Thoughts on a Recent Accusation of Institutional Failure against Wheaton College
There are few better ways to empty the pews than by going along with the spirit of the age in its professed desire for equality, and yet Wheaton stiffens its neck and blinds its eyes and marches on gladly, proclaiming its fidelity to Christ while at the same time disobeying the actual teachings of his scriptures, and setting itself up as a teacher of those who are to rule Christ’s church.
The recent controversy over Wheaton College’s character is a disappointing one. For in the first case, Tim Scheiderer erred in his article accusing the college of wokeness. His article was not, alas, well written or well attested. It had no citations, and such hyperlinks as were included were only to other Fox News articles, most of which had no relevance to his claims. For example, his claim that Wheaton has substituted the term ‘sacrificial co-laboring’ for ‘service’ was buttressed by an article about Grand Canyon University being fined by the federal government. If one is going to accuse an entire institution of such a “blatant offense against Christianity,” he ought to at least give some actual evidence. To fail to do so invites an accusation of mere personal animosity and slander, which is a grievous thing indeed.
Then too, his article ought not to have been published at Fox News. Granting that any published statement might fall into the view of anyone, it matters where such things are published. Fox News may pay some lip service to our faith for its own business interests, but it is certainly not a Christian outlet, and that means it is not the proper place for an article such as Scheiderer’s (1 Cor. 6:4). To publish there meant exposing professing believers to the criticism of unbelievers (no doubt a large portion of Fox’s readership), as well as aiding an outlet that has probably done more harm to our faith than many of our avowed enemies: for Fox has conditioned people to be weighed down with the things of this life (Mk. 4:19), and in this many believers have been ensnared and made bitter and fruitless. In addition, it may be asked whether it is advisable to discuss such matters with contemporary, colloquial political terms like woke rather than in the language of scripture and of specifically Christian ethics.
But just because Scheiderer’s article went forth in an undesirable form and at an undesirable site does not mean that Wheaton is guiltless. It takes but little observation to see that it has a real problem with worldliness. One need look no further than President Ryken’s official response to the article to see that. For he speaks of the college’s “spokesperson.” If this person is a woman, why not refer to her as a spokeswoman? Why the squeamishness about sex-specific language where it is appropriate? Unless, that is, one is going along with the contemporary trend that imagines humans can be anything other than male or female, and that opts for sex-neutral language in an effort to avoid assuming anyone’s sex and thereby giving potential offense. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34), and by his use of “spokesperson” President Ryken betrays an infection by worldly thought patterns.
The faults do not end there. President Ryken teaches in Wheaton’s School of Biblical and Theological Studies, which aims to “promote the development of academic skills necessary for advanced study and service in the church and society worldwide,” and employs four women as professors. If God forbids women to teach or rule in the church (1 Cor. 14:34; Tim. 2:12), how can they be employed in providing advanced training to those that will do so, or who will go on to teach in other institutions that train men for church leadership? Of the four, at least one (Prof. Aubrey Buster) appears to have preached in Wheaton’s chapel, hardly the only woman to do so. The other three are ordained, two as Anglicans (Prof. Amy Peeler and Prof. Emily McGowin), and one, Prof. Jennifer McNutt, as a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, whose apostasy has long since become something of a byword.
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Techno-Slavery
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
I recently sat in on a presentation delivered by the president of a prominent evangelical seminary. The topic was discipling the next generation–what some have nicknamed “the smartphone generation.” At one point, our presenter pulled out his own device. “The next generation will not remember a time without one of these,” he said.
That Zoomers are inured to supercomputers in their pockets is not shocking. But the point is usually meant as a set-up for a more audacious–but no less fashionable–assertion: because the next generation won’t remember a time without smartphones, they can’t imagine a future without them.
Hence, the countless articles from evangelicals about discernment and technology, all assuming a kind of techno-inevitability. These typically present as a moderated position between two extremes–a “third way” between total adoption and extreme luddism. Many writers have recently questioned the third way approach to politics. It’s time to do the same with technology.
In his insightful critique of a “third-way” approach to politics, James R. Wood focuses on retrieving the telos of politics itself. The same can be done–and is being done–for technology, especially with an eye toward emerging technologies like AI. But it is also important that we apply such questions to current technologies–even devices like smartphones which so many of us have grown accustomed to. As Jon Askonas points out in his essay, “Why Conservatism Failed,” it was the adoption of new technologies like the Pill that did more to transform the household than anything else. Like a steroid to a muscle, technology causes the nascent power of the idea to explode. Transgenderism lay dormant in academic circles for a while but has now arrived in mainstream culture largely because of innovation and advancement in sex-reassignment surgeries.
That Christians today are departing from historic Christian teaching about sex, gender, and contraception in the time it takes to fill a prescription or set-up an appointment is a warning to us today. What if the next major technological shift to threaten Christian discipleship isn’t sitting in some R&D lab but in our homes right now?
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
Smartphones aren’t conducive to freedom.
Everyone from Patrick Deneen to Death Cab for Cutie has discovered the crushing yoke of expectations placed on us by smartphones. So much was evident when I compared my life with a smartphone to someone without one.
