Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Warfield on Shorter Catechism One: To Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever

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WARFIELD-Benjamin-B.-IpsenWarfield, Benjamin B. “The First Question of the Westminster ‘Shorter Catechism.'” In The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. Volume 6. 1932; Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is perhaps the most famous of all catechism questions: “Q. What is the chief end of man. A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” This is an excellent article tracing the origins of this question through earlier catechisms and theologies. It also contains a helpful discussion about the “enjoy” part of the answer.

For instance:

 For justice is not done that conception if we say merely that man’s chief end is to glorify God. That certainly: and certainly that first. But according to the Reformed conception man exists not merely that God may be glorified in him, but that he may delight in this glorious God. It does justice to the subjective as well as to the objective side of the case. The Reformed conception is not fully or fairly stated if it be so stated that it may seem to be satisfied with conceiving man merely as the object on which God manifests His glory—possibly even the passive object in and through which the Divine glory is secured. It conceives man also as the subject in which the gloriousness of God is perceived and delighted in. No man is truly Reformed in his thought, then, unless he conceives of man not merely as destined to be the instrument of the Divine glory, but also as destined to reflect the glory of God in his own consciousness, to exult in God: nay, unless he himself delights in God as the all-glorious One.

Read the great Reformed divines. The note of their work is exultation in God. How Calvin, for example, gloried and delighted in God! Every page rings with this note, the note of personal joy in the Almighty, known to be, not the all-wise merely, but the all-loving too. Take, for example, such a passage as the exposition of what true and undefiled religion is, which closes the second chapter of the First Book of the Institutes. [pp. 396-97]

Miroslav Volf on Human Flourishing

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Volf, Miroslav. “Human Flourishing.” In Renewing the Evangelical Mission, ed. Richard Lints. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.

In this essay Miroslav Volf provides a brief and broad historical survey of views of human flourishing accompanied with evaluation and a proposal. Volf’s survey begins with Augustine, for whom human flourishing was found in love for God and neighbor. With the Enlightenment God dropped away, but love for neighbor remained a part of the conception of human flourishing. “The central pillar of its vision of the good life was a universal beneficence transcending all boundaries of tribe or nation and extending to all human beings” (16). In late 20th century, however, human flourishing came to be understood simply in terms of “experiential satisfaction.” Volf concludes: “ours is a culture of managed pursuit of pleasure, not a culture of sustained endeavor to lead the good life” (15).

The problem, Volf explains, with making pleasure or “experiential satisfaction” at the heart of human flourishing is that humans are never satisfied. Even when they achieve what they want, there is more to want. “Our striving can therefore find proper rest only when we find joy in something infinite” (19).

Another problem with equating human flourishing and pleasure is the disconnect between creation and human flourshing that emerges. Volf observes, “Satisfaction is a form of experience, and experiences are generally deemed to be matters of individual preference. Everyone is the best judge of their own experience of satisfaction” (25). He argues that in contrast to this approach most religions and philosophies have argued that human flourishing is tied to the nature of reality. Though Volf does not provides exegetical argumentation for this being the correct position, I would argue that the exegetical foundation is present in Proverbs 8’s teaching that God built wisdom/law into the structure of creation and in Psalm 1’s teaching that wisdom is to live in accordance with this law with flourishing as the result.

In enunciating what this fit between reality and flourishing is, Volf returns to Augustine and summarizes his position in four points: “First, he believed that God is not an impersonal Reason dispersed throughout the world, but a ‘person’ who loves and can be loved in return. Second, to be human is to love; we can choose what to love but not whether to love. Third, we live well when we love both God and neighbor, aligning ourselves with the God who loves. Fourth, we will flourish and be truly happy when we discover joy in loving the infinite God and our neighbors in God” (27-28). Again, though Volf does not bring it out, there is a connection with Psalm 1. It is in meditating on (and then living out) the law of God (which can be summarized in loving God and others) that humans flourish.

Thomas Boston on Conversion

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“Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power,” Psal. cx. 5, i. e. free, ready, open hearted, giving themselves to thee as free-will offerings. When the bridegroom has the bride’s heart, it is a right marriage ; but some give their hand to Christ, who give him not their heart. They that are only driven to Christ by terror, will surely leave him again, when that terror is gone. Terror may break a heart of stone, but the pieces into which it is broken still continue to be stone ; the terrors cannot soften it into a heart of flesh. Yet terror may begin the work, which love crowns ; the strong wind, the earthquake, and the fire going before ; the still small voice, in which the Lord is, may come after them.

Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 247.

What is Original Sin? Part 2

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The term “original sin” was first brought into the church by Augustine (called into controversy concerning sin by the Pelagians) in order that he might have a certain term to use in his disputes with them. The schools retained it as suitable to express exactly the nature of that sin. It is however so called not by reason of first origin (which man created by God had), but by reason of second origin (which it had from the first parent, but by reasons of its principle [because it is from originating sin] and by reason of the mode of propagation [because it inheres in us from our origin] and by reason of its effects [because it is the origin of actual sins]).

Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Ninth Topic, Q. X, IV. (p. 630) (brackets in original).

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 3

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Gathered Worship

In the final section of By the Waters of Babylon Aniol turns to the issue of worship. In this section he does an admirable job of defining worship, defining the mission of the institutional church, and establishing the regulative principle of worship. Though differing with an exegetical point here or a detail there, I am in full agreement with the general thrust of the argument in this section.

One of the best parts of this section is the discussion of “authentic worship” versus worship as a shaper of behavior. Aniol notes that according to some understandings, authenticity is presented as being who you are―with no discussion of whether who you are needs to change. In contrast to this Aniol argues that worship should reshape who we are. Being authentic should not excuse being unlike Christ. Rather, worship should reshape us so that we are authentically more and more like Christ. This is profound and worthy of careful meditation.

Also helpful is Aniol’s argument that the worship heritage that western nations enjoy should be passed along to people of other cultures. This makes sense to me, given that cultures change over time as well as by place. Thus even western nations are making use of the riches from previous cultures when they draw on their own tradition. I would raise one caution here. There should be no assumption that non-western cultures are simply fallen and do not contain the resources for right worship. While on the one hand, one should argue that every culture is totally depraved (meaning that there is no area of culture untouched by the Fall), no culture is as bad as it could possibly be. Thus there is the need for discerning structure and direction in every culture. Further, while Christians in new cultures do not need to re-invent the wheel, missionaries should make a careful distinction between passing on the rich heritage of Christian worship and simply imposing American ways of doing things. American ways are not necessarily biblical ways, and it may well be that in many areas the indigenous culture is less fallen than American culture.

Finally, Aniol makes the intriguing point that Scripture comes with inspired literary forms that are authoritative for our worship. This is a significant point, but it begs for enlargement. What are these forms and what are some concrete ways that they should be regulating worship at present? I would like to see some development of this idea in Scott’s future writing.

Conclusion

In some ways this has been a critical review, but the criticism comes not because I oppose Scott’s project but because I support it and hope to strengthen it. My largest disagreement has to do not with the substance of Scott’s proposal or even with the viewpoints that critiques but with a tendency to favor the two-kingdoms approach and to associate the reformational viewpoint with transformationalism. I think balancing the assessment of these two groups will actually strengthen the overall thesis of the book. I commend By the Waters of Babylon to everyone interested in missions, culture, and worship.

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 2

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Culture

In this section Aniol surveys Niebuhr’s Christ and culture paradigm, looks at the cultural views of key historical figures, and evaluates what he labels the separatist, two kingdoms, transformationalist, and missional approaches. It is at this point that I think the book could be sharpened.

Two Kingdoms

Though Aniol doesn’t actually fully embrace the two-kingdoms view, proposing his own sanctificationist view, he does say, “Perhaps the two-kingdom approach is closest to the New Testament perspective, with its balance of both antithesis and commonality” (115). In his initial evaluation of the two-kingdoms view, the critique is muted by qualifications (“sometimes,” “impression,” “may be”): “the idea of natural law sometimes gives the impression of a neutral middle ground between believers and unbelievers . . . the antithesis may be blurred with the idea of natural law” (75). Later, however, he makes this more trenchant critique: “it fails to emphasize that a Christian’s involvement in the culture should manifest his Christian values” (115).

The attraction to the two-kingdoms view is understandable, especially for those who are concerned for the distinctiveness of the church’s mission and for culturally distinctive, sacred worship (including in the area of music). I find myself great agreement when reading two-kingdoms proponents about these matters. Nevertheless, the two-kingdoms view suffers from some fatal weaknesses.

