Where in the world is the Church?

2022-02-06 0 views

Introduction

Two hymns seems to contradict each other: “This World Is Not My Home, I’m Just Passing Through” and “This Is My Father’s World”. “Secular” education, activities, vocations seems to be necessary evil - in order to make a living, to be able to tithe and give to the missionaries, or at worst, they are distractions to Christian Life. However, the pressure to create distinctively Christian versions of everything in the world assumes there is something inherently wrong with creation. The pressure to justify art, science and entertainment in terms of their spiritual usefulness ends up damaging both the gift of creation and the gift of the Gospel. We need to define two terms. Culture means any human activity that is intended for the use, pleasure and enrichment of society, this includes both popular culture (sports, politics, public education etc.) and high culture (academics, classical music, literature, science). Church means the institutional church, where the Word is rightly preached and sacraments are rightly administered.

How to Be a Worldly Christian

We normally regard the passion for Lord as a passion for missions, evangelism and involvement in ministries. This book wants us to consider the possibility that serving the Lord means a renewed commitment to performing one’s calling with greater excellence rather than abandoning that calling for a new one. Some Christians struggle to understand their relationship to the world because they perceive that earth is a realm ruled by Satan; therefore it seems best to focus on evangelism and spiritual growth instead of secular activities. This comes from the ancient heresy of Manichaeanism, a form of Gnosticism emphasizing the dualism between “good god” and “bad god”. Calvin argues that all satanic and demonic influences of evil are under the sovereign command of God. Satan not only does not have the slightest chance of ultimate victory; he does not have victory over God’s purposes, nor can he frustrate God’s plans. Although he works tirelessly to weaken the believer’s confidence in God’s grace. The sovereignty of God comforts us in crisis and curbs our pride in triumph, reminding us that it is not we who determine the outcome of spiritual battles, but Christ the king who fights for us and has already secured the final victory. Reformation restored the world-embracing and world-affirming piety that we find clearly expounded in Holy Scripture.

In Family, the vignettes of Luther’s home life are filled with portraits of a family sitting around the table praying, reading Scripture, and also singing, playing instruments, and playing games.

In Art, we can see a clear change from Medieval to the Dutch Baroque. Medieval painting was to inspire devotion and to teach a moral or spiritual lesson with themes related to religious matters. Dutch Baroque depicts secular life. Jesus is God, but the medieval church had so stressed His distance and divinity that the devout had to look to saints and Mary for understanding. The Reformation emphasized the truth that God had become human, bringing dignity to earthly, secular life. One need not to “sanctify” art by demanding it serve the religious or moral interests of the church. Creation is a legitimate sphere in its own right.

In Music, great artists were able to move freely between the secular and sacred without confusing either, for they were comfortable with reality, whether it was the reality about Creation and the Fall, historical epics, delicate impressions of a foreign land, or the reality of salvation from sin and redemption in Christ.

In Literature, the Reformation inspired freedom from churchly constraints as well. We see the rise of modern novel, historical studies and a variety of literary explorations.

In Science, the Reformation liberated the scientists to pursue his calling without having those who were untrained in sciences constantly judging his observations. The Protestant scientists believed nature is the “second book of God”, which would harmonize perfectly with the “first book”, the Scripture. There is a slogan called “All Truth is God’s Truth”, and a book from Arthur Holmes with this name.

In Education, Martin Luther persuaded the government to mandate compulsory universal education for the first time in Western history. The Academy, which later became the University of Geneva, became a model for the great universities of Europe and the New World. Far from being anti-intellectual or fearful of secular learning, the Reformers believed that Christianity could only thrive among a literate and educate populace.

Sphere Sovereignty: Minding our Own Business

Abraham Kuyper has the notion of “sphere sovereignty”, which he adapted from the Reformer’s insistence upon staying within the sphere of one’s calling and making the boundaries clear. As God reforms and rebuilds home, church and politics, liberating each to pursue its divinely ordained role without confusion with other spheres. A church is set back on track by restoring its confidence in the power of the Word; a family, by restoring its confidence in the importance of both quality leisure time together as well as fellowship in the Scriptures; and a nation, to protect its citizens against foreign or domestic aggression. Only by clearly distinguishing these spheres are we able to have same and reasonable expectations of the various institutions in which we are commonly involved.

Christ and Culture

According to Christ and Culture from Yale’s H. Richard Niebuhr, there are five different approaches taken by Roman Catholic and Protestant bodies about the relationship between Christ and Culture.

Christ Against Culture

In 1 Thessalonians 4:11, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands … so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody”, there was at times intense persecution that accentuated the sense of being strangers and aliens in this world. As Latin Father Tertullian said: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem”. There is an opposition of nature and grace, secular and sacred. The Gnostic element in approach becomes evident. The world is evil, but the realm of spirit is good; earthly things are inherently sinful, while heavenly things are inherently virtuous.

