An Invitation to Glory

This post is an excerpt from The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers (Wipf and Stock, 2019). It was written by Dr. Michael Travers. It was presented to the C. S. Lewis Society of New York in 2013 on the 50th anniversary of Lewis’s Death and again at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on January 30th, 2014. Today, March 2nd, is the anniversary of Michael’s passing into the glory that he deeply longed for.

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In his apologetics and fiction, C. S. Lewis invites his readers to hope for heaven and God. His great contribution is his reminder to twentieth-century western culture, which has lost its mooring, of what it means to be humans who were made for God and to long for him all our lives. C. S. Lewis reminds readers that this longing for God, this hope of heaven, is the proper state for all of us in a fallen world. He offers to readers a vision of the Christian mind.

Our culture needs to remember what it means to be human: we are created in the image of God and for the purpose of praising God. At the very outset of his Confessions, St. Augustine gives voice to the essential human need––and desire––to praise God:

Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee. He is but a tiny part of all that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality, the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that Thou dost resist the proud: yet this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise Thee.

Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. For Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.[1]

Because we were made for God, we cannot be satisfied apart from Him. Nothing in this world can satisfy the ultimate desire of the human soul to be satisfied in God. Human culture, particularly that inspired by Christianity, incarnates this desire for God in manifold ways, and, what is more, Scripture attests to it as well. The desire for God is a key element of the Christian mind.

The idea that we all desire God and hope for heaven is expressed in both the Old and New Testaments. In Ecclesiastes, the wisdom writer states that God has put “eternity into man’s heart” (Ecc 3:11), and evidences the implications of our desire for God in that nothing in this life ultimately satisfies the soul. The writer speaks of good things––such as work, food, and relationships––that we enjoy in this life, but he teaches that ultimate wisdom is to seek God and rest in him. Everything else is “vanity,” or futility. The Psalmist writes that the ancient Hebrews longed for rest in the Promised Land. But, because of their unbelief and sin, they had to walk the wilderness pathways for forty years before they were allowed to enter that rest, and then it was only the next generation that was allowed to do so (Ps 95:1–11). In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews applies the temporal rest of the ancient Hebrews in the Promised Land figuratively to the spiritual rest Christians have in Christ and then to the eternal rest we ultimately will enjoy in the new heavens and the new earth (Heb 3:7–4:11).

In this life, we are not yet at rest, and we cannot be at rest until our faith becomes sight in heaven. We hope for future glory. In the New Testament, the apostles often write of a hope that looks forward to eternity. The apostle Peter admonishes us to be “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). Peter speaks this instruction to Christians, admonishing them to give a witness to non-Christians about heaven and eternity with God. For Peter, as for the other New Testament writers, this hope is not wishful thinking; rather, it is settled and certain hope, for it is predicated on the character of God as evidenced by the Word of God––“Christ in you, the hope of glory,” as Paul has it in Col 1:27. Paul speaks elsewhere of our hope in Christ, for Christ has paid the debt of our sins and granted us eternal life (Cf. 2 Cor 1:10; 1 Tim 4:10). In the earthly life of Christ our longing for God is made concrete in the transfiguration, when Peter, James, and John see Christ revealed in all his glory. The transfiguration follows immediately after Jesus tells his disciples that he will come again in great glory, thereby prompting longing for that glorious kingdom; it is then that he is transfigured before the three men, and they are given a glimpse of the future and the one on whom their hope is founded. In Romans 8, Paul writes that the Christian’s whole life is oriented toward this hope when we will be glorified in the presence of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Michael Travers

The Bible often expresses this hope in narrative form. Almost two-thirds of the Bible is narrative. From Genesis to Exodus, through the history books and prophets in the Old Testament, to the Gospels, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and even the book of Revelation in the New Testament, the story of redemption is just that––a narrative. The writer of Hebrews symbolizes this life as a pilgrimage. He writes that we “desire a better country, that is a heavenly [one]” (Heb 11:16), and “for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb 13:14). A pilgrimage is not just a wandering journey; rather it is a teleological journey with a destination. For Christians, that destination is heaven with Jesus Christ, our ultimate beatitude. It is no accident, then, that the Bible incarnates a grand metanarrative that encompasses the whole of the created order and our place as humans in that story.

Giving voice to the Christian narrative of hope is what Lewis did in his writings at a time when others had lost sight of that hope. He presented a vision of the Christian mind. Austin Farrer writes of the voice Lewis gives to Christianity:

It was this feeling intellect, this intellectual imagination that made the strength of his religious writings. . . . His real power was not proof [as in apologetics]; it was depiction. There lived in his writings a Christian universe that could be both thought and felt, in which he was at home and in which he made his reader at home.[2]

There is the note: Lewis invites his readers to come along home with him––to God and heaven. He knew that we longed for something beyond this world, and he invited us to join him in the search for our eternal home.[3] Lewis’s method for inviting others to put on the Christian mind, through his prose, poetry, and narrative, was to put the metanarrative of the Bible on display.

C. S. Lewis reminds readers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of a truth that pre-modern western people knew as part of their culture and we have largely forgotten today: we were created to worship God. Lewis encourages his readers to worship God again––that is, to put on the Christian mind. He invites them to accept that “weight of glory.” Lewis embodies the heart of Christianity in this invitation, for the metanarrative of the Bible tells the same story: creation, fall, redemption, and recreation. Lewis incarnates this metanarrative in his apologetics, his poetry, and his fiction. It is by developing a Christian mind that Lewis fulfills his role as worshipper.

For Lewis, the original creation is the normative mode of existence for human beings, in fellowship with each other and God. In this created condition, there was no need for longing to escape and go to heaven, no need for hope, for all things were as they should be. Lewis invites his readers in all of these books to participate in the glory of things as they were meant to be. In the fall into sin, however, humans were plunged into a pathological condition, producing a sense of exile because we were cut off from God and therefore long to be reunited with him. It is this undesirable state of sin and exile that forms the foundation of Lewis’s apologetics and fiction. Our innate longing for a remedy finds expression in his novels, in the form of a pilgrimage, or quest––a journey that inherently incarnates longing and hope in its form and structure. This longing is for renewal of all that has been tainted by sin; it is a longing for a new life.

Lewis’s fiction provides descriptions of this coming renewal, which begins with a sense of release from sin’s effects. He expresses the sense of beginning a new and glorified life in heaven this way in The Last Battle:

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are––as you used to call it in the Shadowlands––dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”   

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.[4]

All of Lewis’s writings encourage his readers to long for God and to hope for heaven; this is a central characteristic of the Christian mind. And it is fitting that this is so, for the longer we live in communion with Christ, the more we long to see him face to face. Lewis knew that longing well and it shaped everything he wrote. This longing for the transcendent is what makes the Christian mind so beautiful.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

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[1] Augustine, Confessions, 3. Emphasis original.

