Anders Nygren on Evangelical Christianity

The following citation is from Anders Nygren's Essence of Christianity, first published in 1960. It is amazing to read this in light of subsequent political and social developments within evangelical Christianity (namely, the establishment of the "Religious Right." We can be hopeful that in the years ahead, evangelicalism will resemble more what he describes here.

“Evangelical Christianity agrees with Luther’s view, and it too puts religion at the center of life. There is no moment in life which in itself falls outside the sphere of religion. Religion seeks to permeate everything—not by domination from without, like Catholicism, but by leavening from within. That is why Evangelical Christianity has no social or political program of its own to offer as an alternative to other forces which seek to construct society on another pattern. It is convinced that the Christian religion will transform social life, since it is the ultimate force in the universe. But it will not do so directly by setting up a Christian social and political program which it could try, from its own higher standpoint, to impose upon society from without. Harm is always done to Christianity when it is confused with a social movement.

The primary task of Christianity is purely religious—as Evangelical Christianity has fortunately never been able to forget. Its task is primarily to transform men, to fill their lives with eternal content. It is only by the roundabout way of this religious task that Christianity can succeed in working indirectly towards the transformation of social life. When it has created men filled with eternity, each one of whom serves God in his own vocation, there must inevitably be a gradual transformation and Christianization of society. Christianity has no completed programme suited to all times and circumstances. What it can do, however, is to set the circumstances, that vary so greatly from age to age, in the light of an eternity which is necessary and valid for them all alike; and it can create men who know how to solve the problems of their time with all the seriousness of eternity, men who in the very act of doing this stand in the presence of God as His servants." (67-68)

Catherine of Siena, to Pope Gregory XI, on returning to a humble and spiritual church

Ah, what a shame this is! They [ministers] ought to be mirrors of freely chosen poverty, humble lambs, giving out the Church's possessions to the poor. Yet here they are, living in worldly luxury and ambition and pretentious vanity a thousand times worse than if they belonged to the world! In fact, many layfolk put them to shame by their good holy lives. But it seems supreme eternal Goodness is making us do under coercion what we haven't done for love. It seems he is permitting his bride to be stripped of prestige and luxury, as if to show that he wants holy Church to return to being poor, humble, and meek as she was in those holy early days, when she was concerned only with God's honor and the salvation of souls, taken up not with material things but with the spiritual. For ever since the Church has paid more attention to the material than to the spiritual, things have gone from bad to worse.

But take heart, father, and don't be afraid, no matter what has happened or may yet happen. God is doing it to make the Church perfect once again, so that lambs may feed in this garden instead of the wolves who are devouring the honor that belongs to God by stealing it for themselves.

Doubt, Faith, and Mother Theresa

During the course of declaring Mother Theresa a Saint, the Catholic Church (and now most everyone) has discovered an astonishing truth: she was, after all, a human being.

The recent unveiling of her private correspondence show that the servant of Christ in Calcutta expressed doubt in the existence of God and in the presence of Christ. Toward the end of her life, she gave up prayer.

"Where is my faith?" she writes. "Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be God — please forgive me."

"Such deep longing for God," she writes. "… repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal."

"What do I labor for?" she asks. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

Two groups of people are now jumping on these letters: conservative evangelicals and committed atheists. The latter seek to show that even the most heroic of our saints has the sense to disbelieve God but lacks the courage to liberate herself. The former seek to show that she had "religion" but not a "relationship." That is, she was convictional Catholic, but an unbeliever.

Both responses are fundamentally flawed.

First, to the triumphal atheist: Expressions of doubt by the faithful are not chinks in the armor of theism, but are authentic expressions of a real and vibrant theism. The God of Christianity is not, and never will be, a passive harmless object of mild-mannered believers. Rather, he lies beyond human ability to manipulate, control, or defend by human conceptuality. The true believer never has God absolutely within her grasp. He slips away, just when we think we've got him.

Secondly, to the conservative evangelical (and I am one): We must remember that true and living faith is an inward, active and restless thing. Faith is not characterized merely by consistent assent to a body of propositions; rather, faith is characterized by a life shaped by the contours of the life, death and rsurrection of Jesus himself. Faith is relational, dynamic, and calls for a continual relinquishment of our own ability to control our lives, even to control our belief. We believe, sometimes, on the strength of the absurd (Kierkegaard) and sometimes that means we may lack the strength to believe at all. Most importantly here it's good to remember that Christ's faithfulness to us is more significant than our faithfulness (or faithlessness) to him. That understanding is the foundation of a life lived in freedom to God and in response to the liberating power of the Gospel.

Finally, to all: Mother Theresa spent her adult life caring for the most destitute of the most hopeless. Who among us, were we to immerse ourselves in the deepest, darkest pit of suffering, would not be tempted to also ask, "Where is God?" It would be hard for her--as it would for us--to see that her life, in fact, was a powerful response to that very question. God was there, where she was, being the body of Christ to a suffering world.

Basil: An early postmodern deconstructionist

Basil, the fourth century saint and theologian puts the predicament of religious knowledge this way: If you can't have certain knowledge of an ant, how can you expect to have certain knowledge of God?

