I would like to briefly consider the seeming paradox believers face as we think about the relationship between being stewards of God’s creation and the palpable disinterest in worldly endeavors that seems a part of the New Testament narrative particularly.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about Peter’s description of Christians as “sojourners and exiles” (I Peter 2:11). Interestingly, immediately after this passage, Peter moves on to a discussion of civil authority and the obligations, duties and responsibilities of citizenship. So how exactly are we exiles and citizens at the same time, and what holds these two strands together?

Beyond Peter, James says that our life is like a vapor. Christ indicates that His Kingdom is not of this world. Paul says that our citizenship is not of this world, but is in heaven. Our kiddies go to summer camp and sit around the campfire singing ditties like this:

This worlds not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angel beckons me from heaven’s open door
And I just can’t live at home in this world anymore.

Conversely, we’re told in Scripture that we are to exercise dominion on God’s behalf. “Be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth” was the command given to Adam and Noah, and it hasn’t been revoked. We’re told to go “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on EARTH as it is in heaven.” Likewise, we sing “This is Our Father’s World” and we believe that redemption extends as far as the curse is found.

How shall we reason through the paradox? How is that we can exercise dominion while being exiles and sojourners?

First, we must make a distinction between being in and of the world. The word “world” is used in numerous ways throughout scripture, as it is in modern parlance. To think of the world as the created order or as a geographic area, for instance, is different from considering it as an ethical system.

Scripture affirms that God loved the world (John 3:16), the cosmos, and thus sent His Son to perish for its ultimate redemption and glorification (Rom. 8:21). Likewise, Genesis says that God created the world and that everything he saw was “good.” In Col. 1 we read of the supremacy of Christ, and His role as creator: “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him” (v. 16). Christ also sustains all things via His providential hand (v. 17).

Further, in the Bible, men are never saved out of this world, but are recreated in Christ for the purpose of serving Him (Eph. 2:10). Christ’s prayer in John 17 is clear: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

So “the world” as the benevolent gift and creation of God is something that is good, something we should work to restore. But world often has another meaning, too. It is frequently used to represent an ethical system. See the thoughts of Greg Bahnsen discussing Satan as the “prince of this world”:

It is quite common for the term “world” to be used, not in a geographic sense, but in an ethical sense…the immoral realm of disobedience…The “world” represents the life of man apart from God and bound to sinful impulses. Thus, when scriptural writers speak of “the world,” they often mean the world in so far as it is ethically separated from God…the world is that realm which is dominated by Satan and his standards…[and] must be interpreted [in many passages] as the kingdom of darkness, the city of reprobate man.

So, often in the New Testament when we are given commands about fleeing from worldliness, the command isn’t to retreat into monasticism or pietism, but to keep our minds and hearts from conforming to the wicked ways of “the world,” meaning the ethical system characterized by Satan’s standards.

I think a better way to understand the passage in I Peter, however, is simply to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. Many of Peter’s readers would have been familiar with the Older Testament and recalled the words of Jeremiah 29. Writing to exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, penned these words:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Then in verse 10 we read God’s promise, “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.”

There are two things happening here. First, the people could look ahead to a future promise, a future restoration in their home. They had great and wonderful prospects for a future deliverance from exile. Likewise, so do Christians.

At the same time, they didn‘t eschew their responsibilities in history, for it is by God‘s providential hand that they had been placed in their circumstances. The language employed by Jeremiah–”build houses,” “multiply there,” “seek the welfare of the city”–echoes the language of the Cultural Mandate. It is, in short, the language of dominion.

What ties these two seemingly contradictory ideas together is the Christian understanding of service–or as Peter says in verse 12, having conduct that is honorable and doing good deeds.

Such deeds, empowered by the Holy Spirit, are ultimately blessed by God, who brings a harvest of souls as a result. Christians ultimately have different ideas about dominion than those in “the world.” Non-believers make the mistake of assuming that power is simply wielded indiscriminately for personal benefit. Christians, on the other hand, believe that true power and authority stem from a foundation in service.

Think about the example we are to emulate in Christ. Matthew says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:26-28). Paul says that “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: he humbled Himself and became obedient to death.” And what was the result of His servanthood? Paul continues: “Therefore god exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name” (Phil. 2:5,9).

So we are to serve. Jesus says we are to seek first the kingdom of God, and ultimately success, or dominion–represented by the visible expansion of God’s Kingdom in every aspect of life–is accomplished by service to God, which is usually accomplished by serving other men and God’s creation.

Consider missionaries headed for an overseas appointment. They are leaving their home to become sojourners and aliens in a foreign land. Their ultimate home is heaven, but they are leaving the comforts of their temporal home behind. They will be subject to the laws of a new land and will learn to speak new languages, adapt where possible to new and strange customs–basically go native, all for the purpose of doing good to others and ultimately proclaiming the excellencies of God (I Peter 2:9). Sitting here in our wealthy and blessed land, we think this the height of spirituality. And yet, we are likewise aliens, in very similar circumstances, and our goal should be to carefully think through how to apply the same principles in our day-to-day lives.

