Category: spirituality of the church

Having Your Organism and Organizing It Too

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Tim Keller devotes several chapters to cultural engagement in his book Center Church. In it he shows that he may have as much time as Fr. Dwight does for reading and reflection beyond sermon prep. Keller sees problems in both the transformational model and 2k, and in his ever constant search for a “third” way, one that adheres to the — wait for it — center rather than to margins or extremes, he winds up in solidarity with Abraham Kuyper:

Kuyper taught that the church institutional was the gathered church, organized under its officers and ministers. It is called to do “Word and sacrament,” to preach the gospel, baptize, and make disciples. (240)

There you have conceivably the 2k aspect of Kuyper, one that preserves the church’s task of evangelism and discipleship.

But Kuyper also thought of the church as organic, and here comes the camel’s nose:

[This refers] to all Christians living in the world who have been discipled and equipped to bring the gospel to bear on all of life. . . . As Christians in the world, they are still to think and work together, banding together in creative forms being the church organic that the church institutional has discipled them to be. (241)

Notice how the church organic doesn’t result in parachurch agencies that have their own non-ecclesiastical oversight. (Notice too that Redeemer PCA has lots of non-Word-&-sacrament activities in its budget lines, the finances overseen by officers called to minister Word and sacrament.) No, the model here is church officers teaching and equipping believers how to engage the culture. (Maybe a bakery and vintner ministry at least for the Lord’s Supper?) Part of discipleship is applying the gospel to culture. The church organized becomes the same thing as the church organic.

Yet to be factored into this selective appeal to Kuyper — apart from sphere sovereignty which might give parents rather than church officers lots of room for engaging the culture — is whether the Bible actually allows Christians to engage the culture in the name of the gospel. It sounds nice, but if you take Christian liberty seriously, one church organicist’s gospel engagement is another believer’s abuse of Scripture. And there goes all that organic unity in the body of Christ except for spiritual earnestness.

The other problem is the Confession of Faith’s, the one that Keller subscribed, assertion that synods and councils are not to speak to non-ecclesiastical matters (31.4). If a synod or council shouldn’t address non-spiritual matters, why should a session or Reformed pastor?

Rather than making a coherent case for why Christians must — even should — engage the culture, Keller reads like he is looking for a rationale for what Redeemer NYC already does.

Putting a Point on Christian America

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Would the United States possibly consider a bill comparable to the Jewish State proposal of Israel, which includes the following language:

The state of Israel is a Jewish and a democratic state. These two values are intertwined, and one does not outweigh the other. We promise equal rights for everyone, regardless of religion, race or sex. At the same time, Israel is the nation-state of the Jews only. This combination between the the rights of the nation and the rights of the individual, serves as the central thread in all of Israel’s founding documents.

Try that for a Christian America:

The state of the United States is a Christian and a democratic state. These two values are intertwined, and one does not outweigh the other. We promise equal rights for everyone, regardless of religion, race or sex. At the same time, the United States is the nation-state of Christians only. This combination between the the rights of the nation and the rights of the individual, serves as the central thread in all of the United States’ founding documents.

Would this kind of legislation make unsexy Americans happy?

Noah Millman, a Jewish-American of some variety, is not happy with Israel’s proposed legislation because it provides legal justification for a status quo that discriminates against Arabs:

It means that Arab citizens can be discriminated against in housing, including state-supported efforts to move Jewish citizens into Arab-dominated regions coupled with local discrimination to keep Arab citizens out of Jewish areas. That they can be discriminated against in education – most Arab citizens are educated in a separate school system from Jewish Israelis (actually, there are three official “streams” in Israeli education, secular state schools, Jewish religious state schools, and Arab schools, plus a large set of ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious schools that are outside state control but receive state support, plus a small smattering of independent schools, but now I’ve probably given too much information). And so forth. . . .

This, in my view, is the most tangible practical significance of the Jewish State bill: that it would provide a legal justification for upholding the legitimacy of the discriminatory aspects of the status quo when faced with legal challenge.

