RSSIn Defense of a Theology of Cross and Glory: Part 3
O GOD, merciful Father, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as are sorrowful; Mercifully assist our prayers which we make before thee in all our troubles and adversities, whensoever they oppress us; and graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, may, by thy good providence, be brought to nought; that we thy servants, being hurt by no persecutions, may evermore give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thy Name’s sake.
(Litany. Book of Common Prayer)
I’d like to begin this post by apologizing to my fellow contributors for writing so much. My purpose is not to “hog the blog,” but rather to provide a defense of theocratic-transformationalism as thoroughly as I’m able while critiquing what I see as a terrible error: W2Kism. The time, energy and inspiration are not often there, so I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. This third part of my defense begins with a few further reflections on suffering and obedience.
“Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them†(Heb. 13:3). While humility is essentially a spiritual quality, the intensity of one’s suffering often has to do with the outward circumstances one finds himself in. In the last post of this series, I made reference to Christians’ disproportionate experience due to outward circumstances. At the present time, the vast majority of Christians throughout the world suffer deprivation and impoverishment. Not a few must bear oppression on a day to day basis. The Sudan, North Korea, China, and the Middle East come to mind. Those who are privileged to live in the West have little awareness of the extreme spiritual suffering these most precious members of the body of Christ endure.
On the inward level, western Christians suffer. We suffer in our sin, our own difficult trials, and the separation from loved ones by death we experience. Even here there are saints who have profound insight into the meaning of suffering. But these, knowledgeable of their own privileged unworthiness, should have a sense of the difference in proportion between their suffering and that experienced in other parts of the world. We should join with the prayers of our oppressed brethren in imploring for the cessation of persecution.
Some incongruity becomes apparent when we see some W2K men rationalizing suffering as normative, even as spiritually beneficial, while third world Christians cry out for justice and deliverance. It is better to let the downtrodden speak about the virtues they find in suffering, if any. We could do no better than to read Richard Wurmbrand and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of their experience under Communism. These men are more aware than most of the threat posed by a culture that turns itself away from the Lord. They and countless others were spiritually crippled for life from the things they went through. Here in the “free†West a less obvious, but no less insidious, deformation is taking place.
On the broader scale, the American church languishes in its fat and lazy accommodation with godless culture. We excuse this accommodation as being submissive to the ruling authorities, of choosing the “lowest place.†But what does this mean in the context of a democratic society where everyone is “equal†and the government is accountable to its citizens? What does submission mean when the majority of our elected leaders claim some form of Christian adherence? What are we doing to disciple our fellow countrymen, the majority of whom are descended from Christian ancestors, whose only religious heritage is Christianity?
[As an aside, I’ll grant that the activist strategy of the so-called religious right inspired by the civil rights protests of the 1960’s is woefully insufficient for the task at hand. Darryl’s Confessional-Liturgical Protestantism is indeed central to the program we should pursue.]
What are we doing with the “quiet and peaceful†existence we have been blessed with, with the vast resources available to us? What are we doing to alleviate the suffering of our brethren abroad? Are we conceiving of new ways to justify our inaction, new ways to rationalize how making the world better is impossible? What are we doing?
Excursus: Macro Ethics Applied
There has been some discussion lately about an incommensurability between Christian ethics and the natural laws required for the maintenance of common culture. Darryl Hart argues that Christian virtue and natural virtue are incompatible, and Caleb Stegall invokes Tolkien’s authority that possession of the ring (of power) is inherently corrupting. Lord Acton’s ghost must be lurking nearby.
When I was younger, struggling with dispensationalism, I used to ponder how the natural right to self defense fits with the Lord’s commands to “love your enemies†and “turn the other cheek.†The W2K answer to this question is that the Christian holds dual citizenship in two ultimate realms: the City of God and the City of Man. In doing so, W2K men appeal to Calvin’s teaching that determining what is proper to temporal affairs—versus spiritual—was as easy as distinguishing body and spirit. But I have difficulty seeing how W2K—and even the great Calvin—has provided a practical solution for this Gordian knot every Christian must face. Can body and spirit be so easily separated?