According to a report published in Lancet, the war has claimed the lives of 655,000 Iraqis. At a 95% confidence interval, the range of deaths is between 426,369 and 793,663. Keep in mind that Iraq is a country 1/12th the size of the United States. Start extrapolating those figures, even the “low” one, and it boggles the mind. George Bush, a statistician by training who is a real whiz with batting averages, questioned the “methodology” of the research saying it “is pretty well discredited.” The Iraqi government, naturally, criticized the study, too, but even they admit that more than 300,000 Iraqis have fled their homes to other parts of the country to escape violence since 2003. Meanwhile, 890,000 Iraqis have moved to Jordan, Iran and Syria since Saddam’s fall. The UN estimates that 315,000 Iraqis have fled their homes in the last eight months and that between 1.2 and 1.5 million Iraqis are hanging out in neighboring states. Though the numbers are all over the place, the point is we have created a humanitarian disaster which worsens as a result of our presence despite what liars in the administration, on capitol hill, and in the press corps tell us.

As for the Lancet study, most of the organizations tracking civilian deaths rely exclusively on media reports–in other words, they ignore huge swaths of the country. Likewise, “There are two reasons for thinking the survey might be more accurate than has been portrayed, both of which were not mentioned much yesterday. First, the researchers were able to duplicate, with different households, the results of a survey they conducted two years ago (which was also widely disputed) that put the death toll then at 100,000. And secondly, the pre-invasion mortality rate of 5.5 per 1,000 people per year, found in both surveys, is similar to the estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau.” On top of this, the military will not report any numbers, and the Iraqi government recently took steps to bar the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry from releasing information about civilian deaths. So who are you going to believe? John’s Hopkins researchers or the guys who said these things?

It turns out that Bush and the GOP have delayed the Second Coming of Christ.

The “coalition” in Iraq will soon shrink. Tony Blair must be the only man on the British Isles that still supports the war. Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt says the presence of British armed forces in Iraq “exacerbates the security problems” and they should “get out some time soon.”

After our invasion of Iraq, many Christians have found a comfortable home in Syria. You might think this would concern American Evangelicals. You would be wrong.

You mean all along the administration has known things were bad in Iraq and hasn’t told us? Really, did you need Bob Woodward to tell you that?

European lefties, or “progressives,” are hopping out of the closet, wondering if Islam might be incompatible with “European values.” “A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party. The Dutch are taking up the challenge by giving prospective newcomers a primer on those values: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. Secularism is a thin reed on which to build a civilization and I doubt very much that Europeans can succeed in stemming the Islamic flood if the primary concern is nothing more than a defense of radical individualism–as symbolized by kooky feminism and homophilia.

Paul Craig Roberts on the case for impeachment and the decline of American character: “Claes Ryn is correct when he says a change of mind has occurred. The Constitution and the political system based on it are on the ropes because the players no longer believe in it. They believe in executive power to act forcefully in behalf of ‘American exceptionalism.’”

Hysterics over at Focus on the Family say the world will come to end if the GOP loses control of Congress. Albert Mohler says that Christians sin, yes, sin, if they don’t vote. You don’t know where to start with such nonsense, but I’m pretty sure my conscience would be clean sitting out a Hitler-Stalin slugfest. But the point is clear, Christian conservatives have very little clout in the GOP, whose leaders think they’re “nuts.” If conservatives really want to get the attention of the GOP, perhaps they should stay home and let them take a drubbing.

Justin Raimondo makes the case for a tactical alliance between libertarians and the Democratic Party.

One wonders about the moral compass of such men. Charles Krauthammer writes that because the North Koreans have nukes we have to invade Iran:

This policy [deterrence] has a hitch, however. It works only in a world where there is but a single rogue nuclear state. Once that club expands to two, the policy evaporates, because a nuclear terror attack would no longer have a single automatic return address.

Which is another reason why keeping Iran from going nuclear is so important. With North Korea there is no going back. But Iran is not there yet. One rogue country is tolerable because it can be held accountable. Two rogue countries guarantees undeterrable and therefore inevitable nuclear terrorism.

Picture jailbird Jack Abramoff sitting at an NCAA hoops game with Bush Svengali Karl Rove. Between hot dogs and Budweiser they’re busily discussing policy toward Israel, of course, and how much Mr. Bush looovvves Ariel Sharon. Rove manages to convince Abramoff that all the tough talk directed at the Israelis (try not to snicker) is little more than window dressing to mollify the Arabs in preparation for the coming war in Iraq. But wait a second. This conversation took place in March, 2002! You mean the administration really didn’t take every possible step diplomatically to prevent war before they dragged the country into complete disarray in Mesopotamia?

