Old/New American Gospel vs. Gospel

I recently saw on a Southern Baptist Facebook page a David Platt meme where he is quoted as saying, "We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the Gospel is American and how much is Biblical." I thought it was a really good quote.  Nothing could be more Biblical than saying that the Word and the Word alone defines our Christianity. 

The challenge to this is in considering America’s fairly Christian history, which stems from a millennium and a half-long Christendom in the west.  It becomes very difficult to distinguish between "American" and "Biblical" in many peoples’ minds when the alternatives to "Biblical" seem to be either civil religion* (an Americanized Christianity where the church's mission is primarily to help make a great nation) or expressive individualism** (a post-modern development in thought where happiness is found in finding one's own identity by looking inward, and expressing it outwardly; so, no need for God).  Many old-school American Christians are tempted to take parts of the Bible that fit a civil religious grid, but leave others.  Many younger Christians (and younger Americans who don’t identify as Christian but are acquainted with the Bible) are tempted to do the same, as long as it fits their grid.  In the end a statement like Platt's can be taken as accusatory to one side, without rebuking the other.  

Should the other side - the post-modern side - be rebuked, though, since their side contains some who are not professing Christians?  Well in the west, Christianity has been so engrained that if one isn’t a Christian, there’s a good chance that they still have some kind of working knowledge of the Bible.  Therefore they are accountable to scrutiny with their view of the Bible - and their morality in general - the same as the Christians.  

The fact is that both sides can be accused of picking and choosing what to keep and what to discard based on what fits their own version of utopia.  Many who would “amen” Platt’s meme are those rightly opposed to an old Americanized version of Christianity.  But if opponents aren't careful, their opposition may only be in favor of a new Americanized Christianity.  They may be after a 21^stcentury love-centered red-letter Christianity that is only hard-hitting to the old side.  And in that way, they may simply replace the old Pharisaism with a new one.  We always have to be careful not to simply replace one mode of Pharisaism with another.  Note I say, "we," because none are immune to this tendency. 

Biblical Christianity 

Without tossing out Platt’s statement all together, because I think he makes a good point that should especially be considered by the older side, I’d pear it down and restate it as thus: “We need to explore whether or not our understanding of the Gospel is Biblical.”  That’s all.  And that requires knowing the Bible.  Biblical illiteracy among professing Christians in the Christian west is bafflingly low.
I think there are a couple of reasons for this: 

1. Church attenders don’t want to know the Bible.  So they don’t listen when it’s preached, but are only in church to ease their conscience, and not to hear from Jesus as He speaks through His anointed preachers who expound His word. 

2. Pastors don’t preach the Bible.  They either preach series based on the latest bestsellers, never expounding entire books of the Bible which would lead their people through an end-to-end completion of thought based on an occasion of sacred writing.  Or they preach based on their own opinions and angry passions regarding what they see as wrong with the world.  

3. Churches and denominations are often only committed to the Bible in name only.  I remember hearing in college of something called Bibliolatry, which is the worship of the Bible instead of the worship of the God of the Bible.  The point is that we shouldn’t make too much of the Bible, and this is true.  But it’s also true that we don’t want to make too little of the Bible. If we don’t let Scripture define the church’s mission, right and wrong for the individual and the world, and everything else, we’ll define these things somehow, based on some other criteria.  In my experience, most of those talking about bibliolatry are those who aren't prepared to let the Bible define our standards for us.  If the church were to get serious about the Bible’s message, believing that it gives a clear message that if followed would lead us into the Promised Land, the church would be more unified than it is.  But instead, the visible church is divided because the Bible’s message isn’t heralded, and that is because the Bible’s message isn’t pursued, and therefore it is neither heard nor understood.

The Story 

I was a youth pastor in my early 20s who was a cultural Christian from the time I was a teen. When a church in my home state brought me on post-college to work with youth and lead the music, they graciously gave me time to study God’s word so I could teach God’s word.  Even in my cultural Christianity I just had a sense that the Bible was true.  As I worked in this church and read the Bible, I came alive, because the story gave rise to certain clear conclusions about God, man, sin, the world, etc. etc.  

Each book of the Bible has a unique genre and setting, but they all contribute to the same story, displaying a rather impressive unity even in the midst of the Bible’s complexity.*** In essence, and this is what I’ve been preaching now for the last 7 years in the pulpit, the story is this: 

-God made man for Himself, to rule over His creation.

-Man ran away from God, in sin, following Satan’s temptation and his own reasoning. Now he has an innate rebellious nature in both thought and action. 

-The Old Testament bears out this rebellion in detail through Israel’s history, while also establishing patterns for the coming redemption.

