Today Is the End of the Christian Right - Mike Farris Sees It Happening

As about 1,000 evangelical leaders met with Donald Trump today at Trump Tower (including Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, tweeting a picture of himself with Trump in front of Trump's wall of magazine covers that includes a framed cover of Playboy magazine), Michael Farris posted this essay declaring that today is the end of the Christian Right. Considering that Farris helped pioneer the Christian Right in the 1980s and beyond, his words carry some serious weight. Please read them. I quoted the main points below.
[In case you may think that Falwell, Jr., likely unaware of all the covers on the wall, would have been scandalized to find a Playboy magazine in the photo he shared: he has shrugged it off and said everyone criticizing him is a hypocrite, because he's proud to be seen with sinners and tax collectors. And, apparently, snap photos with them and their pornography.]

"I attended the very first meeting of the Moral Majority held in Indianapolis in February of 1980. I was the Washington state director of the MM and have been a leader of the "Christian right" ever since.
Today an estimated 1,000 evangelical leaders are making a pilgrimage to Trump Tower to "listen" to Donald Trump."
"This meeting marks the end of the Christian Right. The premise of the meeting in 1980 was that only candidates that reflected a biblical worldview and good character would gain our support."
"In 1980 I believed that Christians could dramatically influence politics. Today, we see politics fully influencing a thousand Christian leaders.
This is a day of mourning."
(Farris, Trump's Meeting with Evangelical Leaders Marks the End of the Christian Right)

He puts it very clearly: the religious right joined together in order to support candidates that would represent biblical values and worldview. Today we see Christian leaders on the right following after a candidate who reflects neither. They are not influencing politics for Christ. Politics is influencing them, so much so that they will not let go of clinging to political power and influence no matter what compromises they are required to make. If you cannot disentangle yourself and your faith from politics over a man like Trump, then politics owns you.

This is shameful for a Christian. Our crucified Lord told his disciples when He was being arrested, knowing torture and death awaited Him, that they should put away their swords. He asked them if they didn't realize He could immediately call upon the Father and have twelve legions of angels fighting for Him. But He did not, for the same reason he told Pilate: His kingdom is not of this world, otherwise his servants would be fighting for it now. And it still isn't. America is not Christ's kingdom. He does not need us to fight for control of America at all costs, no matter what we lose in the process. If America goes the way of Trump, or of Clinton, that is the world's business. Our business as Christians is to remain true to our Lord, put our hope in His coming kingdom, and be sure that we represent it rightly to people in the world. Making certain that the Church looks just like Christ is far more urgent and important than trying to make America look like the Church.

This means we can afford to let go of political power. We can afford to not be influential over immoral candidates. We can afford to have nothing to do with them. We do not have to run off a cliff with Republican candidates. They are not our only hope. In fact, our hope is completely set on something else. Peter, one of the disciples that Jesus had to rebuke in the garden for fighting as if His kingdom was of this world, says it plainly:

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (1 Peter 1:13-21).

That is where all of our hope is set. This is the kind of people we ought to be before the rest of the world. Mike Farris sees it. Do you?

Spiritual Coffee: Make the Most of the Things of Earth - We All Need Church History - Knowing Yourself in Spite of Technology

Three tools for inspiration to energize your mind for the week. Here's some help for enjoying the things in the world without loving God less, for taking an interest in church history, and for reconnecting your soul to God's gift of grace and mercy in spite of the distractions of so much useful technology.

Prior collections are tagged under Spiritual Coffee.

The Strange Brightness of the Things of Earth, Joe Rigney (Cities Church)
Rigney has brought a common dilemma of faith into clear focus: does enjoying things in the world subtract from our love for God, or can it help increase it? Should we be cautious and self-conscious about enjoying things too much? Rigney's writing and teaching is some of the most insightful work I've ever read or heard on this subject. Sermon transcript or audio at the link. This is part of a series, so you can look at the related sermons as well. Rigney also has a five-hour seminar available in audio here at the bottom under Media ("The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory") that I strongly recommend for going deeper.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus/Look full in his wonderful face/And the things of earth will grow strangely dim/In the light of his glory and grace.