“No one can serve two masters†(Matt. 6:24). God or mammon must be served. How are we to understand (and obey!) Jesus’ words if we possess two citizenships, two ultimate loyalties? Oh, they aren’t ultimate? One is higher than the other? I see: “We must obey God rather than men.†Earthly citizenship must be subordinated to heavenly if we are to avoid the alternative—ethical schizophrenia.
It may be objected that I might overemphasize how often earthly and heavenly loyalties conflict. Perhaps it is thought that most of life consists of things indifferent, of adiaphora. It seems that most of our choices are between similar alternatives: Shall I eat roast beef or steak? Should I drive a Mercedes or a Lexus? Should I play a ball game or watch TV? As long as we fulfill obligations of health, family, and employment, we are free to choose from the alternatives available to us. For Christians, most of life may be lived in the world according to its laws while faith is exercised in the remaining time left, in attending church and offering private works of service.
There is much truth in this for how individuals live out their lives. However, there is more to life than the exercise of private faith and the fulfillment of personal needs. The outside world influences us in ways that are not obvious at first glance. Our behavior validates (or not) and/or enables (or not), various interests pursued on the macro level of life.
The meat that I eat, is it raised in a factory farm where animals are pumped full of hormones and treated inhumanely? The brands that I choose, which causes are supported and who benefits from the support of my hard-earned money? The pursuits, indifferent or not, that I habitually engage in, what is the cumulative effect of practicing them? What kind of culture am I promoting by the choices I make?
“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality†(Acts 15:28,29). This decree from the very first Church council has relevance to the point raised in the previous paragraph, I believe. All is not resolved by appealing to Christian liberty. St. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 10 does not rescind the council’s decree. In 1 Corinthians, one of Paul’s earliest epistles and contemporaneous with the Jerusalem council, Paul is concerned to show how things of creation can be received with thanksgiving, even after they have been defiled by pagan practice. To give thanks is to sanctify, and whatever is done should be done to God’s glory (vv. 30-31). What the council was concerned about, on the other hand, at least in part, was the defilement of conscience inevitably resulting from association with—or regular support—of idolatry. The council was not so much concerned with the occasional eating of defiled food out of necessity, but with the habitual way of life of Gentile Christians.
That the Jerusalem council concerned macro (social-public/large scale) issues and Paul micro (personal-private/small scale) can be ascertained from the following considerations: It cannot be disputed that the council issued decrees concerning the lifestyle of Gentile converts, whereas Paul was concerned with the private consumption of defiled foods. It is doubtful he would have advocated their regular consumption. That he never countenanced the public eating of such food, which would amount to a flaunting of Christian liberty, can be seen in 1 Cor. 8:9-13.
Macro and micro considerations need to be taken into account whenever the commandments of Scripture are applied in particular circumstances. This is not to be confused with situational ethics. Rather, the exercise of judgment is needed for the appropriate application of law in a particular case. Whatever Christians do should always be done with an eye for its public—as well as private—consequences, for every act has both micro and macro ramifications.
Steve Zrimec writes: “The go-to charge of antinomianism seems odd. I know you make these micro- macro-distinctions but, to be honest, I find them sort of manufactured since it should go without saying that the categories for obedience to which I refer are both individual and corporate; the HB was written for both the individual believer and the church proper. But therein seems to lie our difference. I see these forms culled from scripture to mean how the church may and ought to govern herself and her members.â€
Here’s my problem with Steve’s point of view. He is only concerned about individual and corporate obedience of Christians in the Church apart from culture’s purpose. For him, Christianity has nothing to offer to the historical task of human culture. The public consequences, the cultural impact of our behavior, indeed, the cosmic consequences, don’t even register on his radar.
Much of life is lived in the public realm, and the standards of public behavior are different than those in private (i.e., We don’t engage in sexual intercourse or defecate in public. We observe the manners and mores of polite society.) And all the things that we do, we do as Christians, our essential identity. Make no mistake about it: the people of the world know who we are, especially if they have spent any time at all with us.
This micro/macro “distinction†I’m making is merely an attempt to account for the disparity of significance between public and private acts and their consequences. Further, it is a way to express the interrelatedness of individual life and the life of the larger community, since every ethical choice has immediate and far-reaching consequences. Micro and macro considerations are an important element of moral casuistry. Indicatives and imperatives just won’t do the whole job. Living a principled Christian life requires more. And the social aspect of Christian ethics cannot be dismissed by appeals to free justification.