"Let him expound the nature of the ant. Is its life sustained by breath and respiration? Is its body provided with bones? Is its framework braced with sinews and ligaments? Is the position of the sinews held secure by the covering of muscles and glands? Is the marrow stretched along the spinal vertebrae from the front of the head to the tail? Does it have a liver and a gall bladder near the liver; also kidneys, a heart, arteries and veins, membranes and cartilage? Is it hairless or covered with hair? Has it an uncloven hoof, or feet divided into toes? How long does it live? What is the manner of reproduction?...

Let him who boasts of the knowledge of things existing explain the nature of the ant...But, if you have not yet, by your investigation, understood the nature of the smallest ant, how can you boast that the incomprehensible power of God is clear to your mind?"

Ok, so we've advanced significantly in our understanding of the ant. But what of God? Is he any less inexplicable, regardless of our advance in knowledge of things tangible?

"These fundamentalists want to eat me up."

The following is an excerpt from a letter Karl Barth wrote to Geoffrey Bromiley. It's his response to Christianity Today's request for answers to a series of questions posed by Gordon Clark, Fred Klooster, and Cornelius van Til.

Dear Dr. Bromiley,

Please excuse me and please try to understand that I cannot and will not answer the questions these people put.

To do so in the time requested would in any case be impossible for me. The claims of work in my last semester as an academic teacher (preparation of lectures and seminars, doctoral dissertations, etc.) are too great. But even if I had the time and strength, I would not enter into a discussion of the questions proposed.

Such a discussion would have to rest on the primary presupposition that those who ask the questions have read, learned, and pondered the many things I have already said and written about these matters. they have obviously not done this, but have ignored the many hundreds of pages in the CD where they might at least have found out--not necessarily under the headings of history, unversalism, etc.--where I really stand and do not stand. From that point they could have gone on to pose further questions. I sincerely respect the seriousness with which a man like Berkouwer studies me and then makes his criticisms. I can then answer him in detail. But I cannot respect the questions of these people from Christianity Today, for they do not focus on the reasons for my statements but on certain foolishly drawn deductions from them. Their questions are thus superficial.

The decisive point, however, is this. The second presupposition of a fruitful discussion between them and me would have to be that we are able to talk on a common plane. But these people have already had their so-called orthodoxy for a long time. They are closed to anything else, will cling to it at all costs, and they can adopt toward me only the role of prosecuting attorneys, trying to establish whether what I represent agrees or disagrees with their orthodoxy, in which I for my part have no interest! None of their questions leaves me with the impression that they want to seek with me the truth that is greater than us all. They take the stance of those who happily possess it already and who hope to enhance their happiness by succeeding in proving to themselves and to the world that I do not share this happiness...

These fundamentalists want to eat me up. They have not yet come to a "better mind and attitude" as I once hoped. I can thus give them neither an angry nor a gentle answer but instead no answer at all.

With friendly greetings,

Yours,

Karl Barth


Would that evangelicalism not merit Barth's stinging critique in these strategic days...

The Gospel and Contextualization

It seems to me that discussions regarding the future of evangelical theology and the role of the evangelical church in the world increasingly will hinge on the articulation of a theology (or theologies) of contextualization. Describing the function of context and its effect on theology and ministry is no easy task, raising a host of concerns on all sides of the discussion. On the one hand, if we say, "context is everything," are we not thereby reducing truth to relativism? On the other hand, if we say things like "the Gospel is timeless and transcultural," isn't the truth of Christ abstracted from the profound embodiment which the incarnation implies, so that it becomes ideology rather than transformational reality?

Kevin Vanhoozer, in an online reply to Andreas Kostenberger's review of Drama of Doctrine, puts it rather well when he advocates the search for "time-full truth—for truths that are true at all times." He notes that "the truth of Jesus Christ may be embodied at all times, but not at no-time." Thus, the Gospel is universal, but it will always be expressed in time-bound, particular contexts. The merit of this point of view is that it captures the historical dimension of revelation and the richness of a diverse tapestry of experiences of salvation, liberation, and the newness of life in Christ. It privileges the human (and ecological-creational) experience as the epicenter of God's redemptive work.

In a subsequent post, I plan to introduce and interact with the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, the influential Flemish twentieth-century theologian who had a lot of intriguing and potentially constructive things to say about contextualization.

Who Can Be Saved?

I'm currently teaching a course called "Current Issues in the Doctrine of Salvation." I structured the course around a broadly biblical/theological definition of salvation, including both its vertical dimension and its horizontal. The first, the vertical, is what evangelicals have typically thought of as "salvation." Otherwise known as "getting saved," "going to heaven," etc. But theology must rediscover the horizontal dimension of salvation: wholeness, well-being, peace, reconciliation, etc.

Most of the tricky theological questions have centered on the vertical dimension, in the form of questions like "who can be saved?" Related to this are issues such as "how much 'information' is required to be a Christian? Must someone have concious explicit knowledge of Jesus Christ to be saved by him? Is to suggest otherwise (that conscious faith is not necessary) detrimental to the missionary "enterprise," which the New Testament so highly prizes? Is salvation potentially accessible (Terrance Tiessen's position is "accesibilism") to every human being, either in this life or the next? Or are unevangelized persons out of luck, with hell to pay?

Any thoughts?