Perhaps the price of elite evangelical respectability in the modern academy is adoption of the embarrassment reflex—understood as, in its deepest sense, a willingness to allow the idea of the “social” to displace that of the classically theological at the taproot of intellectual life. Such a displacement demands that evangelicals norm their theological claims against the conclusions of the social sciences, rather than vice versa—or else be tarred with the dreaded label of fundamentalist.

Nearly thirty years ago, Notre Dame historian Mark Noll fired a resounding shot across the bow of his own tradition, declaring boldly that “[t]he scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”[1] Ever since its publication, few books have loomed over evangelical intellectual life more powerfully than The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which laid out what Noll viewed as a devastating indictment of evangelicalism’s incapacity for meaningful engagement with disciplines beyond its boundaries.
Over the decades since, a much more comprehensive evangelical intellectual ecosystem has emerged, partially in response to Noll’s critique. New colleges and universities explicitly interested in cultivating the “life of the mind” have been founded. The catalogs of publishers like Crossway Academic and InterVarsity Press overflow with interdisciplinary efforts to place the evangelical tradition into conversation with topics of current interest. A complex of parachurch groups like the Gospel Coalition, with thoughtful evangelical content ranging from popular to scholarly, has sprung up online. And at the K-12 level, the classical education movement has promoted thoroughgoing engagement with the philosophical and spiritual wisdom of generations past. By virtually any metric, the landscape of evangelical intellectual thought is materially more developed than it was in 1994.
And over those years this matrix of institutions has incubated a new sort of public figure: the elite evangelical. The elite evangelical was educated at top-flight institutions and largely eschews the “culture war” language of Moral Majority forerunners like Jerry Falwell. He reads Christianity Today, listens to Tim Keller sermons, and tends to know far more about J.R.R. Tolkien than J. Gresham Machen. Above all, he is proficient in the use of the word “winsomeness.”
The rise of such a class, however, has not led to much of a rapprochement between America’s evangelicals and an increasingly secular mainstream. Nor has it seemingly engendered a healthier and more unified evangelicalism. Indeed, the recent 2021 General Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention exposed publicly what had already been obvious to many observers for some time: an ugly and deepening rift between these post-Scandal “elite evangelicals” and the rank-and-file members who fill evangelical church pews across the country.
The SBC presidential election victory of “moderate” Ed Litton over conservative hardliner Mike Stone (as well as longtime SBC fixture Al Mohler) was widely perceived as a referendum on the denomination’s alignment with ex-President Donald Trump, but the issues in play transcend any single figure. Many observers were caught off guard by the size and vehemence of the coalition backing Stone’s candidacy, a reflection of the fact that a large and growing faction of lay evangelicals are deeply concerned about their movement’s present trajectory. Chief among their targets is the group of elite evangelical figures—the pastors whose op-eds appear in the New York Times, the writers who pen Gospel Coalition columns, the seminary professors who urge greater interaction with secular academia, and so on—that they derisively describe as “Big Eva,” and view as steering evangelicalism away from theology and toward issues like immigration, racial justice, the environment, and so on.
For those firmly ensconced in the elite evangelical ecosystem, it is easy to write off much of this backlash as a result of escalating political partisanship. Kept out of view is the question of whether any of the alarm is warranted—whether perhaps there’s something in the elite evangelical water that actually does merit their concern. What if the worry that manifests—often inaptly—as complaints about “liberalism,” “cultural Marxism,” and “critical race theory”—has an intelligible root?
Over the last few decades, whenever the political right happens to hold power, there have tended to appear claims that conservative American Christians—particularly evangelicals—are closer than ever to establishing something like an American theocratic caliphate. The Bush years had Damon Linker’s The Theocons; the Trump years had Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshipers and Jeff Sharlet’s The Family Netflix docuseries. Such commentary is downstream of the reality that American evangelicals often figure as the villains of modern academic historiography—characterized chiefly by their opposition to teaching evolution in schools, criticisms of various efforts at promoting civic equality, negativity toward environmental legislation, and so on.
For the elite evangelical who inevitably encounters such vilification within “mainstream academia,” the psychological response produced by all these allegations is likely to prove complex. Elite fears of an real-world Handmaid’s Tale are implausible on their face: at the time of this writing, Republican presidents have appointed twelve out of sixteen Supreme Court justices since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973,[2] and yet have never been able to marshal a majority to overturn that precedent, let alone revise the American constitutional order more dramatically. The most exaggerated versions of these claims don’t even attempt to persuade anyone not already adhering to preexisting secular assumptions.