The Christ of Culture

One the other hand, there are people who identify Christ with a particular culture that He simply exists as the embodiment of one’s own culture. This is the inheritance of Protestant liberalism. In American evangelicalism, cultural Christianity has produced an unusual confidence in the ability of the American spirit to accomplish whatever is necessary. “Christ” is an idea more than a person. “Cultural Christianity, in modern times at least, has always given birth to movements that tended toward the extreme of self-reliant humanism, which found the doctrine of grace demeaning to man and discouraging to his will”. This is why Arminianism works so well in America and Calvinism is so disdained. Calvinism can never serve the idealistic or optimistic individualist who believes that there is something unique in the national character that predisposes a sinner to become a saint by hard work. In Reformation theology, God judges and justifies; in Arminianism, man decides and pulls himself up by the bootstraps.

Christ Above Culture

This category suggests neither antagonism nor assimilation. In this approach, the fundamental issue does not lie between Christ and the world, but between God and man. The world is neither to be cursed nor blessed. There is an attempt to synthesize Christ and culture, but not to simpy “baptize” one’s own culture with Christianity. This is the position from Thomas Aquinas.

Christ and Culture in Paradox

This position affirms the “dual citizenship” of every Christian who is a member of the City of God and the City of Man simultaneously. Neither the sphere is to rule the other, nor is either sphere to attack the other. Adherence to this position will not seek to locate God’s grace in culture or in oneself, but they clearly distinguish creation and redemption. Luther recovered Augustine’s emphasis on the “two cities”, and Calvin buttressed it with his own defense of the two kingdoms, especially in The Institutes.

Calvin says that the moral law of God written on the human conscience is sufficient for framing a just society. And yet Calvin urged believers to so live by the light of special revelation (the Bible) that their influence could be detected in the wider culture.

Christ the Transformer of Culture

The final classification in Niebuhr is also the one he particularly favors. Proponents of this view doesn’t believe that this world will be transformed into Paradise by human progress, but they are also eager to see God’s hand in the advances in science, medicine, the arts and learning in general. They want to be God’s agent to reform in the world around them. They emphasize three things:

1). The importance of the doctrine of creation. The world, even in its falleness, as Calvin put it, is “a theater of God’s glory.” The non-Christian still bears God’s image and, by common grace, is capable of great feats of cultural good. 2). The conviction that humanity if fallen. Life the dualist, the transformer affirms total depravity, but he is anxious to anxious to distinguish this from an ontological or essential evil. It’s not that we are sinful because we have material bodies. Sin is a consequence of moral rebellion. It is “the corruption of nature, not nature itself” that is to blame. 3). The transformer also believes that the world is awaiting complete redemption.

The evil will never be fully or even significantly conquered this side of Christ’s return, but there will be partial victories from time to time. There are two distinct spheres, but God is active in both. God is both creator and redeemer, He redeems not only individual souls, but “makes all things new.”

The transformer neither worships culture nor hates it; neither expects final victory in this life nor final ruin. This view is advanced by St. Augustine, John Calvin and the Reformed tradition.

Scripture and Culture

The real question is: “What do the Scriptures teach?” Scripture admonishes us to avoid either the tendency to confuse the kingdom of God with an earthly nation, or to view citizenship in one kingdom as completely antithetical to citizenship and participation in the other. In our day we are faced with an evangelicalism that exhibits both a “Christ against culture” and a “Christ of culture” temperament. One one hand, we share with the Anabaptists a hatred for high culture, yet, with the Protestant liberals, we share an addition to popular culture. We are as formed (or deformed) by modern technology as by Scripture, and we rarely notice the worldliness of popular culture. The proposal the author has is roughly equivalent to a combination of the “Christ and culture in paradox” and the “Christ the transformer of culture” paradigms. This is my Father’s world, and yet, this world is not my home.

“Vain Philosophy” - A Cop Out for Anti-Intellectualism?

What does “deception philosophy” mean in Colossians 2:8? Does it mean that secular philosophy is bad and we should just avoid it? No. Although secular psychological, marketing, political and sociological ideologies rule our anti-theological church. There is still plenty of reasons to learn about worldly wisdom and read not only the bible.

The Value of Creation

Bible’s warning is against confusing “things heavenly” with “things earthly”, not against “things earthly” in general. Confusing things heavenly and earthly trivializes things earthly. The Bible itself is not the answer to everything, it is not a directory for every problem in our lives, for that is not author’s intention. The Bible is specifically directed to the mind, heart and conscience - bringing home the seriousness of God’s judgment and the surprising announcement of God’s pardon and justification of the wicked in Christ Jesus. Bible is limited in its scope and interest primarily to ultimate issues.

