“There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”
John Witherspoon
Presbyterian Minister / Educator / American Founding Father
I lifted this quote from a piece
http://www.americanvision.org/article/i-refuse-to-be-comforted/
written by Bojidar Marinov. It is a piece I wish I would have written and really should be read by all Christians but especially those who use the doctrine of God’s sovereignty to cancel out the doctrine of our responsibility to the commands that issue forth from our High King Jesus Christ. As Bojidar notes, there should be no comfort found by or for a people who try to use God’s sovereignty as blanket to cover the ongoing sin of their refusal to contend for the crown rights of King Jesus.
However as good as that article is — and it is great — I want to take this quote in a slightly different direction. I have, for what seems like an eternity, said that there are two ways for Christian culture to die. These two ways are never mutually exclusive. Christian culture can die both from the inside out or it can die from the outside in. Just as a tree can die both because it has become rotten at its core — only to find that rot move outward — or because the tree has become rotten in its extremities — only to find that rot move inward, so Christian culture can rot from the inside out or from the outside in. This unwavering conviction is one reason why I have struggled so mightily against the dualism of R2Kt for I see it as a rot virus that will kill what remains of our Christian culture (and very little remains) from the outside in.
Christian Cultures that rot from the inside out are cultures where the Theology, from which they draw their life, is untended and neglected. The the character of sin, the absolute necessity of redemption, the doctrines of grace, the Sovereignty, Transcendence, and Immanence of God, the Lordship of Christ, The work of the Spirit in sanctification are ignored and so one form or another of the rot that is Humanistic idolatry where man is large and God is small begins to infect the Church and as the Church is the fountain from which a Christian culture drinks its theology the whole culture begins to share in the rot. God sends a leanness into its soul.
However, Christian cultures can also rot from the outside in. Now keep in mind that I’ve noted that these two are never mutually exclusive. Christian culture that rot from the outside in are those cultures where the the life of the culture (its theology) for some reason isn’t moving out to the extremities in order to nourish them and give them life. On one level the Church is fine because it continues to affirm and care for its theology. However Christian theology at the same time becomes abstracted from everyday life to the point that people in the Church eventually can’t see the application or connection between things like a conscience not in bondage and temporal property, or the connection between religious liberty and civil liberty, or, to give a more fundamental example, the connection between the Lordship of the King Christ and the necessity for limited and decentralized governments. When it is no longer possible for the core of the culture to send its nourishment out to the extremities of the culture because of the inability to make proper application, the extremities begin to whither and that withering eventually begins to move to the core and the whole culture begins to rot. As I have said repeatedly this is the danger of all Christian theologies that want to posit culture and faith as independent and unrelated phenomena. There are Christian theologies that encourage that Christian theology should not bear on the public square. Such theologies ensure rot from the outside in because if the public square (the tree’s extremities) can not be informed by Christian theology it will be informed by some other pagan theology and as that pagan theology gains in strength in the extremities of culture it will eventually work inward to infect the institution that produces the theology that informs the culture so that core of the culture and the extremities of the culture theologically correspond so that both are thoroughly rotted.
This is the kind of rot that Witherspoon is warning against. We cannot find sanctuary in our Churches and leave the cultural extremities to their rot and not expect that eventually the rot will work its way into our sanctuaries. Christian people live and swim in the culture and if that culture in which they are swimming is not spring fed by a Christian theology then what will happen is that Christian people, will, with exceptions, begin to reinterpret the Christian faith in light of the theology that they are constantly drenched in during the week.
Christians must mind their theology. Both in its theory that bolsters the concrete and in its application praxis where the dots are connected between the orthodoxy and the orthopraxy. Currently we are not doing so well either in theory or in praxis and so we are in danger of rotting from both the inside out and the outside in.
Free_line,
Nope … the whole idea that cultures, by necessity, have life cycles is a myth. There is nothing that causes a culture to die except that a people switch their gods and so, as it pertains to Christian cultures, begin to rot.
Christian culture, though it waxes and wanes will live forever because Christ goes from Triumph to Triumph and the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the water covers the sea.
Thanks for stopping by.
Free-_line,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I take it you are not a postmillennialist?
Freeline,
Naturally, with all that is within me I plead with you not to abandon the our great and glorious High King Jesus. I am praying that you do not slam the door on Christianity but rather embrace the Christian faith w/ all your being.
Your comments bring to mind one of my favorite quotes from Malcolm Muggeridge,
I am reminded of it because you seem to be approaching the matter much the same way as Muggeridge did.
I agree that it has had its shared of notorious villains and and great heroes. However when I consider the villains I can’t help but think that even their villainy was tempered by the influence of the Christian faith. It is true that Torquemada was a bad chap but if forced to choose between the crimes of the Christian Torquemada and the crimes of the non-Christian Mao Tse Tung, I’ll go with the Christian villain every time. As you no doubt know, this is not to excuse them, but rather it is only to observe that even with the villains Christianity had a restraining influence on their black hearts.
I think we can begin to guess what would’ve happened w/o Christianity when we look at a country like Russia. The Christian ruling Czars were, overall, a bad lot, but when they were expelled in favor of the Christ haters like Lenin, Baukin, Trotsky, Felix Derzhinsky, Kalinin, Molotov, and the lot suddenly the Christian Czar’s killing of thousands looks saintly compared to the Christ hater’s killing of tens of millions. Christianity made a difference.