The antinomianism discernable in Darryl, Steve, and other representatives of W2K has to do with their lack of serious engagement with macro ethical issues. The chain of reasoning that follows is denied: A collective cultural task was given to humanity. This culture mandate has been assimilated within every subsequent covenant, including the new covenant, the Church’s constitutional order. After his redemptive work, the Lord Jesus ascended to a Throne to whom every other authority is subject. The Church witnesses to Christ’s lordship, announces his accomplished redemption, and cooperates in the royal-sacerdotal task of applying it. When this task is complete and the Lord returns, the old creation will be transformed into a new heavens and a new earth. At that point the Church and new creation will be coterminous with one another, suffused with the glory of God.
To ascribe cultic qualities to the Church devoid of cultural import, to disengage the Church’s mission from any culturally transformative purpose, is effectively for Christians to forsake the macro-ethical sphere of life altogether.
D Hart
July 6th, 2007 at 11:09 am
W2K only denies macro-ethics as you define them, Andrew. W2K also affirms natural law and the truths that emerge from the created order and human nature. If you really want to assert the lordship of Christ over all creation, it might be good for you to recover the distinction that Gillespie and Rutherford both made between Christ as creator and Christ as mediator. Christ as creator rules over all things and reveals himself through the book of nature. To make Christ as mediator the king of all is to put at odds the offices that Christ executes as our redeemer. You make him king over all people and things, even though he cannot be prophet or priest of those outside the church.
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Fair enough. I will soon be addressing this Creator/Redeemer distinction which I believe to be an artificial “dispensationalization” of the ministry Christ received when he ascended and was exalted.
stevez
July 6th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
“The meat that I eat, is it raised in a factory farm where animals are pumped full of hormones and treated inhumanely? The brands that I choose, which causes are supported and who benefits from the support of my hard-earned money? The pursuits, indifferent or not, that I habitually engage in, what is the cumulative effect of practicing them? What kind of culture am I promoting by the choices I make?”
As nobel the efforts may be, it must be just awfully tiring to have to scrutize one’s life like this. (One would think having getting past Dispensationalism alone would have been cause to take some rest.)
This sounds more like American-made activism, which amongst other pitfalls, seems to think it actually accomplishes something in the course of a day. I would say the same thing to Andrew I say to unbelieving, yet well-intentioned, friends of mine who toss me ways to make sure Hugo Chavez doesn’t get anymore funding by the common American citizen (i.e. don’t buy gas at Citgo): “I’m not an activist…I am a Christian. And I simply cannot keep up with the myriad of ways folks seem to think righteousness should be exacted. Whose to say they are right in the first place, and where does it end?” And practically speaking, no transformer I know actually lives his life per these strictures. They seem operationally W2K. At best, they are simply inconsistent in applying their very noble sounding system, or at worst, their system is just flat wrong and actually comes against the Gospel itself.
I am still quite lost as to this charge of antinomianism (are there really such things or is it an urban legend?), which seems fairly serious yet not well defended. As Darryl points out, W2K has categories for obedience. Why is that not enough? I guess because they aren’t applied in the same way (e.g. be sure your Nike’s weren’t made in a sweat shop half way around the world). And why is any appeal to individual conscience, which comports under the natural book of nature, gasped at? The conscience was created by God; it can and should be used vigorously. We are told to have eyes of faith and to not demand what our eyes can see. But that doesn’t mean we ought not go around using our actual eyes for daily needs; we are not to use them to affirm our faith, but I still have to drive to work everyday.
Steve
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Steve writes: “Whose to say they are right in the first place, and where does it end?†And practically speaking, no transformer I know actually lives his life per these strictures. They seem operationally W2K. At best, they are simply inconsistent in applying their very noble sounding system, or at worst, their system is just flat wrong and actually comes against the Gospel itself.”
I’m sorry that you were born in a more complex time, Steve, but that’s not my problem. (Though I agree I inconsistently pursue the “examined life” if you will. I guess I’m imperfect, but I don’t dismiss its necessity.) Civilization has developed a lot, especially in the last 100 years. There’s a whole eco-system of human interaction with a global economy and electronic communications connecting lives in ways that would be inconceivable to St. Paul.