Recently I was asked to present a paper at Indiana Wesleyan University’s inaugural Martin Symposium. Dr. Glenn R. Martin chaired and taught in the Social Sciences Department at Indiana Wesleyan University where I attendend between 1977-1982. Martin was the Arminian version of R. J. Rushdoony and he was the man who first introduced me (a very rough around the edges 18 year old) to presuppositional and Weltanschauung thinking. He was my mentor and though I have left the Arminian expression of Worldview Thinking for the more consistent expression of the same found in Reformed thought and theology Dr. Martin will always remain the man who made all the difference for me. For good or for ill, I am who I am today largely because of the teaching of Dr. Glen R. Martin.

His posthumously published book is entitled “Prevailing Worldviews,” where on the back cover you will find an endorsement by yours truly.

If all the World could be Arminian the way that Dr. Glen R. Martin was Arminian I would be close to being content.

 

Christ As King – A Brief Overview
 

Dr. Glenn Martin’s guiding premise was the Lordship Of Jesus Christ over every sphere of reality. He expressed this constantly by his call to think in such a way that begins and ends with the God of the Bible regardless of what sphere or discipline one is contemplating in their thought life. This paper is an attempt to speak to the Church’s responsibility to proclaim the Mediatorial Kingship of Jesus Christ.

 

Beginning with God’s revealed word we would contend that the purpose and mission of the Church, in submission to Christ’s office as Prophet, is to proclaim Christ in His Mediatorial capacity as High Priest and King of Kings. The Church’s purpose and mission to proclaim Christ necessitates a return to an emphasis where Jesus is once again placarded to men in His Mediatorial offices as Prophet, Priest, and King.

 

That Scripture has such a purpose and mission for the Church is seen in what is commonly referred to as the great commission (Mt. 28:18-20).

  And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen

Here we find Jesus, having completed His High Priestly work on the Cross, now in His office as King, speaking as one with all authority. From His office of King He commissions the first representatives of the post-resurrection Church to bring the Priestly (baptizing) and Kingly (teaching to observe all things) work of Christ to all the nations.

In I Corinthians 15 we find one of the greatest explanations regarding the implications of the High Priestly work of Christ in providing His Church’s salvation. The Apostle can start by noting,

 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…

 Yet even in this Chapter we find lineaments putting forth the Kingly office of Christ.

25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.

 The Kingly rule of Christ mentioned here by the inspired Apostle obviously has a ‘now, not yet’ quality that is put together in such a way to suggest interesting eschatological conclusions, but regardless of ones eschatology, clearly the Church is reminded by Paul’s inspired words in I Corinthians 15 that discussions regarding the gospel includes the idea of the absolute Kingship of Jesus Christ.

Again in Ephesians 1, the idea of Christ as Priest and King are brought forth in tandem. Early in the Chapter we are told, in reference to Christ’s Priestly office that,

In Him (the beloved) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace

This is followed just a few versus later by a reference to Christ’s Kingly work where we are reminded that the working of God’s mighty power was,

 worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,

Once again, we see that our great High Priest is King over all for the sake of the Church. Since this is true the Church cannot proclaim a Gospel that does not include the news of Christ’s absolute Mediatorial Kingship. 

In Acts 5:31 Peter can put these two offices together by noting of Jesus that,

“God hath exalted Him to His right hand to be Prince and Savior.”

Again in Acts 17:7 those who opposed the Gospel had no doubt that the Gospel pronouncement was not limited to Jesus vested in His High Priestly office but also included the authority of Jesus in His office of High King. The envious Jews in Thessalonica framed their objection to those who brought the Gospel by charging that,

“Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus.”

Indeed throughout the book of Acts the twin themes of the Preaching Church were the Kingdom of God and the Resurrection. These twin themes lend support to the observation that the Church’s purpose and mission is to proclaim Christ in His Mediatorial capacity as High Priest and King of Kings.

Most importantly, the idea that the purpose and mission of the Church includes the good news of Christ as Priest and King is seen in the complex of the redemptive events in the person and work of Christ. Jesus was crucified as a sin offering accomplishing that component of His Priestly work of salvation while in His Ascension Jesus’ Kingship was inaugurated. The Church can hardly speak of one of these offices without immediately referencing the other. The offices are certainly distinct but they are in no way divorced.

So, if we are to begin and end with God in our thinking regarding His Church we must conclude that the primary mission and purpose of the Church is to proclaim Christ in His Mediatorial capacity as High Priest and King of Kings. 

The teaching of Scripture on the primary purpose and mission of the Church is to often in abeyance in modern America. The Church’s proclamation on Christ’s Mediatorial Priestly office wherein He is Savior has been eclipsed by categories foreign to that message. The Church’s proclamation on Christ’s Mediatorial Kingly office wherein He is Lord has been replaced by a view where Jesus’ Kingship is of the Gnostic like variety. We shall deal with these in reverse order.

The Gnostic King Jesus & His Incredibly Shrunken Realm

  In the abstract most evangelicals would mouth the words that ‘Jesus is Lord,’ but when that confession has the expectation of being made concrete in this world the Lordship of Jesus begins to dissipate. I submit that the Evangelical Church has embraced a type Gnostic King Jesus who is Sovereign in the Spiritual ethereal realm but whose Kingship has little to do with the corporeal material realm in which man does his daily living. 