[2] Farrer, “In His Image,” 384–85. Farrer was Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1935 to 1960, and a good friend of Lewis.

[3] Cf. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 143.

[4] Lewis, The Last Battle, 210–11.

Liberalism, Verbicide, and Love in Christian Discourse

Men often commit verbicide because they want to snatch a word as a party banner, to appropriate its ‘selling quality.’ Verbicide was committed when we exchanged Whig and Tory for Liberal and Conservative. But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then to become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative – useless synonyms for good and for bad. – C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words

There is no question that language changes and words morph in their meaning. No serious student of language, especially ancient languages, can escape the ways that the meaning of words changes over time, sometimes to the point that they begin to mean the very opposite of their original meaning. Words can be mistreated to the point they are semantically dead; virtually useless for any meaningful discourse.

C. S. Lewis was being somewhat curmudgeonly when he wrote the above sentences in the introduction of Studies in Words. However, his point is well taken and worth considering, particularly in the way some terms are used in contemporary evangelical discourse.

Liberal and Liberalism

The adjective liberal and the associated noun liberalism have both been killed in contemporary evangelical discourse. They are, as Lewis described, no longer words that effectively describe the content of a theology, but a person’s evaluation that that theology is bad. They are epithets rather than effective labels, in most cases.

This in nowhere more evident than in social media debates surrounding the current president, the use of critical scholarship in theology by orthodox scholars, and religious thinking on nearly any subject.

Do you favor immigration reforms that offer a path to citizenship? You must be a theological liberal. Do you believe that there is a place in public theology to debate the limits of human economic impact on the environment? That makes you a liberal. Do you think that gross public sins make someone untrustworthy? Obviously, you are espousing liberalism. And, if you dare to think that race has an impact on the way people see the world, then there is no question that you have crossed the line into theological liberalism.

These are all examples of publicly discussed policies and ideas for which arguments can be made on explicitly religious grounds. And, if we are honest with ourselves, there are legitimate arguments for different positions (but not all positions) on these policies to be made from distinctly Christian perspectives that fall within the range of historic orthodoxy.

Because of the corrosive properties of theological liberalism, using the words liberal and liberalism to evaluate rather than describe is an easy way to avoid having to consider the merits of the argument. (It is worth noting that the same is true for the way the word fundamentalism is used.)

This form of argumentation is particularly corrosive in contemporary debates because many of the people actively engaged in debates have a vague notion of what the original meaning of liberal was or what the actual, specific theological connotations of it might be. This allows the application of the epithet to concepts that have their roots in sound Christian doctrine as a way to marginalize them.

The Meaning of Liberal

It would be impossible to adequately treat liberal theology in a blog post, but Roger Olson summarizes four common themes of liberalism,[1] which are both fair and helpful descriptions:

1. Acknowledging modernity as an authoritative source and norm for Christian theology. Doctrines that have been ruled impossible by modern standards (e.g., two natures in Christ) are to be abandoned.

2. The immanence of God overwhelms any concept of his transcendence. This is a pantheistic or panentheistic tendency that tends to blur the line between creation and creature.

3. The moralization of dogma; only doctrines that have direct implications are necessary. Thus, the deity of Christ is translated into a metaphor for his moral influence.

4. There is a strong emphasis on the universal salvation of humanity. Sin becomes alienation rather than disobedience to God’s moral law. God is no longer a judge as much as a paternalistic figure waiting for people to accept themselves and focus on loving him. Salvation is primarily therapeutic rather than transformative.

These are general statements. Within theological liberalism there are a wide range of applications of these themes, but Olson’s seems to be reasonably accurate, based on my research.

In some expressions of liberalism, especially Protestant liberalism, the differences between the historic Christian faith and the liberal expression of Christianity can rightly be described as different religions. Many of the same terms are shared between modern liberalism in the tradition of Christianity and orthodox Christianity, but they often mean radically different things.

But the significant point for this context is that theological liberalism isn’t simply a policy proposal that runs counter to the political platform of the Republican party, but a distinct theological method that has radically different theological presuppositions than orthodox Christianity. This also doesn’t necessarily include the process of taking into account the inputs from other sources, like science and sociology, as long as those inputs are subjected to the norms and authority of Scripture.

If we are going to use words, we should try to do so honestly and with knowledge of what they mean.

Love in Christian Discourse

Verbicide, as Lewis describes it, is a form of dishonesty and intellectual laziness. It may be too late to reclaim the terms liberal and liberalism from the lexical graveyard, but at least we can stop abusing the term and our brothers and sisters in Christ. We may, if we are careful, avoid committing verbicide for other useful terms of description by seeking to understand their definitions and use them accordingly.

More importantly, perhaps, we can honestly evaluate the ideas of others and make our evaluative judgments in careful terms that interact with the ideas they express rather than simply categorically rejecting them because they don’t sound enough like a certain brand of contemporary political thought.

Demonstrating Christian love in discourse does not entail agreeing with bad arguments or ignoring factual errors. It does, however, at least require honestly describing our ideological opponents’ ideas before evaluating them.

[1] Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 549–551.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis

According the Walter Hooper, the man who became the executor of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate, Lewis did not expect to have his books read for long after he died.

That is, of course, the way of it for even many good writers and careful thinkers. During their lives, when they are writing essays and giving lectures, their books sell because they are on trending topics and there are regular reminders that a certain book exists.

People continue to find C. S. Lewis helpful for several reasons. Unlike many academic writers and moralists, Lewis wrote children’s books that are enjoyed by a wide swath of people, both those inside and outside his ideological camp. This means that Lewis’s other works have a fighting chance of being picked up, even if someone wasn’t initially very interested in an essay entitled, “Religion and Rocketry.”

In his intellectual biography of Lewis, McGrath explains Lewis’s ongoing popularity by three reasons:

1.       The continued value of his apologetic work.

2.       His religious appeal.

3.       His use of imagination in defense of the faith.

I think these three are valid, but one needs to go a little further to get at the heart of the reason for the continued sales of the works of C. S. Lewis. Michael Travers noted another reason beyond those offered by McGrath:

In addition to these reasons, there is an underlying reason for Lewis’s ongoing important: he wrote about things of first importance, timeless truths that he thought we needed to hear. In his writings, Lewis taps into the essential human condition in such a way that we catch glimpses of truths we had forgotten or perhaps suppressed, especially in our modern, Post-Enlightenment culture. One of these truths is that everyone is on a journey, hoping for heaven, even when we do not know it or refuse to admit it.

Travers’s explanation gets at the concept of the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis.

Lewis remains fascinating to many Christians at varying levels of education and experience, and across denominational boundaries, primarily because he gets at the heart of what it means at piece to live with the Mind that imagined the universe, set its boundaries, and controls the course of history. The Christian mind provides evidence of the truth of reality and how to live within that truth.