The point of bringing this up is not the situation in Israel (where a modified bill is pending). It is instead to wonder how far Christian advocates of a Christian America are willing to go in their national self-understanding. Should non-Christians face discrimination in housing and education? Or if America is about freedom of religion as so much of the contemporary opposition to gay marriage has it, how is it possible to insist on a Christian America?

Congregationalism as Constantinianism

Published on by D. G. Hart475 Comments

Peter Leithart wants to add to my work as clerk of session. First, he’s reading a lot of sociologists of religion (would John Milbank approve?) on the capacity of congregations to function like families and provide for members in similar ways:

This social capital is not merely intangible. Congregations offer material support to needy members: “When people in congregations talk about building relationships and creating community, they are talking about more than warm, fuzzy feelings. These relationships often take on a depth of mutual obligation that involves pain and sacrifice, as well as joy and celebration. Once having entered these communities, participants are challenged to care for each other, in good times and in bad, and most of this caring takes place informally, rather than through organized programs” (65). Tangible support is particularly beneficial to immigrants: “In Chicago we encountered a congregation whose religious roots are in Nigeria—the Holy Order of Cherubim and Seraphim. There we heard, ‘Our church has a lot of immigrants that are coming to this country. Some of them are very young families. . . . So, you have the church trying to be like a family structure. To be able to mend all of this together so they can have a life.’ Mending together a life often requires informal assistance, rituals of healing and mourning, and the timely visit of a pastor”

Next, he thinks congregations can contribute to a number of the policy questions before the nation:

The US faces policy challenges of gargantuan proportions. Immigration, social security, drugs, race, crime and prison reform, health care, Islamicism and other international challenges. I’d put same-sex marriage, the ethical issues surrounding biotechnology, and abortion high on that list, and some would add environmental issues to the short list.

For ordinary Americans, that list poses two challenges. First, each is a hugely complex, apparently insoluble problem. A health care reform bill has been passed, but many doubt whether it will improve health care or lower costs. The difficulty of formulating a policy on immigration that answers to all American interests and values is evident in the fact that no such policy has been formulated and legislated. There are limits on what a war-weary America can do about ISIS.

Second, ordinary citizens don’t have the capacity to do much about any of them. We can vote, but few have the ability or opportunity to do much else. At best, we respond by bitching about the state of the world or engaging in Facebook polemics; at worst, we throw up our hands and find some way to avoid thinking about it.

For Christians, there is an alternative approach that disaggregates the problems and opens the possibility of constructive action. Instead of treating these issues as questions of national or state policy, we can examine them as ecclesial questions, questions about the ministry and mission of the church.

I don’t mean that we stop debating the merits of policy proposals. Institutional and legal patterns are critical, and there are definitely healthy and unhealthy, good and bad ways to organize our life together. But public policy isn’t the only way to address social needs, and for the church, legislated policy isn’t the primary way to address social needs.

No group of citizens can build a wall along the Mexican border, and few contribute in any meaningful way to formulating immigration policy. But nearly everyone lives in a town with a Hispanic minority. In addition to (or before) asking, “How can America control immigration?” Christians should ask, “What obligations do churches have toward immigrants? What can we do to proclaim the gospel to them in word and deed?” We shouldn’t merely ask how Federal or State governments can make health insurance available, but how churches can provide affordable basic medical care to the poor in a local area. We may not have the policy answers to the drug trade, but many churches support or provide help for addicts and some have effectively intervened to reduce gang violence. We can’t stop ISIS, but churches can send and support missionaries in Islamic countries, and churches can mount targeted evangelistic campaigns to Muslims in our neighborhoods. We can think of Muslim immigration to the US as a threat to our Christian heritage; we can also recognize it as one of the greatest opportunities for Muslim evangelism since the sixth century.

Well, one relief is that the economy is so bad in this part of Michigan that we don’t have that many Hispanics, so that round of meetings is not needed (even if it means finding a good Mexican-restaurant is a challenge). But how in the world if congregations barely agree on the order of service are we now supposed to find consensus on drug treatment procedures?

Plus, I’m not going near Islam (except when having drinks with our Muslim neighbor). Hasn’t Peter seen any of those ISIL videos?

