A Humbled Resistance

A Response to The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President

 

 

Closing Comments and Exhortations

 

 

Transcending Culture

 

Claiborne and other emergents/postmoderns have helped us to see many of the unhealthy influences of the pop culture on the church.  Postmoderns tend to link all of the ills of pop evangelicalism on the influence of culture in general and modernism in particular.  The response they propose is to transform the church from one influenced by modern culture to one influenced by post-modern culture.  How wise is it for us to trade in one incarnation of worldliness for its successor?

 

We don’t believe in propositional truth because of modernism and the Enlightenment; we believe in it because it is clearly taught in Scripture and has always been believed/practiced by the Church.

 

Are creedal statements really the product of modern spirituality?  Whenever this new spirituality supposedly started—whether the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, or 1900s—statements of faith certainly predate modernism.  What about Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, and Ephesus, not to mention Trent, Augsburg, and Dort—all of which predate 1620?  Does anyone really believe that creedal formulations began with modernism, as if Christians suddenly got obsessed with doctrine in the wake of the Enlightenment?42

 

In the same way, we don’t believe that we should love our neighbors (and enemies) because the emergents say so—we believe and must learn to better practice it because God has commanded it. The Church is called to transcend the culture. 

 

It is hard to believe that J. Gresham Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism was published in 1923 because so many of the battles he fought with modern theological liberalism are needing to be fought all over again.  See if Machen’s description of modern liberalism doesn’t ring true for her emergent successor [clarifications added]:

 

The liberal preacher is really rejecting the whole basis of Christianity, which is a religion founded not on aspirations, but on facts [truths we can depend upon].  Here is the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood [what we have to do], while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative [what Christ has already done]; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God 43

 

The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance.  Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin.44

 

 

Some Encouraging Signs

 

There is a contingency of younger Christians like Kevin DeYoung who are, in a sense, rebelling against the rebellion:

 

I know that some in my generation have a hard time with truth claims.   But I’m convinced there are just as many of us—Christians and not—in our postmodern world who are tired of endless uncertainties and doctrinal repaintings.  We are tired of indecision and inconsistency reheated and served up as paradox and mystery.  Some of us long for teaching that has authority, ethics rooted in dogma, and something unique in this world of banal diversity.  We long for Jesus—not a shapeless, formless, good-hearted ethical teacher Jesus, but the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of the church, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of two millennia of Christian witness with all of its unchanging and edgy doctrinal propositions.45

 

 

There are also young adult oriented ministries like “New Attitude46 ” and their emphasis on “humble orthodoxy” who are pursuing authentic Christianity without abandoning the essential truths that define it.  This is from their “What is Humble Orthodoxy?” page47 :

 

Humble orthodoxy is a commitment to believe, live, and represent biblical truth with humility.

Believe

We believe that God has revealed Himself in Scripture and that His revelation reaches its culmination in the Person and work of Christ on the cross. God’s truth in Scripture should not be redefined or reinvented. Our role is not redefine truth but to receive God’s truth.

Live

We believe that the truth of the gospel transforms not only what we believe but how we live. Biblical truth doesn’t merely inform us, it introduces us to a person who changes us.

Represent

We believe that the gospel demands humility from those who represent it. We want to represent the truth not merely as those who are right, but as those who have been rescued.

Forget reinvention. Embrace a humble orthodoxy.

 

 

Final Exhortation

 

In the introduction I encouraged readers to take Claiborne’s advice to stay anchored in the Church. Younger readers have grown up in a different time and culture than we old folks have.  What Scripture calls “worldliness” has changed flavors but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8).   

 

The gospel is not ours to reinvent, deconstruct, or even edit.  It is ours to proclaim.

 

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