truly encounter God and are given the gift of faith. That’s the kind of viewpoint I’m suggesting here.

So you wouldn’t see a qualitative difference between the faith of Abraham and, say, the faith of Mohammad?

Well, I don’t know about the faith of Mohammad. What I do know is that Mohammad’s theology was really bad; at least as we have it mediated to us in the Quran and the broader Islamic tradition. I could not presume from the outside to know whether Mohammad is going to end up in heaven or not; but frankly I find it difficult to believe that he will, given that he seems to have known quite a bit about the orthodox teaching of Jesus Christ and seems not to have taught it.

So, my hope for Mohammad is pretty slender. I have to be honest about that. Whereas I think in the case of some Muslims around the world, who have been brought up in that erroneous tradition, nonetheless they learn some true things about God—that there is one God and that he is great and merciful. The testimony of many missionaries to the Muslim world tells us of people there who have realized that there is a true God in whom they can put their trust.

And, frankly, many Muslim converts to Christianity don’t believe that they’re changing gods when they come to Christian faith; they believe that they have come to a much clearer understanding of the god they have previously worshipped—just as the apostle Paul didn’t believe he switched gods but actually came to a much fuller understanding of the God he had always but erroneously served.

What about the biblical passages that speak of all of humanity being

under God’s judgment apart from faith in Christ, of salvation coming only to those who call on Christ’s name, or of faith that comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ? What do you say to people who find it inconceivable that these passages could be interpreted in an inclusivist way?

Romans 10 is a fascinating study of Paul mixing and matching references to God in the Old Testament with references to Christ, isn’t it? It seems to me then that it is not a helpful passage for the particular question we were discussing; namely, is there a necessity for people to hear about Christ or “just” about (the one, true) God? I submit that this passage so blends the two that there is no helpful way to tease them out for this debate.

Now, I don’t want to over-read this. I think that the primary way God brings men and women, boys and girls to himself around the world is through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think that the normative Christian tradition has always said that and I think the Bible says that. Let no one take false hope from what I’m saying today, that there are many people who are going to be reconciled to God who have never heard the gospel preached. The standard practice of the church is to get out there and to preach the gospel, and we definitely should do that. I’m simply saying that in the case of the millions of people who have lived and died between the time of Jesus and their own time—who have never had a chance, apparently, to hear the gospel—I don’t think we should write them off as necessarily lost. I’m suggesting that perhaps God in his mercy has spoken to them in the way in which they could hear according to the limited light they were given. And that seems to be what missionaries testify: as the gospel goes out, people encounter remote villages and individuals who have some vision or dream or inclination toward the true God. And here’s the test: M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 1

agreed on that. The question is, How is the benefit of that saving work mediated the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, we are responsito two classes of people: first, to the people who ble to repent and to accept that message in faith; and lived chronologically before Jesus and didn’t have a if we don’t, we are in peril. chance to respond to the when they hear about Jesus Christ, with sin. All people are under the good news of someone who didn’t do they recognize this as the true condemnation of the law, whether yet exist, at least not in the flesh; gospel about the true God? Mostly they have it written on their conand, second, to those people who they do. If they don’t, then they science or on tablets of stone, lived after Jesus, who are in culare turning aside from the only namely Gentiles and Jews togethtures and societies where they are true God and their souls really are er, and the only way out is through cut off from hearing that gospel? in peril. faith in Christ. And he says there, That’s what we’re talking about. explicitly, through faith in Christ.

So that’s how you would interpret How then would someone be able So the evangelical inclusivist posithe Gospels? For example, the relito respond to the light of nature in tion would say: we are saved by gious leaders who hear Jesus a saving way if the content of that grace alone, in Christ alone, but preach the gospel are responsible faith is in fact not gospel but simnot necessarily through faith in for what they hear, but they reject ply God as creator and judge?

Christ alone? it, which is why Jesus says essenThere is no way to get there from That’s right, with the particular tially that they are children of hell here; there is no way to be saved phrase, “faith in Christ alone.” We and that they will be condemned? on the basis of inference from what must have faith in God, and that he I think that’s crucial for us. When we think we see about God in nais—we believe because of the revepeople have the gospel preached to ture. I agree with your reading of lation given to us—the God and them, and here’s the second qualiPaul there. I think it’s interesting Father of Jesus Christ. And in that fier—when they have truly heard that you properly connect what sense, it is faith in Jesus Christ, it—then they are responsible for it.

