Christian Theism and the Authority of God in the 21st Century – A Response[1]
In part one of this paper the authority of God biblically and historically was discussed. Part two looked at the authority of God in American culture from a historical perspective. Postmodernism and the implications for Christianity generally and the authority question specifically were addressed in part three. In this section the question of how Christian theism must respond to the attack upon the authority of God by 21st century mankind is taken up.
Gene Veith is one Christian theist on-point in the debate between secular mindsets and Christianity. Calling on Christians to understand that they are “freed from the credulities of secular humanism, the mind-deadening cynicism of postmodernism, and the stifling limitations of scientific materialism,”[2] he insists that the current secular attacks upon Christianity are grounded more in hyperbole than fact and reason.
This does not diminish the extent or ferocity of the secular assault upon Christianity. A key issue for this writer is that the secular assault is often sublime. This may appear to be contradictory to some as postmodernism has been portrayed as a ferocious adversary. What this reveals is the intellectual mindset of those given to a secular worldview, including those who consider themselves Christians. The pivotal point in understanding this issue can be located in the approach taken to the authority of Scripture. Christians generally fall into three camps. One perspective understands the authority of the Bible to inform and teach and accepts that authority as the rule for living. Thus life is viewed through the prism of Scripture. A second group consists of those who may have understood and accepted the Bible as a rule or authority but for various reasons no longer does. A third group places their confessional traditions on par with or higher than Scripture. The latter two groups have adopted a view at odds with God’s authority. In the final analysis, at least in practice, these groups have succumbed to the pervasiveness of a belief system that sees no need for God’s authority. In a world where God’s authority is seen as unnecessary for faith and life it follows that any authority models derived from God would be equally unnecessary. Values and morals die quickly when removed from their source. This would explain in part the wide chasms within Christendom related to the issues of abortion, homosexuality, and even support of the nation of Israel. Readers will note that those who hold to a high view of the authority of God and His Word oppose abortion and homosexual behavior while supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend herself. Values and ethics are transcendental or they are left to majority values, cultural totalitarianism, or sheer authoritarianism. This writer does not believe this to be mere coincidence but will leave it to the reader to contemplate those connections.
Postmodernism presents its most menacing challenge in the area of knowledge or epistemology. Postmodernism agrees with existentialism by stating matter-of-factly that we cannot know anything with certainty. Of course this statement itself is nonsensical because if it is true it is false as we would know at least that one thing and thus the statement becomes self-refuting.
The weight of the postmodern argument in the area of epistemology has been thrust against the notion of objective truth. Truth to the postmodernist is not objective and cannot be discovered. Instead truth is a construction of the individual based on personal likes, dislikes, cultural operators that influence an individual, and in the end is unknowable.[3] In support of their theories most postmodernists turn to the differences evident across cultures. These differences according to postmodernism are the result of different cultural norms and values. Postmodernists conclude that because there are differences across cultures there are different truths and because there are difference truths, truth must be relative. Christians would agree with the initial observation but would disagree with the conclusion.
Christians would counter by saying that one way to account for the differences seen across cultures is to see cultures that exclude God as deliberate God-evading social constructions. This is an effective method of restating the postmodern position in a way that turns it on itself. Truth cannot be apprehended nor denied by choosing to deliberately avoid it. Modern man seeks to escape the authority of God by denying that He or it exists or has any bearing on their life. We shall see that this is a fruitless effort.
The Real Issue is the Rejection of the Notion of Authority
Christian theists have maintained for some time that the challenges faced by adherents of Christianity in the 21st century are unique and unparalleled. Montgomery suggests several reasons for this current environment.[4] He cites the pervasiveness of global communications that have removed any buffer between secular man and Christians, the exponential growth of pluralism that has fostered a plethora of individualism and worldviews, and increasing sophistication of the arguments forwarded by global religionists designed primarily to discourage criticism. The net effect of all these variables is a disconnection with the transcendent and from a Christian theistic perspective the authoritative.
The wide-spread acceptance of the idea that all religions are the same cannot be understated. Tolerance in the 21st century has been redefined from granting people the opportunity and right to voice their perspective on any subject to a no holds-barred, anything goes diatribe that does not seek to gain a hearing but instead seeks to forcible gain cultural recognition and acceptance for any behavior or view point to the degree that dissenting views are deemed intolerant. Once again however, the disconnection from a transcendent view occurs.
What must be the response by evangelical Christians to this situation? Oden suggests that evangelicals are “living in a decisive period of evangelical opportunity, a consequential moment of apostolic apologetics.”[5] Because postmodernity cannot ultimately answer anything with enduring truth, it is the opinion of this writer that it will pass as a vanquished relic like so many pop philosophies before it. What will remain however are the lingering characteristics of uncertainty and skepticism framed within an individualistic morality. This is very much like the times faced by the early church. Morality was individualized and truth was accepted on the basis of pragmatism and convenience.