 The way this has developed in the West was by embracing a Theology / Epistemology where a sacred realm was created where the Lordship of Christ is unquestioned, leaving a putatively secular neutral realm where believers in Christ and believers in other gods co-operate according to the dictates of shared autonomous reason.

“The ‘form-matter’ dualism (of classical philosophy) was transferred into the medieval variant, the ‘nature-grace’ schema. Natural philosophy or natural reason…was given full autonomy in the area of ‘common ground.’ Both believers and unbelievers can use this hypothetically neutral reasoning faculty to discover identical truths in the realm of nature. Grace, the realm of faith, was alone closed to the reasoning powers of the pagan world. Revelation was needed to provide men will full knowledge of faith, the sacraments, and the Church.”1  (Gary North, Foundations of Christian Scholarship pg. 129)

 The problem of course with this arrangement is at least threefold. First, by appealing to ‘reason’ what happens is that man’s intellect is made autonomous in the common realm and so the starting point for all his thinking is self-referential. Instead of beginning and ending with God, he begins and ends with himself. In essence man, either in his individual _expression or in his corporate _expression, is now Lord of the putatively neutral realm.

The second problem with this idea is the notion that man can have any realm where he can operate without a pre-commitment to some theological a-priori. Man can do nothing in any realm without being informed by some faith commitment. I believe that Dr. Martin required his students to read Thomas Kuhn’s ‘Structures in Scientific Revolution,’ in order to awaken them to the reality that man can not escape his a-priori faith commitments.

The third problem is that in assuming that a shared common or neutral realm can exist, apart from the Lordship of Christ, one destroys the idea of the anti-thesis that one finds in Scripture. From Genesis 3:15 through the end of Holy Writ God’s Word teaches a warfare worldview where the seed of the serpent and their Lord contest against the seed of the woman and the Lord Jesus Christ. Where the anti-thesis is in total eclipse, this side of the eschaton, there the Lordship of Jesus as been surrendered.

Now because of this compartmentalization we have a sacred realm where Christ is Lord and the standard is His eternal Word, while at the same time having a secular realm where autonomous man is Lord where the standard is his relativistic word. In the former realm man begins and ends his thinking with God. In the latter realm man begins and end his thinking with the autonomous self. The consequence of this is a contemporary Church that is filled with individuals who claim a Jesus who saves their non-corporeal souls but who have not been taught to think God’s thoughts after him in every area of life and who have not been taught that Jesus as King, has a Word on how to incarnate and bring their salvation into the material world through the holy callings in which they are called. Jesus thus is a Gnostic King with an incredibly shrunken realm. He saves our souls but leaves our material realm largely untouched.   

This dualism with its sacred secular dichotomy has survived successfully as long as it has in America for two reasons. First, because of the remaining influence of a Christian World and life view on the societal and institutional infrastructures the autonomously manufactured common realm has been able to function. The leavening of Christendom in American, through the beginnings of the Holy Commonwealth, which did not allow for the kind of bifurcation that we have spoken of, has taken centuries to completely eradicate. Such is the strength of Biblical Christianity.

Second, the ‘secular’ realm has survived because the sacred realm (Christianity) has increasingly redefined itself in order to accommodate the demands of the ‘secular’ realm. This second eventuality was recognized over 70 years ago,

 “[i]t will be remembered that the theory of evolution found its bitterest and most persistent opponents among the theistic religionists. Only gradually and with reluctance has orthodoxy readjusted its theology to make room in it for the theory of evolution. There are many Theists today who believe in evolution, but they have had to make over their idea of God considerably. Indeed, they have not yet succeeded in making a satisfactory adjustment. It is still to be seen whether or not Theism will survive the shock which the theory of evolution has given it.” (2) Charles F. Potter; Humanism, A New Religion (New York, Simon & Schuster, pg. 15

Theism has survived the shock but its survival has more often been in spite of the visible Church’s lack of proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every area of life, rather than because of its resistance to alien worldviews. 

  This Evangelical and American trend to compartmentalize reality into Sacred and Secular categories is the legacy of the work of Thomas Aquinas and later in Protestantism by Bishop Butler. Aquinas held that while the will in man was fallen the intellect was not. With this understanding of a incomplete fall of man pandora’s box was opened releasing all the villainy that autonomous man could achieve with his reason divorced from revelation.

This has led to an approach described by Dr. Greg Bahnsen.

“The Thomistic approach assumes that fallen man is capable of reasoning in a proper way (prior to repentance of sin and submitting to the Savior) and that knowledge and intelligible interpretation of experience are philosophically possible apart from God’s revelation (i.e. – possible in terms of a basic perspective different from the Christian Worldview). Man’s own intellect, when used at its best, is thus granted the ability and the right to pass judgment on the credibility of God’s word (it’s worthiness of faith). Reason – set up as a judge, not simply a tool – takes a privileged position alongside faith.(3)

pg. 47 Van Til’s Apologetic, Bahnsen

The consequences of such an approach are manifold. First, as we have seen, the Lordship of Jesus Christ ends up being limited to the arbitration of human reason deciding where Christ will be allowed to be explicitly Lord. Man, in determining the sway of Jesus Lordship, becomes his own Lord. This was brought home to me again when in a recent discussion with a prominent Reformed Theologian I was informed that “There is no ‘Christian’ economics,” and this despite the fact that his own confession gives a statement on theft that would make a good beginning in formulating a Christian economics.