Paul says about Gentiles with what who is of course the only true God. The reason I am putting the emPaul says about Jews. And if we But what we’re saying is that alphasis on the qualifier here is that, read those chapters the wrong way, though someone might not yet again, I have taught students who we’ll come to not just Paul’s wonknow the story of the historic charhave come from terrible Christian derful and terrifying conclusion acter of Jesus Christ—that incarnahomes for whom the actual mesthat all have sinned and come tion of the second person of the sage of the gospel is deeply intershort of the glory of God, but we’ll Trinity, that good news about his twined with abusive parents or come to the conclusion that everylife and death, resurrection and aswith irresponsible pastors, and so, body is condemned unless they cension that occurred in Israel two for them, they can’t yet separate have heard the gospel of Jesus thousand years ago—they may be out the wonderful Good News of Christ and responded to it, which is able, nonetheless, to put their faith Jesus from these terrible experiour context today. in the true God as he has revealed ences. Now, God knows those But Paul doesn’t mean that. Paul himself to them and to trust him to things and God can separate out doesn’t mean that nobody among save them somehow. those things. But what I think we the Jews was saved until his own I’m not sure how many of the need to say is that the normal picgeneration. He believed, of course, Old Testament Israelites really beture presented in Scripture is that that many faithful Jews had come lieved that the sacrificial system when the gospel of Jesus Christ is before him who were saved by the could save them. I expect a lot of preached, we are responsible to rework of Jesus Christ and by faith in them did. But their own prophets pent and to accept that message in the God of Jesus Christ. I think the were telling them that this really faith; and if we don’t, we are in better way to read Paul is that he is won’t do. There was this tension in peril. showing us that the only basis of the Old Testament as to how the salvation is neither the Gentile adblood of bulls and goats could ever In the opening argument of Roherence to the light that they’d take away sin. There must be mans 1–3, it seems that Paul is been given nor the Jewish adhersomething else, and this something clearly laying out an argument ence to the law that they’d been else, of course, is Jesus. I think that from general revelation that it’s given, for all fall short of the glory same apprehension, by God’s merlaw, not gospel. God exists, he’s of God, but through the saving cy, shows up in some other culgood, righteous, just, and angry work of Jesus Christ. We’re all tures where people think: “There’s

The normal picture presented in Scripture is that when

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no way that sacrificing to this idol or practicing this religion can possibly do for me what needs to be done.” All over the world, people have the sense that they need to be saved: they can’t just be good Buddhists or good Hindus on their own. And so, they come up with gods to try to save them. I think there is this divinely given instinct that we need a savior. Only God knows if people are then reaching back to him sincerely in their hearts, toward the only God who can save.

So if they call on one of these other “gods” or even an assembly of “gods” for salvation, are you saying that as long as they realize that they can’t save themselves and they’re looking to a god to save them, that is an inchoate calling upon the name of Jesus?

It might be, but it also might not be. I’m a big C. S. Lewis fan, but I think one of the least helpful passages in Lewis’s writings comes from the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia where we have Emeth, the hero from the side of the bad guys, the Calormenes. His name means “truth,” but he has faithfully served the god Tash, the almost satanic figure of the Calormenes. At the end of the story, Aslan, the Christ figure, welcomes Emeth and says, “All the good that you rendered toward Tash, I am happy to accept myself.” I think Lewis sets things up in a way so problematic that I just have to disavow it; I think it’s wrong. Because the way he depicts the god Tash is so satanic and dark, I don’t see how you can get to Aslan that way. I’m not talking about theological fuzziness; I’m talking about theological flat contradictions here, where Tash is pictured quite clearly as antichrist. It would be like worshipping Kali in the Hindu pantheon. So I don’t think that sincerely believing in some particular god is going to necessarily be accepted by Yahweh as proper. In fact, throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh is pretty severe

about the worship of other gods.

Instead, I think we have to have a situation in which the only true God makes himself known to people somehow through their hearts such that although they have fuzzy theology, they put their trust in him. I think that is extremely difficult to do in some religious contexts, which is why God has to resort to visions or dreams rather than through the established religion, because the established religion is so far away from Christian truth that there is no way to get home by way of that religion.

not groping around in the dark, and so they can get to know the Jesus Christ we know and love.

So if anyone is saved in other religions, it will be in spite of the teachings of that religion rather than through those teachings?

I agree with that and the only qualification, I’d say, is that I think in most religions there is something that is probably true in some ways.

It would be hard to imagine a totally false religion that got everything wrong, that would actually have any adherents. But they will not be generally saved in any religious structure that presents the gods or god in a way that is deeply different from the God of the Bible. I don’t see how that could happen.

So, if in the case of some religions, there is a kind, good, strong, provident, and merciful God such as we see, for instance, in Vishnu of Hinduism or in Allah in some forms of Islam, then I could imagine our true God speaking through those pictures to somebody who is otherwise not going to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, drawing them toward himself through that confused but somewhat accurate theology. But you hear all the qualifications I’m putting on. The fundamental bottom line here is: are they apprehending the true God by God’s gracious intervention in their lives, and are they responding with the gift of faith that God alone gives? I can imagine that happening in the case of people with fuzzy theology; but we need to get the gospel to them as soon as possible so they’re M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 3

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS mo de r n r e fo r matio n must-reads

Readings on Christianity and Pluralism The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism

by Tim Keller Dutton, 2008 An apologetic for a pluralistic culture, Keller tackles the difficult questions, turns them around, and makes the skeptic doubt his own doubts.

This isn’t just a resource for Christians, but a model of appropriate engagement for our own age.

by D. A. Carson Zondervan, 1996 An enduring treatment of the challenge of pluralism, Carson’s important work is still a beneficial resource for students of the Word. The book addresses philosophy, important thinkers, and practical questions with equal grace and ease.

Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission

Worldviews: A Christian Response to Religious Pluralism

by Anthony Steinbronn Concordia, 2007 What message of salvation is offered by the world’s religions? The author shows the relationship between our fundamental assumptions about the world and our hope for salvation.

by Harold Netland InterVarsity Press, 2001 Netland’s award-winning book examines the nature of our religious truth claims and the implications of our conclusions for both Christian doctrine and evangelism.

SEE ALSO: The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel (Zondervan)

Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb (Baker)

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Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans) Is Jesus the Only Savior? by James R. Edwards (Eerdmans)

REVIEWS w h a t ’ s

b e i n g

r e a d

Understanding Islam

T

he interest Christians have taken in Islam has a long and tortuous history,

was lost on Americans. For example, in the late 1740s Jonathan dating back as far as the seventh century. And the vast amount of literature Edwards (1703–58) began to take interest in success stories of overgenerated over the centuries has, as literature does, given birth to a variety seas Muslim evangelism. This no doubt appeased his evangelical of images of the Muszeal, but more importantly it gave him (and others) hope lim world. None of it that the millennium was nigh. He was convinced, he wrote, has been particularly that the “full enlightening and Conversion of all Maflattering. Rarely has it hometan and Heathen nations” would precede the combeen dispassionate and ing millennium, due to begin around the year 2000. objective. Most of it has Various eschatological conceptions of Islam persisted into been dramatic if not early national America. The historical growth of Islam was overtly apocalyptic. linked to the locusts emerging from the bottomless smokeAnd all of it has in one filled pit in Revelation 9:2–3, whereas its temporal politiway or another influcal ascendancy, imminent decline, and eventual destrucenced modern Christion were foretold in Ezekiel 38–39, throughout the sectian thought about Isond half of Daniel, and Revelation 16. William Miller (1782– lam. Several histories 1849) and the eponymous Millerites capitalized on this and have been written deeven offered the specific prediction of 1843 being the year tailing the European the Muslim world (along with the papacy) would collapse side of this history. and Christ would return.

Only recently, with the publication of Thomas S. Kidd’s American Modern Reformation invites you to submit Christians and Islam, has American Christians and a book review for publication in the the American story Islam: Evangelical CulReviews section of an upcoming issue this been told. ture and Muslims from The book begins the Colonial Period to year. We would like to give you the opporwith the colonial age the Age of Terrorism tunity to critique, evaluate, and consider when Americans were

by Thomas S. Kidd books both good and bad from your Princeton University Press, 2008 not necessarily “con210 pages (hardback), $29.95 versant with Islam” but Reformational perspective. Thoughtful still found the occasion Christians will examine the most important to “converse about Islam regularly.” The impetus for this books of the day, and we want to was not from any interaction with the hundreds if not thousands of Muslim slaves from Africa, Kidd argues. Rather, encourage interaction with books that it was the news that began to circulate in the late seveninspire and instruct, or maybe frustrate and teenth century of the enslavement of North American merconcern. Submit your review of chants and sailors by the Barbary pirates.

Islam made its way into Christian discourse in other ways 1,000 words or less in an email to as well. A host of American theologians envisioned the Musreviews@modernreformation.org. lim world playing a vital role in the Last Days. They also Please reference the guidelines made use of its theology by comparing it to Christianity to demonstrate the superiority of the latter. and suggestions available at Not surprisingly, given the geographical difficulties, there www.modernreformation.org/submissions. were no real attempts to address Islam with the gospel. This, however, does not mean the dream of Muslim conversion

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These and other bold predictions did not resonate well with nineteenth-century conservatives, but nor did it lead to more prudent interpretations of Islam. In fact, it led many, including C. I. Scofield (1843–1921), to reconsider their interpretation of the chronology of Revelation in relation to the Muslim world. Not only did he and other dispensationalpremillennialists began to see the majority of Revelation (particularly after chapter 4) as events that would take place in the future, but they also began to focus on the restoration of Israel in the midst of Muslim Palestine as an integral component of the drama of the apocalypse.

Kidd’s careful and comprehensive narration of these subtle yet significant theological developments is complemented by his treatment of other contributing, sociopolitical factors. He goes to great length to detail how the wide variety of nineteenth-century publications on Muhammad, Islamic theology, and American captivity at the hands of the Barbary pirates in North Africa perpetuated particular diabolical images of Islam.

Curiously, about the time that U.S. Marines broke the back of the North African corsairs and their patrons along the southwestern shores of the Mediterranean (particularly—as the “Marine’s Hymn” goes—on “the shores of Tripoli”), Kidd explains that American evangelicals finally began to address the prospect of sending missionaries to the Muslim world. He traces this development from the original missionaries sent to the Middle East who ended up directing most of their efforts to Eastern Christians, to a chapter-length treatment of America’s first serious scholar of and “apostle to Islam,” Samuel Zwemer (1867–1952).

He and his colleagues were filled with zeal for the evangelization of the 200 million Muslims scattered across the world, and were optimistically hopeful that, as Zwemer wrote in 1907 (evincing his postmillennial leanings), Islam was “doomed to fade away in time before the advance of humanity, civilization and enlightenment.”