This confusion also trivializes things heavenly. Instead of meeting God where He allows Himself to be known (in revelation) through faith, we try to bring Him down to us (in experience) through speculation. The result is a message that is neither earthly enough to be on time and on the cutting edge, nor heavenly enough to say anything really profound and otherworldly.

Taking Every Thought Captive

When Paul warns about being deceived by vain philosophy, he is referring to confusion between Christianity and Greek Philosophy. Paul was attacking Gnosticism in particular and the domination of theology by secular wisdom in general. This is precisely the problem we see in evangelicalism today, e.g. secular notions of the self.

Paul also warns the Corinthian believers to encounter the philosophy: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). How can one demolish arguments if one is (a) unfamiliar with the arguments in the first place, (b) uninterested in the merit of those arguments, and (c) incapable of refuting them?

Apologetics

1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have with gentleness and respect”. In Acts 17, Paul builds from earth to heaven using the natural revelation. He understood and exploited the truth in the secular worldview, but then he judged the errors by Scripture.

Those who do not know the strength of that which is part of the unbeliever’s slavery will never know how to free him or her. This means the Christian witness cannot be naive, it cannot simply ridicule unbelief. There are great dangers of ignoring the secular mind because we are left with no way of knowing the extent to which we ourselves are being shaped by these trends in secular thought.

Avoiding the Two Dangers

Just because we cannot find salvation through the great philosophers does not mean that “we have no desire to believe anything else” that is not dependent on special revelation. There is much worth knowing things earthly that the Bible does not take the time to tell us. And yet, there is nothing about God, ourselves, and our relationship to God that the world can tell us more truthfully than God Himself.

We must be aware of two dangers: 1). to ignore the promises and perils of human wisdom. There is no need to trivialize things earthly by feeling the need to “baptize” everything with religion. 2). We must also beware of the effects of secular thought on our own thinking and lifestyle at the point where these forces do clash with Scripture. Just as defendant who cannot afford an attorney will nevertheless be given one by the court, so too every person has a philosophical outlook that even influences the way he or she reads the Bible.

Common grace is common, not specifically Christian. Christians should be engaged in these fields, but not in order to “take them back” or redeem them; but rather, to fulfill their divinely ordained callings in the world.

Christianity and The Arts

What is the relationship between Christianity and Art? Should we feel guilty by reading secular novel or enjoy a film for its artistry even when you recognize the message is wrong?

Artistic Criteria

What are the biblical criteria for judging good from bad art? The simple answer is “None”.

There are two common incorrect interpretations of biblical text. One following the post modernity, that everything is metaphar and everyone can have their own interpretations. The other is the conservationist’s view that everything should be read literally. In reality, biblical texts are written with some genres, we should read it according to the genre. There are propositions, statements, and there are all metaphors and parables. Jesus gives statements like “I am the Way, Truth and Life” and he also talk about many parables. Both of the are true, and should be read according to their style. The reason that we have artistic expression is because not everything can be expressed with proposations and logic.

“Christian Art”

What about “Christian Art”, is there such a thing? C.S Lewis answers the question very well: “I do most thoroughly agree with what you say about Art and Literature. To my mind they can only be healthy when they are either (a) admittedly aiming at nothing but innocent recreation or (b) definitely the handmaids of religious or at least moral truth.”

Worshiping the correct God correctly falls under the judgment of the second commandment. So the world must not be allowed to tell us how to sing or how to speak in the presence of God. It is God, not the unchurched, who must give us our pattern for worship. Only the Word and sacraments are God’s ordained means of communicating the riches of His favor, so our specifically Christian expressions must be framed solely by that rule.

When God chose His people and instituted a form of worship, a clear distinction was made between “holy” and “common”. However, God is still involved in all of life and is not limited to “religion”. God is involved with creation as with redemption. One day, when heaven and earth are once again reunited, the whole world will be redeemed and will once again become the temple of God, His glory filling the earth. We live in the “in-between” time, when the holy, the church, is separated from the common, the world.

The problem is not that we make a distinction between common and holy, but that we made one “good” and the other “evil”. The Reformers, while upholding the distinction, insists that because God created the world and upholds it by His power, it cannot be a realm that is inherently evil. It is a battleground in which good and evil, truth and error, belief and unbelief struggle. But so is the church! They serve two distinct purposes, the purpose of the church is to worship God as He has ordained and to bring the Gospel to the nations. Although the world can be seen by the believer as “a theater of God’s glory”. The world can never be made into a means of redemption. Culture, Art, Science, Education, Literature and Politics cannot redeem.