Instead, for elite evangelicals, the critiques that cut deepest tend to be those that allege that American Christians have betrayed their own tradition in a fundamental way. Three recent books—all of which have sparked much discussion and controversy within evangelical circles—epitomize this sensibility. In Taking Back America for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry argue that American Christians have bred a toxic “Christian nationalism” committed more to acquiring and wielding political power than to living out Christian ideals. In Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, theologians Gregory Thompson and Duke L. Kwon contend that the complicity of the American church in historical racism is so severe that “the language of White supremacy and reparations, now so unfamiliar and awkward, [should] one day become as fixed in the church’s imagination and fundamental to its vocation as the language of repentance and reconciliation is today.”[3] And in Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, historian Kristin Kobes du Mez posits that twentieth-century American Christianity was colonized by a toxic nationalist-inflected masculinity, one that eventually culminated in the election of Donald Trump.
The crucial common feature of these texts is that all of them are, at least in a sense, addressed to evangelicals (or at least point in that direction): they are calls to action of a sort, urging evangelicals to adopt alternative interpretations of their American Christian tradition, without repudiating it altogether, in the name of progress. At the heart of all three books is the conviction that popular evangelicalism as such is on the wrong track—that it needs to be saved from itself through immediate course correction, or risk falling back into a fundamentalist morass.
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God can be trusted in everything he says and does (John 14:13-14; Matthew 7:7-8; 1 John 5:14). In a world where standards, systems and relations are ever-changing, God is not. He remains true. And he communicates truth. He is reliable and trustworthy. He never changes, and that makes him faithful. His character, promises, and plans are ‘yes,’ and ‘amen!’ Child of God, stand on the promises of the ever-true and faithful God (Hebrews 13:5).

We live in an age of subjective truth. It’s an age that frowns on claims of absolute and even objective truth. Some claim truth is merely relative. It’s whatever you feel or think. The standard of truth in most cultures is on a slippery slope, ever-changing. In such a time, one of the most comforting and stabilising truths is that we serve a God who is both true and truthful, unchangingly so.
God has revealed himself as the authoritative and absolute truth. Wayne Grudem writes: “God’s truthfulness means that he is the true God and that all his knowledge and words are both true and the final standard of truth. The term veracity, which means ‘truthfulness’ or ‘reliability,’ has sometimes been used as a synonym for God’s truthfulness.” Truth denotes that which accurately corresponds to reality; to what is reliable and consistent.
The True God Speaks Truth
The truthfulness of God implies that he is the only true God and that all his words and ways are true. As one prophet declares: “The LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King…The gods who did not make the heavens, and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens” (Jeremiah 10:10–11). This echoes Moses’ glorious declaration: “I proclaim the name of the LORD: ascribe greatness to our God. He is the Rock; his work is perfect; for all his ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is he” (Deuteronomy 32:3-4).
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Written by E.V. Powers |
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Jesus’ sheep refuse to renounce Him under even intense persecution from the world system. Jesus’ sheep refuse to listen to the voice of the world system.

The Morning Scene (vv. 1-6)
The symbolic picture began with the ministry of the first advent of Christ and the earliest period of the Apostolic Age where the sheepfold is meant to mean the nation of Israel. This is the sheepfold that Jesus initially purposed to enter by the door. It was the Messiah’s mission during His first advent to call out His own sheep from this ethnic sheep pen. This harmonizes with Matthew’s Gospel as he recorded the Lord announcing the same mission when Jesus said, “I was sent only to those being lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24; cf. Matt 10:6; Rom 15:8).
The Door into the Fold
Jesus introduced the setting of His symbolic picture in Jn 10:1 with the words, “Amen, amen, I say to you the[1] not entering in through the door to the fold of the sheep but climbing up another way, he is thief and robber”[2] The first feature of Jesus’ symbolic picture is the door into the fold. The natural features of the main entrance into the ANE sheep pen have already been established above. Later in the symbolic picture Jesus will refer to Himself as the door of the sheep (cf. v. 7). Concerning the morning scene, the emphasis on the door concerns the one who was authorized to enter by the door as well as the one who was authorized to guard the door.