"What is the song telling us? It tells us that earthly things may have some brightness; they may have some beauty. They may bring us some joy. But when Jesus shows up, that brightness grows dim in his light. That beauty fades in comparison to his wonderful face. In his presence is fullness of joy, and therefore the delight we had in earthly things is now dullness and dust."

"That tension comes into focus when we take the dimness of earthly things in the light of Jesus and set it alongside the hymn we just sang, “This Is My Father’s World.”

"This is my Father’s World/He shines in all that’s fair/In the rustling grass I hear him pass/He speaks to me everywhere. 

"What does this hymn teach? Not that earthly things grow dim, but that God shines in them. “He shines in all that’s fair.” They’re not dim; they’re bright with his brightness. They don’t go silent when God shows up; He speaks through them. And there’s the tension: which hymn is true?" 

13 Reasons We Need Church History, Matthew J. Hall (TGC)
Excellent thoughts on why church history has special value and importance for Christians, and how to study it wisely. Although Hall doesn't state this directly, there's a lot of encouragement here for all Christians that we should care about knowing our history, and we shouldn't think of it as a matter only for seminary students and scholars. 

"Throughout Scripture, rightly remembering is critical to faithfulness. As early as Eden, Eve listens to the serpent, succumbing to faulty interpretations of the past and of God’s revelation in particular.

"Throughout the Old Testament, God calls his people to recall and retell his gracious saving acts. Yet Israel repeatedly forgets, fails, and strays. The New Testament is also clear: Historical events are at the heart of the good news.

"Our mission is to recount that history and call the nations to repent and believe in the Christ. Even the development of post-apostolic doctrine involved history. The early church fathers and councils had to determine, for example, what it meant to say with historical confidence that Jesus was both God and man."

Habits of Mind in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs (Comment Magazine)
The summer issue of Comment Magazine is available online now (free and simple registration required). It's hard to choose among the articles - the focus on how design and technology influence us and our faith is tackled in a diversity of forms. For an introduction, James K.A. Smith examines cutting-edge technological marvels against the potential to forget who we are (or what makes us human) in Our Built World. I chose Jacobs, however, because distraction and divided attention are major challenges for most of us. Having used social media and tech prolifically and personally himself, as well as questioned and criticized it, Jacobs speaks from real life with the benefit of examining himself and all of us against Christian thinking across several centuries. But what he grabs hold of here and leads us through is not a list of ways to tame technology; instead, it's a vital question of what happens when our perception of life and self goes wrong. Those who see only their own failures and imperfections and those who see only a world of outward problems in need of the right technological fix both suffer from a distorted view of the Gospel and self. Here is good medicine.

"So what do we do with the great majority of people for whom excessive self-examination is the last problem they're likely to face? I think this is one of the most important problems Christians—and especially pastors—face today."

Fundamentals Part 2: Christ and Culture - Niebuhr's Five Categories of Interaction

60 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr addressed the same ideas summed up in Bruce Ashford's lecture (see my last post) with even more depth and broadness. If you really want to grasp the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to culture, Niebuhr's book Christ and Culture is priceless. My ambition here is to simply sketch out and summarize the basic categories Niebuhr charted out, showing how they compare to Ashford’s discussion. People could spend entire books on the significance of Niebuhr’s work and its application to a wide range of problems and issues. I only aim to be as simple as possible without distorting his meaning. This makes for a longer-than-average blog post, but the understanding of these ideas is worth it. If you want a really detailed discussion and examination of his categories and ideas by a far superior commentator, you’ll be glad to get D.A. Carson’s 2008 book Christ and Culture Revisited. You can even preview the first section here. (I gladly admit to drawing freely from Carson's analysis.)

