Thumbnail Sketch of James K. A. Smith’s “Desiring the Kingdom”

Finished James K. A. Smith’s “Desiring the Kingdom; Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.” There are some quality ideas in the book about the way pagan culture works in us to shape us via its liturgies. I was glad for this reminder of the necessity to be epistemologically self conscious about what is seeking to form me. There are also some excellent reflections on what happens in our Church liturgies from the opening of God’s Greeting to the closing of the Benediction.  So good are these insights that I can recommend this book just for that chapter.

However, having said that Smith’s idea that the social imaginary has priority over a Christian worldview is not convincing. In this argumentation Smith is tipping his postmodern hand over and over again as seen in the advocacy of narrative over discourse, and the use of a host of what might be characterized as false dichotomies; orthopraxy precedes orthodoxy, instinct trumps rationality, animal desire precedes human reflection, heart informs mind, liturgy shapes worldveiw, habit creates thinking about habit, social imaginary over worldview thinking, and pre-cognitive over cognitive.

The idea that a sanctified imagination is to be prioritized and preferred above sanctified rational thought begs any number of questions. For example, Smith insists that liturgy trumps worldview and yet our Churches are Liturgy thick with little to show in terms of Christ formation. Smith might well counter that we have to re-think our Liturgy and that might well be true but how do we re-think our liturgy without using a worldview to correct a weak liturgy?

Smith’s insistence that the heart (desire) takes precedence over the mind (rational) is thin at best and dangerous at worst. The very idea that the heart and mind are to be dichotomized like this is the work of some kind of dualistic fever. When it comes to the use of the word “heart” in Scripture a survey reveals, when taken in context, that approximately 8 out of 10 verses in Scripture that what is being spoken of is a person’s mind. 1 out of 10 verses relate the heart to volition. Another 1 of 10 verses have the heart standing for the emotions. This indicates that in its overwhelming usage in Scripture heart and mind are synonymous. Smith makes too much capital out of the difference between head and heart. 

Having said that Smith does lay his finger on the pulse of a real problem in the Church in the West today and that is the fact that so many of our children in both our Churches and our Church colleges end up having a Christianity that is only marginally different then the paganism all around them. Somewhere, Christian worldview training isn’t enough. Now, for my money I would say that is due to the fact that we are allowing the culture to interpret us as opposed to or interpreting the culture. Our Christian worldview training is failing because, at the end of the day it is not getting to the essence of thinking God’s thoughts after him. Smith realizes this and is to be lauded for that realization however, I am not convinced that his solution of a consecrated imagination as shaped and formed by worship habits is the answer. In fact, I’m convinced it is not the answer. Indeed, the answer that Smith offers up sounds to much like the idea that the Worship service is to be used as a vehicle of manipulation to form people quite without their being aware of how they are being formed. I fear there is more of Edward Bernays in Smith’s theories then there are Jesus Christ.

At the end of the book Smith changes focus to the Christian University and as he explains his vision I think what Smith wants to build is a Christian commune as a University. He prescribes potentials courses which would reduce the amount of academic work in favor of “learning to read a stranger in a coffee shop,” or to be involved in matters that are directly related to “issues of poverty.” Given the disappearance of the Christian mind in the West today this idea strikes me as potentially disastrous if it was to be followed.

Smith’s book has much to recommend it and I think it is well worth a read but at the end of the day his worldview about social imaginary is not a worldview that I can regard as wholesome.

Tim Keller Channels George Orwell

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London, part 1, chapter 3, pp 32

“I think Genesis 1 has the earmarks of poetry and is therefore a “song” about the wonder and meaning of God’s creation. Genesis 2 is an account of how it happened… For the record I think God guided some kind of process of natural selection, and yet I reject the concept of evolution as All-encompassing Theory.”

Tim Keller
The Reason for God — pp 97-98

Keller refuses to accept either 6 day creationism, nor full blown evolution. Keller is also on record as saying, “You’ve got some problems with the theistic evolution….” As a result Keller goes for the “messy approach” that seeks to combine all of them and none of them. Of course the “messy approach” means that Keller has just embraced contradiction. In point of fact, Keller has exceeded Orwell’s “double-think,” moving on to the hallowed ground of “triple-think.”

Examining Keller’s quote above we easily detect Keller’s contradiction in terms of the most basic tenet of Reformed Christianity (Keller is a Presbyterian minister) and that is God’s exhaustive sovereignty. What Keller has posited here is that God and some other agency called “Natural selection,”  co-operated together unto the end of creation. Now, Keller does seem to give God the upper hand but notice that Keller’s God is merely guiding Natural selection. Where did this Natural selection that God is guiding come from?

