Ehud Would On The Calvinist Concept of Culture — And Commentary

This was the view presupposed in every jot and tittle of Bishop James Ussher’s Annals of World History, as well as Augustine’s City of God: history is neither solely the march of peoples nor ideas, but both; because certain ideas only occur to and resonate with certain peoples in any appreciable numbers. As it pertains to the Gospel, we know certain groups have proven more receptive than others, and in varying degrees. Some groups seem to continue demonstrating Christian principle in their culture even when the inward substance of that culture has slipped away. Other groups, having long accepted Christianity in abstract, have never gone on to demonstrate it in their societies. And others still, such as the Pirahã people have proven thus far incapable of grasping the most rudimentary aspects of Christianity.”

Here we see teased out and expanded the simple idea that has been articulated often here on Iron Ink that culture is defined as theology externalized as that theology is poured over particular peoples. If culture was simply theology externalized, without any consideration of the people who embraced the theology the inevitable outcome is a kind of Gnosticism where the creational and material reality that God ordained for particular people completely disappears into the ether. On the other hand if culture was simply the expression of particular peoples without any consideration of the impact of what particular people’s believed in terms of ultimate considerations (epistemology, axiology, ontology, teleology, etc.) then the results would be a naked materialism. Also, in each view there would be an arc towards a Globalist and Universalist reality as both views (Gnostic and Materialistic) would expect the whole world to move towards the singular reality that they espouse. We have seen this in conversation with Christian Alienists who expect that there will be a New World Order that will be Christian but a type of Christianity where all colors bleed into one — all ethno-distinctions disappear into the great miasma of Christian oneness. This is hardly dissimilar from the heathen Babel vision where the goal is the same. The only difference being is that the label “Christian” is slapped on this Christian globalist view.

In the Christian understanding of culture and eschatology, the world is converted to Christ so that the result is a variegated panoply of different Christian cultures, with each Christian culture finding a harmony of interests because despite their distinctions in flavor and arrangement there exists a unity given the reality that they each embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism.” This stands in contrast to the uniformity of people demanded by the Christian Babel views that insist that Christianity will turn Chinese, or Ndebele, or Shona, or Intuits, or Mongolians into the same exact people with the same exact culture expressing the same exact Christianity. That this vision is a myth of exaggerated proportions is seen in Revelation 21 where we read of the existence of particular nations streaming into the New Jerusalem as particular nations;

²⁴ And the nations ^[n]of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor ^[o]into it…. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.    

And then in this grand vision of John the Revelator we are told that;

² In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Even in the new Jerusalem when the great consummation has arrived nations and peoples do not disappear as distinct nations and peoples.

This reality is why Calvin Seminary Martin Wyngaarden could write in the 1960s;

Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will, therefore, be extended.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.

And again,

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”

“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.”

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria, and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Martin Wyngaarden

The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture — pp. 101-102.

This is the great contest that we find ourselves currently in. The question resolves to whether the Church of Jesus Christ will pursue a Uniformitarian Christianity where all colors bleed into one and where grace destroys nature so that the creational distinctions that each people group (and perhaps eventually even each gender) were assigned by the Creator God are snuffed out so that the current version of Babel distinction-less Christianity can flourish. The alternative is the embrace of the Trinitarian idea of Christianity as applied to culture where the whole globe is won to Christ but won to Christ allowing for unity in diversity as among the varied Christian cultures that each and all embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism,” and yet that without becoming uniformitarian clones of one another.

May God grant us His grace to avoid the gray, bleak, uniformitarian cultures that the Christianity of modern churchmen desires to produce.