First, it is crucial to stop and think about what we mean by the words “Christ” and “culture.” D.A. Carson takes time to examine this right away in Christ and Culture Revisited. We can’t just take for granted that we all mean the same thing by those terms; if we do, we will leave a lot of room for confusion in how each approach to culture affects the Christian and just where the line between culture and Christian thought can be drawn. For purposes of my discussion, when I refer to Christ, I have in mind not simply Jesus Christ as a person and Savior but also what the Apostles' Creed and the historic confessions of the Church teach us about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and other basic Christian doctrines. This differs from Niebuhr’s approach, for he tried to be very inclusive and make room for some modern perspectives on Christ and Christianity such as liberal theology and existentialism. Niebuhr himself, however, drew some boundaries and excluded reflections/imitations of Christianity like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. My point is simply to clarify that I think of Christ in terms of traditional, biblical Christian teaching such as would have been accepted and approved by Augustine or Luther or Wesley or Charles Spurgeon.

As for culture, Niebuhr sums it up brilliantly:

What we have in view when we deal with Christ and culture is that total process of human activity and that total result of such activity to which now the name culture, now the name civilization, is applied in common speech. Culture is the “artificial, secondary environment” which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organizations, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values. This “social heritage,” this “reality sui generis,” which the New Testament writers frequently had in mind when they spoke of “the world,” … is what we mean when we speak of culture. (Niebuhr, Christ and Culture)

In short, culture can be described as the world the Christian interacts with beyond purely Christian circles such as church or youth group. Niebuhr helped us a lot by identifying it with what the New Testament writers meant when they referred to “the world.” In fairness (and Niebuhr and Carson both say this) it is hard to identify a Christianity that is entirely outside culture, just as no person can be entirely outside the culture in which he lives, but what we all have in mind here is how the Christian interacts with the culture that we see as distinct from Christ and the Church. We want to figure out how to interact with that which differs from Christianity. Note that culture includes beliefs and ideas as well as traditions, social structures, etc. Culture is not devoid of values or a shared sense of moral purpose; but these are often different from or vastly weaker than the values and purpose Christianity reveals to mankind.

D.A. Carson does us another favor by making the distinction even clearer. What Niebuhr is really doing is comparing “two sources of authority as they compete within culture, namely Christ… and every other source of authority divested of Christ (though Niebuhr is thinking primarily of secular or civil authority rather than the authority claimed by competing religions). If we do not recognize that the polarities Niebuhr sets up are along such lines, the rest of his elegant discussion simply becomes incoherent.” (Christ and Culture Revisited, p. 12)

Now, the five categories from Christ and Culture:

Naturally, these are all generalizations and people who fit under a certain category may very well not fit all the attitudes or weaknesses described. 

1. Christ Against Culture. An attitude often described as "withdrawal" or "separatism." On this view, Christianity and culture are simply incompatible. The culture is too corrupt for Christianity to redeem, and the Christian is at risk of being tainted and compromised by culture if he or she gets involved in it. No matter how one tries to carefully engage the culture, the moral compromises are unavoidable. Christians should not involve themselves in politics, or military service, or other positions of cultural entanglement. However, Christians do interact with the world as ordinary folk: shopping, paying taxes, going to the health club, etc. For some particular Christians, this approach may serve their calling: monasteries and convents would fit here. Historically, it was advocated by Tertullian and Leo Tolstoy, and is commonly seen in Quakers, Mennonites, and the Amish. It was included in Ashford’s lecture as the Second View: Grace Against Nature.
   Weaknesses: Christians who hold this view sometimes make the mistake of viewing the non-religious studies and disciplines as inferior or bad. They may end up despising literature, science, etc. as too corrupted by sin and “godless” thinking to be of any value. Ashford critiques it for its wholesale rejection of much of the created order: “[T]his vision gives sin too much credit. The evil one does not have the power to make bad what God has made good. The best that he can do is to take God’s good creation – which remains good structurally – and twist it toward wrong ends. … This vision unintentionally, as I see it, undermines Christ’s lordship and reduces it to one’s private life, one’s personal activities, and one’s church worship.” A logical consequence of this view is that whole areas of work and study are considered immoral or unworthy for Christians: no Christian lawyers, or legislators, or judges, or public school teachers. If followed through, this would ultimately mean no Christian representation in any of these fields or in any of the decisionmaking or lawmaking of society. Even in its weaker forms, this view can create a crisis of conscience for Christians who cannot reconcile their participation in a career or government position with their belief that these things are corrupted almost beyond redemption.
   