Do keep in mind also that one of the core tenets of Natural selection is the arrival of species by a random process of time plus chance plus circumstance. The whole idea of Natural Selection is that it is not guided. Meanwhile the whole idea of a sovereign God is that He doesn’t cooperate in creation by guiding another independent agent called “Natural selection,” to a agreed upon end. When reduced to its essence, Keller has a Sovereign God guiding a process that is by definition a random process of chance. This is classic Orwellian double think taken up as Evangelical art form. In saying everything Keller has said nothing.

Keller does indeed reject Evolution as a all encompassing theory of origins but at the same time he has also rejected the Sovereign God of Reformed Christianity as a all encompassing theory of origins. The result is a mish mash of contradictions as combined with a miasma of pseudo-intellectualism.

Indeed so great is Keller’s faith in his “Natural selection guiding god” that Keller can testify with all the fervor of a true believer,

“How could there have been death before Adam and Eve fell? The answer is, I don’t know. But all I know is, didn’t animals eat bugs? Didn’t bugs eat plants? There must have been death. In other words, when you realize, ‘Oh wait, this is really complicated,’ then you realize, ‘I don’t have to figure this out before I figure out is Jesus Christ raised from the dead.’ ”

So, Keller can not have enough faith to believe the Scripture that death did not enter until after Adam’s fall but he does have enough faith in his “Natural selection guiding god” that (s)he could have it all figured out even if he can’t figure it all out. If one is going to have that kind of faith why not place it in the Biblical record?

Some, in speaking out Keller’s defense have noted that Keller often speaks differently in different contexts. I am not surprised by this in the least. In point of fact it is exactly what we would expect in someone practicing Orwellian double think. There is nothing intellectually sophisticated in any of this. It is all Orwellian double and triple think. In short we see Keller channeling Orwell,

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

How would you refute Dr. Landon Jackson? Or would you?

Recently a third party known to all involved wrote to our mutual friend what we find below. How would you respond?
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The well meant or free offer of the Gospel has long been a debated point among Reformed Churches and to date those who champion the “free offer of the Gospel” have, for the most part, won out in the contemporary Reformed Church.  The well meant or free offer of the Gospel teaches that God offers the Gospel to be accepted by those He has ordained, from eternity past, to be passed by in terms of salvation. Those Reformed who have opposed the well meant or free offer of the  Gospel have done so on the basis of its contradictory nature. They have noted the inconsistency in saying that God offers the reprobate to saved all the while having determined that they are vessels created for wrath.

The opposition to the well meant or free offer of the Gospel is not the same as opposition to the General call that finds all men everywhere being commanded to repent. One can deny the well meant offer of the Gospel and still be a passionate evangelist.

The dangers of the well meant offer of the Gospel is not only found in its contradictory nature but also in what it potentially works on those who hold to it. Those who hold to the well meant (free) offer of the Gospel run the danger of being so earnest about seeing souls saved that they will define down law so impoverishing gospel in order to make it easier for people to enter into the Kingdom. If God really intends for those He has determined to pass by to have a bonafide opportunity to accept the Gospel, so the reasoning goes, then we must do everything in our power to remove every obstacle. What eventually begins to happen is that the obstacles of the legitimate demands of the Law are removed so that people can more easily accept the offer of what is now a non Gospel, “Gospel.” God has a well meant offer of the Gospel for everyone, elect and reprobate alike, therefore we must make sure that nothing gets in the way of that well meant offer — even the truth.

Next, we must think through the implications of the Free offer of the Gospel. If we posit that there is, on God’s part a universal desire to save all in some sense based upon an intrinsic reluctance in God to bring wrath to bear on humans, then that same reluctance exists to have brought the wrath to bear on Christ the human. This would give us then a universal reluctance, on the Father’s part to save any. If the free offer of the gospel is predicated on this universal reluctance to punish then we likewise must posit a universal retraction of the gospel.

Dr. Landon Jackson

Man as Homo Sapien vs Man as Homo Liturgicas

“… Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineament of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God’s healing and illumination. Before we theorize the nature of God, we sing His praises. Before we express moral principles, we receive forgiveness. Before we codify the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, we receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Before we think we pray. That’s the kind of animals we are, first and foremost: loving, desiring, affective, liturgical animals who, for the most part, don’t inhabit the world as thinker or cognitive machines.”

James K. A. Smith
Desiring the Kingdom; Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation — p. 34

What is being advocated by Smith is the idea that doxology precedes theology. Smith casts this as an approach that is contrary to what he styles as an enlightenment approach where humans are seen as biological idea containers. Smith prefers what he styles as an “embodied approach” where a person’s loves and desires serve as the foundation for subsequent acquirement of a knowledge base. He styles his approach as “pre-cognitive.” Smith’s interest is to move education from a collection of information in the interest of a proper world and life view to a pursuit of pre-cognitive character formation that will result in a proper world and  life view. Smith contends that we are hearts before we are minds and as such the Church should be more concerned with right worshiping practices that satisfy the desires of the heart. Consistent with this is Smith’s appeal that worship should go after the imagination before it goes after man’s rationality.