Just this morning I was reading an almost twenty-year old verdict on the effects of modernity on Dutch Reformed churches:

Whereas once (and still in some isolationist communities) there was considerable homogeneity of perspective on virtually all matters of faith — that is, the Reformed message was uniformly accepted throughout the Reformed community — that is no longer the case. Among respondents in each of the countries under consideration, there is immense variation in matters of belief. Whether considering new understandings of Scripture or new formulations of divinity or new attitudes about the fate of nonbelievers, consensus is rare. On matters of political and moral concern, Christians of the Reformed churches have significant differences of opinion. (Rethinking Secularization: Reformed Reactions to Modernity, 281)

So do members of most communions (Roman Catholics included where they put the “it” in unity). But now Peter wants us to take on social policy? How much free time does he have in his new position?

If He Responds, "So What?" You May Have Struck a Nerve

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Catholic replies has this to say to an inquiry about the many years that saw emperors appoint popes:

Q. What do you say to someone who tells you that Popes were appointed by emperors for a long time? How did the Church approve the appointment of a Pope by an emperor? — E.G., Florida.

A. The first thing we would say is, “So what? What point are you trying to make? Are you trying to say that the papacy was not established by Christ to govern His Church? But that’s not true. Are you trying to say that Popes do not have the authority to teach in the name of Christ? That’s not true either. Or are you trying to say that Popes put into office by secular rulers were not protected by the Holy Spirit from teaching error? That’s false as well. In other words, your statement is irrelevant.”

Second, we would suggest that this person take a look at the history of the Church. For example, James Hitchcock has pointed out in his History of the Catholic Church that Church and state were interconnected during much of the Church’s history. He said that “beginning in the mid-fifth century, the emperors were crowned by the patriarch, but it was the emperors who were responsible for preserving the integrity of the faith and who often regulated church life by their decrees. They had the authority to summon councils, as Constantine had done at Nicaea [in 325], but doctrinal issues had to be decided by the assembled bishops” (p. 188).

Hitchcock also described the dreadful condition of the papacy in the ninth and tenth centuries, “when it fell under the control of murderous factions. Some popes were notorious, and few could exercise even the least spiritual authority. Kings and emperors often treated the papacy as under their control, and popes in turn intrigued in secular politics” (p. 120).

He said that “the low point in the history of the entire papacy was reached in 897, when the body of Pope Formosus (891-896) was exhumed by orders of Pope Stephen VI (896-897), placed upon the papal throne in its vestments, formally ‘tried’ for violations of Church law, found guilty, stripped of its vestments, and desecrated. Stephen himself was strangled in prison later that year, and Formosus’ honor was restored” (pp. 120-121).

There were more “bad Popes” in the 15th century, for example, Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and Alexander VI (1492-1503), but the vast majority of the 265 Pontiffs have been men of great virtue and holiness, many of whom are venerated today as saints.

With emperors like that, who needs popes?

The problem is that popes, like Gregory VII, objected precisely to emperors and kings interfering in the selection of bishops:

As early as the Synod of Reims (1049) anti-investiture legislation had been enacted, but had never been enforced. Investiture at this period meant that on the death of a bishop or abbot, the king was accustomed to select a successor and to bestow on him the ring and staff with the words: Accipe ecclesiam (accept this church). Henry III was wont to consider the ecclesiastical fitness of the candidate; Henry IV, on the other hand, declared in 1073: “We have sold the churches”. Since Otto the Great (936-72) the bishops had been princes of the empire, had secured many privileges, and had become to a great extent feudal lords over great districts of the imperial territory. The control of these great units of economic and military power was for the king a question of primary importance, affecting as it did the foundations and even the existence of the imperial authority; in those days men had not yet learned to distinguish between the grant of the episcopal office and the grant of its temporalities (regalia). Thus minded, Henry IV held that it was impossible for him to acknowledge the papal prohibition of investiture.

We must bear carefully in mind that in the given circumstances there was a certain justification for both parties: the pope’s object was to save the Church from the dangers that arose from the undue influence of the laity, and especially of the king, in strictly ecclesiastical affairs; the king, on the other hand, considered that he was contending for the indispensable means of civil government, apart from which his supreme authority was at that period inconceivable.