Lewis is one of a number of Christian thinkers who had the Christian mind. In his own time Dorothy L. Sayers and Francis A. Schaeffer had a deep understanding of reality and were able to point people toward it. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck overlapped with Lewis, but also had the Christian mind. As we look back in Church history, the number grows: Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo both thought and wrote with the Christian mind.

At a most basic level, the Christian mind is one that recognizes the enduring truth, goodness, and beauty of God. It is therefore drawn perpetually to asking questions about the true, the good, and the beautiful. This is a vision of reality that sees integrity in the universe because God himself, the eternal Three-in-One, is perfectly simple and without division. Comprehending this reality, even to the limited degree possible, entails looking at the wonder of reality outside of our own minds. Truth is discovered by observation, not introspection. The Christian mind is, therefore, one that is more interested in the world around than in itself.

I recently edited a collection of essays in honor of a friend and mentor, Michael Travers. In that volume, eleven authors from different fields of study consider the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis as it was presented in his work and as it applies to other significant topics of interest.

The book contains an essay by Michael Travers on Lewis’s apologetic of hope, which opens the book with a grand view of C. S. Lewis’s vision of the world. There is also a delightful chapter by Michael’s daughter, Elizabeth, on Desire and Love in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Aside from personal connections, there are several essays by well-known Lewis scholars in the book. James Como contributed an essay on C. S. Lewis as a master builder, demonstrating Lewis’s rhetorical genius. There is also a chapter from Leland Ryken who gets at one of Lewis’s sources: John Milton. Ryken’s chapter shows how the Christian mind understands all of life to be a stewardship before the Lord.

Heath Thomas contributed a chapter correcting C. S. Lewis’s writings on the Psalms of Lament and demonstrating that Lewis appears to have grown in his understanding of lament later in life, particularly in his Letters to Malcolm. Daniel Estes explains the significance of the integration of faith with all of life, something at which Lewis excelled. There are also essays in Lewis’s ethics in That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man, his concept of the “Inner Ring,” disinterested love in Screwtape and The Great Divorce, and an essay that puts Lewis and Schaeffer in dialogue on apologetics and epistemology.

In each of the diverse essays attempts to show readers where Lewis was pointing, since Lewis himself viewed his work as less significant than the one to whom he was pointing. This is a book with a heart attuned to both evangelism and doxology, concepts that are deeply intertwined and vitally important to the Christian life.

If you are fan of C. S. Lewis, or looking for an introduction to the wide range of work he did, this volume would be a good place to start.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

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NOTE: I edited this volume. If you buy a copy, I might get a tiny fragment of the money, which might eventually bring the hourly rate of my efforts up from deeply negative to zero dollars lost per hour. My more significant motivation is that Michael Travers was a dear friend and some of the essays in this volume are just plain good.

Karl Barth's Political Theology

One model of political engagement for contemporary Protestant Christians can be drawn from the 20th century, Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. Barth is perhaps more well-known for his copious systematic theology, Church Dogmatics, or his public feud with his colleague, Emil Brunner, over the function of natural theology in shaping Christian doctrine and practice. However, amid his other, more famous works, Barth also produced a coherent, tested, and helpful political theology.

Barth was a citizen of Switzerland, but taught in German Universities beginning in 1921. During this period between the World Wars, Barth witnessed the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, more commonly known as the Nazi party, with its infamous leader, Adolf Hitler. As a citizen of a neighboring nation, Barth observed the changes in German society, particularly in German Christianity, from within. He was eventually expelled from Germany in 1935 due to his resistance to the Nazi party, particularly his opposition to efforts to institute governmental control of various German churches. One result of Barth’s lived experience was the development of a political theology that maintains active engagement of Christians in politics while preventing churches from either controlling or being subsumed by the government.

Historical Challenge

In its essence, Nazism is not simply a political movement, but a worldview (weltanshaung) for the German people. One of the foreseeable consequences of the punitive sanctions enforced by the Allied victors of World War I in the Treaty of Versailles was the impoverishment of the German nation, which resulted in a sense of bitterness and desire for relief from oppression. The Nazi platform was, as a result, geared toward restoring national pride through a comprehensive social program that included such infamous institutions as the Hitler Youth, which aimed to build support for the rising National Socialist party and its vision for Germany from an early age.

The smothering nature of such a worldview program could not leave the independence of the German churches alone. As Arthur Cochrane observes, “The National Socialist ideology was actually a political religion.” (Cochrane, 1976, p. 21) At the heart of this political religion was the exaltation of the Aryan race, which began to take on cult-like characteristics, particularly when Hitler’s virulent hatred of the Jews began to spread. In his infamous screed, Mein Kampf, Hitler blamed Europe’s Jews for most of the problems of German, writing, “It was the Jews who plotted the First World War, and they are the power behind Germany’s two archenemies: international capitalism and international Bolshevism.” (quoted in Cochrane, 1976, 23) The National Socialist movement was, thus, in many ways a religious movement. Hitler’s vision was for “the State to control and to direct every area of life. All social, cultural, and economic life was supervised by the Party.” (Cochrane, 1976, 29) This included total control of churches. (Barth, 1939, p. 5)

Early on in his political career, before taking power, Hitler had deceived Christians regarding his position on independence in church doctrine and practice. Cochrane notes, “In Mein Kampf he [Hitler] stressed that the part would be neutral with respect to the confessional or denominational differences. . . . He maintained that Church and State should be strictly separated, and he condemned political parties that owed allegiance to any particular denomination . . .” (Cochrane, 1976, p. 35) Is should have been obvious early on, however, that National Socialism was a totalizing worldview that could not exist peaceably with Christianity or any other religion. Yet, on the 23rd of March in 1933—in the lead-up to his 1934 election—Hitler reiterated, “The rights of the Churches will not be diminished, nor their position as regards the State altered.” (Quoted in Barth, 1962, p. 24) Many Germans believed him.

Despite Hitler’s claims to the contrary, once in power, Hitler began placing officials in the ecclesiastical hierarchies in Germany. He also recognized a “German Christian” party, whose membership consisted of individuals who supported the totalizing worldview of National Socialism while still claiming to be Christian. Cochrane observes, “While the Church was engaged in withstanding the State’s encroachment upon its offices and government, it also had to combat the Neopaganism of the ‘German Faith Movement’ which the government, at first secretly and later openly, espoused, as well as the nationalist and racial ideology of the Party . . . .” (Cochrane, 1976, p. 37) The conflation of Church and State, largely through the State’s attempts to take over various German churches required political and spiritual resistance. It also required the development of a political theology upon which an appropriate resistance to State intrusion could be based. Karl Barth would provide that political theology.

The Resistance

Some Christian clergy in Germany resisted the Nazi inroads and immoral impositions in the life of the churches. (Haddorff, 2004, p. 3) However, after the dust settled in 1945, the evidence shows there had been very little civil resistance to National Socialism. “On the other hand,” Barth notes in Eine Schweizer Stimme, from the very first months on there was a German Church struggle. Even it was not a total resistance against National Socialism. . . . It confined itself to the Church’s Confession, to the Church service, and to Church order as such. It was only a partial resistance.” (Barth, 1945, p. 5) Barth’s vision for the Christian resistance to the totalizing civil religion of National Socialism required a total commitment.