The history of the Muslim world through the remainder of the twentieth century proved otherwise. Despite numerous signs that various millenarians took as evidence Islam was in a perpetual state of decline—such as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the growth of Zionism, and the return of Israel—Islam did not “fade away.” Zeal for bringing the gospel to Muslims didn’t either, but what Kidd observes is that the concept and attitude toward such an enterprise went in a host of different directions. Liberal Protestant denominations largely “abandoned the quest to win converts,” while conservative evangelicals of every stripe retained Zwemer’s missionary zeal, although they didn’t necessarily share his optimism.

Evangelical views of Islam and the events occurring in the Muslim world during the twentieth century were not really pessimistic either. Rather, they were extremely apocalyptic. Titles such as Martin DeHaan’s The Jew and Palestine in Prophecy (1950), Wilbur Smith’s Israel/Arab Conflict (1967), Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth (1970), and others flooded the market. Among evangelicals, apocalypse was in the air, and this heightened American sensitivities to the 4 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

growth of Islam both at home and abroad.

Kidd concludes his book by tracing the growing awareness and concerns evangelicals have had with the presence of Islam in America, from an American-born former Presbyterian named Mohammad Alexander Russell Webb (1846–1916) through the rise of the racist quasi-Muslim Nation of Islam, to the existence of a host of immigrant families and Muslim organizations scattered across the nation.

Then he covers missiological and eschatological thinking about Islam prior to and immediately after the events of September 11, 2001, showing the great diversity, increased sophistication, and wide array of opinions on Islam exhibited in contemporary Christian literature. As Islam continues its slow but steady growth in America, evangelicals of whatever stripe would be wise to consult American Christians and Islam, particularly as they continue to seek ways to approach Islam with sobriety and faithfulness.

Adam S. Francisco is assistant professor of historical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art

by Daniel A. Siedell Baker Academic, 2008 192 pages (paperback), $24.99 As a lover of art in general and abstraction in particular, I have wrestled with a number of questions. What is art? What constitutes good art? What responsibilities does the artist bear in transmitting one’s work to one’s audience? What responsibilities (if any) does the audience have in receiving such work? And what happens when faith is added to the equation? Should Christians even bother with so-called “secular” art?

Daniel Siedell’s book, God in the Gallery, answers many of these questions. The book is divided into seven essays that, in the words of the author, form a critical engagement with a Christian critical reception of modern and contemporary art. Each chapter is engaging and incisive. The author’s discussions of the contemplative element in the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, the nature of art criticism, and the didactic element in Lutheran altarpieces are thorough and insightful. The author especially shines in defending the legitimacy of modern and contemporary art. He persuasively argues that art is constituted by its environment, such as physical exhibition and visual/conceptual history and its ecology; i.e., its subjective

qualities that move both artist and audience. In doing so, he also exposes the fallacies of the narrower, populist approach that views modern art through a lens of suspicion.

He writes, The notion of modern and contemporary art’s elitism is based on the assumption that art used to be accessible to the ‘average person’ when the church was the patron for the visual arts at some point before the Reformation. But this is a red herring....The average person in fifteenth century Florence may or may not have been literate and may or may not have understood all the iconography and symbolism of an altarpiece, for example, but that person would have recognized the main contours of the imagery because it was part of the liturgical life of the church that worshippers absorbed. It was what defined their experience from birth....Moreover, the ‘average person’ in contemporary American society is literate, educated, and devotes a tremendous amount of time to learning new skills, whether on the Internet or the bike path, in the boardroom or the kitchen. But art is rarely a part of this continuing education because people believe that art needs no preparation. It should simply ‘speak’ to them, clearly and right away, or else it is ‘elitist.’ (163) Such a statement exposes the laziness of our culture.

Even Christians, who believe that all things beautiful have their source in God, define their aesthetic too narrowly.

While God in the Gallery educates, it also confuses. The first weakness concerns the matter of exegesis. Throughout his book, Siedell makes repeated references to the altar to the unknown god (Acts 17). In the introduction, he seems to have an overly optimistic view, claiming that “what [Paul] knew and worshiped, they were already worshiping, although as ‘something unknown.’” (11). The context, however, suggests that we should be less optimistic. Verse 16 describes Paul’s spirit as provoked—a verb used in the Septuagint to describe the Lord’s anger concerning Israel’s idolatry (see Ned B. Stonehouse, Paul Before the Areopagus and Other New Testament Studies [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957], 6). Rather than finding truth amid falsehood, Paul uses this discovery as a point of contact with his audience.

This altar probably quelled the polytheistic fear that some unknown god was being deprived of his rightful worship.

(Indeed he was!) And similar to their Athenian forbears, twentieth-century abstractionists like Pollock and Rothko were also searching for transcendence and immanence, producing “altarpieces to an unknown God.” It is one thing to say that their paintings are a point of contact with image-bearers who are suppressing the truth, but it is quite another thing to say that their paintings are windows into the one true object of worship.