   
2. The Christ of Culture. This view often disregards or minimizes conflict and tension between Christianity and culture. Those who hold this view embrace what they consider to be best in culture, and have an optimistic view of the possibilities of human culture. Rather than seeing Christ and the Lord God as sovereign rulers of the universe who are establishing a new kingdom defined by God's righteousness, followers of this view tend to view Christ and Christian truth as "improving" culture and perfecting what is good in culture. At the same time, they tend to minimize the conflict between Christianity and whatever is bad or undesirable in culture; there is no need for Jesus to take lordship of all of culture, on this view, and so the parts that are backwards or unsavory can simply be disregarded as they focus on making the best parts better. Jesus is often accepted as God by those who hold this view, but not as a ruler of all Creation who must one day remove what opposes the righteousness of God. People who fall into this category often have little use for concepts like the Fall or Redemption. Jesus is more of a hero who has come to better humanity, much like a Plato or Socrates (although on a higher and more divine level). Historical persons who fit under this view include Abelard, Thomas Jefferson, some Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, and even Kant (who charted a course in philosophy away from the spiritual and supernatural aspects of Christianity but found the moral reasoning compelling). From the late 19th century, liberal theology in the United States has largely fit under this category. In Ashford's lecture, this view doesn't have a direct counterpart, but the discussion in my last post described how the First View: Grace Above Nature and the Third View: Grace in Tension with Nature can end up leading to a practice of this view and its weaknesses - but in pure form they resemble the third and fourth categories below.
   

   Weaknesses: Niebuhr sees more promise in this view than the first view, which rejects most of culture wholesale. Those who embrace the higher aspects of culture and become fluent in them may become "missionaries" to the aristocracy, academics, and cultural leaders who are offended by Christians who treat culture as polluted. But there are significant weaknesses (see also those raised in my last post). Christ tends to be reinvented and adapted by those holding this view to reflect what they see as the needs of the times. So he becomes a great moral rationalist, or an advocate of social justice, or a general example of inner spirituality. The tendency is to broadly include people in spite of vague or nonexistent theology, and to sidestep or reject parts of Christianity that would exclude some people from the community of believers. The fact that the Christ conceived by these Christians usually reflects the cultural demands and the trend of popular thought makes Him little more than an idol created to support their social objectives. In particular, this view often fails to see the importance of grace because it downplays or discounts the effects of sin. The focus is primarily on improving society here and now, rather than looking forward to a new heavens and new earth and the kingdom of God. Those holding this view often have no grasp of some Christian doctrines or theological concepts; they are prone to picking and choosing the aspects of Christianity that serve their vision of culture. This view is sharply criticized by orthodox Christianity as sacrificing too much of the essence of Christian faith and teaching.

   
   