In summary, the genius of the Reformational approach to the arts is that it makes biblical religion most relevant to artistic endeavor when it is true to itself and frees art to be true to its calling as well. While biblical faith inspires great art, the wedding of religion and art (like the wedding of religion and politics) only ends up destroying both.

Biblical faith is based on the announcement of what happened in history, when the God-Man was crucified for our sins and raised for our justification, Christianity is in its greatest danger when sinful creatures attempt to discover religious truth from within (since art is a deeply psychological and emotional enterprise that is meant to satisfy entirely different criteria than that of revealed religion)

Art should be accepted for what it is: a divinely given human activity designed to reflect the truth, beauty and goodness of the Creator by reflecting on His creation.

“Christian Fiction”

How should we view the attempts of some writers of “Christian fiction”? Similar to “Christian Art”, what’s important is that we should not confuse them. There are “Christian fiction” that is neither good theology nor good literature. It turns Christianity into moralism rather than a redemptive announcement, and it turns literature into a sermon instead of a story.

Although good fiction may conform to C.S Lewis’ example, they may go even further to write fairy tales that do not imply anything Christian since all of reality is created and upheld by God whether we mention Him or not, whether readers believe in Him or not.

There is always a explicitly Christian themes in art, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a good piece of fiction in its own right, and that is why it is studied as a Western classic in secular classes. The church music of Vivaldi, Bach and Handel is more famous in many concert halls than in most churches today - not because of their religious themes, but because their richness of music.

Secular and Sacred

Reformers denied the Neoplatonic dualism between spirit and matter and insisted that all of life was “the marvelous theater of God’s glory”. No part of human activity was to be seen as somehow outside of God’s interest and providential design. However, there is a distinction between “things heavenly” and “thing earthly”.

A great example is from music. One might complain that some contemporary Christian music was simply emotional and lacked biblical content. Another might say, “Yes, but music is by its nature emotional”. There is a difference between music used to worship God and music used for self expression and self entertainment. There is nothing wrong with art appealing primarily to the feelings and imagination, but there is a great deal wrong with worship that is motivated feelings and imagination. According to the second commandment in the Ten Commandments, we cannot worship God with our own opinions and emotions; our worship (including the music) must be rigorously checked for its theological integrity.

Art in the Believer’s Life

Ever since the triumph of the Romantic vision, art has been seen by many as a province for the elite - men and women who have touched the face of God and enjoyed a beatific vision of the elusive trinity of “the true, the good and the beautiful.” The artist has climbed the ladder into the secret chambers of Paradise and, through his sacramental images, has learned the mysteries that elude the more earthly minded.

An example is in painting, in medieval and Romantic paining, The Annunciation of the Virgin Mary would take place in a place that lacks perspective, depth etc. to communicate that this is a heavenly encounter. While the Reformation artist would represent Mary as common woman engaged in everyday tasks.

The sphere of art is distinct from that of the practical and yet is not to be therefore confused with the ultimate. The two opposite tendencies are toward materialism and Gnosticism. One the one hand, we discover the tendency to judge everything, including art, by its usefulness, and on the other hand, the tendency to associate art with “the spiritual”, as if working with iron were less spiritual simply because of its relation to matter.

Understanding Art

I don’t believe that high art is sinful or a distraction, but how can I enjoy it if I don’t have any background and training in these fields? This question comes from the view of art as a badge of special achievement meant to admit the artist to the balcony, high above public sentiment and taste. But this is not always so. Art is meant to bring delight, wonder, criticism and even discomfort of the viewer. This has been the case since Romantic period. Mozart’s operas were originally performed for the equivalent of modern moviegoers. We don’t need to be worried that because we cannot understand much of modern abstract art that we are ill-equipped for the task of enjoying art and literature. Before nineteenth century, the literature, painting or music are produced for our pleasure, not for the author’s esoteric Gnostic self-appreciation. We should be free to choose the genre that resonates with us.

Reading Fiction

Why should we waste our time reading fiction? Reading fiction not only entertains us (which is reason enough for it); it helps us to step into another time and place and understand a different world and not to simply take our own opinions and experiences as the given truth.

Turning off MTV

How can we get our children interested in reading again; in the age of MTV? A piece of fiction requires the reader’s involvement at a variety of levels, TV or MTV reduce the viewer to a passive spectator. If children are raised with parents reading bedtime stories and are able to associate reading with good experiences, they will keep those habits into adulthood. One the other hand if the TV set was their electronic baby-sitter, they will not have developed the habit of reading and storytelling.