Freeline asked,
I think it is abundantly clear that Christianity waxes and wanes in different geographic locations.
I would offer that the explanation for it is, in part, a matter of disobedience of God’s people. One of the famous parables of Soren Kierkegaard illustrates this well,
This is descriptive of many modern Christians. They hear of who they are in Christ. They agree with the declarations about the new life to which they have been raised (see Romans 6), but in the end, they do not move out in faith and obey. They simply say, “Amen!” and continue on in life as they always have. Eventually God sends judgment upon such behavior and more often than not that judgment is to turn people over to their pagan thinking and unrighteous actions so that they get the consequences of it in spades.
And just as a finish … you do realize that when looking at Christianity sociologically and historically it makes a significance difference as to what Theology is informing your sociology and history don’t you?
Thanks Freeline
Freeline has certainly not given up on truth of Christianity, as he assumes it every time he refers to things like, historical, social, and cultural impact and “net negatives”…all concepts devoid of meaning apart from the Christian Worldview.
The writer of this comment is a retired Dutch High School teacher. Being retired and having two sons who live in Asia I have a lot of time to travel and, though my teacher’s pension is not that great, I can stay with my sons for free and this fact enables me to stay in some Asisian countries for long periods of time.
In December I could stay in Beijing, China, for a couple of weeks and I spent the first one and a half months of this year in Manila, Philippines.
Having been a teacher of English and religion for 36 years I naturally spent a lot of time visiting religious services in Beijing and Manila.
What I saw and heard during these services convince me that there is a lot of truth in the words of “visitor Freeline”.
Religions, including Christianity, may grow in certain parts of the world during a certain period of time, while in the same period of time they may decline in other parts of the world.
If we limit ourselves to the history of Christianity in Europe there have always been decades and centuries in which the Christian faith flourished and periods in which the Christian faith played hardly any part at all and was on the brink of disappearing.
And since the Reformation of the 17th century, Christianity in the North of Europe has developed in a very different way compared to the way Christianity developed in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Here in Holland the Northern part became Protestant and played a relatively important part in the Protestant “movement” (for such a small country) and the South remained Catholic and played a relatively big part within the context of this oldest form of being Christian.
Back to my travel experiences of the last few months. I started my journey in a country and a conteninent where Christianity is practically dying. In Beijing we wanted to go to a Christian Church service on Christmas. To my utter surprise we had no difficulty al all in finding a Christian Church where they held a number of Christian services and where the church building was filled to the brim with worshippers. Of course there were quite a number of expats (who got headphones through which they could hear the translations of the Chinese prayers and songs) ….but there were also hundreds of Chinese who had obviously been converted to Christianity. Possibly when they were working or studying in Europe or America.
BUT: this Chinese version of Christianity had nothing to do with any well-known European or American Church or denomination….it was completely different from anything I had ever seen before. BUT IT WAS CHRISTIAN. AND IT WAS THOROUGHLY CHINESE.
All over the Philippines you find tens of thousands of Catholic Churches where on Saturday evenings they have services at 5, 6, 7 and 8 o’clock and on Sunday mornings at 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9′,10 o’clock and a number on Sunday evenings.
During every service the church is full or practically full.
Mind: the Catholic Church in the Philippines is totally different from the Catholic Church here in Holland and elsewhere in Europe. Coming from Holland I see and hear things which I think that most Christians in Europe and America would find extremely strange, condemnable and not Christian at all.
But still: if you accept the faith of the Philipino’s as Christian …..Christianity in this Asian countryis thriving as never before.
In short: I think Freeline is right: the rise and the fall of Christianity as a world religion is not something that happens all over the world ar the same time. In any period of time there will be parts of the world where Christianity grows while in the same period it withers in other parts of our planet
Willem,
Thanks for your comments.
I read an article recently touching China’s Christianity and the concern I came away with is that while China’s leaders desire the morality of Christianity in order to make their hybrid State run capitalism function they are dreadfully concerned about the implications of Christianity when it comes to there being no King but King Jesus.
As far as Filipno Catholicism goes I would say that there is a great deal of pagansim that has been syncretized into it.
Of course Willem, I am also of the conviction that the marks of the true church are as taught in the Belgic Confession. As such I don’t get to excited about other sub expressions of Christianity.
Jetbrane,
Thanks for your reaction.
As regards manifestations of Christianity in China we should not forget that the doctrines of all Commmunist parties in the world, including those of the Chinese communist party, are extremely anti-Christian and that traditionally in communist countries Christianity in all its forms and all its manifestations is forbidden.
Though it is true that the Christian Church service I attended at Christmas was completely different from anything I had ever seen before I was still surprised to discover that Beijing has a number of church-organisations that call themselves Christian, a number of churches where you find Christian symbols (like the cross) and weekly church services in which a Western Christian does not hear words in prayers or songs that he can experience as anti-Christian.
As regards Catholicism in the Philippines I completely agree with you that it contains a large number of doctrines, practices and rituals that date back to the centuries before the Spanish conquered the country and converted it to Roman Catholicism. These are religious ideas and rituals that may have been part of Phippino culture for many centuries and that will possibly never disappear.