There could well be truth in this, especially as applied to children growing up in the Church. Certainly covenant children, immersed in Biblical Christianity from the tenderest of years, may well have caught Christianity before they were explicitly taught Christianity.  For covenant children I think that we would have to admit that there is an embrace of Christianity that is pre-cognitive in the sense that they are Christian before they are epistemologically self conscious Christians.

Also, I agree that there is much to be said for capturing the imagination of the saints as well as their rationality. I do agree that imagination is a powerful tool for shaping character formation.  Too often Reformed Christians have let their imaginations atrophy in favor of the syllogistic and the linear logic.

Having said that though I do have some observations concerning the quote above.

1.) Is it really the case that we worship before we have a worldview? Without a worldview how do we know who or what we are worshiping? How can one worship if they don’t know who or what they are worshiping?  Is it really the case that we sing the praises of a God we know not the nature of? If we do not know His nature then what kind of praises could we possibly be singing? If we do not have an ontology why would we pray at all, never mind praying for healing and illumination? If we do not have a Biblical epistemology why would we think that this ontologically unknown God could illumine us?

2.) Why would we think we have the need for forgiveness unless we first had some kind of structure that informed us of moral principles? Doesn’t the asking of forgiveness presuppose an already existing moral principle paradigm?

3.) Why would we even come to the Eucharist to take the body of Christ if we didn’t first have some kind of understanding that the body of Christ we are partaking in is distinct, in some sense, from the body of Christ in heaven? This sense of distinctness would imply some kind of nascent understanding of two natures.

4.) “Before we think we pray?” Really, I can’t even come close to making heads or tails of that statement.

I agree with Smith that men can not be reduced to thinking or cognitive machines. Man is a modified unichotomy so that his body and soul, imagination and rationality, his being part of what he is doing and yet observer of what he is doing, enters together into everything he does. But I do not agree with Dr. Smith when he suggests that, when it comes to knowing, our pre-cognitive self precedes our cognitive self. I do not agree that doxology precedes theology. This is to say too much. Neither would I agree with anyone who suggested that our embodiment is secondary to our thinking. Clearly that would be to say too much in the other direction since all our thinking happens as embodied beings.

I understand that Dr. Smith is warning us against a hyper-rationality that does not have the capacity to understand that an idea must be examined in its embodied context. I appreciate Dr. Smith’s, Polanyi like exhortation for us to dwell in our knowing pursuits. I am slow though to give this postmodern feel its head to quickly lest one loses one’s head to a irrational and un-examined experiential ooze.

We shall see where Dr. Smith goes with this idea in the rest of his book.

The Reality of Hell

“At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.”

“What a spectacle. . .when the world. . .and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see. . .illustrious monarchs. . . groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers. . .as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of. . .Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors. . .in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. . .What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination.”

Tertullian
De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX


For the Augustinians…….“They who shall enter into the joy of the Lord shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints’. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost.”

Augustine, The City of God

SECTION 1.“In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. . .So that they may be urged the more to praise God. . .the saints in heaven know distinctly all that happens. . .to the damned.”

Aquinas
Summa Theologica

(When the saints in glory shall see the wrath of God executed on ungodly men, it will be no occasion of grief to them, but of rejoicing.)

It is not only the sight of God’s wrath executed on those wicked men who are of the antichristian church, which will be occasion of rejoicing to the saints in glory; but also the sight of the destruction of all God’s enemies: whether they have been the followers of antichrist or not, that alters not the case, if they have been the enemies of God, and of Jesus Christ. All wicked men will at last be destroyed together, as being united in the same cause and interest, as being all of Satan’s army. They will all stand together at the day of judgment, as being all of the same company.

And if we understand the text to have respect only to a temporal execution of God’s wrath on his enemies, that will not alter the case. The thing they are called upon to rejoice at, is the execution of God’s wrath upon his and their enemies. And if it be matter of rejoicing to them to see justice executed in part upon them, or to see the beginning of the execution of it in this world; for the same reason will they rejoice with greater joy, in beholding it fully executed. For the thing here mentioned as the foundation of their joy, is the execution of just vengeance: Rejoice, for God hath avenged you on her….