Ignoring the prohibition of Gregory, as also the latter’s effort at a mitigation of the same, Henry continued to appoint bishops in Germany and in Italy. Towards the end of December, 1075, Gregory delivered his ultimatum: the king was called upon to observe the papal decree, as based on the laws and teachings of the Fathers; otherwise, at the following Lenten Synod, he would be not only “excommunicated until he had given proper satisfaction, but also deprived of his kingdom without hope of recovering it”.

E.G. from Florida asked a good question. Catholic Replies only added to the velocity of the pitch.

Reading Other People's Mail

Published on by D. G. Hart250 Comments

This communication to the most powerful government in the world inspired me to make public one of mine to the most powerful news reporting agency on the planet:

May 18, 2005

To the editor of the New York Times:

Mark Lilla’s brief for liberal biblical religion in “Church Meets State” is odd for a couple reasons. First, he does not recognize that “liberals” such as Henry Ward Beecher and Woodrow Wilson fit precisely his category of Protestant who spiritualized the Bible and then read liberal democracy back into scripture to justify such campaigns as the Civil War and World War I. Richard F. Gamble’s recent book, The War for Righteousness (ISI Books, 2003), well documents the liberal religious origins of sanctimonious government action. Second, Lilla fails to notice that the old liberal Protestant culture warriors who defended WASP America and today’s Protestant Right both share a utilitarian understanding of religion that evaluates faith by the good it does in this world, as opposed to the world to come. Perhaps a truly conservative Christianity of Augustinian vintage might distinguish church and state better than Lilla’s liberal version.

D. G. Hart
Philadelphia, PA
215-247-7654 (h)
302-652-4600 (o)

I’m betting none of the people to whom these missives were addressed read/reads them. What the on-line readers are supposed to make of these letters is anyone’s guess.

Why Kuyperians Don't Like 2k

Published on by D. G. Hart386 Comments

Michael Sean Winters is reading James Bratt’s biography of Abraham Kuyper and quotes the following assessment of the Dutch statesman:

Nowhere did he so minimize the effects of sin as in his assumptions about the macro level of social development. Sometimes – for instance, in his speech against “Uniformity” – he could spy a fearful momentum that was greater than any particular part, and on many occasions he noted individual persons, policies, agencies, or communities perverting their social potential. But in formal theory Kuyper more often celebrated than worried about the direction of the whole. Here he shared in his era’s cult of “progress.”

Notice the connections. Minimize the effects of sin to think that the whole of society is improving.

How do people invariably view 2k? Too pessimistic, nothing we can do.

How do 2kers respond? Yes, things are bad but God has done great things. Salvation comes from him. Improving social conditions may be positive — don’t let the unintended consequences hit you between the eyes, DOH! — but social improvement is not salvation.

How do 2kers perceive neo-Calvinists? As blurring the gospel into social or holistic aspects, or as being excessively optimistic about human potential for overcoming sin and its consequences.

2k puts the total in Total Depravity. Neo-Calvinists have plans for restoring creation to its original order.

Can anyone possibly explain why Calvinists would be optimistic about anything other than the plan of salvation?

The Christian Option

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

Thanks to last night’s sermon, I heard why John Calvin might encourage contemporary believers living in the United States not to disparage or ridicule Justice Anthony Kennedy (you know, the guy who wrote the majority opinion for legalizing same-sex marriage) but to honor him. From Calvin’s commentary on 1 Tim. 6:1-2:

When he enjoins them to esteem worthy of all honor the masters whom they serve, he requires them not only to be faithful and diligent in performing their duties, but to regard and sincerely respect them as persons placed in a higher rank than themselves. No man renders either to a prince or to a master what he owes to them, unless, looking at the eminence to which God has raised them, he honor them, because he is subject to them; for, however unworthy of it they may often be, still that very authority which God bestows on them always entitles them to honor. Besides, no one willingly renders service or obedience to his master, unless he is convinced that he is bound to do so. Hence it follows, that subjection begins with that honor of which Paul wishes that they who rule should be accounted worthy.