“In God’s sight theft also includes cheating and swindling our neighbor by schemes made to appear legitimate such as: inaccurate measurements of weight, size or volume; fraudulent merchandising; counterfeit money; excessive interest; and any other means forbidden by God…” (HC LD 42)

The second consequence of such a Thomist approach is that in removing the Lordship of Christ from the ‘secular’ realm one removes His law standard in that realm and at the same time replaces it with the law standard of some other lord. As Dr. Martin was fond of saying, ‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ and since that remains true the removal of Christ as Lord from the Secular realm means a replacing of all objective standards found in the revelatory scriptures of the King for subjective standards found in Sharia law or positivistic law, or Hindu caste law, depending on ones self referential desires.

From Light To Darkness

In the days of the Reformation the principle was submission to God; in these days it is a revolt against God. That is why there rages again today one universal war in church, state, and the world of learning, one holy battle over the supreme question: to submit unconditionally to the law of God, or not. Groen Van Prinsterer – Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution(3)

  The embracing of a different standard can be seen by the shift in the approach of the Revolutionary West to educational disciplines beginning especially with the endarkenment (sometimes euphemistically referred to as the enlightenment) and continuing through to the present. This shift has made itself known in the various disciplines with their emphasis upon increasing humanistic, evolutionary, naturalistic and Statist type training standards that are derived from some pagan lord. We will consider just four of those fields in order to provide a kind of Whitman’s sampler of the shift that the Church is facing as it contemplates its necessity to once again proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every area of life.

In the area of Education, the Unitarian, Horace Mann led the way in America moving education away from its Biblical moorings exemplified in the Puritan requirement for an education that was rich with Scripture. 

“It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep man from the knowledge of Scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times, by persuading from the use of tongues, so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors;

 It is therefore ordered by this court and authority thereof…to teach all…children to read and write…they shall set up a grammar school, the masters thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the university.(4)

In doing so they used books like the New England primer that had children learning the letter ‘A’ by reciting “In Adam’s fall, we fell all.” The Puritans were interested in educating their children under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

But starting in the 19th century men like Henry Barnard, John Swett, John Dewey, William H. Kilpatrick, and Harold Rugg followed in Mann’s wake, setting in concrete a humanistic evolutionary, naturalistic, Statist, teaching model that the discipline of pedagogy and Education now holds as the definitional Standard. The guiding assumption of modern education has been expressed at various times by its leadership. 

“Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.”(5) Pedagogic Creed, School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

Dewey, as a signatory to Humanist Manifesto I wasn’t thinking of a proper social order that yields allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Eighty years later this kind of thinking was still holding sway in the Educational establishment.

 Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.”(6) Dr. Chester Pierce, Harvard University, keynote address to the association for Childhood Education International, Denver, Colorado, April 1972

 There were voices of protest in the Church against this denial of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the realm of education,

“I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, which this sin-rent world has ever seen… It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes the least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter how small a minority the atheists or the agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is carried out in all parts of the country, the United States’ system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen” (A. A. Hodge, “Popular Lectures on Theological Themes,” 1889, pages 281-283) (7).

The Church, as is her custom, ignored her prophets.

 In the area of Law men like Christopher Columbus Langdell, Roscoe Pound, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Benjamin Cardozo moved the discipline of law away from its Biblical moorings evinced in Puritan Commonwealth documents like “Abstract of the Laws of New England,” towards standards that evinced a humanistic, evolutionary, naturalistic and Statist paradigm. In the late 1800’s Langdell did yeoman’s work moving law training away from a century of Lawyers in America concentrating on what the Constitution said to Darwinian inspired notions of where the law was perceived to be moving (case law training). By Langdell’s work the Constitution came to be seen to be evolving under the guidance of an imperial judiciary. Roscoe Pound followed Langdell at Harvard Law School and strengthened Langdell’s notions of law set inside a evolutionary Weltanschauung. At one point Pound wrote,

We have . . . the same task in jurisprudence that has been achieved in philosophy, in the natural sciences and in politics. We have to rid ourselves of this sort of legality and to attain a pragmatic, a sociological legal science.” (8) Mechanical Jurisprudence” by Roscoe Pound, Columbia Law Review, vol. 8, no. 8, December, 1908, p. 609

It would take paragraphs to tease out all that is wrong about this quote but at the very least here Pound, following Langdell, subtly advocates using the Law in an evolutionary sense (hence the need for a pragmatic nature) so as to serve pagan-elitist perceived changing societal norms. Secondly, Pound presupposes that Law can be a ‘legal science’ as if that ‘legal science’ can exist without being derivative of some Theology or some God concept. Science of any form is just a handmaid to some Theology. Pound’s irrational search was for an objective point of reference based upon changing subjective norms. Pound’s desire to attain a pragmatic, sociological legal science presupposes a pagan theological paradigm (legal positivism) that is in anti-thesis with a Biblical paradigm.