First, it is an exegetically untenable position. David Van Drunen, the theologian who has done the most to make a historical and exegetical argument for the two-kingdoms view, proposes that the common kingdom and the redemptive kingdom are founded on the Noahic and the Abrahamic covenants, respectively. Neither of these covenants establish kingdoms, however (though the Abrahamic covenant does have promises related to future kings). The Davidic covenant, which is specifically about the kingdom, is neglected in Van Drunen’s treatments.

In addition, it is difficult to maintain that the Noahic covenant is a non-redemptive covenant or a purely natural law covenant. The redemptive aspects of this covenant are foreshadowed in Genesis 5:29. It is tied to a picture of redemption: the salvation of humans and animals through the Flood. The covenant is founded on a sacrifice, which symbolically shows the covenant’s foundation is Christ’s atoning work. Finally, the covenant includes special revelation about not eating blood, which shows the covenant is not solely a natural law covenant. To avoid these conclusions Van Drunen proposes that in 6:18 God makes a redemptive covenant with only Noah while in chapter 9 God makes a different common covenant with all creation. Van Drunen wishes to distance the covenant in chapter 9 from the sacrifice in chapter 8. These interpretations are strained, to say the least.

Second, Van Drunen errs in conceiving of the creation blessing as a command that formed part of Adam’s probation. It is better to see Genesis 1:28 as a blessing that came under covenant sanctions when man sinned. Rightly conceiving the creation blessing has significant consequences. The themes of blessing, land/kingdom, and seed are contained in the creation blessing. The curse in Genesis 3 is a reversal of the blessing in the areas of seed and land. It is no mistake that blessing, seed, and land are the major themes found in the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and new covenants. Redemption is about reversing the curse in these areas. Since human sin led to the curse, addressing the problem of human sin is at the heart of redemption.

In addition, the creation blessing is the foundation for the kingdom theme in Scripture. Man was blessed with rule over the earth under God’s greater rule. When mankind rebelled against God, that rule was marred and distorted. The kingdom of God theme is about the restoration of human rule under God’s greater rule. The glory of God’s redemptive plan is that Jesus, the man who restores that rule, is both God and man. This understanding of the kingdom theme shows the difficulty of the two kingdoms approach. The kingdom that Christ announced cannot be relegated to the churchly sphere because its ultimate end will be the restoration of the original creation blessing.

Biblically it is clear that the Messianic kingdom extends to areas VanDrunen assigns to the common kingdom. Psalm 72 says the Messiah will “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the need, and crush the oppressor!” (Ps. 72:1). He will accept tribute from the other kings of the earth (Ps. 72:10). These are activities that VanDrunen would keep in the common kingdom. The entire idea of a redemptive kingdom separate from a common kingdom seems to be read into the biblical covenants rather than out of them.

A third weakness in VanDrunen’s work is the identification of all of culture with Babylon. VanDrunen bases this key part of his argument on a particular idealistic, amillennial interpretation of Revelation. He specifically constructs his eschatological statements so as to exclude both premillennialism and postmillennialism (Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 63). This idealistic interpretation of Babylon in Revelation 18 is then conflated with Jeremiah 29:4-14 so that it refers to all of human culture, good and bad. However, Babylon of Revelation 18 seems rather to refer to worldly culture in opposition to God (and it does so as manifested in a particular place at the end of this age). In relation to this, the Babylonian exile does not seem to be the best model for Christian sojourning in the present evil age. From the exile from Eden and the exile of Cain through the Babylonian Captivity, exile from the land is punishment for sin. The sojourning theme, by contrast, is a positive theme. When the New Testament does explicitly draw on an Old Testament example of sojourning, it looks to Abraham.

Fourth, the thrust of VanDrunen’s presentation is to minimize the antithesis that exists between Christians and non-Christians in the cultural realm. He notes for example, that there is nothing really distinctively Christian about the vocations of carpenter, firefighter, plumber, or landscaper aside from the virtues of diligence, respect, and honesty that all people recognize as good. But what if VanDrunen shifted his examples to include research biologists, philosophers, historians, or bioethicists? The minimization of the antithesis by the two-kingdoms view seems to cut at the heart of Aniol’s project, which maintains that the church cannot be conformed to the culture because of the antithesis. Aniol notes this difficulty in passing, but I think it is such a threat to his (and my) view that it deserves a more sustained critique.