As a user, I had special access to life online. I was accessible whenever and wherever. Every bit of content in the world was at my fingertips. And yet, I was far less free than the typical Amish man–an example Deneen employs in Why Liberalism Failed.
The Amish man’s religious views preclude him from owning a smartphone among many other modern devices. He has no internet access, no email, no social media, no online identity. And yet, he rises with the sun and sets his plow down as he wishes. He lives and dies by the fruits of his own labors. He joins his family every night for dinner, undistracted by emails or texts from a workaholic boss. He doesn’t receive a barrage of push notifications warning him of social media trends or new seasons of Netflix shows.
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Benefitting Body and Soul From the Table
We’ve talked about how the bread and the wine are necessary. They each play a role in helping us to see in a visible way the death of Jesus Christ and through that sign to more deeply be encouraged in the gift. One by a faith revealed, and the other by a faith disclosed. The spiritual is where in some sense the action happens in Communion. It is by the union we have through the Holy Spirit where the connections take place through faith and the spiritual nourishment is applied when we rightly and properly partake of the outward elements.
Words like mystical, supernatural, enchanted, etc… sound like they belong more at home in a fantasy novel than they do being associated with a Presbyterian church. However, we would do well to remember that we should be comfortable with such terms, especially when our minds turn towards the sacraments of the Church. We confess our thoroughgoing skepticism no more than when we get uncomfortable with the stuff that happens outside our brain. Yet, our fathers in the faith in Scotland and elsewhere worried not about such modern hang-ups. It would be quite beneficial to us to re-embrace the weird in the Christian faith.
What does all that then have to do with the Lord’s Supper? In no other place in our religious life do we need to think outside the confines of what we can perceive with our senses than when it comes to what happens when we partake of the bread and the cup at Christ’s table. For our Q/A today we will read more on what the Westminster Divines understood about these truths.
Here are the two for today:
Q. 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord’s supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein?
A. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord’s supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death.
Q. 171. How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?
A. They that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves thereunto, by examining themselves of their being in Christ, of their sins and wants; of the truth and measure of their knowledge, faith, repentance; love of God and the brethren, charity to all men, forgiving those that have done them wrong; of their desires after Christ, and of their new obedience; and by renewing the exercise of these graces, by serious meditation, and fervent prayer.
In God’s way of doing things the body and the soul are meant to work together for the betterment of the individual believer. We confess that the human being is both physical and spiritual. How that works exactly is above our paygrade. What we do comprehend is that both are creations of the Lord and they both inhabit our identity. They are not to be understood as either fighting against one another (like a cartoon where each have a different voice) or that one is more important to God than the other. They are equal in power and glory.
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Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age Foreword
We believe that if God is for us, no one can stand against us (8:31). We believe that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (8:37) and that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (8:38–39).” ‘Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age’ has everything to do with the armor of God, because this book is a book about truth—truth you may have never heard, truth you may have forgotten, or truth you already know but haven’t dared to embrace.
The devil is a liar.
And not just any old liar, a very good one. He normally avoids direct assaults. He prefers deceit, and misdirection. Think of the snake in the garden of Eden, merely suggesting that God’s word might not be fully trustworthy. !e devil specializes in traps and snares (2 Tim. 2:26). He masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). He blinds the minds of unbelievers (4:4). Our enemy, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, is wicked, tricksy, and false (Rev. 12:9). He is a father of lies (John 8:44).
The devil lies to us in many ways. He may not speak through a snake, but he knows how to make his voice heard. Sometimes he may bring something directly to mind. Or perhaps he keeps us from seeing and hearing what we should. More often, I imagine, he speaks through the half-truths and quarter-truths we find in a thousand movies, television shows, and “news” reports. His voice can be heard in our universities and from the halls of power. If we listen carefully, we may detect his slithering speech in Christian books and in spiritual blogs, even from pastors and churches. That is why the book you are holding is so important. Make no mistake, this courageous book is bracing. You won’t agree with every sentence. But it is hard to imagine anyone who shouldn’t listen to what Rosaria has to say. Strike that— not what Rosaria has to say, but what God has said that Rosaria knows we need to hear. Rosaria Butterfield is a friend of mine, and she is eager to speak to you as a friend too—if you will let her. She is smart, caring, self-deprecating, and—here’s one thing I hope you’ll learn to love—in a world awash in soft heads and brittle hearts, Rosaria isn’t afraid to tell you what she really thinks. May her tribe increase.
There is a war raging between good and evil in our world, and though we might prefer the conflict to be fought somewhere else, we don’t get to pick the times in which we live. The front lines today are battles over sex, gender, and identity. We must be ready for a fight in precisely these places. Don’t underestimate the power of your opponent. The devil wants us to join him in his rebellion against God. He wants to make us cowards and traitors. He wants us to believe the myth of our own autonomy. He wants us to raise the white flag and side with the enemy—the enemy without or the enemy within, it doesn’t matter to him. The devil hates every spiritual blessing in Christ. He hates Christ’s power. He hates Christ’s forgiving grace. He hates Christ’s transforming grace. He hates the gospel and the church. He hates happy marriages and well-ordered families. He hates personal holiness and obedience. The devil hates Christians who stand their ground.
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