Your denial of any responsibility to think about the world you live in seems antinomian to me, along with the rather short list of ethical requirements you acknowledge as obligatory.
The transformationalist system might come against the Gospel itself you say. I’ve been refuting this charge–too bad you haven’t demonstrated the failure of my arguments.
Caleb Stegall
July 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I never thought I would be saying this here, but I find Andrew’s transformationalism far preferable to Steve’s complete abdication of the human experience. The former at least has the virtue of not entailing a failure of nerve. Of course, there is another possibility which is neither transformationalist nor an abdication. Call it Pantagruelism, or Christian Humanism, or Augustinian Thomism, or the Classic Experience of Reason—it is what I have been advocating for on DRC all along. Though the argument seems to have passed that ennobling yet humble possiblity by.
Caleb Stegall
July 6th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I cannot resist one more pertinent bit of Voegelin before I check out of this particular debate. This from his commentary on The Republic:
“Cephalus represents the ‘older generation’ in a time of crisis, the men who still impress by their character and conduct that has been formed in a better age. The force of tradition and habit keeps them on the narrow path, but they are not righteous by ‘love of wisdon,’ and in a crisis they have nothing to offer to the younger generation which is already exposed to more corruptive influences. The venerable elder who arouses our sympathy will not lose it on closer inspection, but the sympathy will be termpered by a touch of condescension, if not contempt, for his weakness. For the men of his type are the cause of the sudden vacuum that appears in a critical period with the break of generations. All of a sudden it appears that the older generation has neglected to build the substance of order in the younger men, and an amiable lukewarmness and confusion shifts within a few years into the horrors of social catastrophe. In the next generation, with Polemarchus, the understanding of justice is already reduced to a businessman’s honesty. And it comes almost as a relief when in the sophist Thrasymachus there appears a real man who pleads the cause of injustice with luciferic passion. He at least is articulate, he argues and one can argue with him, and Socrate scan come to grips with a problem that remains evasive when represented by a respectability and venerable tradition without substance.”
I will leave it to others to debate who might equate with whom in the mini-Republic that is DRC!
stevez
July 6th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Poor St. Paul, living in the impoverished and simplistic past. Little did he know how vastly superior we are and how human beings are different creatures with access to vastly superior ways.
Unfortunately, these are the very same premises and argumentations the progressives in Evangelicalism use to justify innovations in worship, etc.
But “there is (still) nothing new under the sun.” Against these arrogant, modern assumptions of a superiority of time and place, man and his place are really no different than he ever was. I recall a transformer in my church, when having almost this same conversation, metaphorically thump my chest and rhetocially ask if I seriously would rather live in Jesus day and time when “things were so bad,” implying that the right answer should be no. I gave him the answer he wanted by saying no. But my reason was that it is because this is MY time and place, not because it’s better. It is famailiar to me, not superior to others’ times and places.
The rules are the same across time and place, Andrew. We are *not* more complex in our day and time. That is the refrain of modern arrogance.
I do not know where you surface with the notion that I deny responsibility to think about my world. I do. I just don’t have to in the same ways or come to similar conclusions in order to prove it.
Steve
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Fellas, for the last two days I have been approving comments posted on this blog. I don’t know why they don’t automatically upload to the site. Seriously, I am not interested in being the first to read all the comments. Help! Where’s Bill?
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
You know, Caleb, I have tried to aim some of my criticisms obliquely in your direction. I sort of like the Machiavellian Christian thing, but the Christian virtue-natural virtue dialectic gives me the heebie jeebies. I once read a little about John Courtney Murray and thought he must have been intellectually dishonest or willfuly deluded. Am I wrong in thinking there is some affinity between Murray and Pantagruelism?
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Steve writes: “Poor St. Paul, living in the impoverished and simplistic past. Little did he know how vastly superior we are and how human beings are different creatures with access to vastly superior ways.”
That’s not what I said or implied. Our ways are not more superior, they are more complex: as a corpse in a more advanced state of decomposition, infested with worms, compares to another that is only a few days old.
D Hart
July 7th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Caleb, is simply getting along an abdication of human experience? The apostle Paul does exhort Christians to live in harmony with all men (see me later for a proof text). It could be that what appears to be nonchalance among confessional Protestants like Steve and me is really an effort to persevere. Again, I find it striking that the call to arms of either Andrew’s transformationalism or prairie populism finds little support from the early church where sticking it to the man appeared to be much more pressing.