The main points of Barth’s political theology, as it was published during the heat of the struggle against Nazism, were contained in seed form in his Bonn lectures on Ethics from the 1920’s. (Barth, 1981, pp. 440-51) Many of the same elements are discernable in his 1928 and 1929 lectures on ethics at Münster. (Barth, 1981, pp. 517-21) Though the origins are visible early on, Barth’s political theology was more fully developed and expressed more clearly as the challenges from National Socialism changed. In a short book, Theological Existence To-day!, published in 1933, Barth called German Evangelical churches to retain their independence from the National Socialist regime and instead honor the Word of God—that is, the Bible.

Barth’s critique focused on the syncretism of the German Faith Movement, or “German Christians,” with the German government. It was not simply that candidates and policies of one political party were being affirmed by a Christian group. (Hankins, 2008, pp. 143-76) That is usually done on a case-by-case basis. Rather, the theologically liberal (which is to say amorphous) “German Christian” faction merged itself with the German national government of the Nazi’s. The goal of the “German Christians” was to be indistinguishable from the German culture of the day, so that every German would want to return to Church to be built up for the vocation to which the national government was calling the German people—that is, the good “Christians” in Germany who happened to be of the Aryan race. (Barth, 1962, pp. 48-49)

Although the “German Christians” had a theology that would be more consistent with that of mainline denominations in the United States, it would be a significant mistake to overlook the fact that this blending of civil religion and Christianity can take place within self-described orthodox circles. Simply because one affirms the virgin birth, the inerrancy of Scripture, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the doctrines of the Trinity is no guarantee that a thoughtless loyalty to party or politician is not a ready danger. Barth’s critique is as effective for theologically left leaning Americans who ignore the horrors of abortion and revise doctrines to embrace the sexual revolution as it is for right-leaning, Bible-thumping Christians who adapt their faith in other ways to overlook evils in the marketplace or in the politician’s personal life.

On this side of the horrors of World War II and the Nazi desecrations of the imago Dei in the Holocaust, it is hard to understand why the German Evangelical Churches were not more active in their resistance of the Nazi party. Barth chided German evangelicals for their passivity, and noted that a sort of pragmatic realism was a driving force for the acceptance of the advance of the Nazis and the ecclesiological affronts of the “German Christian” movement. Despite this, Barth’s early contentions were mainly theological rather than political. In other words, his concern was not that the government was doing evil things to people, but rather that there was a merging of the government of the Church and the national government. (Barth, 1963, pp. 55-61) His concern was that the Church would cease to be distinct as the differences between Christians and non-Christians dissolved in conjunction with the merger of Church and State. (Barth, 1962, 67-71)

Even if it seems Barth’s emphasis was misdirected in retrospect, his focus on maintaining theological freedom of the Churches to preach a biblically formed doctrine—even in opposition to prevailing political trends—is an essential aspect of a free society that can resist evil. (Jehle, 2002, p. 99). Barth’s goal was that the Church could continue to preach the gospel to the State and to the whole world. This is an essential aspect of encouraging justice in society. In the conclusion to Theological Existence To-day!, Barth (1962) wrote,

[T]heology and the Church cannot enter upon a winter sleep within the ‘Total State’; no moratorium and no ‘Assimilation’ (Gleichschaltung) can befall them. They are the natural frontiers of everything, even the ‘Totalitarian State.’ For even in this ‘Total State’ the nation always lives by the Word of God, the content of which is ‘forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.’ To this Word the Church and theology have to render service for the people. . . . The Church must be allowed to be true to her proper pragmatic function, and be willing to be true. (p. 84)

Although it would turn out to be insufficient, Barth’s call for theological action in response to the “German Christian” movement contributed to the formation of the Pastor’s Emergency League in 1933 and continued through the adoption of the Barmen Declaration in 1934.

The Barmen Declaration was a succinct, ecumenical statement of evangelical belief designed to help faithful, orthodox Christians to resist the encroaching power of Nazism. David Haddorf (2004) helpfully summarizes the six paragraphs of the statement:

1) The church must hear and obey the one Word of God (Jesus Christ) and no other voice, person, events, powers, or sources of truth as God’s revelation; 2) Jesus Christ claims our whole life, and rejects the idea that other “lords” rule over other areas of our lives; 3) the church, too, must not be forced to have its message altered by prevailing social ideologies or political convictions; 4) the church does have a proper form of government, but rejects the notion that there are special leaders (Fuhrer) of authority over and within the church; 5) draws for a separation of duties of church and state, and rejects the state becoming the church and the church becoming the state; 6) the church’s task and mission should not be corrupted by its pride and desire for power and prestige.” (pp. 23-24)

This theological statement, which was largely drafted by Barth, was affirmed by the Confessing Church in May 1934. At that point, Barth’s welcome in Germany was nearly exhausted. (Clark, 1963, p. 47) This, perhaps, indicates the importance of his perspective and how significant a challenge his views were to National Socialism.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

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Once Barth was removed from Germany and sent back to his native Switzerland in 1935, he continued to write on political theology. His three main political works between 1935 and 1946 were “Gospel and Law” (1935), “Church and State” (1938), and “The Christian Community and the Civil Community” (1946). Barth also published another helpful essay during this time, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day (1939). These four works, which are expansions of themes found earlier in Barth, provide a framework for his vision of political theology, especially the relationship of the Church and State. All of his works reiterate the need for separation between Church and State with each entity playing its proper, limited role.

In his brief volume, “Church and State,” Barth argues that both institutions are ordained by God, but each has a particular role. The church is to proclaim justification through faith; the state is to enforce justice. (Barth, 1991, pp. 38-40) As such, rather than a sharp distinction between the two institutions, there is a vital relationship. The Church proclaims the gospel and reminds the State of its role under subjection to Christ. The State should subject itself to God’s intent (not the Church’s authority) and provide justice, especially the justice that allows the Church to proclaim the gospel freely, even to the state itself. This effectively recognized the legitimacy of government as declared in Romans 13, but rejecting anything like a totalizing state that could control truth.

The State, according to Barth, should be neutral with respect to truth. (1991, p. 42) This means it is not the role of the State to determine or regulate truths like Church doctrines. When the State oversteps its epistemic limits, it quickly becomes “demonic” because it fails to fulfill its God ordained duty and, instead, attempts to direct worship toward itself. As Barth argues, “The state becomes ‘demonic’ not so much by an unwarrantable assumption of autonomy—as is often assumed—as by the loss of its legitimate, relative independence, as by a renunciation of its true substance, dignity, function and purpose, a renunciation which works out in Caesar—worship, the myth of the State and the like.” (1991, p. 53) When the roles of the State and Church are blended, both institutions lose their value and must thus be resisted by faithful Christians.