The door into the fold has meaning backdrop that extends from the OT prefiguring of the Messianic office as early as the Protoevangelium (i.e. Gen 3:15). The OT is about the history of the Nation of Israel – the nation from which the Messiah would come. In the NT, the Gospels record that the Messiah has come. The OT prophesied of the Messiah and revealed that He would have distinct qualifications inseparably constrained to signs that He would perform that would authenticate His offices – namely, raise the dead, heal the deaf, open the eyes of the blind, heal the lame, heal the mute, cleanse the lepers, heal the sick, and preach good news to the poor (cf: Isa 26:19; 29:18; 35:5-6; 42:7; 61:1). Jesus fulfilled these features when He came during His first advent to the glory of God the Father. God the Father authenticated that Jesus was the Messiah by identifying these features prophesied from the OT (cf. Jn 6:27 e.g. “the Father’s seal”). In this sense, Jesus is the door, that is, the door representing the Messianic office. As the only Messiah, Jesus is the only Shepherd who has authority to enter the door and have authority over the sheep. It is undeniable that in the first century A.D. Jesus came as the Messiah and because He fulfilled the OT credentials and qualifications for that office He became the only door. In conclusion, the standard according to the OT is that the only lawful authority over the sheep is through the Messianic office which is represented by the office of shepherd and the office of door.  In other words, the “door” and the “shepherd” from Jesus’ shepherding symbolic picture are synonymous terms to the OT Messianic office.
The Fold of the Sheep
As mentioned above the fold of the sheep in the morning scene represented the nation of Israel (Jn 10:1-10). During the First Advent of Christ, the Self-Existent Second Person of the Triune Godhead took human flesh to Himself permanently forever in the incarnation (cf. Phil 2:5-11). In His humanity when the fulness of time came Jesus was born of a virgin woman and born under the Law (cf. Matt 1:18-25; Gal 4:4). The ministry of Christ during His First Advent was involved in fulfilling the Law and the Prophets (cf. Matt 5:17). The Gospel period, namely, the First Advent of Christ recorded in the Apostles’ memoirs of His ministry (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were written to show that Jesus is the Messiah – the fulfillment of OT prophecy. To this effect, the Gospels serve as a bridge between the OT and the NT because they record a period still under Law during Jesus’ First Advent that He had to fulfill concerning His active obedience. There were lost sheep from the house of Israel (i.e. the ethnic sheep pen) that Jesus came to call unto salvation because Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). During His First Advent, Jesus was not initially sent to the Gentiles (cf. Matt 10:6). The initial purpose of His First Advent was to minister to and save the elect from the nation of Israel (cf. Rom 15:8). There was an initial sheep pen full of ethnic Israelites and from out of that sheep pen Jesus called ethnic Israelites who were the elect out of the nation of Israel (cf. Rom 9:6). Indeed, when Greeks sought after Jesus during His First Advent He did not disavow Gentiles (cf. Jn 12:20-26). However, His initial purpose for His First Advent was to disclose Himself to the lost sheep of Israel (e.g. Jn 7:4-7; 14:22). It would be through the ministry of His Apostles that the Gospel would go to the Gentile nations because Israel’s salvation was intended to be extended also to the Gentile nations as their salvation (cf. Isa 49:6; Acts 14:47). In conclusion, the fold of the sheep in the morning scene symbolically represented the nation of Israel. From that national sheep pen it is quite clear in the shepherding scene that Jesus called His sheep out of this larger fold which had become corrupt.
Thief & Robber
The first character mentioned in Jesus’ symbolic picture that was negatively involved with the fold of the sheep is the thief and robber because the text reads, “Amen, amen I say to you the not entering in through the door to the fold of the sheep but climbing up another way, he is thief and robber” (v. 1). It is unmistakably clear that Jesus intended the religious leaders of the nation of Israel, namely the Pharisees, to be identified as the thief and robber.[3] Emphatically, Jesus’ initial point in the symbolic picture was to reveal the contrast between the Pharisees versus Jesus in how they led God’s people (cf. v. 10). In the case of the Pharisees they are surreptitious in obtaining a place inside the sheepfold – that is, they secretively access the sheepfold in a way that attempts to avoid notice or bring attention to their destructive philosophy of ministry just as a literal thief or robber would enter a sheepfold secretively to steal sheep. The Greek term “εἰσερχομαι” translated in English “entering in” from the phrase “the not entering in through the door to the fold of the sheep” is a present middle/passive participle and has the sense to mean “I go in; I enter in.”[4] Because “εἰσερχομαι” is middle/passive in the context it has the sense that those who would enter through the door are called by God – that is, grammatically and contextually the action is performed by God upon the subject who would have entered through the door. However, in the case of the Pharisees, the negative adverb “not” is used before the participle in reference to those who do not enter through the door because they have not been authorized by God to shepherd the sheep, let alone even be identified as sheep. If they had been authorized to enter the door then there would have been no need to try and enter the sheepfold surreptitiously for the goal to steal from God.[5] On the other hand, the Greek term “αναβαίνω” translated into English “climbing up” from the phrase “but climbing up another way” is a present active participle.[6] Therefore, the grammatical active voice from “αναβαίνω” shows that the thief and robber actively on his own gained access into the sheepfold by an opposite or different way than the way God has authorized to enter the sheep pen.[7] The One God has authorized and called to be Shepherd of the sheep to enter the sheepfold is the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. vv. 14; 18). What is more, the only others that have been called by God to enter into the sheepfold are the “doorkeeper or porter” v. 3 and the “sheep” v. 9. On the other hand, after the thief/robber has gained access to the sheep he imitates a shepherd in disguise for the purpose of intimidation toward the sheep – namely, fleecing the flock for his own financial gain. This is implied by Jesus referring to the Pharisees and their philosophy of ministry collectively as “thief and robber” v. 1 and “thieves and robbers” v. 7 because a thief or robber is only interested in taking what does not belong to him for the purpose of obtaining a profit from stolen goods, as well as actively plotting casualties by malice aforethought if anyone should try to expose them and prevent them from achieving their goal.[8] Thievery and malice aforethought are certainly not the criteria that the NT identifies as qualifications that one must fulfill to occupy the office of “the Good Shepherd.”