Oliver Wendell Holmes served on the US Supreme Court from 1902-1932, in defining truth Holmes could wrote that it was, “the majority vote of the nation that can lick all the others.” Holmes’ view of law paralleled his view of truth as he rejected absolutist transcendent moral categories for law opting instead for a kind of cultural relativism.

“The justification of a law for us cannot be found in the fact that our fathers always have followed it. It must be found in some help which the law brings toward reaching a social end.” (9) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Collected Legal Papers.  NY:  Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920.  P. 225, “The Law in Science—the Science in Law.”  Cited in Barton, Original Intent.  P. 229.

Once again, we see an evolutionary view of law where Law is understood not as something static or eternal but rather as a something that is constantly in flux serving always changing social ends.

Finally, for purposes illustrative to show that some other Lord has usurped the Crown Rights of King Jesus in the field of Law and to establish that a neutral realm is a myth we cull a couple quotes from former US Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo who said, “I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.”(10)  The Nature of the Judicial Process 10 (1921) What is judge-made law except that it is man-made law with man as Lord? In another place Cardozo stated,

“If there is any law which is back of the sovereignty of the state, and superior thereto, it is not law in such a sense as to concern the judge or lawyer, however much it concerns the statesman or the moralist.”(11) Benjamin Cardozo Problematics, supra note 2, at 1638

Here Cardozo clearly has citizens living, moving and having their being in the State.

The Church has the clear responsibility of proclaiming to God’s people that the transcendent reference point for Law is found in the Law Word of King Jesus and it is the Church’s shame that her pulpits are full of men who are mute to this responsibility.

 Sociology, in our culture is a given but the word itself wasn’t coined until the 19th century by August Comte. Comte came up with Sociology as a way to explain men’s behavior apart from Biblical Christianity. In America men like Lester Frank Ward, William Graham Sumner, Albion Small, and Franklin Giddings were pioneers in anchoring the humanistic, evolutionary, naturalistic, and Statist paradigm of Sociology (whether leftist or rightist) on the American consciousness.

Sumner was a Darwinist influenced through Herbert Spencer. That Sumner pushed an evolutionary, humanistic and statist sociology is seen in his teaching.

“Nothing but might has ever made right, and if we include in might (as we ought) elections and the doctrines of the courts, nothing but might makes right now…. if a thing has been done and is established by force (that is no force can reverse it), it is right in the only sense we can know and rights will follow from it which are not vitiated at all by the forces in it. There would be no security at all for rights if this were not so.” (12) Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals

It seems that Chairman Mao’s famous aphorism that ‘power comes out of the barrel of a gun’ was just a pithy reduction of the American sociologist Sumner.

Franklin Giddings sociological paradigm shared with Comte’s the idea that mankind had progressed in an evolutionary fashion through certain stages. Whereas Comte had three stages, Gidding’s discerned four stages of human evolution: zoogenic, anthropogenic, ethnogenic and demogenic. Like Comte he believed that he lived in times that were an _expression of the higher end of the evolutionary scale.    

Ironically, Frank Lester Ward used Darwin and Spencer to fight the Social Darwinism of the Gilded Age. Ward revealed how in debt he was to Darwin’s evolutionary thinking and perhaps Hegel’s dialectic in his Address as the President of the American Sociological Society at its First Annual Meeting.  

(Sociology) has gone farther even than physics, which has thus far only discovered the law of gravitation, but has not yet discovered its cause or principle. Sociology has not only established the law of social evolution, but it has found the principle underlying and explaining that law. Just as in biology the world was never satisfied with the law of organic evolution worked out by Goethe and Lamarck until the principle of natural selection was discovered which explained the workings of that law, so in sociology is was not enough to formulate the law of social evolution, however clear it may have been, and the next step has been taken in bringing to light the sociological homologue of natural selection which explains the process of social evolution. That principle is not the same as natural selection, but it serves the same purpose. It also resembles the latter in growing out of the life-struggle and in being a consequence of it; but, instead of consisting in the hereditary selection of the successful elements of that struggle, it consists in the ultimate union of the opposing elements and their combination and assimilation. Successively higher and higher social structures are thus created by a process of natural synthesis, and society evolves from stage to stage. The struggling groups infuse into each other the most vigorous qualities of each, cross all the hereditary strains, double their social efficiency at each cross, and place each new product on a higher plane of existence. It is the cross-fertilization of cultures.(13)

In this quote we see several naturalistic, and humanistic presuppositions. First, Ward cites that sociology has ‘established’ the law of social evolution, which is the Hegelian synthesis between the thesis and anti-thesis of competing social structures. This presupposes a purely naturalistic mechanism that locks the God of the Bible out of the equation. Second, Ward’s presupposition of a closed world, is seen in the whole notion of a sociological evolution that needs a homologue to biological natural selection.