The Good, The True and The Beautiful

Can it be good if it is not true? Can it be true if it is not beautiful? Can it be beautiful if it is not good? The answer is yes. Often Christians will boycott authors, movies or other forms of artistic expression because of the character or religious commitments of the artist, but it is possible to enjoy art without approving of the artist. It is also possible for a particular work to be good in an aesthetic sense, but morally evil, and vice versa. In Scripture we find David’s adultery with Bahsheba and murder of Uriah to be true but not good or beautiful. Similarly, in Scripture we also find expressions or descriptions that are not true. For instance, the stoic theology of Job’s friends, who argue at length that if Job is suffering, God must be judging him for some secret sin.

However, the Christian experience reflected in the modern genre is out of sync with reality, and the love and tenderness of God in Christ is trivialized into mere sentimentalism.

Bad theology leads to bad art, and a theology that only has room for “I can do all things through Christ” and cannot admit “O wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?” will only produce “victory-mode” art that lacks honesty and truth.

It is not unacceptable for a Christian to read, watch or listen to someone or something with which they disagree with. But we still need to be careful about the value that is conveyed.

Christianity and Modern Science: Can’t we be Friends?

Science arose in the Christian West because of the conviction that instead of blind faith, we should recognize the harmony between natural and special revelation and reject any theory that tells us that we must ignore the facts. Protestant scientists believe that there were two “books of God” - the book of nature and the book of Scripture - and each provided information that could not be found in the other. Scripture is consistent with science, but explanatory of the facts passed under the eyes of scientific investigation.

In Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolution”, he argued that every major scientific advance is due to paradigm shift. Initially scientists with Christian background believes revelation, they insisted on humility in interpreting the ways of God in nature. Later, with the rise of naturalism, science now believes that the order in nature comes from random chance and believed that science will eventually crack the mind of the divine.

The Religion of Science

Instead of an enterprise of discovering the marvelous workings of the natural world, science has become for many a religion. Its dogmatic naturalistic foundation is presupposed by the guardians and reigning philosophers. Never mind the facts, we will eventually demonstrate that even though they point to order design and a rational Creator, all that we investigate is really the product of random chance and impersonal forces.

Christopher Kaiser attributes the flowering of science to four theological foundations: the comprehensibility of the world, the unity of heaven and earth, the relative autonomy of nature, and the ministry of healing and restoration.

The Two Books of God

By the doctrine of providence, Protestants had a new way of harmonizing the two books of God, natural and special revelation. God was no less at work in the ordinary laws that we call “natural” than in His miraculous activity.

The dangers is overemphasizing the natural laws and regard them as God, it gives the rise to Deism, which believes that God created the laws and the laws are the cause of everything. The servants became the master: Laws explaining the observable features of God’s providence became the cause rather than the effect. It is also the root for modern naturalism.

The Split

How do we view the contradiction between science and Scripture? Since God is the author of both, and humans can “misread” either, we need humility in determining whether a current scientific model is flawed or whether we are reading into Scripture something that it never intended to say.

Common Sense Realism

When Kant maintained that faith rested on a non-rational and non-empirical foundation, there was no longer an intellectually justifiable unity between the two spheres. Kant insisted that faith belonged in the noumenal realm, while scientific investigation was concerned with the phenomenal realm.

Thomas Reid challenged these continental Enlightenment influences and had the presupposition that the human faculties of sense and memory are basically reliable, one should use the common sense in both daily decisions and attaining certainty in other decisions. This assumes that there is such a thing as a real world and that it can be understood in some degree.

Rationalism and idealism have insisted that there is no reality independent of the mind. The postmodern condition in which we now find ourselves only accentuates that belief. Michael Polanyi argued that induction and Common Sense Realism are not only fundamental to science, but to the existence and activity of the average human being. One does not infer what must be true and then find facts to support it, but one begins with a few facts and a working hypothesis, ever ready to revise the hypothesis when the facts require.

Evidentialism

J.R. Carnes states that theology “stands in exactly the same relation to religious experience as scientific theory does to our ordinary experience of the world”. Does it mean that doctrine is formed on the basis of natural theology or human experience instead of the Word of God? This is called “evidentialism”.

Evidentialism maintains that reality is knowable and that one should make decisions about truth the same way one makes decisions about the smallest details of daily life. In fact John W. Montgomery has argued that the best model for Christianity apologetic is the law-court.

Prepared to Give an Answer

Many scientists and thinkers today naively believe that their rejection of the supernatural, theistic worldview is based on facts, although it is only based on dogmatic, blind faith in naturalism.

