A Christian Manifesto for the 21st Century—Chapter 1: The Abolition of Truth & Morality
The church must declare, as Scripture does, the total lordship of Christ who is the King of kings (Rev. 1:5). To deny this is to neuter the person and work of Christ. It is to neuter the good news. We must read Schaeffer because he calls us back to biblical faithfulness and a cultural engagement rooted in worldview formation.
Published in 1981, A Christian Manifesto reads like a forty-year-old prophecy come true. In it, Francis Schaeffer exposes the underlying issue of a society and a church that is adrift: “The basic problem of the Christians in this country . . . is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals” (17). To rephrase, Christians believe in bits and pieces of Christian truth, like the death and resurrection of Christ, but they fail to integrate that truth into a total view of life. With no worldview foundation, the church is left wandering and paralyzed in this chaotic age, unable to make sense of the larger picture.
The data on Christians and worldview thinking is striking. Recently, one study found only 37% of professing Christian pastors (!) have a biblical worldview. Such a finding is like learning only 37% percent of math teachers know the basics of multiplication. If you don’t know it, you’re not qualified for the job.
Such an alarming revelation should become a rallying cry to recapture a biblical worldview both in the pulpit and the pew. Sadly, the response is one of general apathy. For many Christian leaders, worldview training is optional because they misunderstand what it is.
Many Christians reduce worldview training to apologetics or dealing with various –isms. Such a task can seem overwhelming with endless arguments, facts, and thinkers to know. Such details are needful, but the discipline is much simpler. The biblical worldview simply integrates the doctrines of the faith to build a total view of reality. The biblical worldview is a synonym for the Christian faith.
Worldview thinking calls believers to live and think biblically throughout all of life. The framework of the Christian worldview is the storyline of Scripture—creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. The heart of the Christian worldview is the supremacy of Christ displayed in his universal Lordship (Col. 1:15–20). When rightly understood, worldview formation is vital and inescapable for Christian ministry.
How, then, did so many in the church lose the biblical worldview? Schaeffer demonstrates the problem by pointing to our inability to think in totals. Christians are concerned about isolated issues, but we fail to capture the heart of the problem. Schaeffer lists common concerns from the 1980s—pornography, abortion, the breakdown of the family (17). These are the bits and pieces that consumed his time and ours. Sadly, such issues remain critical today. Only we must add to his list—gender theory, LGBTQ issues, critical race theory, and a resurgent Marxism. These issues are merely symptoms of a deeper conflict between worldviews. But why are we stuck thinking in bits and pieces?
Two Culprits: Humanism and Pietism
A Christian Manifesto offers a Christian philosophy of government. Schaeffer uses the realm of government to make his point about how fragmented our thinking has become. Unlike any other part of life, to bring religion into the realms of government is off-limits. If someone dares to do so, let alone a pastor, they will be met with disgust from both inside and outside of the church. Today, such arguments will be written off as “Christian nationalism,” whatever that means. Yet, Scripture addresses all of life, including the political realm. Schaeffer identifies two culprits that direct us to think in bits and pieces—humanism and pietism.
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These Last Days
There are no other days we are waiting for or looking for before Christ’s return, we are in those days! Therefore, we must watch for Christ to descend and pray for Him to come. His coming will be sudden, swift, and surprising! Watch therefore, the Son of Man is coming at a time you do not expect!
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.
Hebrews 1:1-2
“When are the last days?” Few questions have stoked more discussion, books, imaginations, and trouble than this question. Within the evangelical world there are those who imagine the last days to be well into the future, nearby in the future, or unknown. Some believe the last days are tied to the physical nation of Israel and the city Jerusalem. Some believe the last days will be the glory days of the church, others think they will be a time of greatest persecution for the church. Occasionally these discussions lead us closer to God and His Word, often they take us far from it. Because of the latter, some prefer not to be involved in these thoughts or discussions at all.
In matters of controversy, we must always go to the Scripture with our questions and glean answers from God who speaks to us in the Scripture. When are the last days?
The last days is not a phrase unique to the New Testament. The prophet Joel spoke of the last days in Joel 2:23-32. This was picked up again by Peter at Pentecost when he revealed to all in Jerusalem that what they were seeing was that which Joel prophesied, “in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17). In the last days the Spirit of God will be poured out.
The Scripture goes further when Paul tells us that in times past God spoke to the fathers by the prophets but in these last days [God spoke] unto us by His Son.