3. Christ Above Culture - the Synthesists. Let's subtitle this "Render Unto Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's" or "One Foot in Both Worlds." Niebuhr's last three categories are really sub-categories of what he calls "Christ Above Culture." He sees the historical positions of the Church over the centuries as fitting into three categories: 1) Synthesist, 2) Dualist, and 3) Conversionist or Transformationist. (Carson at p. 20). First, the Synthesist recognizes the distinctions and tensions between Christ and Culture but also believes we have a role to play in culture. We are conscious of the corruption of sin and the effects of the fall, but we also see the created order (both nature and social structures like government) as things God designed for good and for which God still has a purpose. Matthew 22:21 ("Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.") and Romans 13:1 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.") suggest that God seems to have a purpose for civil government and society. Christ is far above culture, but uses all the institutions of culture (government, education, law, philosophy, civic life) for good purposes in fulfilling His work in the people of God and the world. Bruce Ashford's point that God's creation may be corrupted by sin directionally (in how we use it) but is still good structurally seems to be the same idea. However, this is only a part of Ashford's Fifth View: Grace Renews or Restores Nature, and the best match for that view will be Niebuhr's fifth category: Conversionist or Transformationist. Ashford's First View: Grace Above Nature could fit here, but you can't define this entire category by how Ashford describes his First View. Important synthesists included Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Thomas Aquinas. I will skip a discussion of weaknesses, except to refer back to what I said about Ashford's First View in my last post, and leave this as a comparison with the final two approaches.
   
   
4. Christ Above Culture - the Dualists. The Dualist (which has nothing to do with the historic Christian heresy of dualism) is essentially Ashford's Third View: Grace in Tension with Nature. Martin Luther was probably the most famous developer of this view. In short, Christ sets us free through grace to approach culture with a renewed mind and purpose, but He doesn't directly govern what we do in the institutions of culture or how they develop. We are free to use the tools of culture to build and improve culture. Luther's contributions here were enormous: he recovered and affirmed the idea that every vocation (job) in human experience had a significance for the Christian; every man's vocation was the arena in which he lived out the Great Commandments by loving his neighbors and being the instruments of God's blessing to them. Faith makes us acceptable to God, but our works serve our neighbors. Niebuhr said: "More than any great Christian leader before him, Luther affirmed the life in culture as the sphere in which Christ could and ought to be followed; and more than any other had discerned that the rules to be followed in the cultural life were independent of Christian or church law. Though philosophy offered no road to faith, yet the faithful man could take the philosophic road to such goals as were attainable by that way." (Niebuhr, pp.174-75). Søren Kierkegaard is a more modern Dualist.
   Weaknesses: Niebuhr acknowledges that there are few actual examples of full Dualists. He identifies some criticisms others have made. Carson sums these up: 1) that Dualists tend toward conservatism and focus on some institutions and traditions to the exclusion of others, so they are unlikely to bring about major social change such as dismantling slavery; and 2) Dualists can fall into antinomianism (a false belief that since grace has covered and forgiven all our sin, we can go forward in the world without worrying about whether we sin or how our behavior conforms to holiness). As I described in my last post, this kind of thinking can result in a "split-personality" set of values: a Christian mindset at church and an entirely secular, agnostic set of values when it comes to work or society. In spite of these dangers, Luther's contributions to the theology of work and the meaning and purpose of our business and employment are rich with encouragement and wisdom. Gene Edward Veith has made them very accessible and clear in God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.
   
   
5. Christ Above Culture - the Conversionist or Transformationist Model. The main feature of this approach is its hopeful vision that authentic Christian living can transform the world around us. This is not just about converting people but redeeming and transforming the institutions of culture - at least in part. This is the same as Ashford's Fifth View: Grace Renews or Restores Nature, which he identified as the one he believes in. The Christian can live out his or her faith in the midst of the world and the culture without compromising that faith. We do this by being faithful to Christ in each challenge we come across and allowing that steady devotion to transform our corner of the culture a little at a time. As Niebuhr explains, this vision has a long tradition in church history:

   The men who offer what we are calling the conversionist answer to the problem of Christ and culture evidently belong to the great central tradition of the church. Though they hold fast to the radical distinction between God’s work in Christ and man’s work in culture, they do not take the road of exclusive Christianity into isolation from civilization… Though they accept their station in society with its duties in obedience to their Lord, they do not seek to modify Jesus Christ’s sharp judgment of the world and all its ways. In their Christology they are like synthesists and dualists; they refer to the Redeemer more than to the giver of a new law, and to the God whom men encounter more than to the representative of the best spiritual resources in humanity. ...