We are always too ingenious in our behalf. Thus slaves, who have unbelieving masters, are ready enough with the objection, that it is unreasonable that they who serve the devil should have dominion over the children of God. But Paul throws back the argument to the opposite side, that they ought to obey unbelieving masters, in order that the name of God and the gospel may not be evil spoken of; as if God, whom we worship, incited us to rebellion, and as if the gospel rendered obstinate and disobedient those who ought to be subject to others.

Did another Timothy read that letter?

Back in the Day with the CRC

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

James Bratt describes worship and preaching at Eastern Avenue CRC (Grand Rapids, for the uninitiated in Dutch-American Calvinism) during the 1940s:

Worship services themselves made modest accommodations to the American world. English services were introduced alongside the Dutch only at the end of World War I, and against the will of even the progressive Johannes Groen. The singing of hymns, as opposed to exclusive psalmody, had been a major grievance of the 1834 Secession in the Netherlands, but the practice tended to come along with English services. The CRC’s 1914 Psalter Hymnal limited hymns to an obscure, heavily didactic Presbyterian collection calibrated to the fifty-two Lord’s Days of the Heidelberg Catechism. In 1934 the denomination published a more extensive Psalter, including 141 hymns next to 327 Psalm settings, the former selected according to “doctrinal soundness, New Testament character, dignity, and depth of devotional spirit, and clearness and beauty of expression.” None had the slightest odor of Arminianism. At the same time, leaders tried to impose a uniform order of worship across the denomination, a movement that Eastern Avenue resisted because of the “formalism” of some of the new order’s prescriptions: recitation of the Apostles’ Creed, reading of the Decalogue, and a service of confession and absolution. The same reform allowed choirs to take part in worship, another “American” gesture that Eastern had long suspected. They did encourage vocal and instrumental ensembles but had these perform after services. The church year was not organized by liturgical seasons but by preaching through the Catechism. Baptisms (once a month) far outnumbered celebrations of the Lord’s Supper (once a quarter), but profession of faith — normatively in one’s late teens — overshadowed them both. Groen’s pastorate averaged two a week.

As for theology, a glimpse at Pastor Christian Huissen’s deliverances during World War II reveals the most resolute Calvinism in force, at great odds with the more liberal confidences in play at Park Church (the Congregationalist cross-town rival). The calls that Vandenberg heard for immediate planning to institute a postwar regime of peace Huissen decried as arrogant folly: unless everyone started to “reckon with the risen Christ . . . the coming peace treaty will be the beginning of the next war.” Upon news that one of the eighty-eight youth that Eastern had sent into the armed forces had died in action, Huissen responded: “The world would say you have given your life so that the world may be a better place to live in. We do not believe that. The world will not be a better place to live in.” Rather, the young man had done his duty before earthly powers, enjoining those left behind to exceed mere duty and perform joyful service unto the power that really counted, the eternal Lord. That God exercised as specific and absolute a control over events as any Calvinist could imagine: “Every bullet and every bomb goes exactly where he has predestined that it should go,” Huissen declared, so that of Eastern’s fallen son it could be said, “The Time, manner of death, and all the circumstances are exactly as he deemed best.” In so anxious a world, Christian Reformed people whether at war or at home were simply to keep their minds daily on God and keep themselves weekly at worship. (James Bratt, “Rites of the Tribes: Two Protestant Congregations in a Twentieth-Century City,” 149-150)

Do Supreme Court justices, homosexuality, or Planned Parenthood videos generate more anxiety than world war?

Piling On

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

So thanks to Matt Tuininga’s critique of Scott Clark and mmmmmeeeEEEEEE, Stephen Wolfe adds to Clark’s and my misery:

I think that Matthew Tuininga has made a valuable correction to D.G. Hart and R. Scott Clark who seem to find no social value in Christian sanctification. Would not our conformity to the image of the Last Adam have social implications? Of course, it would. The fundamental problem with the Hart-Clark 2k theology is their failure to recognize that the Gospel, which includes sanctification, restores the Adamic dominian. As J Peter Escalante and Steven Wedgeworth have made abundantly clear, “man’s Adamic dominion has been in principle restored in Christ.” This means, so it seems to me, that sanctification includes a conformity to the original Edenic order and a restoration toward the original mandate to bring, through human creativity and work, creation to its potential maturity. This has nothing to do with immanentizing the eschaton, as Eric Voegelin warned against. It means rather that the Gospel empowers Christians to work toward the realization of a mature natural order.