In my 2k world, I have lots of room for average Christians simply trying to get by. If they want to engage in political theory or party politics, fine. But are these efforts required of Christians, really?
stevez
July 9th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Andrew,
And that is not what I said either; I did not say you implied our *ways* are more complex. You are saying that our *time* is (”I’m sorry that you were born in a more complex time, Steve, but that’s not my problem”). And my point is that it is not more complex (”complex” seems to be our modern coinage for many things, one of which also seems to be “better”).
What do you mean “we have developed a lot”? Have we, really? I take “develope” to mean “gotten better, advanced positively, etc.” Even given such definition of terms, it seems to me that, in the grand scheme of things, for every “advancement” man makes he gives away something and impoverishes himself. Unless you have modern goggles on, which only allow you to see the fact that we no longer have polio at the local watering hole. But I do not perceive that things get any better or worse as time either progresses or retreats (again, nothing new under the sun). With such a view, I am befuddled by both “chicken-little” notions that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket (a strain I tend to perceive amongst the premillinarians I know), or more optimistic notions that seem to attend golden-age postmillinarianism, which seem to dovetail nicely with modern notions of “progress, advancement, etc.” My feeble perceptions, for better or worse, right or wrong, place your views in the latter camp, mainly. Just as I don’t register with the dispy-premil tendency to not want to “polish the brass of a sinking ship because it’s all going to burn anyway, so let’s sit on a hill and read the Bible all day, stopping on occasion to point out how the world is in a tail spin and is getting worser and worser and come up with narrow examples which really don’t prove too much beyond our narrow brands of social/cultural/political mores,” I don’t understand this rather cheery outlook that earthly glory is coming at the hands of men, no matter that they are Christian, that things are looking up, singing with not St. Paul but Paul McCartney, “you have to admit it’s getting better, getting better all the time, getting so much better all the time!” I read the former Paul to diverge from both these views.
Steve
stevez
July 9th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Whether I have similar discussions with (American versions of) Evangelicals, mainliners, Reformed Covenanters, Dutch (neo) Calvinist Transformers, Roman Catholics or even those more smitten by secular spirituality, there seems a common disdain for the idea that there are two distinct kingdoms and that they operate differently from one another while under the same sovereign Lordship of Christ. Whatever substantial differences these diverse traditions have, they are covered by a fairly strident agreement that the Gospel has a direct and obvious bearing on cultural/temporary endeavor. I find this fascinating.
It seems quite odious to general American piety to suggest that God ought not be enlisted to further any temporal concern, that the Bible has nothing to say about anyone’s particular views on how the world ought to shake out. It is inconceivable that it may be blasphemous to invoke God’s Name to solve temporal plights, however much inherent dignity and goodness they might possess. To American piety, no matter its specific tradition, the term “Christian secularist†seems about as sensible as fish on bicycles.
Speaking as a born and bred American, I like to think I know something of this attraction. These suggestions are contrary to my own natural, American piety. God must agree with what I perceive as right, good and true in my narrow application of such…right? To say anything less is necessarily a “failure of nerve, a depressing, disenchanted, and disheartening life.†I welcome such accusations because it indicates that someone is listening and understands that the theses and lines of argumentation challenge the presumptions of American piety in ways that so many who would think they are really don’t, but end up perpetuating it instead. I for one can attest that the W2K view, which quite starkly challenges these assumptions, was not the easiest thing to come to grips with; it was, in point of fact, quite shocking. And I think any American piety, if it is truly listening, will be offended. And at the risk of disclosing too much publicly, I did have to personally answer why I was so offended. That this offense seemed to seem an awful lot like the offense I perceived upon hearing the Gospel itself sees to imply what the answer ought to be. All that to say, the offense experienced or the impulse to charge “failure of nerve†is well understood. (It is odd, given that I admit to having moral/social/cultural/political persuasions, refuting the suggestion that the defended views encourage “neutrality or antinomianism,†but still well understood. But just because I refuse to break the glass and pull the God-lever when I perceive a hot contest in the public square doesn’t mean apathy is afoot. That’s an odd correspondence.)