The individualistic attempt to do in an anti-Christian fashion what Sociology attempted to do on a corporate level started as phrenology and eventually developed (?) into what we today call Psychology. Today, Psychology like Sociology is a given in the American mindset, and like sociology in its origin it was anti-Christ to the core. Psychology became part of the America psyche thanks to work of men like Freud, Jung, Rogers, Maslow, Skinner and a host of others. The various fields of psychology and sociology have spawn countless fields in the West the way Spielberg’s Gremlins multi-duplicated with the addition of water, and with just as much danger.

Clearly, neither sociology nor psychology dwells in a neutral realm and as such the Church needs to proclaim the crown rights of King Jesus over these realms of thought.     

I would submit that regardless of what discipline we inquire into (including Christian Theology) we find that Secular Humanist presuppositions and assumptions holding the field so much so that a foundational challenge to these positions is often taken as an un-Christian attack on good wholesome teaching by those in the Church who spent their formative years being trained in the Secular realm where reason was King and in a Church where God’s law word was either ignored or reinterpreted through the assumptions of Secular Humanism. All of this is why in 1961 Harry Blamire could say,

“There is no longer a Christian mind….As a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion – its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues with the context of the eternal, the view which relates all human problems – social, political, cultural – to the foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God’s supremacy and earth’s transitoriness, in terms of heaven and hell.” (14) Harry Blamires The Christian Mind pg. 4

 Blamires’ point wasn’t that there weren’t still some people living who thought like Christians, rather his point was that the context for conversations among those people in different disciplines didn’t exist in such a way that the influence of Christian thought could be brought to bear upon a set people or culture. Blamires’ point seemed to be then that those who did think like Christians were so isolated in their various fields that for all intensive purposes the Christian mind was in eclipse. 

The purpose of establishing these matters by our light dusting is that,

1.)    There is no such thing as a neutral or secular or common realm. Neutrality is a myth. Therefore the Church must proclaim the Lordship of Jesus in these areas. 

2.)    ‘Neutral’ realms are always reflective of some Theology and are derivative of and beholden to some God concept.

3.)    If the transcendent and absolute standard of King Jesus is not the standard by which we measure in the putative secular realm then some other standard of some other Lord will become the standard by which we measure in the ‘secular’ realm.

Though these disciplines have ‘evolved’ over time, there is little evidence that on a large scale they have ‘evolved’ in a Biblical direction. The covenant seed continues to be trained in ways that compromise their confession that Jesus Christ is King.

The reason that the Church needs to return to a proclamation of Jesus Mediatorial Kingship is first because it is the Church’s unique privilege and responsibility to proclaim King Jesus in more than an abstract or gnostic fashion.

Second, none of our other cultural institutions are going to do it since they have already largely been compromised by the Spirit of the age. We are now several generations into this kind of evolutionary, humanistic, naturalistic and statist Weltanschauung and if Reformation and awakening is to come there has to be some institution that is sounding the tocsin seeking to alert God’s people that Jesus is not a gnostic King and that God’s people are responsible to think His thoughts after Him in every area of life and measure by the King’s standard.

 From Darkness To Light

 This is a proclamation though that the Church must make in the face of severe resistance for our churches are often led by professionals who have been trained in an unbiblical Worldview, who, because of that, will likely feel ideologically threatened by such a bold proclamation. As just one example, see how threatened people feel, if, from the pulpit or the lectern, it is insisted that the Lordship of Jesus requires parents to pull their children that God has given them out of Government Schools since such education is universally premised upon false gods and as such is idolatrous.(15) Secondly, proclamations of the Lordship of Jesus Christ will also face resistance because frankly much of the Church in America is filled with people who prefer to be entertained and who would leave for other Churches if it were required of them to do the difficult work of thinking. (16) Thirdly, proclamations of the Lordship of Jesus Christ will face resistance because the implications of submitting to that Lordship could be personally and professionally ruinous for people. Imagine Biology Teachers showing up in school prepared to teach something as innocuous as intelligent design. Finally, proclamations of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the Church will face resistance because many church goers don’t like and aren’t equipped for the confrontation that this doctrine brings in a culture where other lords are in usurpation against King Jesus.  

The remedy for all of this is easy to advocate but harder to implement. The remedy, as we have suggested, is first, found in eliminating the notion of a secular realm, if by secular realm we mean a realm that is unaffected or unmoved by some Theology. While Dr. Martin was correct to insist that there is no institutional hierarchy there can be no doubt that Theology remains the Queen of the Sciences, the protestations of modernism notwithstanding. In order to provide solution to the current problem of compartmentalization we must first recognize that no realm exists nor can exist that is not derivative of some Lord or lords and hence some Theology. One’s belief about God drives everything. Everything about us is the outward manifestation of our inward beliefs about the character and nature of some God. As a Christian people we must wake up to the fact that everything, that happens around us from School curriculum, to magazine covers, to Presidential Speeches, to forms of government, to what is considered chic in apparel, to hairstyles, to music, to parenting styles, is driven by some faith commitment which in turn descends from some God concept. The only question is which faith commitment and which God. Neutrality is a myth. Once that is recognized we must go on, as Dr. Martin tirelessly repeated to re-interpret every area of life in light of the Scripture.