At the day of judgment, the saints in glory at Christ’s right hand, will see the wicked at the left hand in their amazement and horror, will hear the judge pronounce sentence upon them, saying, 191 “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels;” and will see them go away into everlasting punishment. But the Scripture seems to hold forth to us, that the saints will not only see the misery of the wicked at the day of judgment, but the fore-mentioned texts imply, that “the state of the damned in hell will be in the view of the heavenly inhabitants; that the two worlds of happiness and misery will be in view of each other.

Jonathan Edwards
The End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous
or
The Torments of the Wicked in Hell, No Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven
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In God’s providence, a few days ago I found myself in two different discussions in two different situations with two different people who do not know each other concerning the reality of Hell. Both of these folks were what has come to be known as “Annihilationists.” Annihiliationism is doctrine that some of have embraced (J. W. Wenham, John Stott) which denies most especially the eternality of Hell. Some practitioners of Annhiliationism insists that those outside of Christ cease to exist upon death (soul sleep), while other practitioners will allow for a Temporal Hell where the Rebel against God suffers the torments of Hell for a season that is fitting for their crime whereupon God snuffs them out of existence.

What I am going to do below is give a few observations about the importance of the doctrine of Hell as a concept. I am not trying to here, build a Biblical case for Hell. I am not doing so, not because it can’t be done, but rather because the reality of Hell as well as its eternality is so obvious to a natural reading of Scripture it strikes me that the people who deny the doctrine of Hell or its eternality are beyond convincing. The denial of the doctrine of Hell as well as a denial of the eternality of Hell is like the denial that Scripture prohibits women from serving in ecclesiastical office. In both cases, the Scriptures are so obvious in their articulation that trying to convince those, who are reading through or past the Scriptures, that they are in error is largely a waste of time given the pre-commitments of those who are doing the denying.

So, what I’m doing below is just giving a few observations surrounding the denial of Hell.

1.) The denial of the eternality of Hell is all the more dangerous because on the surface it seems so benign. This denial is not like the denial of the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth. No one doubts that someone who denies Hell can be in Union with Christ. (Though I would insist that such a view leaves them open to the charge of having low views of Scripture.) I do insist though that people who are Annhilationists aren’t looking under the hood of that denial to see the implications of what they are denying.

2.)  The denial of the eternality of Hell is another example of putative Christians or unlearned Christians or immature Christians attempting to make God out to be nicer than He makes Himself out to be. It is an attempt to save God from being God. It is sentimentality trying to rescue the alleged mean glowering character of God. It is another example of do gooders, who by doing their good, end up making Christianity crueler then any Devil could. This denial of the eternality of Hell is taken up by those who, at the very least think, “My God would never be that mean.” It is the argument which attempts to make God “reasonable.”

3.) Annihilationism, does not seem to comprehend that by altering the anchor example of God’s eternal justice (The condemnation to Eternal punishment for those who rebelled against God and His Christ) that the effect is a relativizing of temporal justice and punishment. If the anchor of justice is set loose and diminished in the Cosmic Divine realm the effect is to set adrift any ideas of absolute justice in the temporal realm.  If God’s justice is altered in terms of Hell and / or its duration then justice is the realm of man can be relativized and altered as well.

4.) Those who insist upon the conditionality of Hell or deny the eternality of Hell are those who will, in themselves or in their generations, become those who rebel against the whole concept of fixed Justice. When we deny the proper required Justice applied (eternal Hell) against those who commit crimes against God’s character and who do not find forgiveness in Christ, we will, over the course of time, deny the proper required justice against those who commit other lesser crimes. If the required proper punishment is denied, in our thinking, against those who commit the greatest of all crimes (unrepentant rebellion against the Character of God) then the consequence of that will eventually be the denial of justice implemented against all other lesser crimes.

Getting rid of the eternal character of Hell guarantees the eventual arise of Hell on earth.

  5.) The Holiness of God is infinite and as such rebellion against God’s Holiness requires eternal punishment for those who do not close with Christ. The denial of the eternality of Hell is a denial of the august and majestic character of God. Low views of Hell insure, and in turn cause, low views of God.

Envision my point this way. If one was to change the penalty for murder from the death penalty to a $100.00 fine the obvious impact would be to cheapen the value of a life. Just so when we argue that Hell is not eternal punishment but only ceasing to exist we cheapen the value of God’s Majesty, Holiness and Transcendence.

The doctrine of Hell is a case where the punishment fits the crime. Any lesser punishment would suggest a lesser crime. The suggestion of a lesser crime would suggest that an offense against the person of God is somehow an offense that shouldn’t have the fullest possible consequences.  The eternality of Hell corresponds to the Majesty of God and His Law.

6.) Another way to frame this is to note how a threat on a President’s life brings greater punishment then that same threat levied against a homeless drunk. There is a greater punishment because the President is a greater person. The same principle applies here. When we offer up lesser penalties we communicate that God is more like the homeless drunk then He is like the President.