None of this is to say that Aniol holds to the views critiqued above. He does not go into this level of detail in his summary of the views. However, these aspects of the two-kingdoms approach make me wish that Aniol had been more critical of it.

Creation Regained: Response to Aniol’s Critique

Aniol does provide a sustained critique of a group he labels transformationalists, with Al Wolters as the chief representative. This labeling is problematic. The label transformationalist comes from Niebuhr’s typology, but Wolters’s position does not fall nicely into Niebuhr’s paradigm. Wolters describes his position as reformational, and he uses the word “transform” only four times in Creation Regained: once in quoting Romans 12:2, twice regarding the transformed way that early Christians viewed slavery, and once of the transformation of culture in the eschaton. Some reformational thinkers have objected to being labeled transformationalists by their critics. In fact, in contrast to transformationalism, Wolters and Goheen note, “The history of this ‘time between the times,’ then, will not be one of smooth progress or an incremental linear development of the kingdom toward its consummation. Neither will our mission be one that resembles a steady victorious march toward the end” (133). Rather, “We announce and embody a victory that remains hidden until the final day. And so the embodiment of that victory often appears in what appears to the world as weakness, even foolishness” (134-35). What does it look like to live out this vision in the present world: “If we as the church want to be faithful to the equally comprehensive biblical story we will find ourselves faced with a choice: either accommodate the Bible’s story to that of our culture and live as a tolerated minority community, or remain faithful and experience some degree of conflict and suffering” (134). This is neither triumphalism nor a minimization of the antithesis.

Critique 1: Conflation of Divine and Human Creation

The specific critiques launched against Wolters seem to arise from misunderstanding. For instance, Aniol writes, “Wolters fails to distinguish between God’s creation and man’s creation. He often conflates the two categories, equating the intrinsic goodness of God’s handiwork with what mankind produces” (79). He raises the stakes by saying that this is “to slide dangerously close to Pelagianism” (79). Wolters’s view does expand the conception of creation beyond material things in two ways, but this expansion does not involve a confusion of God’s creation and human creation.

First, Wolters holds that law is built into creation. Creation is not only material things; creation includes non-physical laws like gravity and norms for marriage. Drawing on the wisdom literature Wolters observes that God designed his world to work in particular ways. Wisdom is to observe God’s world to through the lens of God’s Word to discern how best to live in the world God made. Wolters’s point here actually strengthens Aniol’s project: “Much of modern art, with its refusal to recognize any aesthetic norms, edges toward nihilism: it manifests a glorification of autonomous human creativity, and in doing so denies God’s creativity in the aesthetic realm. Not all art is good art. Both artists and aestheticians are called, each in their own ways, to discern the criteria that define good art—criteria that are not arbitrary but rooted in a given order of things that must be honored” (26). Here Wolters’s is challenging the same cultural relativity that Aniol is challenging.

It is probably Wolters’s second expansion of the concept of creation that concerns Aniol. Wolters points out that God “put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue” the work of creation. In making this point, however, Wolters is not conflating what God has made and what humans make and calling both creation. He is simply making the point that the “unfolding of culture and society are integral to creation . . . , that they are not outside God’s plan for the cosmos, despite sinful aberrations, but were built in from the beginning, were part of the blueprint” (44-45). In other words, Christians should not oppose cities per se and prefer an agrarian lifestyle on the grounds that Adam lived in a garden but Cain built a city. We should not avoid all music because Jubal devised the first musical instruments. Rather, we recognize that at the center of the new creation is a city, the new Jerusalem, and that right worship of God can make use of musical instruments. Why? Because God designed his creation so that it could develop in such ways. Wolters is not saying the human development itself is God’s creation. Rather, the norms that God built into the world make such development possible and necessary.

In addition, Wolters specifically guards against Aniol’s concerns by a detailed discussion of worldliness (something absent in Van Drunen’s writings). He argues that “world describes the totality of sin-infected creation” (64). He argues that “nothing is ‘neutral’ in the sense that sin fails to affect it” (82). Goheen, who coauthored the postscript to the second edition of Creation Regained writes in another book, “After being rescued [Christians] are not to love the world or anything in the world (1 John 2:15), nor are they to conform to the pattern of this world (Rom. 12:2). When Paul exhorts the church not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, he is referring to culture” (A Light to the Nations, 182). There is no cultural neutrality here, nor is there an ascription of the intrinsic goodness of God’s creation to the works of man’s hands.