Americans in general, religious ones even more so, like to believe that there is no time like theirs. Some will even say their time is more complex, that fates hang in the balance of their own generation, etc., etc. It must stroke our sense of superiority somehow. But the idea that the likes of Paul lived in less complex times seems to be an enormously naïve read of human history. Are we really to believe that Paul didn’t have the same temporal experiences and concerns we do? If so, so much for any hermeneutic of full humanity (of Paul, of Scripture, indeed even of Christ). And yet, there is utter silence about any of it.
The charges from the other side of the table accuse so-called W2K views of encouraging American creaturely-comfort, that it is too comfortable with the center of the Venn diagram (i.e. common ground), not properly up-in-arms about this or that state of things. But I would contend that the views making such accusations are what actually seek to make friends with the world and put an end to hostilities—hostilities Scripture seems to think are as present now as they were at the time of their own authorship. Christendom seeks to break down any antithesis between the secular and sacred and un-fortify the walls between the believer and non-, not by the weak and foolish things of God, but by the perceived wisdom and strength of man. Much like the popular pieties of our time which suggest that persons can find out God’s divine plan for their lives (contra Dt. 29:29 and Calvin’s own take that doing such is to “enter a labyrinth from which there is no hope of returnâ€) by subjecting any given situation to 6 criteria, the stuff of transformationism/theocracy also reflects the deep-seated American need to manipulate our world so that we have as little discomfort as possible. How discomforted can any one believer really be when either he has figured out he should emerge from any given situation relatively unscathed because he distilled the Infinite Almighty’s eternal will for it more or less (as odd as that is) or if the State is making sure you may worship every Sunday without hindrance (something not even Paul was afforded), rooting out heresies or generally making sure all flesh bends the knee in the here and now? Both are functions of that impulse to not have to die, to make life predictable and safe. Perhaps it’s the same impulse that stood in front of Jesus to keep Him from His Cross and to actually cause Him to address Peter as Satan incarnate.
Ironically enough, these impulses, which seem to labor under the illusion that the outsider will observe such efforts and applaud their desire to make the world better, actually make their champions repugnant amongst the outsiders instead cultivating grounds to fulfill Paul’s entreat to be winsome and cause them to praise God (e.g. read secular Jew Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Comingâ€) . That irony is simply amazing to me.
Steve
stevez
July 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I wonder…can an absolute failure of nerve say: Granted, they are different consistencies of vomit in the shag carpet that require perhaps different treatments, but if we take seriously the “radical intolerance of Presbyterianism†then the stuff of transformationism/theocracy or anything remotely resembling it ought to be scoured out with the same—if not more—veracity that the Federal Vision is currently experiencing and the same vigor employed by Machen to kick the can of Liberalism? Or is that unbecoming?
Steve
Andrew Matthews
July 9th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Steve, It’s pedantic obtusity to quibble over words. It was very clear I was referring to the web of interaction in our advanced civilization through “a global economy and electronic communications.” *Ways* not *times* was my original meaning. And yes, our times pose a greater spiritual danger as modern technologies provide more ways in which the world presses in on us.
stevez
July 10th, 2007 at 8:30 am
1) “Steve, It’s pedantic obtusity to quibble over words.” If so, why point out that “*Ways* not *times* was my original meaning”? I believe someone once called such a distinction a function of “pedantic obtusity.”
2) Since you yourself still have not moved beyond this pedantic obtusity I seem overly given to…actually, let’s get the term right…abstrusity…and seem to yet make a distinction between ways and times, I think it’s rather a tortured effort to make this sort of distinction and really is itself abstruse to try. Which is to say, neither our ways nor our times are any “more complex,” in grand scheme of things. That things are “different” may be conceded. But if human beings are involved, nothing has changed, not really. But you have to disagree with that before you may say that our ways and times are “more complex” or have “developed” or are essentially different in ways that Paul’s time and place wasn’t. Again, that is a large part of what fuels the church-growth/P&W movement of our time for example, that man and his world are essentially different and demand different treatments, which I am saying is complete rubbish. So in that way, I cannot accept your logical conclusion that our ways or times are somehow fundamentally different, because it’s based on a faulty starting point–the same one Bill Hybels has.
Steve