   What distinguishes conversionists from dualists is their more positive and hopeful attitude toward culture. (Niebuhr, pp. 190-91)

   For the Conversionist, the Creation has a more significant place in God's plan for humanity and for redemption than simply being the place we live while we wait for the new heavens and new earth. God is at work in the world and the culture as part of establishing the kingdom of heaven, and He does some of that work through our involvement. Where some Dualists can think of human institutions as having largely a negative or neutral function (restraining evil, for instance), the Conversionist sees the possibility of establishing good things that reflect the coming kingdom of God. We cannot make these institutions perfect or sinless, but we can pursue some reflection of God's ideal order. Think of Handel's Messiah, or Christian universities, or hospitals founded by Catholics and monastic orders. We do the best we can to display the true, the beautiful, and the good and show the world that God is wonderful and generous. 
   

   
   

   Conversionists believe that, in spite of the brokenness of the world, for God all things are possible. They are more likely to see in the history of the Church and the history of humanity evidence that God has taken an active role in the affairs of men to guide them to His glorious purposes, intervening to turn the instruments of culture unexpectedly in the direction of God. They believe it is possible to use all the activity of ordinary life - eating and drinking and marrying and mourning - in a redemptive way that contrasts the life eternal against unbelieving culture. These things all ultimately belong to God, were created for Him and by Him, and can still be used that way. That does not mean we claim dominion as Christians over everyone else's use of culture; but rather we display to the world how much better it is to use the things God has given us in a Christlike way that embraces God's design. Niebuhr seems to favor this model, although he does not state his personal preference. Augustine, John Calvin, and John Wesley each demonstrated this approach in their works.
   

   
   

   Weaknesses: This model may slip into excessive optimism about just how much it is possible to redeem the institutions of culture, which can result in getting so caught up in culture that one confuses Christian duty with cultural roles and objectives, letting those roles shape us more than Christ. For instance, achieving a Christian vision for politics becomes so consuming that the visionary becomes mostly a politician with an agenda founded in Christian ideas and little more. This is different than the Christ of Culture category, because the visionary may retain very traditional Christian theology and see the culture as alien to Christian practice, but he or she is so enthralled with "winning" the culture that this comes to occupy all Christian activity. It can also be distorted into pushing a uniquely Christian vision of culture onto others who do not share the faith in Christ, as seen in some of the more polarizing and inflexible approaches to the "culture wars." However, that is not the vision of this model and represents a shallow grasp of the role of an ambassador. The goal is not to wrest institutions of culture away from others, but to win their support and admiration for the superior blessings of using these institutions in a Christlike way.

Fundamentals of Christian Culture and Education - A Very Useful Overview

I was delighted to see this very helpful and simple breakdown of how Christian truth interacts with the world. The way that Christians see the relationship of a Christian to things that are not strictly Christian, such as culture, arts, education, politics, law, society, etc., has a tremendous effect on how we display Christ to others and interact. And here is a magnificent tool to quickly and simply figure out what that means for you, your kids, and your church. If you look over the following outline, you will see that the category you fall into has a tremendous influence upon whether you participate in the culture of your community or focus on establishing a separate, Christian culture in a private circle of fellow Christians. It affects the way you act when you engage each sphere of life mentioned above, and also how you think those spheres of life ought to look. In other words, it affects both how you treat people and the kind of community you try to persuade those people to build.

In addition to the short summaries below, Justin Taylor has (once again) posted a brilliantly organized outline and breakdown of these ideas drawn from a lecture by Bruce Ashford. If you have time, you should read Taylor's whole post (which incorporates a chart and notes created by others from the lecture; the outline below is from Taylor's post). For the best impact, you can listen to the audio from Ashford's lecture. But Taylor's compilation is enough to ground anyone so you can start thinking through how this affects your approach to homeschooling, or public or private education, or Bible studies, or church community.