Critique 2: Confusion of Elements and Forms

Aniol’s second critique of Wolters is that his structure/direction distinction “fails to distinguish between what might be called elements and their forms” (79). This critique does not reject the structure/direction distinction, for Aniol notes, “Wolters’s structure/direction categories are a good starting point, but the situation is often more complex” (79). Wolters would not disagree with this last statement, for he has himself noted that structure and direction don’t really settle issues; they provide the framework within which the discussion takes place (cf. Creation Regained, 110).

The value of this framework should not be discounted, however. By affirming the goodness of creational structure, Wolters defends what the church has defended since the rise of the gnostic heresies, namely, the essential goodness of creation. By affirming the reality of direction no one is not able to do what Aniol fears—simply affirm that cultural practices are creationally good. One is forced to argue that such practices are not twisted in sinful directions. Structure and direction may simply be a starting point, but it is a good starting point.

Aniol disputes some of what Wolters labels as structure: “he lists technology as a structure, but technology is already a direction itself; it is a form of the more basic element of communication. The same is true for dance and music.” This kind of dispute, however, is not a critique of the framework that Wolters is laying out; it is the kind of discussion that is necessary within the framework. Having seen Wolters’s responses to questions of this sort, I think he would welcome challenges to his categorization on certain points. (However, I would personally disagree with making technology a direction of communication; I would see technology as the basic structure of tool using with the different actual technologies developed embodying various directions.)

Critique 3: Cultural is Neutral

Aniol states, “the transformationalist position eventually understands culture in general to be neutral. Any ‘sinful direction’ it recognizes is typically limited to the content of a given cultural form but not the form itself. Rather, since forms are characterized as elements (or directions as structures), very few if any cultural forms are judged to be against God’s law. The danger of this view is that anything in culture is fair game for the Christian for the Christian, and ‘cultural redemption’ means little more than adoption” (79).

Aniol is not tilting against windmills here. This does describe real people and movements. But it is doubtful that it accurately represents Wolters and Goheen. As already noted Wolters and Goheen have a robust understanding of worldliness which guards against mere cultural adoption. For instance, Goheen describes his family’s approach to the use of technology: “Ignoring this potent force in our homes is nothing short of foolish. We read Neal Postman’s Technopoly, and when new technologies were introduced into our home, we discussed them together: What will this give and what will this take away? What are its benefits and its dangers? We can record some successes and, sadly, some failures. Nevertheless, there must be an intentional plan to discuss these issues to help our children learn to use technology wisely” (A Light to the Nations, 222-23). He also describes their approach to television: “When we had television in our home in the early years, we allowed our kids to watch some children’s programing as long as they observed a simple rule after each commercial. They had to ask (out loud so we could hear): ‘Who do you think you’re kidding?’” (A Light to the Nations, 223). Notice that the television, which dominates so many American lives, evidently went by the wayside. And notice what Goheen says really filled their time: “None of our children can remember a time when we didn’t have family worship as central to our evenings. We set aside an hour to an hour and a half for family worship five nights a week (Monday through Thursday and Saturday). It was important to set a time and remain unswerving in a commitment to guard it at all costs against other intrusions. It meant starting other meetings later and not planning other evening events. During this time we taught our children the true story of the world in Scripture, using books and methods appropriate to their ages. We spent significant time singing and praying together” (A Light to the Nations, 222).

This doesn’t sound like “little more than adoption” of the culture. Nor does Goheen’s comments about technology comport with the idea that direction only has to do with content and that forms are always structural.

Concluding Thoughts Regarding Wolters and Goheen

This response to Aniol’s critiques of Wolters and Gohneen does not mean that his critiques of cultural conformity in the name of cultural redemption have no legitimate target. They do. Nor does this mean that everyone writing from Kuyperian background is equally helpful. Wolters is far better than Cornelius Plantinga, in my estimation (and on the two-kingdom side, David Van Drunen is far better than D. G. Hart on the issue of Christians and the common kingdom). My point is simply that Creation Regained actually gives Aniol a better platform from which to make those critiques than the two-kingdom viewpoint. I think that Aniol could strengthen his position by seeing Wolters as an ally rather than as a foe.