Lindsell believes the way to address the current crisis of authority is to remember our past.[6] He believes that the church has a rich history of tradition and experience to call upon when addressing questions and challenges to God and His authority. He insists that to abandon the doctrine of the authority of God and His Scripture is sheer evangelical suicide. While it is true that evangelicals must staunchly defend the notion of authority we must not rely too heavily on tradition as this has limited value as a resource for engaging current thinking and is certainly not an “ace” that might trump secular objections.
The real question that must be answered by evangelicals is, “How is the Bible authoritative?” A second question might be, “By what means can the Bible actually exercise authority?” What we must accept from the outset is that these questions will have different answers depending on the environment in which they are asked. Stated another way, the definition, understanding, and application of authority as it relates to God and the Scripture will vary according to the context of the inquiry. As has already been demonstrated, authority is located in the individual in modern secular America and even among many Christians. At the heart of this issue of authority is the question of what does it mean for the evangelical Christian and how will it be presented both within the church and to the secular culture.
N.T. Wright in his 1989 Laing Lecture offered the following understanding of what evangelicals ought to mean when they speak of God’s authority:
Authority is not the power to control people, and crush them, and keep them in little boxes. The church often tries to do that—to tidy people up. Nor is the Bible as the vehicle of God’s authority meant to be information for the legalist. We have to apply some central reformation insights to the concept of authority itself. It seems to me that the Reformation, once more, did not go quite far enough in this respect, and was always in danger of picking up the mediaeval view of authority and simply continuing it with, as was often said, a paper pope instead of a human one. Rather, God’s authority vested in scripture is designed, as all God’s authority is designed, to liberate human beings, to judge and condemn evil and sin in the world in order to set people free to be fully human. That’s what God is in the business of doing. That is what his authority is there for. And when we use a shorthand phrase like ‘authority of scripture’ that is what we ought to be meaning. It is an authority with this shape and character, this purpose and goal.[7]
Pinnock, Witherington, and McGowan appear to advocate an abandonment of talk of authority as it relates to inerrancy on the basis that inerrancy is a characteristic of the autographs only and as such is not meaningful today. Bloesch stops well short of proclaiming that Scripture is the Word of God. Morrison points out that:
The result is similar to what Thiselton has critiqued as “Word magic.” Admittedly, “Word of God” is used with much contextual variety in Scripture. Scripture is not the Word of God in the same sense or at the same level as Christ the Word, he who is by nature the eternal self-disclosure of God. Also, Scripture is the God-given witness to Christ. The Scriptures, by the work of the Spirit via inspiration, in, of, from and to Christ, are derivatively the Word of God. But by God’s grace they are the Word of God. It is at this crucial place that Bloesch, like Barth, Brunner et al., fall into a dichotomous way of conceptualizing the Word in a neo-Platonic fear that an affirmation of such historicity will tarnish the Word.[8]
Complicating this issue of authority at least for Pinnock is his affinity for what has become know as Open Theism. This theological perspective insists that while God has exhaustive knowledge of past and present He does not possess exhaustive foreknowledge. Ware responding to what many term as Pinnock’s muddled theology says that open theists such as Pinnock “denies that God knows—or can know—the future free decisions and actions of his moral creatures, even while it affirms that God knows all future possibilities and all divinely determined and logically-necessary future actualities.”[9] Ware also quotes Hasker who like Pinnock advocates an open theism: “Since the future is genuinely open, since it is possible for a free agent to act in any of several different ways, it follows that it is not possible for God to have complete and exhaustive knowledge of the entire future.”[10] This is not to say that open theists are heretics but merely that the authority of God is necessarily called into question by these systemic speculations.
The perspective of this writer is that authority is being sacrificed on the altar of theological gymnastics and while such pastimes might seem engaging to the scholar they have far-reaching and devastating effects upon Christians outside of academia. In the least challenging God’s authority opens the door for challenging His character, purposes, and work because if God is ignorant of the future He cannot be rightfully deemed authoritative in the present; the accuracy and surety of revelation and Scripture because if God cannot know the future then the biblical texts as redemptive history and prophetic fulfillment are merely guesses; the truthfulness and design of the gospel of salvation because if God can not know who will be living throughout human history, Christ’s death cannot be substitutionary for sin; and the Christian life of faith and hope in God because Christians cannot be certain that God really can work all things out for the good of the individual or that God really has a purpose for suffering in the Christian’s life.