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Secular When it Should be Sacred
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Recovering the distinction between sacred and secular will not solve all our problems but, like its analogue, the nature/grace distinction (not dualism), the sacred/secular distinction is an important tool as we continue to learn how to navigate a post-Christian culture.A significant part of the process of recovering and applying classical Reformed theology to our contemporary situation (sometimes called ressourcement, a French word which refers to getting back to original sources) is recovering the distinctions that we lost in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are a number of these, e.g., the archetypal/ectypal distinction, which, in Recovering the Reformed Confession, I called the categorical distinction; the distinction between law and gospel, which, in the classical period of Reformed theology (i.e., the 16th and 17th), was received as basic. Another lost distinction is that between the sacred and the secular. This is a distinction that our classical writers employed regularly but one that is regarded with suspicion today. In this discussion, sacred refers to that which is devoted to God. Think of the way Leviticus speaks of that which is dedicated to God or holy. Secular, in this context, refers to that which is common to Christians and pagans alike, which is not dedicated to God or holy in that sense. It does not mean “unclean” or defiled but simply not specially set apart. Think of the difference between the loaf of bread in your kitchen and the bread that has been consecrated for use in the Lord’s Supper. We often say during the administration of the Supper, “this sacred meal.” That there are secular meals is necessarily implied. Your family dinner is such a meal but it is not dirty or corrupt.
Recovering the Distinction Between Sacred and Secular
The traditional Christian (and Reformed) distinction is regarded with suspicion by some because it is unfamiliar. It is also, as a recent correspondent wrote to me, regarded by some as a Roman Catholic distinction. Some have been taught that the sacred belongs to God and the secular belongs to the Devil. That would be Manichaeism (i.e., the theology behind the Star Wars films). Others have been taught (directly or indirectly) by the followers of Abraham Kuyper that any distinction between the sacred and the secular somehow removes the sovereignty of God.
Neither of these was true in the classical period of Reformed theology and they are not true now. The Protestants saw the secular and the sacred as two distinct spheres over which and through which God exercises his sovereign providence.
Calvin used “secular” as a category without prejudice regularly. E.g. in Institutes 1.8.2, he contrasted the different styles between the human authors of sacred Scripture and “secular” writers. We see the same usage in 1.8.6. Calvin regularly wrote of secular judges, secular philosophers, secular work. E.g. in 4.7.22 he contrasted the properly sacred work of ministry with Gregory I’s complaint that he was forced to be too occupied with “secular affairs.” This way of thinking, speaking, and writing was universal among the magisterial Protestant Reformers and the Protestant orthodox.
We should not confuse the category secular with the use of “secular humanism” and “secularism” as pejoratives. Just as there is a difference between science and scientism so there is a proper distinction between things that are secular and a philosophy of secularism.
One way to think about the distinction between the sacred and the secular is to consider the restriction that the Apostle Paul placed on us in 1 Corinthians 10:14–21. The problem facing the Corinthian church was what to do about sharing meals with pagans.
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What Is Humility?
A popular notion of humility is that it entails forgetting about ourselves. Instead, humility is the internal frame of heart that results from seeing ourselves as we really are. The problem of pride is not that it sees the self, but that it sees the self wrongly. Humility is a putting of the self in its proper place before the glory of God.
When asked in the early fifth century what three graces a minister needs most, Augustine didn’t think twice before responding, “Humilitas; humilitas; humilitas.” When it came to pastoral graces, the great African bishop awarded humility with gold, silver, and bronze medals.
The more I grapple with the Scriptures and my own proud heart, the more I am convinced that Augustine was exactly right. Humility is the most needful of virtues, not merely for Christian pastors, but for all people. If pride is at the root of every vice, then humility must be at the root of every virtue. In a very real sense, it is the virtue of virtues.
That becomes clear when we understand its essential nature. What is humility? Simply put, it is the downward disposition of a Godward self-perception. Let’s unpack this definition so that we can see why Augustine would prize humility so highly and why we should as well.
Humility, first, is a downward disposition of the soul. The Scriptures refer to it as a lowly spirit. Proverbs 29:23 states, “One’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.” God likewise declares through His prophet, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit” (Isa. 57:15). Sadly, the exact opposite was what characterized the nation of Israel in the wilderness. They perished under God’s judgment because “their [collective] heart was lifted up” (Hos. 13:6). The humble heart is one that is not lifted up with the illusion of self-sufficiency and the aim of self-glory. Humility is an internal disposition directed downward toward the self.
However, it is important to clarify what the Bible doesn’t mean by a lowly spirit. Sometimes humility is mistakenly confused with having a low view of oneself or perhaps with the debilitating feelings of incompetency, inferiority, and hypersensitivity that some people experience. But this is not the biblical understanding of humility.
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