This brings us to the second major problem that involves the author’s liturgical assertions. When Siedell mentions “Nicene Christianity,” he really means Nicaea II, locale of

the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which legitimized the use of icons in the church. While it is true that many branches of Christianity allow for pictures of Christ, Mary, and the saints, Eastern Orthodoxy goes a step further. Siedell, a Lutheran, seems to approve. “Nicene Christianity does not merely tolerate images in the church. It requires them” (31). He asserts that “since God deified matter through the incarnation of the Son, not only has all humanity subsequently been changed, so too has all visual imagery and aesthetic form. Herein lies the important difference between veneration in the new covenant and idolatry in the old covenant, which had not enjoyed the blessings of the incarnation” (83); although later, the author tempers his argument, “Given the high value placed on icons in this study, it might be assumed that I advocate using only icons and the ‘hard things of the Orthodox and Catholic tradition.’

But this is not the case. For good or ill, we must make our own way, step by step” (145). Unlike Paul who used the altar to point his audience to the Word of God, Siedell seems to point his audience to visual icons as “a means of communion, a way to partake of the divine nature” (83). Now it is true that Byzantine icons have a powerful presence; but while I admit their power, I question their propriety.

Scripture nowhere requires their making. In fact, the lesson of the snake on the pole, a christological image required

by God but perverted by man, should temper our confidence in such things (Num. 21:8–9; John 3:14–15; 2 Kings 18:4). For example, as a Christian then who has taken vows to uphold the teachings of Scripture as summarized in the Westminster Standards, I appeal to Scripture over tradition, Word over image. As Jesus told his doubting disciple, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

God in the Gallery is stimulating, challenging, and, at times, infuriating (from a Reformed perspective). I cautiously recommend this book to mature Christians who desire to broaden their understanding of modern and contemporary art, and who can tolerate a very different hermeneutic.

Ken Golden is an ordained minister of the Presbytery of the Midwest of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

In the Splendor of Holiness

by Jon D. Payne Tolle Lege Press, 2008 122 pages (hardback), $13.50 Just over one hundred years ago, E. M. Bounds began his influential book Power Through Prayer by calling the Christian community of his day to abanM AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 7

don their reliance upon the latest church growth “techniques” and to concentrate instead on communing with Christ by way of massive doses of Word and prayer. Bounds insisted, The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men….What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer. (11) While Bounds’s work tends to emphasize the individual more than the worshiping community—something we might expect given his background in Methodism and the fact that he is writing primarily to ministers—it is still a helpful reminder that God has never been interested in techniques so much as in his people communing with him by Word and prayer.

The church in our day is without a doubt “on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel.” In search of a quick fix to problems caused by our longtime neglect of Christian discipleship, evangelicalism has elected to take the easy way out. It has opted for programs over people and seekerfriendly style over substance. And it has all been done with an eye to building the church. To borrow the well-known words of James Montgomery Boice, we have grossly overestimated what God will do in one year (or even five) and underestimated what he will do in twenty.

Jon Payne’s In the Splendor of Holiness: Rediscovering the Beauty of Reformed Worship for the 21st Century fits neatly into this same category of writings. It is a succinct introduction to the subject of Reformed worship and one designed to whet the reader’s appetite for further study. Dr. Payne has even included study/discussion questions at the end of each chapter in order to encourage deeper reflection and review.

What is more, the book is written by a pastor who himself has wrestled (and continues to wrestle) with the topic of corporate worship within the context of the local church, and who longs to see God’s people transformed by “rediscovering the beauty of Reformed worship” for themselves. For all of these reasons, the book is an excellent resource for officer training courses, staff meetings, small group Bible studies, new member courses, and one-on-one discipleship opportunities within the church. If we are going to produce a generation of men and women who opt for communion with God (especially of the corporate variety) over the latest techniques and methods, we will need to capitalize on books such as In the Splendor of Holiness.

The first two chapters of this book set the stage for the remainder of the study. In the first chapter, Dr. Payne offers a definition of liturgy and defends its necessity in the corporate worship services of the church. In the second 4 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

chapter, he seeks to help Christians prepare themselves for worship by explaining what worship is and by advocating two ways of ensuring that every worshiper is ready for Sunday morning when they walk through the doors of the facility. The second chapter, which is by far the longest of the book, contains a helpful discussion of eight characteristics that distinguish biblical worship. When taken together, these characteristics provide a powerful corrective to the tendencies of the twenty-first-century church that is striving after the latest techniques and programs. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

The remaining chapters (three through thirteen) take up an examination of the component parts of the liturgy of a typical Reformed worship service: the call to worship, the singing of psalms and hymns, the reading of Scripture, the confession of sin, the assurance of pardon, the confession of faith, the pastoral prayer, the giving of tithes and offerings, the preaching of the Word, the sacraments, and the benediction. The overriding concern in each of these chapters is to give an understanding of what these component parts involve and why they are to be included in Reformed liturgy. What emerges is a lucid and well-reasoned account of the distinctives of Reformed and Presbyterian worship in a form that is easily digestible. I would highly recommend it.

Dr. Guy M. Richard is senior minister of First Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

by Frank Viola David C. Cook, 2008 318 pages (paperback), $13.99 It is a fruitful exercise to be challenged about what one believes, and that on any point of doctrine. “Iron sharpens iron” and discussing or interacting with those of different persuasions often leads one into a fuller understanding of what one actually believes, even if one’s conclusions are different from the immediate dialogue partner.