Excerpt:

Ashford surveys five competing visions of the relationships between “grace” (God’s saving works and word) and “nature” (not only the created order but also the cultural order). Ashford identifies the following relationships with application toward education:

1. Grace above nature (“bottom-floor education”). Often associated with manualist Thomists. God’s gracious salvation is something that adds to, and fulfills, the natural realm.
2. Grace against nature (“a plague on the educational house”). Often associated with certain Anabaptists and Pietists. The Fall corrupted the natural world ontologically in such a manner that God’s salvation causes Christians to withdraw from the world and live a Christian life separate from it.
3. Grace in tension with nature (“pastors and educators as dual ministers of God”). Associated with Luther and some Reformed evangelicals. The natural realm and the realm of grace each have their own integrity, existing alongside of one another.
4. Nature without grace (“a naked public quad”). Atheistic view.
5. Grace renews or restores nature (“an educational preview of a coming kingdom”). Associated with Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck and the best way to describe the views of Irenaeus and Augustine. Sin does not have the power to corrupt the natural realm structurally. Instead, it corrupts the natural realm directionally. God’s still-good-structurally creation is misdirected toward false gods and idols. When Christians receive God’s grace in salvation, they are liberated from their idolatry, liberated to shape their cultural activities toward Christ rather than toward false gods and idols. Their cultural activity is redirective.

Ashford explains that all of the options—sans number four (nature without grace)—are advocated by various Christian traditions.

He goes on to argues for the fifth view (grace renews nature).

[It is important to note that various Christian traditions and teachers have argued for several of these views. But I believe Ashford is correct that the fifth view is the ideal Christian mission. It pursues a redemptive and transformational impact on the natural world and human culture through engaging it with the message of the Gospel and a life that demonstrates the superior benefit and goodness of embracing God's design. -Anthony]

Fifth View...

After the fall, the world remains structurally good but directionally bad. . . . The world the way it is ordered remains good. The fact that we have sun and moon and stars and dry land and water and human beings and animals— that’s good. And the fact that we have a certain cultural order is also good. Things like the arts and the sciences and politics and economics. . . . All of these sorts of things we do in this realm remain good in their what-ness. The fact that they exist is good.

These creational and cultural things are not corrupted ontologically; we don’t have to separate from them. But they are bad directionally. Because sin is essentially a redirecting of the heart away from God . . . and because it is religiously rooted and located in the heart, it radiates outward into everything we do. And so we continue to be cultural beings and social beings, but all of our social and cultural doings are corrupted by sin and idolatry. . . .

Grace and nature belong together . . . Christ Jesus’ redemption should transform us in the entirety of our being, and as it redirects our heart from idols toward the one, true living God, it should then change the way we operate in culture. . . . His lordship is as wide creation, and therefore it is as wide as our cultural eyes. . . . Our mission, therefore, the Christian mission is as wide as the entirety of our cultural and social lives, involving both our words and our deeds and our teaching and learning.

Ashford goes on to suggest three questions that should be asked (and answered) when we find ourselves in any sphere of culture:

1. What is God’s creational design for this realm of culture?
2. How has it been corrupted and misdirected by sin and idolatry?
3. In what ways can I help bring redirection to this realm by shaping my activities in light of Christ’s Lordship rather than in submission to idols?

That ends my excerpt from Taylor's post. One reason I agree with Ashford on embracing the fifth view is that this view looks at the natural world and human culture as things flawed by the Fall: polluted and misshapen, but not utterly destroyed or beyond value. The same sort of warping and tainting has happened to our hearts (desires and affections) and our minds (beliefs and ideas) due to sin. If the impact of the Holy Spirit within our hearts and minds redeems us gradually from that corruption, then why shouldn't the impact of the Gospel and Christians in both culture and the natural world have a similar effect? On this view, Christians have the privilege when they interact with culture of showing people what a renewed mind and heart look like in work, art, music, writing, friendship, justice, and works of mercy. We give tangible and visible demonstrations of the kind of world God is preparing for those who embrace Him. That is the essence of being an ambassador for Christ: inviting people to see the goodness and worth of the One who sent you.

