In order for the Bible to be coherent, we really do need to have some insight into their world. It’s not that someone needs to understand their ancient setting in order to understand what the Bible is teaching, but many pieces of the full Biblical puzzle will remain missing until you start to dive into their world and thought. Which makes things much more messy and complicated than many conservatives are comfortable with.

The more I’ve thought about this simple statement—The Bible is a historical document—the more I’ve come to realize how simultaneously helpful and frustrating this reality is. On the one hand, it has tremendous explanatory power when thinking through how to read the Bible, but it is that exact same explanatory power that makes the Bible’s placement in history frustrating to both sides of the ideological spectrum.
In the conservative environment I was raised in, I was taught a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible. What you see is what you get. The “plain” reading is the most faithful reading and is all you really need. It may or may not be helpful to have some understanding of the culture at the time it was written, but it doesn’t do any good to try and get at the world behind the text because frankly, it doesn’t matter. Exactly what you read is exactly what happened, take it or leave it.
The issue here is that this isn’t how the Bible is written. The biblical authors wrote the Bible from their unique, individual perspectives, employing common and complex literary styles, and responding to the cultures around them. Before you think this is me falling off the liberal slope, this is exactly what the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says.
Article VIII
We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
This isn’t a liberal view. This is within the view of biblical inerrancy. The Bible was written using various genres of writing, literary devices, and was aware of the world around it.
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If the chief end of you is you – then there can be no telos beyond that. Sure a conservative vision of what that looks like may fit your framework a whole lot more snugly and neatly than a progressive vision, but really, who is to say? Who can challenge you on that? That’s why, as those who challenged the surrogacy issue among conservative gay men found out, the progressives and conservatives are on the same page.

Pink Elephants
You know the funny little trick: “Quick! Don’t think about pink elephants!”
And suddenly, a herd of pachyderm of a particular colour palette are all that you can think about. Try as you might you cannot block them out, loud and incessant as they are with all of their florid trumpeting and vaguely violet stampeding. out of your.
Go on, give it a try: Think of pink elephants and then try not to. You know that you want to.
But, if you will allow me, now that pink elephants are firmly lodged in your grey matter, let’s keep the idea of them the boil. Let’s talk about the pink elephants of conservative politics and their alignment with Christian conservatives, (and I’m nailing my own colours to the mast here).
It’s been a good year or so for conservative Christians in terms of the air cover being provided to them by a whole range of secular conservatives, including a raft of what I will call “Pink Elephants”, namely politically conservative types (in the USA the Republican Party’s animal symbol is an elephant), who nevertheless have cherry-picked the Sexular Age, albeit it’s more modest – indeed conservative expressions.
And this is something picked up by the excellent Bethel McGrew, who has just written a timely article on the matter, in which she highlights what is going to be a growing divide among a group that for a brief moment has made for strange bedfellows – gay conservatives and conservative, orthodox Christians. You can read her article here, and I’ll refer to it more later on.
But here’s the context: Christians are finding that the likes of public intellect and author Douglas Murray (English so not technically an elephant), who is a gay man, goes in to bat for freedoms that Christians need, while all the time mocking the more outlandish expressions of the progressive “woke” framework in texts like his excellent The Madness of Crowds.
Indeed at the recent conservative ARC think-tank conference in London, Murray was one of the stars. Many Christians sat listening to him with rapt attention. He has much to say that is good and wise, and above all, sensible, in an age that has seemingly lost its sensibilities.
Meanwhile over there in Pink Elephant land itself, the likes of Dave Rubin, a gay married man with twins born through surrogacy, has been making an ass out of the Donkeys on the far left of the Democrats. I love listening to Rubin, he’s got an ease of style and a skewering sense of right and wrong (well, to a point).
Both men – along with the formidable Jewish journalist, Bari Weiss, a lesbian woman who is also married and has children with her partner, have bravely gone in to bat against all sorts of critical theory nonsense, as well as the chilling of free speech and freedom of association.
And these people, are championed by Christians who often find that their own faith is Kryptonite in the public square – a case of “But of course you’d say that, you’re one of those backward believers” and the like. It’s very hard to get a voice in a secular setting if you come with a Christian megaphone. The shibboleths and the rules of engagement are against you from the start. So to have such secular, conservative public credibility in your corner (and by credibility I mean non-heterosexual credibility) when debating the crazies, seems almost too good to be true.
When Pink Elephants Go Rogue
But here’s the problem. Pink Elephants are starting to go rogue. And they’re going rogue over the one thing that – you guessed it – sets secular conservatism apart from Christian orthodoxy. While acknowledging transcendence, secular conservative is primarily fuelled by the immanent frame of the “this is all there is” campaign that secular progressives assume, and upon which they are building a case for an earth-bound utopia.
There is a coming split among secular conservatives and orthodox Christians, and it simply be another battle around the same old, same old; The Sexular Age, only this time in the politically conservative camp.
McGrew’s article reports on a growing feud among conservatives in the USA, in which several orthodox Christians in the herd called out the pinkness of the elephant, and challenged the sexual framework that was underwriting cultural conservatives who celebrated the surrogacy births of gay men. And as you read her article, you realise that that got pretty hot pretty quick on all of the socials.
A celebration of the goodness of a surrogacy pregnancy was shot down by a conservative Christian in the mix who asked why we are celebrating this at all.
As I said, read the article to get the full context, but in considering the stoush, McGrew posits this excellent query: Should all conservatives, in the post same-sex-marriage age across the West, simply leave that issue behind and get on with creating a better society according to newly minted conservative values?
Should they, according to the vision of all elephants – be they pink or grey – simply shrug their shoulders before putting those wrinkly shoulders to the wheel and then, working together, try to shift society with the cultural materials that are still permitted to us by the progressives?
Is gay marriage a real thing that we should just hold a hand up to and make a secondary issue for the conservative vision? Or is it, in the words of Douglas Wilson (who I here quote approvingly), a case of same-sex-mirage?
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Written by R. Fowler White |
Thursday, July 7, 2022
In Article 8 of the Apostles’ Creed, following Scripture, we confess, I believe … in the Holy Spirit. We do so bearing in mind that the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error are both present in this world. How will we know the one from the other? We will know the Holy Spirit of truth because His work is to give sinners new ears to hear the Apostles’ gospel of Christ and new mouths to confess the Christ of the Apostles’ gospel.