The Shepherd of the Sheep
On the other hand, the Lord Jesus Christ introduced in v. 2 the authenticity and honesty of the protagonist in the scene –  namely, the shepherd, when Jesus said, “the however entering in through the door is shepherd of the sheep.”[9] The shepherd is portrayed in Jesus’ symbolic picture by entering in through the door to access the sheep pen. John contrasted the entrance of the thief and robber with the entrance of the shepherd by using the Greek disjunctive δὲ translated in English “however” (cf. v. 5, 6). Literally the text is translated into English as follows – that is, “the however entering in through the door is shepherd of the sheep.”[10] The contrast between the thief and robber versus the shepherd is not merely the literal nature of the different ways they enter the sheep pen but the moral implications concerning their different entrances because of the symbolic nature of the scene. The shepherd’s entrance, because he entered through the door, is honest, non-secretive, life-giving, selfless and interested in protecting the sheep from harm (cf. v. 3, 9, 10, 11, 15). On the other hand, the entrance of the thief and robber is disingenuous, surreptitious and with malice aforethought to harm the sheep (cf. v. 10). The identity of the shepherd in Jesus’ symbolic picture is without doubt the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. v. 11). The identity of the sheep in the morning scene vv. 1-6 are undoubtedly Israelite believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ as their Messiah (cf. v. 16). The singularity both grammatically and contextually of the shepherd in Jesus’ symbolic picture revealed there is no one else who can qualify to fit His description. To this effect, there is continuity throughout the Word of God concerning the exclusivity of Christ as occupying the office of shepherd. The exclusivity of Christ as shepherd in the sense of an office was prefigured in Ezekiel 34:23 when God spoke through the prophet Ezekiel the following – “Then I will set over them one shepherd . . .” The same sense is found from Jesus’ shepherding scene concerning the exclusivity of one shepherd who is qualified to occupy the role as an office and its synonymous association with the Messianic office.
The Doorkeeper
In v. 3 the Lord Jesus Christ introduced another character called the doorkeeper[11] when Jesus said, “to Him the doorkeeper opens . . .”[12] It has already been established above with hermeneutic clarity that the overall sheep pen in the morning scene of the symbolic picture is Israelite. What is more, the same clarity has been established above concerning the synonymous relationship between the shepherd and the OT Messianic office. Therefore, the identity of the doorkeeper to the sheep pen who best fits within the context is John the Baptist. John the Baptist is the best answer to the identity of the doorkeeper because of the authority he was given by God over the entrance into the sheep pen to only let the Messiah enter among the sheep. The OT prophesied that the Messiah would be preceded by a forerunner – namely, a messenger who would prepare the way for the Lord (cf. Isa 40:3-4; Mal 3:1).
There are two major reasons why the doorkeeper is John the Baptist. First, the doorkeeper does not allow thieves and robbers access through the door to the sheep pen. It has been thoroughly established above that the thieves and robbers represent the Pharisees. John the Baptist severely rebuked the Pharisees and would not allow them to be baptized (cf. Matt 3:7-12).[13] It was John the Baptist’s ministry to be the forerunner for the Messiah and prepare people for the Messiah’s First Advent (cf. Matt 3:1-3, 7-10; Lk 3:1-18; Jn 1:6-8, 19-34; 3:22-36). Due to the shepherding scene serving as a symbolic picture – the phrase, “to Him the doorkeeper opens” harmonizes with the Gospel narratives record of John the Baptist’s ministry testifying to Israel the Lord Jesus as the Messiah.
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