However, there is a danger in thinking too comfortably and favorably of the natural world and human culture, or expecting too much from the process of restoration and redemption, and the fifth view takes this into account. We can have a transformational and redemptive influence on culture and the world, but we must still be alert to the fact that they will be flawed and, in many ways, in tension and conflict with the Gospel and Christian truth. They are not going to become harmonious with Christianity on this side of heaven; they groan with longing to be set free from sin and decay, and it will only happen at long last when Christ returns. (Rom. 8:19-23). The first view Ashford charts out can easily slip into an actual practice of the fourth view (forgetting that the culture and nature are flawed and corrupted at all, and embracing them as wholly good); the first view tends to treat the natural world and the sciences, arts, and non-religious studies as if they are not tainted or corrupted by sin, but are simply naturally the way God made them. So, for instance, studying geology is simply studying the way God made the earth; there is little or no acknowledgement that the corruption of sin affects our thinking about geology or the conclusions we draw from it. On this view, we have to take the corruption of sin and how it affects our beliefs, desires, and understanding into account when we study the Bible or Christian doctrine, but not when we study Plato or Marx or Jane Austen or the periodic table. Ashford calls this the two-level approach: God's supernatural work of restoration and sanctification is not needed on the bottom floor of non-religious work and study, but is always needed on the top floor of Christian thinking and preaching and Bible study.

The third view does something similar, in that it divides Christian scholarship and non-religious studies into two separate, side by side spheres of life. One of the things that attract people to this view is the appearance that non-Christians and Christians alike use the same intellectual tools in secular fields like mathematics, science, and architecture. They believe that what we call general or natural revelation (what God has revealed to all people through nature, without Scripture or faith) and common grace (the blessings and gifts God has given to everyone through nature, regardless of faith, like the ability to think and the ability to use moral reasoning) are completely sufficient for doing all the non-religious work and study in these secular fields. There is no "Christian" math and secular math, for instance. But this view fails to recognize the many ways a Christian mind and Spirit-filled heart transform what we do in mathematics, science, or architecture: the purpose of our work and the methods we use to complete it may be drastically different for a Christian with a redeemed mind.

An atheist may use science to try to prove his belief that there is no God; a Christian can use science to prove that the existence of God is far more likely and plausible than the atheist's belief in a universe made out of nothing but mindless material. An agnostic philosophy professor may spend her whole career teaching students to compare various systems of belief and ideas without ever really giving them an ultimate answer - or finding one herself. A Christian philosophy professor can help students discover how the ideas of philosophy and the greatest thinkers ultimately point the way back to the God who Himself defines reason and logic, revealing how Aristotle or Locke deduced things about nature and humanity that confirm what God reveals of Himself in the Bible. Likewise, the third view often overlooks how the corruption of sin in the mind and heart lead non-Christians away from truth, blinding them to what God reveals of Himself even in philosophy or art. The Christian still uses general revelation and common grace, just like the non-Christian, but the redeemed knowledge and biblical understanding of the Christian allows her to see further and deeper into the meaning of things and connect them to their ultimate, God-intended beauty and perfection. They both start with the same tools, but the Christian is more informed about how and why to use them.

Finally, the two-level approach (first view) and side-by-side approach (third view) can also lead into an inconsistent, unstable dual life where the Christian thinks different rules apply in "Christian" things than in "secular" things. This can become a practice of being "Christian" when at church and in Christian circles, but doing work or politics as if the rules that apply to them are simply the rules the world uses: doing things in the secular world by secular rules. The danger is that we cease to be any different from the world in how we act, and in fact begin to act inconsistent with Christian character and virtue when we're at the office or in the classroom. These same concerns are addressed in H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture, which I first encountered 15 years ago. I summarize in the next post how Niebuhr compared each of these problems, because his insights are very similar to Ashford's categories yet go much deeper and add more definition. That post also addresses the problems and weaknesses of the second view Ashford described, Grace Against Nature.