Second we must expose the aberrant theologies that are currently being incarnated into this realm we call secular and presume to be neutral. The realm that we now call secular in all actuality is a humanist realm largely ruled by the State and it won’t be satisfied until all Christian notions of ‘sacred’ are either completely isolated to what happens in the Church building on Sunday or isolated to a very private sphere of personal holiness.   In heralding the Lordship of Jesus Christ the Church must expose Humanism for the faith system that it is. Like all other faith systems humanism does have a sense of the Sacred (The Nation State absolutized). Humanism is a faith system, like all faith systems, that is replete with Priests (Psychologists to whom moderns make their confession), sacraments, (abortion and the vote) catechisms (school textbooks), and martyrs (Matthew Shepherd). Since it is a Worldview System in opposition to the God of the Bible it’s sense of the Sacred and its Holy is what Biblical Christians would consider profane and unholy. In Secular Humanism, Man, considered either individually or collectively, is that which is ultimately Sacred, and since Man absolutized handles all that he handles apart from God, all that Man absolutized makes sacred is therefore automatically profane from the view of a Christ submitting Christian. If the Church is to return to the proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ from the pulpit then it must at the same time seek to demolish every stronghold and pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. In our times and in this country that means an extended assault on humanism; the defacto established religion of this country. Does the Church and its ministers have the courage to do that?

Thirdly, understanding that Theology remains the core discipline that informs all other disciplines every college student should be required to start with the core discipline of Theology before moving on to other disciplines that are but seeking to express and incarnate the core discipline in sundry ways. Failing the pursuit of that solution, at the very least Professors ought to be required to reverse engineer their disciplines so that the students have the opportunity to see how their discipline is growing up out of the soil of Scripture.

Fourthly, ministry students should be required to take classes that seek to integrate Theology, Worldview thinking, and Christian Ethics.

These four solutions are nothing but the re-articulation of Dr. Martins’ call to know what we believe and why we believe it and what we don’t believe and why we don’t believe it.

Impact

Where the Church and God’s people take seriously Jesus office as King in an unrestricted sense there a cultural context is created that makes it easier for the gospel to be heard by unbelievers. Think of context and text when reading a book. The context helps the reader to make sense of the text that he is immediately reading. The text itself would be nonsense if it were set in an entirely different context. In the same way when the ‘Gospel’ goes forward in a cultural context that is informed by the unrestricted Kingship of Jesus, there the text of ‘Jesus Christ as the great High Priest’ makes more sense. Where Jesus in His Kingly office is lived out there isn’t such a huge disconnect between the message of Jesus Christ crucified and the reality of a culture that is defying King Jesus at every turn. When we don’t live out allegiance to Jesus in His Mediatorial office of King we make it more difficult for people to hear the strains of the message of the great commission because we are helping to create a social order context that is in opposition to the gospel proclamation. Consequently when we disconnect the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate to have dominion under King Jesus what we inevitably end up creating are Christians who view their salvation as unrelated to their cultural endeavors, or who see their cultural endeavors as unrelated to their salvation. The result would be to give us both an anti-nomian Church and an anti-nomian culture.

When we find the proper tension between these offices we discover that people who have been saved and brought into the Kingdom, now seek to bring that salvation wherein they have been saved into every area of life, so that those spheres may experience salvation. In obedience to King Jesus those who have been saved by Jesus as their great High Priest now bring salvation to the gardens they tend, and the children they raise, and the books they write, and the Churches they attend, and the judicial decisions they hand down, and the art they paint, and on and on. So, as Jesus in His Priestly office saves individuals, they bring that salvation to their corporate life in obedience to Jesus in His Kingly office, which in turn, as we noted above, provides a general cultural context where it is easier for unsaved individuals to comprehend the Gospel.

Now if the objection is raised that what I am contending for is a kind of naturalistic program for the Church where I deny the supernaturalistic agency of God for men to be Redeemed and instead am relying on cultural infrastructure to convert lost men, I would respond by saying that God appoints means to ends. The salvation that the Spirit of Christ brings to men, while a spiritual reality, happens inside a physical and corporeal context. I would say that it is gnostic to suggest that we can get to the spiritual reality without considering the physical context. Men will never be saved by the proper cultural infrastructure but it is certain that their natural individual resistance to the message of Christ crucified will be accentuated and emboldened by cultural infrastructure that is built in defiance of King Jesus.

God putting the offices of Jesus together they must not be cast asunder. The Church must return to proclaiming the Crown Rights Of King Jesus in every area of life.