-Jesus is the God-man who came on a rescue mission to live a perfect life so as to be a perfect Lamb who, in his dying, reconciles men to the God from whom they’ve run.  God is justly angry at sin, and yet merciful in offering His Son for the salvation of men. Through Jesus, men are brought into a just state with God as Jesus bore their sin and the punishment earned therein. In Jesus’ rising from death, He brings about a new creation where righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13).

-People who listen to Jesus and follow Him have, in the Holy Spirit, His presence with them until He returns to earth a second time to fully establish His new heavens and new earth.

-Until that day, they walk together in love, spurring one another on in love and good works, sharing His love with their neighbors, in hopes that they’ll repent and embrace Jesus, who to know is eternal life (Matt. 5:17).  They can't fix every problem in the world, but they try to shine Jesus' light into their world, to effect change for good.

Gripped

When this story grips you, your prior agendas are shaken off (though you may at times fall back into those old patterns of thinking) and replaced by a better story.  America isn’t God's Zion.  And conversely, while the poor and marginalized in society need to be loved and cared for, more than anything they need Jesus.  Rich, poor, man, woman, black, white, etc. etc., all need the real Jesus, because Adam's fallen pride is an innate fatal flaw in each one of us.  

When you see this as the story, you see Jesus as the answer to life’s problems, because now you can see clearly to discern what are the real problems.  The problems are not just in “them” (whoever "they" are), but in me.  And just like Jesus is renewing me, He can renew all others if they’ll listen and consider the claims of the Bible in it’s clarity (which may require my sharing it).

Therefore you don’t think old-school American fundamentalists are the only ones with a propensity to get the gospel wrong.  You assume all people can get the Gospel wrong.  And the only way to get it right is to put yourself before Jesus and ask Him to cut the lines straight and set your feet on the true path.  Fighting the tendency to spend all your energy calling out the problems, you begin offering the solution, because you know the solution.  And His name is Jesus, who lives today, has spoken loud and clear, and is in the business of leading people into light.

Platt was making a good point that confronts many old-school American Christians.  My prayer is that not only they but also all those who don't fit into that category will consider the point, because all of us have a propensity to miss the Bible’s message and get the Gospel wrong.  Let’s listen to Jesus and follow Him into the truth.

*Robert Bellah, “American Civil Religion,” 1967, quoted in Mark Driscoll, Call to Resurgence, 10.

**Bellah, ed. Habits of the Heart, 2008 edition, 142f.

***See Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 22.

The church, life with God, and history

Even faith, Paul says, is not from us.  For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe?  “For how,” Paul said, “shall they believe if they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14).  So even the act of faith is not self-initiated. It is, he says, “the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8c).                                                                 John Chrysostom, late 4^thc. A.D.

My last post was written in celebration of the 16^thcentury Protestant Reformation, where people of my theological ilk hold that the Biblical gospel was recovered to the church.  This idea requires qualification, though: We do not hold that the Gospel was all together lost throughout the ancient church and the so-called Dark Ages.  Rather we hold that the Roman Church had so progressively apostasized (that is, they had progressively run from God’s Word to the point of no return), that there was a theological revival needed in order for the Gospel to not be lost.  In came Luther and Calvin, following closely behind their forerunners Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Savonarola.  All Protestantism traces its lineage to and through this movement from the 16^thcentury. 

Into Church History 

In the spring I graduated from RPTS in Pittsburgh with a masters degree in church history and theology.  I grew up assuming (based on not thinking about it much) that church history jumped from Jesus’ day to Billy Graham’s day and so on down to my day.  Then as I came to Biblical Theological convictions, I learned of church history back to the reformers of the16^thcentury.  But when I got to RPTS I learned of church history that fills the gap between the reformers and the apostles.  Truly, there is no gap.  Jesus was always building His church, as he said he would (Matt. 16:18).  The Reformation was not a putting forth of new ideas, but a recovery of Biblical ideas that people had held throughout history, ideas which had been buried under centuries of increasing man-made tradition.  Therefore, Calvin, in his Institutes, wrote that if Protestants and Romanists had a fair and objective comparison of each of their doctrinal convictions with the church fathers, the victory would side decidedly with the Protestants.* 

The Gospel For All Peoples

The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the issue for the church at all times.**  It separates the true church from the false church, and the church from other religions.  Our pluralistic society assumes that since no one can know what is the right religion, therefore they’re all equally legitimate.  This notion sounds tolerant and good, but in the end it insults each of the religions, all of which claim exclusivity.  The church’s doctrine of justification by faith alone holds that one is reconciled to God and brought into His new creation through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, received by faith.  That is, we are saved not by our own good works, but by Christ’s good works (cf. Matt. 3:15, Jn. 4:34; Eph. 2:8-9; Tit. 3:4-6).  We can contribute nothing, save the need to be saved.  Even our faith in Christ is worked in us by God’s effective grace (see Ac. 18:27, Phil. 1:29), as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the truth of God’s Word, and what it says about God, ourselves, and the world (Jn. 6:63, 1 Pet. 1:23).  