There is a popular caricature which sees scientist as ever open to the corresponding power of new discovery and achieving the reward of real knowledge, whilst the religious believer condemns himself to intellectual imprisonment within the limits of an opinion held on a priori grounds ,to which he will cling whatever facts to the contrary. However this is wrongheaded according to Polkinghorne. First it fails to recognize that scientists, too, have to filter their observation through the observation of other phenomena, and form hypotheses that sometimes that inhibits their acceptance of the observable facts. Second, this caricature assumes that, for religion, Scripture is “incontestable revelation”. However, by contesting Scripture some of its greatest critics have become convinced of its veracity. If a truth can be proven true, it must also be capable of being found false. Therefore the Chrisitian is not being impious to say, “If Jesus is dead, He must be treated dead.”

We may be able to conclude the Bible’s trustworthiness by common sense, rational, evidential inquiry, but we cannot learn the truth about the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the nature of redemption or things to come by observing nature, by rational reflection, or by human experience.

Spiritual Recovery

While men and women of faith ought to challenge the dogmatic presuppositions of naturalism, they also must be willing to be challenged by science itself. History abounds with examples of how easy it is to wed a particular scientific interpretation to biblical text, and later have science to prove that interpretation is wrong. To speak where God has spoken and to remain silent - or to allow natural revelation to speak - where God has not spoken in Scripture is a great art that we must learn again.

Working for the Weekend

Max Weber, in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, attributes the prosperity of capitalism to the work ethic to Protestant/Calvinist theology, but his understanding of theology is ill-formed. For instance , he suggested that the Calvinist was particularly active in the world in order to prove his election by material prosperity, which is not correct. While Weber’s reading has lost most of its support, the historical consensus continues to affirm the Protestant Reformation shaped the “Protestant” or “Puritan” work ethic.

In modern world, we rarely relate theology to life, the vertical to horizontal. And our nine-to-five is considered “secular” since we pushed God only to the “spiritual” realm. This makes our work meaningless, it is theology that gives meaning to every activities of human existence. Once the vertical dimension was clearly corrected and emphasized, the horizontal dimension took its proper shape.

The Problem of Pietism

Pietism tends to create a Christian empire within the normal community. It ended up only creating a church that is of the world but not in it, instead of being in the world but not of it.

A Christian does not go to work on Monday morning in order to convert people to Christ, but to pursue his or her calling, for which he or she was designed by divine creation. It is too often assumed by Christians today that work is unimportant, as if its tedious meaninglessness is somehow justified by the opportunities to witness. Some even concluded that it would be better to abandon the world altogether for the safety of the evangelical ghetto, where one can be assured that his or her work will have a direct evangelistic or church-related objective.

When the church’s faithfulness to its task (preach of the word and administration of the sacraments) and the individual believer’s faithfulness to his or her calling (work) converge, we are likely to have more Christians who know their faith well enough to communicate it in casual conversation (without unloading on co-workers with prepackaged scripts), and their excellence at their callings will lend credibility to that profession.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody”.

The Biblical Basis for One’s Calling

In Genesis, God created man to rule the earth, because man bear the image of God, included in this image was a sense of divine or “transcendence”. Even after Fall, men set up idols for themselves, man cannot live without gods. Men was created to reflect God’s image at least in part, by exercising one’s vocation or calling in the world.

The biblical concept of work is very different from the perception one finds in many Christian circles. Too often it was considered as a necessary evil, a consequence of the Fall. But this is not true, and also not true for family or the church. Work is a divine institution of Creation, given to man as a sign of his dignity, not a curse of the Fall. It is given to the believer to recover the transcendent dimension and connect his or her daily life in this world to the life in heaven.

What about Weekends?

Just as God created man to imitate His “worldliness” (the work in creation). His image is also a summons to imitate His rest.

It is the activities that make the day Lord’s day, not the position in calendar. The Lord’s day should be a church’s “festival day”, or “the market-day of the soul.”

A Family Matter

Families are going to take the lead in this matter of restoring the Lord’s Day to its splendor. Since the very beginning, the family has been the divine institution closet to God’s heart, it’s the most basic building block of society and church. Suggestions for the Lord’s day for family:

The Lord’s Day: ask children to take sermon notes and share at dinner table, spend time with family on recreational activities. The Evening Meal: make it a special time for family to discuss the events of the day. In the past Protestant families made the evening meal the time for brief prayer and the steady memorization of the catechism. Family Night: Select a day of the week to spend time with family, including reading books, games, piano or guitar, bible study etc. Reading Aloud: Read to children at their earliest ages. Television is passive entertainment, this is anti-educational.

Regardless of what one chooses to do, we must put our families first, even before the church. Only after the family activities should we consider small groups, bible studies, volunteering for various activities and ministries in the church. It is time for us to recover the conviction that our most important ministry is to our own families.