The key to Barth’s perspective is contained in the last section of “Church and State.” Barth calls for the Church to pray for the State, but he notes that the Church must fulfill this service whether or not the State provides justice and without considering whether the State is worthy of continued existence. The Church should expect the State to fulfill its role in protecting the preaching of justification, but the Church should be prepared “to carry this preaching into practice by suffering injustice instead of receiving justice, and thereby acknowledging the State’s power to be . . . God-given.” (1991, p. 77) Continued prayer for the State, however, does not constitute support for all the efforts of the State, as when it is “guilty of opposition to the Lord of lords, to that divine ordinance to which it owes its power.” (Barth, 1991, p. 78) This radical submission, even to an unjust State, could take the form of being a victim of the State’s injustice. Suffering persecution for the proclamation of the gospel and the pursuit of justice would be the Christians’ duty as citizens. Since, as Barth argues, “Christians would, in point of fact, become enemies of any State if, when the State threatens their freedom, they did not resist, or if they concealed their resistance—although this resistance would be very calm and dignified.” (1991, p. 79)

In short, according to Barth’s political theology, the Church has the responsibility to help the State be what it ought to be rather than simply resist it carte blanche or support it uncritically. The Church also has a responsibility to refrain from attempting to control the State. The Church is always political, though it should never seek to replace the State. (Barth, 1946, 154) For Barth, Christians have the responsibility to remain engaged in shaping society without seeking to dominate it to introduce a theocracy. Such a careful balance between critical participation and refusing to control is a challenge for the Church, but is essential if the Church is to retain its prophetic voice.

Conclusion

In the United States, the Constitution prevents religious tests for public office and numerous court cases have been heard through the years to ensure the government remains distinct from the hierarchy of any religion. However, recent shifts in laws that have been passed have—sometimes by design, it seems—required abandonment of conscience protections for some Christians to enter into the public square. Even in the liberal democracy that is the U.S., there are threats of the government failing to remain neutral on questions of truth and attempting to become a Totalizing State. Elsewhere in the world this is more significant, though the threat is growing in the U. S.

Following Karl Barth, the Christian response to attempts by the government to seize power should be to continue to preach the gospel and to use appropriate means to convince the State to fulfill its role in guaranteeing the freedom to do so.

Perhaps more significantly for our day, Christians as individuals and the Church as a collective (to the extent that a Church catholic can be said to exist in the U. S.) should be very careful that they do not support an unjust State by giving unwarranted support or cheerfully ignoring (or defending) the shortcomings of a favored politician. Even if the formal roles of Church and State are not blended, the prophetic, gospel witness of the Church is at risk when it becomes too entangled in the role of the State or blind support for how the State’s role is carried out.

NOTE: I wrote a longer version of this argument, which was published in the Spring 2018 edition of Criswell Theological Review.

An Appreciation for the Enduring Value of Scripture

How many translations of the Bible do you have in your home? How often do you read it?

According to LifeWay Research, “Americans treat reading the Bible a little bit like exercise. They know it’s important and helpful but they don’t do it.”[1] This has resulted in a significant decline in biblical literacy, not just in the culture at large, but also in many churches.

Kenneth Briggs, in The Invisible Bestseller notes, “Widespread ignorance and neglect of [the Bible] is a recipe for . . . distortion and abandonment of basic beliefs and practices . . . The future of Christianity seems dependent in no small measure on whether that bible storehouse of creation accounts, history, law, prophecy, morality, poetry, story, witness and miracle is the soil in which churches will be built––or not.”[2]

In contrast to our abundant access to God’s word, throughout Church History, Christians have sometimes struggled to gain access to Scripture. For some, especially around the time of the Protestant Reformation, access to the Bible was worth one’s wealth and even life itself.

Wycliffe

John Wycliffe first translated the New Testament into Middle English in 1380.

In 1408, with support from Archbishop Arundel, a synod at Oxford forbade people from reading Wycliffe’s Bible.[3]

Those who were caught reading the Bible were liable to forfeiture of their worldly goods. But the price of renting a Wycliffe Bible for an hour every day for daily reading was a load of hay–-a significant payment for a farmer living near subsistence. People would pay a high price for a privilege that could cost them everything.

A man named John Bale “as a boy of eleven watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord’s prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records. . . seven [disciples of John Wycliffe] burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.”[4]

These people saw the enduring value of Scripture and it cost them their lives.

Tyndale

On October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake.

Tyndale’s crime? Translating the Bible into English and importing it into his home land. His desire? That the King of England would allow the people access to the Bible in their own language.

He was arrested and executed by the King of England for having the courage to bring God’s Word from the original languages to the people. His hope was for their salvation and spiritual maturity. When a Roman Catholic scholar argued him at dinner, saying, “We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s.” Tyndale responded: “I defy the Pope and all his laws . . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”[5]

Tyndale died to bring Scripture into the common language. People paid big money to rent a copy, because it was so precious. People were starving for access to God’s Word.

But we have no such limitations. We have extra copies of the Bible to give away. That Bible is written in common language and offered at about an eighth-grade reading level. There are free translations of the Bible available online through Apps that you can download onto your mobile devices.

And Bible study tools? There are free websites that offer searchable Bibles that pastors and teachers could have only dreamed of in decades past.

We have an embarrassment of riches, but we don’t take advantage of them because we have Netflix and cable and podcasts and everything else that can keep us from God’s word. Our problem isn’t an access problem, it’s a value problem.

We often don’t properly act on the enduring value of Scripture. Even when we have Scripture, we don’t treasure it.

Enduring Value of the Content of Scripture

 One common dismissal of Scripture’s authority in ethical debates is that it is an ancient book that doesn’t speak to today’s problems. Why should we listen to a book that was written a few thousand years ago? Isn’t the Bible just a regressive Bronze Age Book?

 As an ethicist, this is one of the most common arguments I come across. Non-Christians make it to explain why they dismiss Christians without even listening. Theologically liberal Christians made the same argument when they ignore the parts of Scripture they don’t like and use other parts to support the sorts of ethics that they prefer. 

 And, lest I be unfair, I’ve heard people who claim to be theologically conservative skip or minimize the passages they find inconvenient while highlighting the stuff they like. Some like to celebrate that Scripture affirms private property rights, but they sometimes ignore the radical generosity toward the poor that Scripture calls us to. There is an impulse built into our self-justification to attempt to explain away texts of Scripture that disagree with our preferences.

 Most of the time, when people are dismissing the Bible as ancient and irrelevant it is because they are engaged in what C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery. This is the belief that the new and modern is always better than the old.

 It is on this grounds that people will argue that we have to reject the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality because of what year it is. Or, they might argue, “How can you possibly believe that God created the universe from nothing? It’s 2019, after all.” All of these arguments against Scripture are rooted in our particular cultural moment.