In the second of what is to be a four-volume set, Frank Viola takes on the theological locus of ecclesiology in Reimagining Church, thus offering a dialogue partner for those of us who want to think about the church and what the body of Christ is meant to look like on earth in this time between the two advents.

There is much in this book with which Reformation Christians can agree. The criticism of egocentric, powerhungry, and tyrannical pastors is appropriately brought to bear, and with many other critiques we may raise a hearty “Amen.” Viola makes a valid point that ecclesiology is a crucial doctrine and we must seek to order our worship by God’s Word. It is here that well-informed readers can benefit from reading this book.

In fact, you must be a well-informed reader to weigh and assess Viola’s work, in part because of the varied and challenging theological authors from which he draws, but more specifically because of the unargued conclusions he draws and the fact that certain presuppositions about what the church must look like drive his one-sided presentation of theological history. Early on in the book, Viola’s social trinitarianism is as evident as it is problematic. He cites a host of twentieth-century authors who tend toward this approach by arguing that just as God is a fellowship of three persons—a “Community of three”—so also our vision of church should follow this model (33). It is important to realize, however, that while the Godhead includes both unity and plurality, this trinitarian model for the church can be pressed in unhelpful directions. Social trinitarianism has been fairly critiqued for promoting plurality at the expense of God’s unity, a trajectory that often ends in the heresy called tri-theism, the view that there are in fact three gods and not one. It is appropriate, then, to inquire after Viola’s doctrine of God to see if his ecclesiastical foundation is being built on shifting sand. Furthermore, whatever we might want to say about unity and diversity in the church, there are perhaps more helpful analogies from which to draw.

One of the more frustrating aspects of Reimagining Church is the over-generalized picture he paints of all institutional churches. Indeed, he paints with a broad brush and claims that nearly any church with a modicum of hierarchy, any church with a senior pastor or elders, for example, is guilty of being a false church. The abuse-of-power critique drives much of Viola’s thinking here, but this kind of phenomenon can hardly be said to represent all evangelical churches or even most of them. The impression left is that Viola has constructed a straw man in order to provide his alternate proposal for what the church should look like.

Viola’s purpose in writing the book is to present an “organic Christianity” that does not have any distinction between clergy and laity. The wooden application of the priesthood of all believers moves his readers in the direction of Anabaptist spirituality, where anybody can contribute by bringing a “Word from the Lord” organically, so to speak, in each worship meeting. After nurturing and instructing one group, Viola explains that “after a year and a half of receiving practical and spiritual ministry, they were equipped to know the Lord together, function in a coordinated way, open their mouths, and share the living Christ in an orderly fashion” (71).

Throughout, Viola is clearly arguing for a radical revivalist spirituality. In one example of how history is bent to prove

his point, he asks readers to consider revivals of the past in order to “discover that they shifted the entire terrain of the traditional church service for a time. Preachers would stop giving sermons for months. Instead, God’s people would gather and sing, testify, and share about the Lord for hours. Such meetings were spontaneous, open and full of participation.

There was no human control” (56). This seems a difficult case to argue, when by consulting other sources for the history of American revivals we find that they all came about because of preaching!

In conclusion, one practical objection to raise against this “organic Christianity” proposal is the problem of inevitable theological conflict and debate in the church. Viola offers “consensus and subjection” sections (see chapters nine, ten, and twelve) wherein he proposes a mere Christianity approach, just sticking with “essential doctrines” and “core beliefs” (237).

These include a few such as Jesus’ humanity and divinity and the virgin birth, but it is a short list indeed and one that bizarrely ends with “et cetera”! One can only wonder what might be included under that abbreviation.

Mark Vander Pol is an M.Div. student at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido) and webmaster for Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn.

A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards

by George M. Marsden Eerdmans, 2008 160 pages (paperback), $15.00 Those of us who believe Jonathan Edwards’s life and work are relevant for theology, church and Christian living today will be excited about George Marsden’s latest work. Following his definitive biography, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press, 2003), Marsden tailored his research into a “fresh retelling” (not an abridgement) of Edwards’s life. The most relevant detail about this work is that, unlike the definitive biography, it is much shorter, making it accessible to those who are only curious, vaguely interested or otherwise ambivalent about Edwards.

The brevity also opens up avenues for use in both church and classroom settings. Particularly relevant for the latter, most junior high or high school students continue to read “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God” in their American history classes, often with little understanding of Edwards’s larger corpus or circumstance.

Marsden’s “fresh retelling” includes a parallel between Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. The move to juxtapose Franklin’s and Edwards’s lives as “opposing reactions” and proM AY / J U N E 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 9

totypes of the American story aims at an audience familiar with the life of Franklin but not necessarily Edwards.

These two stories—one grasping the Enlightenment enterprise of complete trust in self, and the other, a recasting of complete trust in God—run as parallel programs of equal importance for understanding American history and the American identity.

