The Contemporary Church is Quintessentially Quirky
- 17 December 2023
At the risk of repetition, I wish to address head on the proposition that the contemporary evangelical Church is culturally quiet – i.e. it is unwilling to address cultural trends either positively or negatively. In short, it unlike ‘the children of Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do’ (1Chr 11:32). St Paul charged the NT Church with much the same responsibility: “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed” (Rom 13:11-12).
The Christ we encounter in Scripture is not the Christ of modern evangelicalism. The Christ encountered by Joshua (Ch 5:13-15) is the real Jesus. Notice He was (i) Militant – poised for warfare with his sword drawn in His hand. He was explicitly ‘Commander of the army of the Lord’. And Joshua instantly comprehended the significance of those words whereupon, at Christ’s request, he removed his sandals signifying his acknowledgement of the solemnity of that moment. Notice then also that (ii) there really were just Two Classes of individuals at large: those who were ‘for us’ and those who were ‘adversaries against us’ (v13).
Alas, today Christianity has disrobed itself of this garb. It does not wish to project itself as an instrument of cultural transformation and has contented itself to retain a form of godliness whilst denying its actual power. It is in a Quandry! It wants all the trimmings and trappings of being part of ‘Jesus’ team’ whilst shedding the responsibility to fight self-consciously for Christ’s victory which He signalled loudly and clearly for (see Matt 28:18ff). It has contented itself for a seat at the table of public discussion instead of affirming that the table itself belongs to Christ.
This paralysis of mind and thought was addressed most effectively by Dr Cornelius Van Til whose writings are freely available online and in print. Van Til merely applied the Reformation mantra ‘Sola Scriptura’ to the enterprise of Biblical Apologetics. That shouldn’t have ruffled feathers within the Churches. Alas it did and a scholastic divide opened up between the more principled Kuyperians & the less sophisticated Westminster brigade. The rejection of Van Til by the mainline evangelical Churches will be perceived in decades to come as their great blind-spot in the 20th century. Let me try to unpack the charge to make it plain and more comprehensible.
Van Til saw, perceptively in his day, that Scriptural revelation was the ‘necessary precondition to the intelligibility of human understanding’. Only that thinking could make sense (of all rationality) that began with Christ and the fulness of His revelation. Such thinking is God-glorifying because it ventures to submit every thought to the obedience of Christ (2Cor 10:5). Such thinking is uniquely non-arbitrary (univocal) but is rather illuminated by divine revelation (Ps 36:9) and is foundationally ‘analogical’ to God’s way of thinking. [It cannot be identical to God’s thought because God is our Creator and we are merely His creatures made in His image!]
The implications of all of this are profound. Those who see it for what it is recognise that the fundamental battle is one of ultimate commitment. We are bound to see that at the heart of all human enterprise and human conversations worldview warfare is raging. There is absolutely no neutrality; rather, there is self-conscious bifurcation between we who are servants of Christ and those who are his adversaries.
The abandonment of the Great Commission by the Church is the result. Such an explicit exclusivism cannot be contemplated. The over-arching idolatry everywhere apparent within the Churches is inclusivism. [As an example in passing, I noted that the popular series ‘The Chosen’ sparked controversy for sporting a Pride flag on set. The Director said, “We are not a church in which all of our employees are going to fit under one particular mission statement, one particular belief system.” Such thinking prevails ubiquitously.]
Dr Van Til laid bare the terms of authentic Christian service. He ever sought to ‘push the antithesis’ and thereby expose the ‘myth of religious neutrality’ within the culture. The Theonomists were drawn to such a principled way of thinking. They (Rushdoony, Bahnsen & North, et al) recognised that Biblical Truth lay derelict in the public square and only a full-orbed return to presuppositional apologetics could revive the dying corpse.
Alas, my own success at articulating all of this to thoughtful fellow Christians has met largely with disdain. Happily, there are a handful of warrior saints who are willing to wrestle with the key issues and marshal their words and prayers more honourably.
Here’s the point. Jesus confronted many enemies. The most pernicious stole into the sheepfold (see Jn 10:1-8). Their influence was extensive and deep-rooted. Several times we are told that for the sake of social acceptability many of the Jews hesitated to endorse Jesus’ message (e.g., Jn 12:42-43). Today the same lines of demarcation prevail. Compromise and preference for ‘a broader outlook’ have seduced hoards of unwitting would-be-followers of the authentic Christ encountered by Joshua.
Van Til’s legacy lives on. No one has refuted his arguments. Dr Greg Bahnsen, his brilliant student, developed the same worldview apologetic. But because of its stark confrontational nature – utterly grounded in Scripture – it generally meets with resistance or else caution. But the rejection of Van Til accounts largely for the Church’s present equivocation in the public square. In the first century it was truly a force to be reckoned with “turning the Roman world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Today it is accurately described by Asaph in the 79th psalm. But God is on His throne. The map-book of history exists in holy Scripture. Hence we can be confident that the dry bones will yet congeal and come alive again (Ez 37). In the meantime, those of us who’ve learnt to read Scripture aright perceiving (i) the centrality of God’s Law for defining universal sin and (ii) the way God constrains earthly circumstances according to covenantal faithfulness and disobedience in various people groups (see e.g. Jonah!) and (iii) the manifestation of His glory and grace in the prosecution of generational judgement tempered with mercy must hold fast with our hands on the plough.
In summary, modern evangelicalism has lost its way. Unsurprisingly, God has laid bare the machinations of His kingdom’s advancement within His Word. Moreover, He has raised up competent clear-minded geniuses down through time who have furnished us with the necessary teaching and instruction we presently require in order to know how to fight honourably as His ambassadors. Uncertainty is not a part of our worldview.
