If politicians and public health officials want more people to trust them, they would do better to try to refute opposing arguments rather than arrogantly dismiss them as “misinformation.” In spite of concerted efforts by civil leaders, public health officials, big media, and big tech to silence dissent during this pandemic, there have been a number of scientists who have contended that the prolonged use of government-imposed NPIs in a pandemic does far more harm than good. 

Framing Everything in Life as a Matter of Empirical Science Disregards the Immaterial and Transcendent Aspects of Human Existence, Succumbs to the Illusion of Control, Enthrones Experts, and Leads to Tyranny.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, one of the many repeated mantras has been that we need to “follow the science” when determining the public policy response to this highly infectious disease. While many have welcomed this assertion, it has not been without its critics. For example, one writer points out the danger to such an approach by noting the following:
As President Dwight Eisenhower said in his 1961 farewell address, public policy can ‘become the captive of a scientific-technological elite,’ which by nature lacks the temperament and broad thinking necessary to steer a democratic society. Instead, this elite’s conceptual blindspots and ignorance of broader human and spiritual concerns mean it is likely to steer us into the ditch of never-ending lockdown cycles to ‘slow the spread’ of a virus that is demonstrably uncontainable by governments and their edicts.
Similarly, former Bureau of Justice Statistics director Jeffrey Anderson argues that, while public health officials now play a prominent role in our governance, such people do not make for good rulers because “it is in the nature of their art to focus on the body in lieu of higher concerns,” and because they “are naturally enthusiastic about public health interventions.”
He adds,
Their guiding light is the avoidance of risk — narrowly defined as the risk of becoming sick or dying. The risk of stifling, enervating, or devitalizing human society is not even part of their calculation. Under their influence, America has been conducting an experiment in mask-wearing based largely on unsupported scientific claims and an impoverished understanding of human existence.
(For data on mask-wearing, see this, this, this, this, this, and this. It is important to remember that the controversy over masks is not whether people should be able to wear them without being given a hard time. Of course they should. Rather, the controversy pertains to whether some people should be allowed to force other people to wear masks against their will.)
“Experiment” is the proper word to describe much of what has been done in response to this pandemic. One wonders why previous generations did not respond to their pandemics by employing the strategies that have been implemented during the COVID-19 outbreak. After all, it is not as though there is anything technologically advanced about non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like stay at home orders, closures, compulsory mask-wearing, gathering restrictions, contact tracing, and physical distancing mandates. People had a basic knowledge of the way infectious diseases spread during the pandemics that took place in the late 1950s and late 1960s.
Why weren’t those pandemics dealt with in the way we have dealt with this one? What is it that has made so many people see the COVID response as reasonable even though the data has shown for some time that the virus is not deadly for the vast majority of those who contract it?
While there are surely a variety of factors that have contributed to what has happened with COVID-19, one of them may be connected with the fact that our society is significantly more secularized today than it was in earlier eras. That is, the widespread acceptance of prolonged, government-imposed NPIs that radically disrupt ordinary life and suppress civil and religious liberties is due in part to the waning influence of the notion that human life has a transcendent meaning, along with the increasing acceptance of a scientism that is focused entirely on controlling the material world.
C.S. Lewis had some important things to say about the threat of scientism. This does not mean that he was anti-science, though he knew that charge would be leveled against him. In a letter written in response to such criticism, he defined scientism as “the belief that the supreme moral end is the perpetuation of our own species, and this is to be pursued even if, in the process of being fitted for survival, our species has to be stripped of all those things for which we value it — of pity, of happiness, and of freedom.” One writer aptly summarizes Lewis’s concerns about scientism by saying that he “feared what might be done to all nature and especially to mankind if scientific knowledge were to be applied by the power of government without the restraints of traditional values.”
Lewis’s most focused treatments of scientism are found in his brief nonfiction work The Abolition of Man and in his fictional Space Trilogy. In the first volume of the trilogy, the scientist-villain (Weston) justifies his mistreatment of the hero (Ransom) by telling him:
I admit that we have had to infringe your rights. My only defense is that small claims must give way to great. As far as we know, we are doing what has never been done in the history of the universe… You cannot be so small-minded as to think that the rights or the life of an individual or of a million individuals are of the slightest importance in comparison with this.[1]
In the last volume of the trilogy, the plot revolves around how an organization called the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (NICE) “follows the science” in its social planning efforts, with ruthless disregard for both animal and human life. At one point in the story, the narrator makes this observation:
The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom’s own time, begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result.[2]
This is what Lewis sets his sights upon in The Abolition of Man, the main thesis of which is summed up in this quote: “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.”[3] Michael Aeschliman unpacks this assertion as follows:
Without a doctrine of objective validity, only subjective, individual desire remains as a standard to determine action. In the hands of an empowered elite, the capacity to reorder society with the techniques of a vastly powerful and unchecked science is virtually limitless and, of course, open to monstrous misuses.[4]
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Throughout the last 2000 years, the Church has been obediently taking the Gospel to the world and to the nations, calling for them to come under the Lordship of Christ. Wherever the world parts ways with Jesus is where we have been called to serve. And when all the nations on earth finally bow their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, when all rebellion is squashed, when all the families on earth are blessed in the seed of Abraham’s covenant, or are put under His titanic feet in cursing, then the end will come.