God’s Rule over All

The Reformation legitimized marriage as an end in itself, as it had liberated arts, science, philosophy and politics for their distinct activities. Marriage no more required religious justification than these other spheres, rooted as it was in Creation.

Apart from the transcendent (divine, vertical, theological) perspective, we can only see the details of daily routines, but when we begin to sign the composition of our daily scores with “To God Alone Be Glory”, as did Bach, that can make even drudgery divine.

A World Gone Crazy

To fulfill Christ’s command to be “fishers of men”, some fishermen stand on the banks of a calm pond, waiting for a strike. Others cast nets, in expansive evangelistic campaigns. But still others are to be found throughout history wading chest-deep into the powerful stream of human thought, refusing to be swept along by the current, but determined to bring in a significant catch. One type of fishing is not to be trumpeted to the exclusion of the others.

Here we briefly summarize “Our Time” in terms of its major currents and suggest some possible avenues of making more meaningful contributions to the world in this time and place.

Modernity: What is It?

To summarize, modernity possesses the following features:

Belief in Progress

The modern belief in progress comes from Hegel’s philosophy of pantheism that history was a progress towards a perfect state of pure spirit, and the progress is synonymous with “God”. It influenced Adam Smith, as the father of capitalism; Karl Marx, the father of communism; John Dewey, father of modern education; Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology; Friederich Schleiermacher, father of modern theological liberalism, Charles Dawrin, who explained the natural history in terms of evolutionary progress. The idea of progress led a number of influential scientists and philosophers of science to divorce from “superstitions” and “dogmas” of faith. People believed in the progress of science, medicine, education, politics etc. will eventually lead us to utopia.

Universal Reason

The entire Enlightenment project was to build a tower of progress reaching to the heavens. It was a secular spiritualism, a naturalistic religion of human achievement with little or no place for God. Modernity championed the omnipotence of human reason to understand everything necessary and to solve every theoretical and practical problem standing in the way of progress.

What were the Practical Results?

That which begins today as a philosophical speculation ends up moving armies and building empires tomorrow. Popular culture makes people more anxious and more superficial, we need to realize the enormous ramifications of modernity in our lives.

Where were the evangelicals in all of This?

Modernity has the belief of progress to utopia, which is similar to the hope that Christian’s holds. But the basis for Christian’s hope is that God is sovereign, ruling in the affairs of all people. It’s not a belief that “everything will work eventually”, but a hope that realizes that salvation and “utopia” will be finally realized not by human striving, but by the intervention of justice at the end of the age.

Conclusion: In the World but not of It

Scripture teaches us that there are two dangers to avoid - separation and worldliness - and church history teaches us how easily we fall into either.

The Biblical Doctrine of Creation: In the World

The Bible stands diametrically opposed to any view that downplays the reality or importance of the created world. Not only God pronounced the world good in the beginning, but it is in that world that God announced His plan of redemption and executed it in real history. In Psalm 50:12, God says “The world is mine, and all that is in it”. He created it and upholds it by His power.

The Biblical Doctrine of Redemption: But Not Of the World

But John also tells us that we must “not love the world or anything in the world” (1 John 2:15). John refers to the falleness of the world, and its hostility to God’s Word. Both Old and New Testaments describe salvation in terms of the salvation of the body and soul together in time, history, and this world. Crucifixion and salvation is not an inner experience of His disciples, but that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1) In Christianity, religion is a matter of history, not just of the heart. It is true whether we believe it or not. This world is not Christian’s enemy, it is not our humanness or the world in its essence that is the problem. As Calvin puts it, “It is not nature, but the corruption of nature” that is the issue.

But Bible is opposed to worldliness, which is the disease of the soul when we pattern our ideas, beliefs, methods and lifestyles according to the world. Many associates worldliness with secular callings, financial success, dancing, drinking, smoking. But this is not the worldliness described by the Scripture. We become worldly when obsessions with “practical” issues replace well-informed discipleship and when we begin to think that visible popularity and numerical success are the measures of ministry. It is quite possible to be thoroughly corrupted by worldliness even while we are safely tucked away in the Christian ghetto.

There is a pattern of indicative and imperative for the pattern of salvation. As demonstrated in 1 Peter. The indicative is God has given us new birth through the resurrection of Christ, then the imperative: “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; …”. Similarly in John 17:14-19. Jesus makes the point that we are sanctified not because we have progressively separated ourselves from the world, but because Christ separated Himself from the world and we are in Christ. And we must recognize and respond to this fact by progressively extricating ourselves from the worldly perspective and the character if produces.

What does this mean for a Christian Worldview?