After developing his parallel with Franklin, Marsden turns to develop more specifically the life of Edwards (chapters two through four). Here the reader comes into contact with the familial, spiritual, intellectual, and ministerial life of Edwards. Chapters four and five particularly look at the Great Awakening through a lens of both history and theology. George Whitefield appears here, becoming a thread between Franklin and Edwards. Chapters six and seven look more specifically at Edwards’s home and church situation in the shadow of the revivals, briefly addressing Edwards’s relationship with his parishioners, slavery, and traditional authority, as well as the larger wartime situations, conflicts, and spiritual malaise in Northampton, Massachusetts. Chapter eight focuses on Edwards’s life after Northampton, including description of frontier life for Edwards and his family. The volume concludes with lessons to be learned from Edwards’s life and theology.

Marsden’s work will serve as a helpful tool to understand Edwards within his broader context, as well as to understand America’s “paradoxical heritage.” A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards is highly recommended as a way to engage the seedbed of the American identity, and to learn more about America’s “greatest theologian.”

Kyle Strobel is a Ph.D student in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland.

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POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING

Outliers: The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown and Company, 2008 320 pages (hardback), $27.99 Of all the quotations he could have chosen to open his latest sociological survey, Malcolm Gladwell selected Matthew 25:29, the chilling pronouncement of Jesus that at the last judgment everyone who has will be given more, while everyone who does not have will lose even what he has (15). Gladwell then goes on to unpack the thesis of his book: successful people do not achieve their accomplishments by their own hard work alone, but because of external conditions, or, for lack of a better word, luck.

Successful people “may look like they did it all by themselves,” Gladwell explains, “but in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” (19). His examples are often intriguing, drawn from a number of fields: Canadian hockey players whose birthdays before a particular cut-off date allowed them crucial extra months of development that their opponents lacked; computer geniuses born in the mid-1950s whose intellectual maturation overlapped precisely with the burgeoning technological revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and émigré lawyers whose circumstances aligned perfectly to grant them unprecedented success in the “revolution of the legal world” in 1970.

In all these cases, luck rather than hard work was the determining factor for success, according to Gladwell. Talent and diligence are still crucial, Gladwell is quick to add; he devotes a whole chapter to “The 10,000 Hour Rule,” the notion that 10,000 hours of belabored practice at an early age are a prerequisite for virtually any successful career.

But forces of chance (for instance, socioeconomic background and the dedication of one’s parents) are the principal determiner of whether a young person can accrue the necessary hours of practice at his particular craft in the first place. In other words, in spite of talent and education, most

successful people benefit from “a big head start, an opportunity that they neither deserved nor earned” (30).

“Lucky breaks,” Gladwell explains, “don’t seem like the exception with software billionaires and rock bands and star athletes. They seem like the rule” (56).

In the second half of his book, Gladwell applies his theory not simply to individuals but to races and ethnic groups (featuring such provocative chapter titles as “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes” and “Rice Paddies and Math Tests,” the latter of which purports to explain why Asians tend to excel in mathematics).

Unfortunately, as his book drags on, one begins to grow weary of his anecdotal evidence and predictable conclusions.

In fact, the first chapter is sufficient to ascertain the makeup of the entire book, which unfolds exactly as expected: in one vignette after another, the successes of person after person and group after group are revealed (though not always through cogent reasoning) to be the products of fortune, rather than mere diligence alone.

His predictable conclusion would not be so tiresome were Gladwell debunking a widespread, intractable belief in the merits of talent and hard work alone. But as his book progresses, one naturally asks whether anyone today really believes in unbridled meritocracy—or whether anyone ever has. The American dream has always stressed (and still stresses) hard work, but not even the most naive optimist denies the importance of chance occurrences, lucky breaks, and unpredictable whims of fate, or assumes that perseverance alone can overcome them. Gladwell’s thesis addresses a straw man.

Outliers only recognizes what all good biographers, sociologists, journalists, and historians (in fact, all thoughtful people interested in the intersection of life’s vicissitudes with psychological and sociological complexity) have always known: the makeup of one’s life cannot be reduced to the inner strivings of an isolated, individual self. While Gladwell provides a helpful and sometimes colorful reminder of this truth, his book takes on a falsely didactic tone that assumes groundbreaking insight when he has merely identified a handful of illustrative examples of a truth that most people already know. Talent and diligence alone do not guarantee success.

Despite the unoriginality of Gladwell’s Outliers, some Christian reflection on his work is worthwhile. First, Gladwell rightly cautions against a superficial analysis of the everyday events around us. Even the most seemingly straightforward occurrences often mask deeper causes, and to understand and appreciate God’s world we should be on guard against simplistic explanations (and therefore any hasty designation of blame or praise), especially where success and failure are concerned.

Second, Gladwell points to the importance of community. For instance, he paints a tragic picture of a frighteningly brilliant genius whose IQ exceeded Einstein’s by fifty points, but who led a life devoid of any professional success because he never submitted himself to peer review.

Gladwell rightly concludes that even the most talented can-

not succeed by themselves; “no one,” he explains, “ever makes it alone” (115). From this vivid portrait we realize the importance of interpersonal reinforcement and interconnectedness. Success at any level demands a willingness to assent to scrutiny. Christians understand that God has designed the world of human interactions as an interwoven tapestry in which all the threads are mutually dependent on each other (or, to use Paul’s biological metaphor, Christians represent distinct but necessary parts of a single living body).