 People that make their arguments by the year on the calendar are missing the fact that culture changes. Many of the things that our culture accepts as true––often without argument––are going to appear foolish in two generations. Thankfully, God’s Word does not change. It offers a critique for every culture, because it is grounded in God’s character.

 To help people––those inside and outside the church––get through cultural challenges, Tim Keller writes,

 “I urge people to consider that their problem with some texts might be based on an unexamined belief in the superiority of their historical moment over all others. We must not universalize our time any more than we should universalize our culture. Think of the implication of the very term ‘regressive.’ To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive.”

 In contrast, God’s Word is permanent. Its truth is rooted in God’s character. It was God’s finger that wrote the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets, according to Deuteronomy 9:10. It is God’s Spirit that spoke through the prophets when they said “this is the Word of the Lord.”

 Scripture is permanent because it is rooted in God’s character and God’s character is good.

 Conclusion

 Our main problem with Scripture is not an access problem, it is a value problem. One of the chief tragedies of our age is that many people who claim to believe Scripture is the ultimate authority for faith and practice are derelict in studying it.

 Let us devote ourselves to the study of God’s unchanging Word. It is a gift and we have it in abundance.

[1] https://lifewayresearch.com/2017/04/25/lifeway-research-americans-are-fond-of-the-bible-dont-actually-read-it/

[2] Briggs, Invisible Bestseller, 57.

[3] B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed., rev. W. A. Wright (London: Macmillan, 1905), 22–23. Cited in Paul Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 283.

[4] “It is a dangerous thing. . . . as witnesseth blessed St Jerome, to translate the text of the holy Scripture out of one tongue into another; for in the translation the same sense is not always easily kept, as the same St Jerome confesseth, that although he were inspired . . . yet often times in this he erred; we therefore decree and ordain that no man hereafter by his own authority . . . translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue, by way of a book, pamphlet, or treatise; and that no man read any such book, pamphlet or treatise, now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe or since, or hereafter to be set forth in part or in whole, publicly or privately, upon pain of greater excommunication. . . . He that shall do contrary to this shall likewise be punished as a favourer of heresy and error.”  William Tyndale, The Obedience of A Christian Man, editd with an introduction by David Daniel (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 202.

[5] Daniell, Tyndale, 79.

Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life - A Review

Francis Schaeffer is one of the more significant intellectual figures for twentieth century evangelicalism and he is in danger of being forgotten. While interest in C. S. Lewis continues apace, many in rising generations of Christians do not know who Schaeffer is. Given that Schaeffer was a significant contributor to something of an evangelical awakening of the mind, forgetting Schaeffer would be a tragedy.

One of the causes of the diminution of interest in Schaeffer is that the generation that knew him best is moving out of the centers of evangelical thought into retirement. Additionally, unlike Lewis, Schaeffer did not leave by winsome fiction that captures the imagination causing younger readers to wonder what else he wrote. Schaeffer must be encountered by someone trying to make sense of Christianity and its coherence with reality.

As more of the generation that met Schaeffer and were intellectually awakened by his ministry pass away, I am thankful that Colin Duriez did the work to conduct interviews and compose a critical biography with first-person discussions of the impact Schaeffer had on many. The result, Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life, is an excellent and encouraging biography that captures an important moment in evangelical history.

Colin Duriez has written biographies of the Inklings, has a forthcoming biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, has written on various forms of fantasy. He seems the sort of fellow that would be interesting to engage in conversation at parties. He was also influenced by Francis Schaeffer, through the L’Abri ministries. Thus, his 2008 volume is both a continuation of the strain of his writing on Christian mind and imagination and a return to his intellectual roots.

The volume is, like most biographies, organized chronologically. It begins with Schaeffer’s family and early years, moves through his pastoral ministry, and into the various stages of his public ministry. Much of the content is derived from Edith Schaeffer’s books, L’Abri (Tyndale, 1969) and The Tapestry (Word, 1981). This biography benefits from those works, but also is enhanced because those accounts tend to cover over some of Schaeffer’s flaws.

Duriez’s account of Schaeffer’s life is realistic. It depicts a man who was exhausted by his busy schedule, had limitations due to apparent dyslexia, and was sometimes short tempered. And yet, unlike the biographical patricide committed by Franky Schaeffer, Duriez reveals a man that was hotly pursuing holiness and fell short despite his best attempts. He was, after all, simply a sinner saved by grace. The portrait Duriez paints shows Schaeffer to be a flawed hero, but still a hero.

One of the strengths of this volume is the number of personal interviews Duriez conducted. In the appendix, Duriez includes a previously published interview he conducted with Schaeffer in 1980. However, much of the biographical data in this volume is provided by discussions with his children and others that lived and worked at L’Abri for an extended period of time.

For those interested in Schaeffer, this is an essential biography. For those seeking to understand how the Christian life can be lived out in a roughly contemporary setting, Duriez’s biography is exceedingly helpful.

Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life

By Colin Duriez

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The Benedict Option - A Review

Rod Dreher’s 2017 book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy of Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, caused quite a stir when it was published. It was reviewed both favorably and unfavorably. Dreher defended his position at The American Conservative, the magazine website he is the editor of, vocally and often. There were points in the public discussion that it wasn’t clear that everyone who was criticizing the book had read the same thing.

The Benedict Option is an idea borrowed from the monastic order that descended from St. Benedict. Dreher drew the idea that a resurgence of a Benedictine ethos would be beneficial from Alistair McIntyre’s seminal work, After Virtue.

Dreher, formerly a Roman Catholic, who has migrated to the Eastern Orthodox faith, sees a separatist community as the path forward in resisting the corrosive effects of our post-Christian culture.

Strengths

It is clear that Dreher has a good understanding of the problems with Western culture. It isn’t that one thing or another is the big problem. For example, sexual immorality in its various forms as celebrated by our culture, is not the main problem with our world. Or, perhaps more clearly, it is not unique to our culture.

The unique aspect of our culture is how relentlessly intrusive the anti-Christian influences are. Before the digital age keeping your kids from pornography was largely a function of not buying dirty magazines and reasonably screening their time at a friend’s house away from the family. Now pornography is streaming down the same digital pipeline as the cute, if inane, videos about making pretty bracelets or surviving in the wilderness.

Dreher recognizes that even if parents put a filter on their home internet and monitor usage carefully, the vast majority of the parents in the community have given their child their own digital device with unfettered access to whatever the internet might offer. The only way to keep you kids safe (that is, to preserve them in some condition of relative innocence) is to form a contrast community that has agreed upon norms to help protect the group.

Another strength of Dreher’s vision is that, if implemented, it would give Christians the opportunity to practice authentic community in ways that are exceedingly difficult in our dis-integrated modern world. The Benedict Option would require intentional re-integration of life, neighborliness, and humanity. There is something strongly attractive about the move toward a more conscientious observation of the creational order.