As we continue our series on the Apostles’ Creed, we come to Article 8 and confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit. As we do, we’re actually starting the third section of the Creed. The first section (Article 1) focused on the person and creating work of God the Father. The second section (Articles 2-7) focused on the person and saving work of God the Son. Now we come to the third section to focus on the person and work of God the Spirit.
Some describe the Holy Spirit as the “forgotten” Person of the Trinity. This is not, however, historically accurate. In fact, over the centuries, students and teachers of Scripture have made the Spirit the focus of much helpful attention. Still, with nearly 60% of Americans agreeing that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being,” we should concede that the Spirit is the lesser known of the Three Persons. We also do well to recognize that The Nicene Creed (AD 325, 381, 589) perfected and expanded the wording of Article 8 by affirming, “And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son: Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified: Who spoke by the prophets.” We’re not surprised, then, when catechisms and confessions from the Reformation era explained Article 8 of the Apostles’ Creed in light of the Nicene Creed. Our comments below will do the same.
Confessing our belief in the Holy Spirit, we bear witness that He is, together with God the Father and God the Son, true and eternal God. Proceeding from the Father and the Son, He is the Third Person of the Godhead. He was active in the work of creation, forming and filling the visible creation. He has been active in the work of salvation, making all things new, particularly God’s people, in and through Christ. In His ministry, He gives the definitive, conclusive testimony (witness) to the Father who sent the Son and to the Son sent by the Father. As the Spirit relates specifically to the Son, Scripture describes Him as constantly present in and with the incarnate Son, from womb (conception) through tomb (death) to throne (ascension). As such, the Spirit is designated as Paraklete, that is, as Divine Defense Counsel, Advocate, Chief Witness, Eyewitness, Character Witness to Christ, the Son of the Father. We must, accordingly, take care to receive the Spirit’s witness.
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