Nor does this response mean that Wolters and Goheen are above critique. For instance, Wolters’s claim that the “products of human culture” will be purified and brought into the new creation goes beyond the biblical evidence and seems unnecessary even in a redemption-as-restoration paradigm. I also question Wolters’s willingness to speak of Christians advancing the kingdom in such areas as “advertising, labor-management relations, education, and international affairs” (76). This language seems too expansive. Regarding Goheen’s A Light to the Nations, I’ve in the past called it “the most disappointing and most profitable book that I’ve read recently. Disappointing because I came to the book with high hopes and found that I disagreed with his basic thesis. Profitable because it is . . . full of wis[dom].” Nonetheless, I find their overall paradigm more biblically grounded and more practically useful than the two-kingdoms paradigm.

What is Culture? Aniol’s Proposal

Aniol concludes his section on culture by arguing that culture should be disconnected from the concept of race and connected to the New Testament category of behavior. If this is not done, then any cultural critique will be labeled racist. If that happens, then the Christian is not able to critique any culture.

Since race is a social construct, and since, given the way the construct has been developed, races exist across multiple cultures, I find the first part of the argument compelling. I also agree that when relating the New Testament to the idea of culture, the idea of behavior is a major connecting point. However, culture is more than behavior. It involves ways of thinking, and it involves artifacts. I think Aniol’s discussion of culture, while good and helpful, could be strengthened by including a discussion of the Bible’s teaching about thinking. In addition, I think expansion on the concepts of elements and forms, which he discusses at various points in the book, might help him further address the artefactual aspects of culture.

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 1

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Scott Aniol’s writings about music, worship, and culture present a viewpoint that is in need of careful consideration for the health of the church. He brings knowledge of theology and a knowledge of music together in ways that many people on both sides of the debate over worship do not do. Further, Scott grounds his discussions about music in a broader, theologically-rooted understanding of culture and conservatism. I am in fundamental agreement with Scott on these issues, and so I commend his latest book By the Rivers of Babylon: Worship in a Post-Christian Culture along with his other writings on religiousaffections.org.

Despite our fundamental agreements, Scott and I disagree about some matters in the central section of this book. He tends to favor a two kingdoms approach to culture and to take a dim view of Al Wolters’s reformational approach, whereas I have found great value in Wolters and have some serious reservations about the two-kingdoms approach. I thank Scott for having Kregel send me a review copy of By the Rivers of Babylon, and I hope this review serves not only to commend Scott’s book to others but also serves to foster greater agreement between us regarding these two differing approaches to culture.

By the Rivers of Babylon falls into three general sections. The first section, chapters 1-3 evaluates the missional church movement. The second section, chapters 4-7 survey different Christian approaches to culture and present Aniol’s own proposal. The third section, chapters 8-10, focuses on Christian gathered worship. Chapter 11 wraps up with implications and applications. These three areas—missions, culture, and worship—are often discussed in isolation of one another, but Aniol is wise to bring them together one’s view in one area will have implications for one’s view on others.

Missional Theology

The section on the missional church movement provides a brief history along with a summary of missional theology. In doing this survey Aniol recognizes the difficulty of defining missional. The term is used across a wide spectrum of people and organizations that range from theologically liberal to evangelical. The treatment is careful to specify who precisely is under consideration and focuses mainly on the evangelical side of the spectrum. Aniol notes three positive contributions of the missional church movement. First, evangelism is a prominent concern. Second, the missional church movement, in theory, views worship as an activity primarily of believers and rejects the evangelism-centric services of the church growth movement. Third, the missional church movement has recognized that western Christians now live in post-Christian societies. This affects how the church functions in society. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on how the Enlightenment shaped the church in less than desirable ways. Aniol then notes three negative aspects to the missional church movement. First, it takes its critique of the church of Christendom too far, thus rejecting too much of the inheritance that Christians have from past centuries. Second, it too often assumes that culture is neutral and that church practice can be easily adapted to a wide variety of differing cultural forms without loss. Third, it maintains a close connection between worship and evangelism that at times belies its critique of the church growth movement.