Weaknesses

Although the vision Dreher presents are attractive and do seem to answer many of the contemporary, the Benedict Option is not without its difficulties. Many of these were made apparent during the period after the release of the book, when the roiling rage of reviews threatened to swamp the Christian blogosphere. Many of Dreher’s critics seemed to misread his book, exaggerating his claims. However, there are some legitimate points of criticism.

Most significantly, this book makes much less sense read independently than it does when read as a sequel to Dreher’s 2006 book, The Crunchy Con Manifesto. That book gives a better sense of what Dreher’s desired cloister might look like. In fact, looking back at many of the reviews of The Benedict Option, much of the criticism of the book seems to be based on assumptions about the nature of Dreher’s vision for community, which is spelled out much more clearly in his earlier book. Putting the two books together also makes it clearer that Dreher’s book is not merely a reaction to the infamous Obergefell decision, but a rejection of the broader tendencies of modernity.

As a second significant weakness, Dreher’s Benedict Option seems to give little place for evangelistic missions. It seems to point toward bolstering the bastions rather than sending out emissaries for Christ. Dreher clearly does not deny the importance of evangelism, but the theme is largely absent from his work. Taken in combination with his Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the failure to discuss this important duty of Christians warrants concern by missions-oriented Protestants.

Conclusion

If you’ve not read The Benedict Option and have formed your opinions about the book from the internet chatter about it, then you’ve likely drawn the wrong conclusions. Dreher posits an idea, which I think deserves a hearing, even if it needs significant modification to be applied. The best thing about Dreher’s Benedict Option is that it offers a positive conception of life as it should be to discuss and strive for. In a world where Christian culture tends to mimic and act as slow-moving revolutionaries, Dreher offers something different.

It may be work quoting a couple of paragraphs of The Benedict Option to give a sense of the work in Dreher’s own words:

The Benedict Option is not a technique for reversing the losses, political and otherwise, that Christians have suffered. It is not a strategy for turning back the clock to an imagined golden age. Still less is it a plan for constructing communities of the pure, cut off from the real world.

To the contrary, the Benedict Option is a call to undertaking the long and patient work of reclaiming the real world from the artifice, alienation, and atomization of modern life. It is a way of seeing the world and of living in the world that undermines modernity’s big lie: that humans are nothing more than ghosts in a machine, and we are free to adjust its settings in any way we like.

There is some wisdom in what Dreher outlines. It is worth considering his plan of action to determine if we can formulate a better one.

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

By Rod Dreher

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The Gospel of Our King - A Review

What are people for?

That is the question Bruce Ashford and Heath Thomas set out to answer in their book, The Gospel of Our King.

This book is another example of contemporary authors attempting to present the biblical storyline in a way that is fresh, innovative, and inspires appropriate action in response. Thomas and Ashford do quite well in their attempt.

Books like The Gospel of Our King are part of an effort to counteract the dominance of the metanarratives of our culture. In the West we are taught that the world exists to meet our demands and serve our presence. We custom order t-shirts to bear our favorite messages, choose the facts we will be subjected to, and select every expression of our identities. This is the story of our world. But the contemporary story is a damaging one, because it drives us away from the truer, better story of Scripture. Unlike to world’s story, God’s story, as laid out in the Bible, is life giving and conforms with reality.

The book begins by outlining the grand story of Scripture in four movements. The first four chapters of the volume outline creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, respectively. These four movement describe the arc of God’s work from the beginning of time into the future. Having offered this summary of the movements within Scripture, Ashford and Thomas turn to providing definitions for commonly misused terms, which are essential to this discussion. Chapter Five defines worldview, gospel, and mission. The final four chapters look at how a gospel-formed mission, built on a Christian worldview, works itself out in theological, social, cultural and global dimensions. None of these four terms will surprise anyone who grew up in a sound, biblical church oriented toward getting the good news of Christ’s resurrection out to the world. However, the authors put some meat on the terms by arguing that the mission of God must remain grounded in sound doctrine, expressed to people in real, often practical terms, brought to bear in culturally specific ways, across the globe to people of every tribe, tongue and nation.

The Gospel of Our King affirms the reality that we were not made for ourselves, but to serve the King of the Universe.

I have read dozens of books on worldview, the gospel, and mission. I found The Gospel of Our King to be a refreshing presentation of this topic. This is a book that I am glad to recommend. Above all, this is a volume that helped to remind me of the central purpose of the Christian life: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The book is written at a very accessible level. Even though it is published by Baker Academic, this is a volume that would be helpful in a high school class or a discipleship class with believers seeking to go beyond the most basic outlines of Christian doctrine. This will also be a helpful tool for more academic settings, like an undergraduate or seminary classroom.

Perhaps more significant than its helpfulness as a teaching tool, The Gospel of Our King is encouragement even those who already know the story well. I read this in a day (in part because I read it on an airplane travel day), but I found it a balm to the soul, an exhortation to live more faithfully, and an inspiration to tell others about the gospel of our King.

The Gospel of Our King: Bible, Worldview, and the Mission of Every Christian

By Bruce Riley Ashford, Heath A. Thomas

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NOTE: I have worked with both of the authors of this book, but I enjoyed it and think it is good, so I am reviewing it.

Can We Trust the Gospels? - A Review

Are the gospel accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ reliable?

That, perhaps, is the central question that every Christian must ask. The accounts in the Gospels are, after all, accounts of the most important events in the Christian faith. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then we have no hope beyond this life. If that is true, he argues, then we are most to be pitied. The truthfulness of the Gospels is a question that every Christian must consider, which has implications for the validity of faith itself.

Peter Williams of Tyndale House in Cambridge asks this all-important question in his book, Can We Trust the Gospels? His answer is accessible, informative, and helpful to those that are willing to take up and read this concise book.

Given the number of apologetics books on the market that deal with the reliability of Scripture it might seem that Williams’ book would be simply another entry into a crowded field. However, Can We Trust the Gospels? is offers a fresh approach to an enduring question. It is one of those rare popular-level books that caused me not simply to nod along in agreement but to look up and wonder why I had never thought of that before. It is, in short, an important book that will remain useful for decades.

The reliability of Scripture is a well-worn topic, especially in evangelical circles, so many of the chapter topics will appear familiar to the experienced readers. Williams begins the book by asking what non-Christian sources from around the time the Gospels were set say. The basic concern is to see whether historical accounts corroborate the information in the Gospels. As many other writers have noted, there are a number of non-Christian writers whose work supports the historicity of the gospel accounts.

Williams also highlights an argument that is less common among defenders of Christianity: The historical accounts support the rapid spread and increasing popularity of Christianity (with all of its supernatural beliefs). Approximately 30 years after the death of Christ there was a reasonably large population of Christians in Rome, as well as throughout much of the Roman empire. All of them attest to believe similar supernatural ideas about Jesus Christ, which undermines the argument made by some critics of Scripture that ascribing miracles to Jesus and affirming his deity were late revisions of Christianity. That idea simply does not match the historical truths surrounding the spread of Christianity, as attested in hostile, non-Christian witnesses.

