One little section toward the end of the chapter (before Piper moves into a biography of John Owen) was particularly profound for me as a young pastor trying to grow a church. Emperor Constantine's conversion led to the legalization of Christianity (January 313), and this brought with it an influx of Arian Christians into churches where Athanasius was ministering (Arianism heretically teaching that Christ was a created being, instead of Himself being eternal God). Piper writes that here Athanasius would have been confronted with the temptation to compromise toward an Arian Christianity that was more intelligible to the multitudes, but was unfaithful to God's revelation of Himself in Scripture. But Athanasius, who upheld orthodoxy much of his ministry while standing alone, didn't compromise. Instead, he stayed the course with the divinity of Christ.
Piper continues:
"If you want to grow a church, the temptation is to give the people what they already have categories to understand and enjoy. But once that church is grown, it thinks so much like the world that the difference is not decisive. The radical, biblical gospel is blunted, and the glory of Christ is obscured.
"Rather, alongside the indigenous principle of accommodation and contextualization, Athanasius would plead with us to have a deep commitment to the pilgrim principle of confrontation and transformation -- the brain-boggling, mind-altering, recategorization of the way people think about reality."
John Piper, The Swans Are Not Silent: Contending For Our All (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), pages 68-69.While the very nature of communication requires the speaker laboring to use the same terms as the listener, the very nature of Gospel communication requires the speaker remembering that God's ways and thoughts are higher than man's ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:10-11). Thus the Gospel of Christ's glory truly preached will be considered foolishness to the world if it is made clear (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18-25).
And so we are not in the final analysis salesmen trying to sell people something to fit within our listeners' own pre-furnished thought processes. Rather, we are laborers for truth which creates new categories and thus new thought processes, that people who have never witnessed glory the likes of Christ's will through His Word be transformed by seeing God's glory in His face.
Otherwise, we may grow churches, but the churches themselves will be full of the unconverted who merely appear to have godliness (cf. 2 Tim. 3:5, Is. 29:13), but who have yet to witness the mystery of godliness, which is Christ in all of His glory (1 Tim. 3:16). Thus our task is to speak the mystery, let the Spirit draw people through it, and not ourselves so toy with contextualization that we also toy with unfaithfulness. It might require our reputations in the world, but it will gain us eternity with our Lord. Let us not forget, right doctrine saves both ourselves and our hearers (1 Tim. 4:16).
As Piper concludes of Athanasius, confrontation and transformation must come alongside of accommodation and contextualization. We are to never lose accessibility and clarity. But we are also never to lose truth at the expense of the former. This tension is where the minister lives. And if the Lord has begun the work in us, He will surely complete it. See: Athanasius.
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