But just when Mike Horton and Dave VanDrunen thought they were on comfortable chairs in the bus terminal (oxymoron alert), a quick google search reveals that they are just as bad — maybe worse:

VanDrunen contends that the cultural mandate was given as a condition through which Adam would inherit eternal life for himself and his offspring. This activity of Adam was temporal, only given by God in preparation for the Sabbath rest in which he would partake through his obedience. He purports that because Christ is the last Adam, such a cultural mandate is no longer a necessity for those who are in Christ. He argues: “To understand our own cultural work as picking up and finishing Adam’s original task is, however unwittingly, to compromise the sufficiency of Christ’s work” (Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 50). To be clear, VanDrunen emphasizes the importance of the Christian’s vocation in the secular realm, but views it as only temporary, and he disconnects it from the mandate given to Adam.

What VanDrunen fails to recognize is that God created humankind to live within two particular sets of relationships: to God, and to creation. In his approach, for Adam, the cultural mandate has coram deo implications. Adam’s standing before God prior to the fall was not based on grace and faith, but instead upon his obedience in fulfilling the God-given mandate. This is, of course, based upon VanDrunen’s commitment to the Reformed concept of the covenant of works in the Garden of Eden (an idea that I have critiqued here). The problem is that the text of Genesis never makes such a connection. Nowhere in the creation account is Adam told that his standing before God could somehow be merited by obedience to this mandate. Rather, Adam’s creation was an act of grace. His relationship to God was always based on God’s action and his reception. Sure, he could lose his righteous standing before God, but he couldn’t gain it by merit.

The implications of this difference of perspective are important. If Adam’s relationship before God has always been by grace, and man’s relationship to creation has always been determined by the mandate of Genesis 1:28, then the cultural mandate is no longer simply part of the Adamic administration, but is essential to who the human creature is.

So I wonder how widely Matt has read VanDrunen and Horton. The more people under the bus, the more misery.

With Friends Like These

Published on by D. G. Hart137 Comments

This caught my eye (from under the bus). Matt Tuininga calls me a friend and I guess that’s supposed to weaken the sting of what’s included:

But Scott Clark’s version and Darryl Hart’s version is not the Reformed version. And it is not just their conclusions about religion in the public square that are different. These are fundamentally different political theologies.

Yes, Calvin argued, and rightly so, that the church should only proclaim what the Word teaches. The church should stay out of public policy debates. Yes, Calvin argued, and rightly so, that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual. It cannot be conflated with the moral transformation of secular society. But Calvin also affirmed that the Word teaches much about society and that the church must proclaim these teachings. And when he said that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual he meant essentially that the kingdom of Christ is eschatological, not that it has no implications for material social life (as I show here). Remember, we are talking about the theologian who recovered and reestablished the diaconate as a spiritual, materially oriented office (again, as I show here). I have written much about this and will not rehash it all here.

Scott and Darryl are both friends to me, and I am grateful for all they have done for me over the years. But their thinking on these points is not clear and it is not helpful. It is hardly likely to persuade anyone tempted to embrace the Social Gospel, given that it merely presents an individualistic and virtually neo-Platonized gospel as the alternative.

On the way to this characterization, Matt waves at the Bible but does little more when he writes:

Appealing to J. Gresham Machen’s doctrine of the spirituality of the church, which he identifies with John Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine, Clark argues that “social concerns” are outside of the scope of the gospel. Thus Machen, in his official capacity as a gospel minister, “refrained from speaking to social concerns because of the teaching of the New Testament. Read on its own terms, the teaching of the New Testament about the Kingdom of God is remarkably silent about the pressing social concerns of the day.”