What is the path that Christian theists must take to traverse these turbulent waters of defection and compromise? A return to the authority of God through the working of His Holy Spirit and by His Word Jesus Christ is the priority. The effects of postmodernism are seen in the hopeless abandonment of transcendent morals in American culture and a quiet acceptance among many Christians that the church may teach one thing but the individual must interpret what that means for them and act accordingly. Evangelicals must address this in their own house and then correct the misconception in the culture that truth is subjective. How can that be done?
The first thing that evangelicals must do is to decide whom they serve. If man then the discussion in this paper is irrelevant but if God then it is of the utmost importance that we pay attention to what is happening around us and by God’s guidance chart a course out of the swamp. Evangelicals must resist the temptation to seek approval from the culture. Many would adamantly reject that such a thing is happening but the seeker-sensitive purpose driven mentality that seeks to have the culture inform the church as to what is appealing in a church is a tell-tale sign that accommodation is under way. Why would evangelicals believe that God’s people need a fresh perspective from the lost world on what an effective God-fearing church looks like? Haven’t we learned anything from the liberal and neo-orthodox theologies that are stuck in a moral morass of their own choosing?
A second and equally important issue that evangelicals must clarify and stand firmly on is the existence and necessity of propositional truth. There is right and there is wrong and we are informed of their existence and difference by a transcendental ethic. The authority of God must necessarily be declared as the source. Postmodernism’s most powerful weapon is the charge of intolerance, narrowness, and exclusiveness, with this last charge being perhaps the most inflammatory. Postmodern’s understand that if the Christian truth claims related to Christ and the way of salvation are right then their system is in shambles.
The third issue that must be addressed is the over-dependence on politics and government. Conservatives and evangelicals criticize the religious left and secular culture for believing that government has the ability to solve all the problems of America. Evangelicals must gain some perspective and balance themselves in this area. Political power can be intoxicating and while this paper is not suggesting that Christians withdraw from political activity it is suggesting here that we forsake this attitude that the right political structures embodied in law will create an environment whereby people would stream to God. Laws cannot change the human heart. Only God through the work of the Holy Spirit can transform the human heart and that is a necessary prelude to a changed culture.
Finally, I propose that evangelicals refuse to succumb to the temptation to follow postmodern culture into the realm of reality defined by experience. Postmoderns reject head knowledge in favor of heart knowledge.[11] This is so because verbalized ideas, opinions, and perspectives are merely expressions of cultural experiences. Words are only an expression of the individual sharing them and therefore become the experience of the individual and their reality. This leads in turn to a dependence on the heart or emotions as the barometer of reality and the rejection of the mind or reason. Churches have fallen prey to this experience over mind perspective most notably in the Word faith movements and experience driven sects that seek demonstrative exhibits over the biblical pattern of worship and teaching doctrine. What is not recognized beyond the obvious incompatibility with the biblical pattern is that secular people will only be drawn to experience driven situations until another experience driven situation presents itself as more valuable, enjoyable, or beneficial.
It is my hope that the church will awake from its slumbers and rise once again to a place of prominence in America. I do not hold out hope for those apostate denominations that have rejected God and His Word and thus His authority. There is still hope however for some who are still fighting the good fight of contending for the faith.
[1]Some of the material appearing in this section is from this author’s critique of postmodernism as a worldview. See particularly my book review of Gene Edward Veith, Loving God With All Your Mind. Available here.
[2] Gene Edward Veith Jr., Loving God With All Your Mind: Thinking as a Christian in a Postmodern World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 37.
[3]This postmodern view of truth is the intellectual basis for the unflinching and unashamed positions of pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-euthanasia, and pro-drug usage as well as almost everything else many Christians stand opposed to on Scriptural grounds. The postmodernist ethical insistence on individual choice as an unassailable right effectively negates any consideration of the substance or consequence of their choice.
[4]John Warrick Montgomery, Defending the Hope That is in Us: Apologetics for the 21st Century. Available at http://www.jwm.christendom.co.uk/unpublished_essay.html Accessed March 5, 2009.
[5]David S. Dockery, The Challenge of Postmodernism: An Evangelical Engagement (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1997), 393.
[6]Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible: Defending the Inerrancy of Scripture (Costa Mesa, CA: Calvary Publishing, 2008),
[7]N.T. Wright, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative? The Laing Lecture 1989. Available from http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Bible_Authoritative.htm Accessed March 9, 2009.
[8]John D. Morrison, “Holy Scripture: revelation, inspiration and interpretation.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39 (S 1996):505-506.
[9]Bruce A. Ware, “Defining evangelicalism’s boundaries theologically: is open theism evangelical?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45 (June 2002):193-212.
[10]William Hasker, “An Adequate God,” in John B. Cobb, Jr. and Clark H. Pinnock, eds., Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 218. Cited in Ware, 193.