Creation and Redemption: Distinct, but not Separate

In the beginning, everything was good. Work was a divine vocation that was intended to build the kingdom of God by advancing culture and a godly civilization. Also ordained by God was the institution of family. Families were to be the center of this universal kingdom of God. There was no need for government, as there was a perfect harmony between God’s will and the rule of His creatures.

After the Fall, the work was to involve “painful toil”, and the blessing upon the family was overshadowed by the curse of painful childbirth. Enmity was placed between the husband and wife, and the war between Satan and the Son of Eve was announced. In spite of all the curses upon normal human existence, including the division of the secular and sacred, God did not leave Adam and Eve without hope. Even in the face of His judgement, He announced the Gospel.

One does not have to “bless” work or secular institutions with the adjective “Christian” for it to be honorable to God. Since it is created and sustained by God. However there is still a distinction between secular and sacred until Christ’s return. To be in the world means that Christians and non-Christians work side-by-side, both bearing divine image and equally capable of civil virtue, creativity, pleasure, pain, success, failure, wisdom and kindness. This liberates us from thinking that everything we did in work, pleasure, in artistic or creative or academic interests had to have something to do with evangelism or the church.

To be in the world but not of the world requires that we know the Christian faith well enough to recognize when we are allowing worldly definitions, attitudes, outlooks and patterns to shape our beliefs and expressions. As we sometimes do not sufficiently appreciate our abiding sinfulness as Christians, we do not take the image of God in non-Christians seriously enough.

Common Grace and Saving Grace

Another distinction we need to keep in mind is between “common grace” and “saving grace”. If we confuse these two, it is easy to see success in business as a sign of divine favor and floods in a particular region as a sign of divine reprobation. The ungodly mistake God’s common grace for saving grace by presuming that because things are not so bad right now, they are not under God’s displeasure.

Unbelievers are capable of great things because (1) they still bear the God’s image (2). they are gifted and held in check by God’s general, superintending providence and common grace.

The spiritual children of Cain have the light of nature to guide them in their building of civilization; the spiritual descendants of Seth have the light of Scripture and the mind of Christ. Unbelievers may build great cities and be guided in their efforts by God’s gracious providence, but believers must be content to wander as strangers and pilgrims. They must be content with their nomadic existence in the world. Just as God descended in judgment upon the secular salvation of the Tower of Babel by confusing the languages and dividing the nations, so at Pentecost He descended in salvation upon the church by allowing each man and woman who had arrived in Jerusalem to hear the Gospel in his or her own native tongue.

Joseph and Daniel are good examples of Christians in secular government, yet they did not seek to turn their respective offices into catalysts for making the kingdom of this world biblical theocracies. They simply pursued their calling in the world with excellence and diligence. Regardless of one’s calling, each of us is expected to pursue excellence in the realm of creation, alongside unbelievers, and this secular calling is just as noble as the sacred calling to the ministry of Word and sacrament.

Also, there is a tendency in the evangelical world that Bible has answer to all practical matters of “things earthly”, which is not true. The Bible is concerned with that which cannot be discovered in nature: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation. It does not tell us what we can discover for ourselves but in greater detail or with greater wisdom; it tells us something we could never have learned through our own investigation, wisdom or insight.

The Scriptures are sufficient for everything related to saving truth and for the revelation of God’s moral will, but they were never intended to be sufficient for everything else. We do not need a Christian view of auto mechanics or biblical principles for open-heart surgery, so why do we need Christian music, Christian books, Christian art, or Christian businesses?

Natural Revelation and Special Revelation

It was not by insisting that their work be specifically “Christian” in any explicit sense, but by reminding them of God’s blessing over creation in its own right, that many believers were liberated from churchly constraints to glorify God and enjoy Him in their callings.

Also since the Law of God is written on the conscience of the pagan who has never been acquainted with the Scriptures, then unbelievers can establish reasonably just societies.

By seeking the interests of our clients or constituents and not using our job or office as a bully-pulpit for our faith, we will win the respect of outsiders - and this, according to the apostle Paul, is a noble goal.

Rebuilding the Foundations

If we are to see the culture change, we must look first to the body of Christ, beginning with our own families. It is not to suggest that we leave our secular occupations and become church workers; but to say that before we can change the culture, we must recover the purity of doctrine and life that has always had a transformative influence in the world. We must stop accommodating to the very culture that we are opposing and attempting to transform. To do that we need only only know our own theology, but know the idols and understand the ways in which we are shaped more by the spirit of the age than by the Spirit of Christ.

The Reformation did not set out to change the culture, yet it is credited in varying degrees with the rise of democracy and human rights, modern science, the revival of arts and letters etc. Conversely, many Christian movements today set out to change the culture, but they end up being changed by the culture - take captive themselves, because the roots were too shallow.