All of this is to say that every other religion or worldview in the world holds a performance-driven redemptive narrative, where we have to change our own behavior in order to be saved and/or save the world.  This is true of every single religion, as well as secularism and anti-religious social concern (however sincere and well-intentioned as may appear). Biblical Christianity answers this and says that we can’t do what we must nor can we rightly define for ourselves what we must do.  So Jesus did it for us.  And if we put our trust in Him, He’ll bring us to God, and do it in us today.   Thus the prophet Jeremiah says that Jesus will be called “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer. 23:6).   Eternal life is life in Jesus Christ the righteous.  

As I learned the Biblical Redemptive narrative of salvation in Jesus, I came alive.  And this Protestant-Reformed theology, as I’ve been describing it, has been labeled as Christ-centered theology, because it anchors Biblical doctrine in His Person and work.  But did the ancient church hold this, or was it invented in the 16th century by men named Luther, Calvin, Bucer, and Zwingli?

The Gospel in the Ancient Church

The quest for the gospel in the church led me into further reading, and it’ll probably never stop. Recent reads include Nate Busenitz’ Long Before Luther and Steven Lawson’s Pillars of Grace.  These books are studies in the distinctives of Protestant theology as they were in fact taught and upheld between the time of the Protestant Reformation and the New Testament days.  While the early church fathers wrote much that can, quoting various independent texts, be used as proof texts by a Romanist, the fathers also wrote a lot that can be used the same way by Protestants.  This calls into question the fathers’ consistency and leads one back to the absolute authority and clarity of the Bible alone (which is what the Protestant Reformation was all about, and which is what the ancient church fathers held).***  It also begs the question, "Have we understood the fathers rightly?"  I've come to believe, with Calvin,^^ that the fathers were more Protestant than Romanist, though there are caveats.  But the point is that the teaching of the Scriptures is where the conversation is to begin and end.  

Therefore the quote above from John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of the ancient church, helps illustrate that he knew the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from any works.  That is, he seems to have known that baptism doesn’t save and that the Lord’s Supper (or the Eucharist) was only grace-giving in the sense that it encourages us and reminds us of our salvation.  This, by the way, was Augustine’s view.^*  Many other examples could be given, but I’ll just commend you to Busenitz’s Long Before Luther, pages 165-90, or just listen to his talk from the 2018 Shepherd’s Conference.

A Divided Church?

Conservative Internet superpersonality Matt Walsh has recently tweeted that Protestants shouldn’t celebrate the Reformation on October 31 because, by it, the church is more divided than ever.  This would be a legitimate critique but for the Protestant conviction that prior to the Reformation (and even more so after) the unreformed Roman church forsook the risen Christ and His finished work.  Thus the Reformation was about gaining back the truth of the Risen Christ and what it means for our salvation today.  In short, we’d rather have a divided church than a Christ-less church.  According to the apostle Paul, a church that adds any kind of works to Christ and how His work effects us is not only confused, but bewitched (Gal. 3:1), having forgotten the gospel it once knew.  This isn’t to say that good works don’t follow saving faith in Jesus’ merits.  But the good works don’t contribute to one’s merit.  And the ancient church, including men like Origen, Irenaeus, Ambrosiaster, Tertullian, etc. etc. etc. knew it.   They knew it because it was indeed what Jude called “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).  The reformers were laboring to recover it.  Now I am too, even if it means division among those who profess Christ.

And even if the ancient church was confused on justification, the important point is that Jesus himself made it clear: “Whoever believes in me has eternal life.  He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5:24).  

This is indeed the faith once for all delivered to the saints.  Therefore, let the true saints listen to God’s voice.  All others can be content with a man-centered wish-dream. But let them do so with the warning of the Lord, that if you deny Him, He’ll deny you before His Father (Matt. 10:33).  And let us all prayerfully consider the warning, and simultaneously follow and bow the knee before Jesus together.  He'll receive us, for "He lives to make intercession for us."

Soli Deo Gloria! 

*Calvin, Institutes, Prefatory Address, 4; in Beveredge's translation, xxv.

*Ibid, 3.11.1, 3.15.7.

**see Roger Beckwith. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and It’s Background in Early Judaism, 386-90.

^^Calvin, Institutes, xxvi-xxvii.

^*Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Robertson's translation, 87, 93.