Third, Gladwell’s study points to God’s sovereignty. Without God’s providence, this book would offer little hope, concluding that success comes, despite the importance of hard work, primarily from the blind forces of chance. But if we interpret Gladwell’s description of causation as divine sovereignty, the book’s message becomes more comforting. After all, long before Malcolm Gladwell, the Bible understood life’s intricacies, the nuances of causation, the importance of even the most seemingly trivial details. The story of Joseph and of Jonah (to name just two examples) unequivocally point to the guiding hand of God on his people through seemingly insignificant details. In fact, perhaps the best biblical summary of Outliers is Proverbs 16:9 (rather than Matthew 25:29): “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”

In summary, don’t read Outliers for tightly woven arguments or a novel theory of success, for it lacks both. But for a diverse and often lively, albeit predictable, survey of individuals and groups that have enjoyed success across various disciplines and professions, Outliers is accessible and entertaining, and may even provide occasion for theological reflection on God’s providential hand over human affairs.

John Stern is an M.Div. student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

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FINAL THOUGHTS f r o m

t h e

d e s k

o f

t h e

e d i t o r - i n - c h i e f

Responding to Today’s Nathans

I

n this situation—whether we call it postmodernism or most-modernism—I suggest, first,

the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this age, Islam a two-pronged apologetic strategy: moving from the universal (God’s existence and ac- has no reason to accept modern political tolerance tivity, the moral law, the impossibility of accounting for reason apart from God) to the when it comes to religion.

However, we do. Far from particular (the concrete existence of Jesus Christ as the insurrendering to the culture, Christians are simply affirming New carnate Word, especially his resurrection). Working back and Testament teaching concerning the age of common grace in forth—in both directions—we can help people to acknowlwhich we are now living when they seek the common good edge what Scripture says they already know deep down (Rom. of the earthly city even if it is not Christ’s Kingdom. Christ con1–2) and announce the very specific good news that they canquers by his Word and Spirit, not by the weapons of this world. not know apart from a herald (Rom. 3–4). On one hand, it We have to stop thinking in terms of “our Judeo-Christis true that naturalistic presuppositions will always screen out ian culture” and acknowledge the value of political pluralism the possibility of God’s miraculous involvement in the and toleration. And then we can talk about the unique, nonworld. On the other hand, the resurrection of our Lord is a negotiable, and true claims of the gospel. In other words, we historical fact that forces people to rethink the kind of dogmust be culturally tolerant of other religions (including secularism), but theologically and spiritually intolerant of asmatic framework that would make it impossible to believe similating Christian faith and practice to the idols of our age. in something that actually happened.

Finally, postmoderns are understandably burned out on We also have to take seriously (but not too seriously) the the countless modern projects of “totalizing metanarratives”; modern/postmodern suspicion that while universal religious that is, stories that pretend they aren’t stories. Postmoderns, experience and morality are fine—even useful—particular however, are far from rejecting stories. They just want everyreligions with their competing claims are dangerous. Samuel body to put their cards on the table and acknowledge that Huntington has spoken of a “clash of civilizations” in the twenall of our assumptions—including democracy, capitalism or ty-first century that has religious differences as its deep unsocialism, scientific progress, and so forth—are narratives that dercurrents. Unfortunately, there is much material in we have heard and that we tell each other in order to organize church history for skeptics to draw from in their arguments our own identity and action. against religious dogmatism. However, we need to explain to people that it is not Christ—a particular Messiah who has The gospel is the greatest story ever told. It does not need indeed arrived and will return—but Christendom that is the to be “juiced up” with clever gimmicks. We don’t need to make problem here. And, as Christians, we should be just as eait relevant and useful or translate it into metanarratives that ger to renounce any identification of the gospel with a parwe think are more ultimate. The history of the covenant of ticular culture, nation, or civilization. grace—centering on Christ and culminating in his person and Trying desperately to hold onto the last vestiges of culturwork—is not a means to some greater end; it is the end. The al power, many Christians in recent decades have only lent gospel doesn’t illustrate a point; it is the point! We just need greater credibility to the argument that to the degree that one to tell it, from Genesis to Revelation, and to deliver it not only is committed to a particular faith, he or she will be intolerant, through preaching and teaching but through baptism and Combigoted, and perhaps even violent. Much as we might like to munion, through the care of elders and deacons, and in the credit Christianity with everything good in the modern myriad ways that we are able to share it with our neighbors. world—including democracy and religious freedom—it seems Ours is a moment neither of retreat into the false humilunlikely that these values would have arisen apart from the ity of “my truths” and “your truths,” nor of indulging the arEnlightenment’s reaction against the Wars of Religion. In that rogance of power-moves. Like all of the times comprehended context, orthodox Christians contributed significantly to the under the New Testament’s rubric of “this passing evil age,” development of constitutional liberties (with Reformed Chrisours is a moment of loving, patient, humble, and gracious tians playing a large role), but churches—both Protestant and witness to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

Roman Catholic—were drawn into the modern age kicking and screaming. As it turns out, political pluralism is great. PeoMichael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation. ple should be free to believe whatever they like without fear of governmental molestation. Lacking any distinction between

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