Aniol’s evaluation of the missional church movement seems balanced and fair, and I think his concerns are sound. A naïve view of cultural neutrality combined with a substantially negative view of prior church practice both impoverishes the church and leaves it up to cultural corruption. One of Anoil’s most telling observations relates to the difference between the tendencies among missional theologians and practitioners: “The theologians seem to emphasize the fact that culture shapes the church (especially harkening back to the ways Christendom and the Enlightenment shaped the church in the West) and warn against being shaped by the culture in ways that ‘might be compromising gospel truth.’ Most practitioners, on the other hand, tend to minimize the possibility that any culture could shape the gospel harmfully, instead emphasizing the need for the church to engage the culture and redeem it for the gospel” (34-35). If this is the case, then the practitioners are setting themselves up to repeat the errors of the past without reaping its benefits.

Since the missional church movement is concerned to contextualize the gospel within particular cultures, chapter 3 concludes with a survey of changing definitions of culture from culture as high culture to anthropological definitions that recognize that all people groups have a culture. Chapter 4 opens with a survey of the roots of the contextualization idea in the World Council of Churches. These discussions transition to the second part of the book, which examines how Christians are to understand and relate to culture.

Tensions in the Puritan View of Culture

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Puritanism and its Reformed-pietist successors constantly vacillated between whether they were rebuilding Christendom by making towns and eventually nations into virtually Christian societies, or whether they were advocating a pure, called out church. Edwards had strong commitments to both ideals. Heir to the Puritan establishment and part of a powerful ruling class, he was jealous of the privileges of ministerial prestige in town and province. He looked forward to a worldwide Reformed Christendom as the millennium approached.

Yet he was also a luminary among the international awakeners whose insistence in conversionism could—like earlier Puritanism—be disruptive of the standing order. The awakeners worked on the premise that many church members, including many clergy were unconverted. The implication seemed to be that true churches should be made up of true believers only. . . . Some had become Baptists, applying the logic of converts-only purity to both sacraments. It is easy to see why Edwards’ opponents would accuse him of moving toward separatism.

Edwards wanted rather to resolve the old conundrum without resorting to separatism. He would show how to maintain both the purity of the church and the establishment.

George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 350-51

Creation and Social Structures

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Greg Forster has some helpful comments on how social structures are rooted in Creation while also being shaped by human action. This means that social structures are rooted in the creational order but human action can twist them in accord with the Fall or press them back toward something that conforms to God’s law.

We must avoid two errors when thinking about social structures. The first error is thinking of them as arbitrary constructs of individual human decisions. This implies that there are no limits on how social structures can be changed. We raise children in families now, but if we all decided to live differently, we could just as easily create massive nurseries and drop off all our babies there at birth. We have an economy based on ownership and exchange now, but if we all decided to live differently, we could just as easily redistribute all property to the people we think should have it, or abolish property and live communally. This is the error I described earlier as naiveté about the social nature of human beings. . . . Admittedly, there is something mysterious about this. It certainly seems like social structures ought to be infinitely changeable if they are only the result of human action. But in fact, they make no sense to us if they’re arbitrary. If we can rearrange parenthood or ownership at will just by deciding to do so, then really there is no such thing as parenthood or ownership. The reason is simple: social relationships are embedded permanently in our nature as human beings. They’re like reason and morality, which are also embedded in our nature. You can’t think logically unless you first assume, without argument, that logic is valid. You can’t think morally unless you first assume, without argument, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. Similarly, you can’t think socially unless you first assume, without argument, that social systems are real and not arbitrary. The other error to avoid is treating social structures as though they were not a result of human action at all. This implies they can’t be changed, that they’re mechanical forces that stand outside our world. They control us, but we have no power to control them. I’ve already hinted at this error, when I commented that there’s no magical force outside human will that makes people live this way.

Greg Forster, Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It (Crossway, 2014), 178-80.

Culture and Creation

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Culture is what we make of creation. Literally we take the stuff of creation and shape artifacts and institutions. We build things from stone and steel. We make art by arranging colors and textures, sounds and words. And our social institutions are shaped by taking into consideration the nature of human nature. Figuratively, we make something of creation—we project an appraisal in our cultural forms of the kind of world that God has made and the kind of creatures he’s made us to be. Cultural disorders often come from inadequate or false readings of creation. Many people today deny the very existence of a given human nature, arguing that cultural institutions are simply social constructions, arbitrary and freely chosen patterns guided only by human willing.

Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Journal 78 (Jan/Feb 2006): 00:08-00:57