In the second chapter, Williams provides evidence that the four Gospels were likely historical documents, written by people close to Jesus. These records were widely disseminated throughout the known world within a century or two of Christ’s death, which is record time for ancient manuscripts. Significantly, this mass distribution and frequent translation occurred before there was a central authority within Christendom to manipulate the message of Scripture, which undermines one of the most common attacks against the historicity of the Gospels.

Further attesting to the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts is the minor details embedded within the books. Williams illuminates many examples in his third chapter. Historical books, especially in the ancient world, that were written by people unfamiliar with the actual places, typical names, and unusual customs of that place and time. The Gospels validate each other by their particularity in geography, which often overlaps, but their differences also support their validity as independent witnesses. The pattern of knowledge and included details supports the authenticity of the Gospels.

In Chapter Four, the book discusses the undesigned coincidences in the Gospels. The books will include the same characters in different scenes, but with the same characteristics. This also includes overlap with non-Christian sources. Williams here provides evidence that either the Gospel authors were corroborating to write realistic fiction or they were telling stories they believed were true from different perspectives. They may have known of each other’s writings, but even if they did, the unity in the diversity is uncanny given the literary genres of the day.

The fifth chapter asks whether the Gospels record Jesus’ actual words. Williams argues that there is good reason to believe that what we have in Scripture is a faithful presentation of Jesus’ actual teaching, not ideas put into his mouth centuries after. They may not be the exact words, since direct quotation was not considered necessary for accuracy in ancient records. However, there are clear signs in the language recorded by the Gospel authors of the authenticity of their recorded speeches.

Chapter Six explores the question of the quality of the manuscripts. Here Williams documents the massive number of available manuscripts and, amazingly, their consistency across languages, regions, and time. Significantly, these factors make the hypothesis that there were major theological changes imposed on the texts highly unlikely.

The seventh chapter is very brief, arguing that there are formal contradictions within the work of Gospel writers. These were often designed, according to Williams, to cause readers to think more deeply about the potential meanings of the words involved. He writes, “These formal contradictions do show that the author is more interested in encouraging people to read deeply than in satisfying those who want to find a fault.”

Chapter Eight is a brief conclusion that sums up the broader arguments. Basically, Williams has been making the argument that it is much more likely that the Gospel accounts are trustworthy accounts of the events surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of a man named Jesus from Nazareth. The logical contortions one must go through to believe that all of the Gospel-stories are just made up to gain control is much more difficult that simply taking the four Gospels, with their miracles and all, at face value.

Williams sets out to show that there are good reasons to believe in the authenticity of the Gospels. He is careful not to claim a cast-iron case. Instead, he shows the credibility of the texts we have today, which is a strong argument for the day.

This book is a welcome addition to the large field of textual apologetics volumes on the market. Can We Trust the Gospels? stands out because it presents different, more nuanced arguments than many other similar texts make. The book is remarkably accessible, carefully nuanced, and well-researched. This should be a vital resource in the libraries of pastors, scholars, and lay-people for generations.

Can We Trust the Gospels?

By Peter J. Williams

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Becoming a Smarter Digital Citizen

Technology is amazing. In my life, I’ve seen the advancement of personal communications at a pace and to a degree that I would never have guessed was possible within my own life. I scoffed at the people who told me when I was a teen that television would be replaced by videos streamed on the computer. That was incomprehensible to me, since the internet was so limited as a resource then. I still remember having someone from the city (Buffalo) come out to do a demonstration of the internet at my rural school. They showed us ERIC and we were supposed to be amazed. Given that I was young, I didn’t recognize the potential of a database that would index academic articles, and the platform was extremely limited in comparison to contemporary tools.

Fast forward a few decades and now we are surrounded by a sea of digital influences. I read most of my news online and the news that I do read often depends on the people I follow on social media. I too rarely actually go to the landing page of any website, including those sites whose content I regularly consume.

However, since I get the majority of my content through social media, that makes me vulnerable to manipulations in the algorithms. This is because, in order to keep us addicted to their content, social media platforms distort the way information is displayed on their pages. There are complex calculations running in the background to ensure that you see your cousin’s pregnancy announcement when it pops up, but only get one link to that article that everyone is reading. Also, if they think you will be offended by that popular article, they might just not show it to you.

There is no question that the social media platforms are manipulating the content that gets displayed. That, at some level, might be considered tolerable (since they own the platform) and some might believe it is relatively benign (I do not). But there is a deeper problem: the manipulation of algorithms by people that want to do us harm.

In a multipart series, Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day has researched the manipulation of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube by bots and bad guys. I’m linking here to the series, with a brief synopsis of each video, because I believe that this is content worth sharing and considering as we learn how to live within our present digital culture.

The Art of Digital War

Because of his former day job, which involved working alongside the military on weapons systems, Sandlin was afforded a unique opportunity to engage some experts on the future of war and how cyber warfare will play into the way that wars will be fought or avoided in the coming decades. This video is a key part of understanding why the manipulation of social media feeds is worth the money and time invested in it.

Manipulating the Big Three Platforms

Some of these videos are a little long, but I found them very engaging. What is most helpful is that Sandlin was given access to experts from YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook who are trying to combat the rise of bots and overtly hostile actions. I have my own concerns about how our digital overlords are using their self-granted, self-regulated powers, but it is worth seeing how the algorithms are being manipulated to better understand the world in which we live.

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

The Problem with Your Newsfeed

Although this video was released before the three-part series on the manipulation of particular platforms, but it provides a very helpful guide to being a better digital citizen. Sandlin talks to someone who works through a process of validating information before sharing it, and tries to teach us to do the same. If we all followed this sort of process, instead of simply sharing something that made us feel the right way, then false information would not be disseminated so regularly.

Sandlin also recaps why carefully parsing any links that you might share is so vitally important, because so much of the contemporary divisiveness and viral disruption of communities depends on false, or at least biased, information getting out into the main stream very quickly.

Conclusion

I’m writing on a website that has no paper counterpart, so obviously I’m not ready to step out of the digital world. A lot of the views for this website come through social media sharing and from search engines, so it isn’t in my interests to jump ship just yet.

However, we really do need to think about how the new information economy is shaping how we learn, see, and understand the world around us. We need to recognize that even more than the biased, but more benign forms of censorship and self-promotion inherent in commercial media, the rise of the portability of digital tools makes it easy for a relatively small, hostile actor to significantly influence the course of societal debate.

Being a good citizen in a digital world is part of being a good neighbor. Part of being a good neighbor is learning how the bad guys work (and the not-so-bad guys that are just as manipulative) so that we can resist unhelpful misinformation and reinterpretation in a rapidly changing environment.