Does Clark forget how much the New Testament has to say about justice for the widow and the orphan, good news for the poor, the oppression of the weak, marriage, slavery, the breakdown of social barriers (between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, Barbarian, Scythian), violence, reconciliation, sharing with those in need, the diaconate, obedience to civil authority, families, peacemaking, or any other number of vices and virtues that pertain to relationships between human beings. What version of the New Testament is he reading? In what world are these not pressing social concerns?

Paul actually put tight limits on the aid widows could receive. The poor included the Centurion who had servants (who were sort of like slaves). Yes, Paul wrote about marriage but he hardly set up a parachurch organization, Focus on the Family. And Paul and Peter talked a lot about submitting to those in authority (and to the surrounding social order); that hardly made them transformational and hardly allowed for readers to spot where those apostles paying honor to — wait for it — Nero were hoping for a new Christian social order. A string of words that have a certain register in Sociology 101 hardly makes the New Testament a playbook for a Social Gospel.

For some reason, though (maybe it’s a Dutch thing), Matt doesn’t put David VanDrunen in Plato’s cave with Scott Clark and me. I don’t have any idea why (though I have a few hunches) because VanDrunen could not be clearer about the spirituality of the church and the New Testament’s silence about building a just, moral, and spiritually transformed society (thanks to Zrim for doing the typing):

The Lord Jesus Christ did not come to raise up followers who would transform the cultures of this world. Christ came as the Last Adam to achieve the original goal of the First Adam under the covenant of works: the new heaven and new earth. By his perfect obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension Christ has succeeded. By virtue of his achievement Christians, by faith, share in his verdict of justification, his heavenly citizenship, and his everlasting inheritance. Redemption does not put Christians back on track to accomplish the original goal of the First Adam through their own cultural work—Christ has already done that on their behalf perfectly and finally. Misunderstanding this point is perhaps the fatal flaw of neo-Calvinism. Until the day when Christ returns he has ordained that his people be pilgrims in this world and be gathered together in the church.

It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of the fact that the church was the only institution that the Lord Jesus established in this world during his earthly ministry. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God; that is, the new creation, the original goal of the human race under the covenant of works. Yet if we scour the Gospels we find but one institution that Jesus associates with the kingdom and but one to which Jesus points to find the power and the ethic of the kingdom at work here and now. Jesus did not establish the family or civil government, but simply affirmed their legitimacy. He did not lay out plans for kingdom businesses. Families, governments, and businesses already existed under God’s providential rule and were common in the cultures of this world long before the kingdom was announced. Jesus established his church. Unlike the cultural institutions of this world, Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church alone. He entrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven to the church alone. He commissioned disciplinary procedures reflecting the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount for the church alone. He promised, to the church alone, that where two or three are gathered in his name he himself will be there among them.

Christ came, in other words, not to transform the cultures of this world but to win the kingdom of God, the new creation, which will be cataclysmically revealed out of heaven on the last day, and to establish the church, for the time being, as a counter-cultural institution that operates not according to the cultures of this world but in anticipation of the life of the age-to-come. The church has its own doctrine, its own worship, its own government, its own discipline, its own ministry of mercy, and its own strange ethic of non-violence and forgiveness that defies the wisdom of this world. Jesus and his apostles did exert great effort to shape a culture: the church’s culture. The New Testament makes clear, of course, that Christians must live and work among the cultures of this world, and should be just, honest, loving, and industrious as they do so. But the only culture-shaping task in which the New Testament shows any serious interest is the formation of the church. In light of such considerations I suggest that the only Christian culture—in the profoundest sense of the term—is found in the ministry and fellowship of true churches of Christ operating according to the teaching of Scripture alone.

I wonder if that also sounds neo-Platonic.

To correct Matt, 2kers, even the unhelpful ones, do think the gospel is social. The gospel society is the church, which may explain why some of us are active in our communions and congregations. Maybe Matt did not mean to discount that. But it sure does seem that the church trumps society even for the Westminster Divines who were thinking about the place of Christianity in a society torn apart by civil war:

The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (25.2)

The church is social and proclaims the gospel. Society is not the church and it does not proclaim the gospel. (I’m sure there’s a logical fallacy in there somewhere.)