When writing a book, an author commonly develops themes in the first chapter that repeat throughout the drama but only find their resolution in the final chapter. This is precisely what God has done in the epic tale He has constructed called man. When God began His story, He created the first man and called Adam. God designed that man as the pinnacle of His creation, enlivened that man with His own breath, and placed him in a garden palace to rule and have dominion over the creatures. God installed this man as His viceroy, and along with his newly crafted queen, Adam was called to be fruitful in his labors, to multiply humans to fill the earth and extend God’s dominion to every square inch of the planet to the glory of God. And while Adam failed in this mission, this was the paradigmatic chapter God used to launch into His story.
Knowing this, it should not be surprising that God brings all of these themes together in beautiful, victorious harmony in the final chapter we are now living in. For instance, He raised a true and better Adam, Jesus, to succeed where Adam failed. Unlike Adam, who fell into the depths of sin, Jesus would ascend as the pinnacle of a new creation, high and lifted up, with a name above all names, to sit as God’s true and better viceroy. Like Adam, who was called to rule in a garden, Jesus ascended into paradise and sat at the right hand of God to be fruitful in His labors, to multiply disciples across the nations, and to bring the unruly world under the rule of Almighty God. Unlike Adam, who fell at the feet of the serpent, Christ crushed the serpent under His feet and has been plundering that dragon’s kingdom ever since. This final chapter that we are living in, where Christ redeems everything lost in the fall of Adam, is the last and concluding chapter in God’s grand masterpiece. This means you are living in the end times. Let me explain.
Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about how the book of Acts, especially in the events of Pentecost, prepares us for the fact that the end times are events that have already begun. This works itself out in two specific ways. First, the last days rightly refer to the final waning years of the Old Covenant era, where the temple, the priesthood, and Mosaic Judaism all came to a cataclysmic end with the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Those were the last days of the Old Covenant, and when they were over, that chapter was closed forever and for good. Yet, on the other hand, the end times also refer to the beginning of a new era inaugurated in the first century. This is a final end-time epoch of earth’s history, a concluding chapter encompassing the entire reign of Christ, who will bring all things under His Lordship or under His feet.
Thus, the end times describe a unique forty-year period, a window of time, that occurred in the first century, where two distinct covenantal eras overlapped in the nation of Judah. At the same time that the Apostle Paul was preaching the Christian Gospel in Galatia, the high priests were offering sacrifices in Jerusalem. These two eras had overlapped. The penultimate chapter had yet to conclude before the final chapter began. During those forty years, between the ascension of our Lord in AD 30 and the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 70, both the New and Old Covenant eras existed simultaneously. One was nose-diving into its last and final hours, while the other was soaring to life, evidence that God’s final chapter of history had begun.
Today, I want us to build upon that foundation by seeing two things. First, I want us to clearly see how Jesus came into His reign and is in that reign right now. Second, without venturing into the bizarre and weird, I want to show how we can know precisely when His reign will be complete. With that, let us continue in Peter’s great sermon, recorded in Acts chapter 2:32-36.
Luke tells us:

This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”‘ Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” – Acts 2:32-36

When Does the Reign of Christ Begin?
As this passage tells us, Jesus’ reign begins the moment He ascends and sits upon the throne. We are not waiting for a future millennial Kingdom of Jesus. He is also not currently in heaven twiddling His thumbs. He is reigning over His empire now, and the armies of hell are shuddering because of it. How do we know this?
For one, Luke tells us that Christ was exalted up unto the right hand of God in the resurrection and ascension. Jesus’ exaltation should be seen as His elevation above all men and His coronation to rule. For instance, being at the king’s right hand symbolized unparalleled authority. Men who were elevated to such a position would be considered the vice-regent, the second in command, with power over all men, save the King. In a sense, this is the position unto which God appointed Adam. Yet, Adam’s obedience puttered out, and fell into rebellion, before he reached his throne.
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Written by Patrick J. O’Banion |
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Works like Calvin’s masterpiece don’t belong to a small subset of trained pastors and theologians, much less to the secular academy. They belong to the church. And reading them ties the church of this century to all of those that have come before.

In his recent book Breaking Bread with the Dead [read TGC’s review], Alan Jacobs offers advice for achieving a “more tranquil mind”—a thing devoutly to be wished. At the heart of the book is the following insight: the more substantially we’re in touch with the past, the more effectively we’ll avoid being “trapped” in the “social structure and life patterns” all around us (14).
Like C. S. Lewis, who famously urged us to “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds” by reading old books, Jacobs argues that “you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion” unless you regularly step away from it (23). For Christians, this means attentively reading (and rereading) the great works of the church’s history.
But, let’s face it, reading Augustine’s City of God, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Milton’s Paradise Lost can be hard work. Helpful resources exist for potential readers, of course. You’re more likely to hang in there with the great, big books if those who have gone before us can reduce the friction (as it were) by telling you what to expect.
In that spirit, I’d like to point out some landmarks from a recent reading of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), one of those great works of the Christian past and a daunting tome to encounter. Think of the following as lessons learned—things I wish someone had told me before I took the plunge.
1. Calvin had a vast knowledge of Scripture.
Calvin often used the Institutes to address issues that didn’t fit into his sermons or commentaries. Scholars suggest interacting with all three genres—Institutes, commentaries, and sermons—to get the full picture. No doubt they’re correct, but Calvin’s interaction with the Bible bleeds over from his exegetical labors into the Institutes. Watch for his wide and deep knowledge of Scripture. Seeing it operate in a work of this scale is marvelous to behold.
2. Calvin engaged church history deeply.
Calvin understood that being a Christian meant being connected to all Christians who had gone before. In addition to theologians of his own day, Calvin read (widely) among the church fathers and (not quite as widely) among the medievals.
This allowed him to bring the debates of the past into conversation with the controversies of the present and, by considering how the church and her theologians had previously engaged those issues, to move his readers through confusion toward conclusions.
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