The New Perspective on Saul

You know how it’s become all trendy to, like, try to go back in time and read Paul in his original context or whatever? As in, “Oh, Paul lived in the period known as Second-Temple Judaism, so in order to understand Galatians we need to know what those Judaizers stood for,” blah blah blah? Well, I got to thinking about this trend toward old-school theology, and I think it’s pretty awesome. The older the better, I say.

That’s why I’m going to start espousing what I call the New Perspective on Saul. I mean, if we’re going to go old-school, let’s go all the way back—I’m talking ad-frickin-fontes, baby. Because if everything just gets perverted over time, then the farther back you go, the better stuff will be, right?

Being Pauline is gay. I say, let’s be Sauline!

I haven’t quite worked out the intricacies of my new theological movement yet, but I’m thinking it’s for sure going to make a big deal out of the whole idea of grace. Now, grace is an easy thing to misunderstand, so let me explain what I mean. My movement will say that it’s totally by God’s grace that we get to be a part of God’s people, which is pretty awesome, right? There’s, like, nothing we can do to get in, so we can’t take any credit for anything. Of course, once we’re in we have to make sure we do a bunch of good things so we don’t get kicked out onto the street and end up totally disinherited, but that kind of comes with the territory. The thing to remember is, we get in by grace alone!

And when it comes to figuring out exactly what kinds of good works we need to do to stay in God’s family, it’s easy. Just go straight to the Old Testament and read all about it there (you know, all those "blessings and curses" passages from the Law). It’s not rocket science or anything—the tenure of Israel in the land is exactly like us in the church today, so just like they lived under the constant threat of exile, so do we (but of course, for us it’s not getting shipped off to Babylon that we need to get all worried about, it’s America losing its power in the world. But seriously, that won’t ever happen! Not as long as we keep the terms of our national covenant with God and all.)

So there you have it, a truly killer vintage theology for the new millennium!

Now I know what you’re thinking: “But what about the New Covenant? Isn’t that supposed to be pretty important or whatever?” Hmmm, let’s see. Howsabout while you’re pondering that question I’ll be over here savoring some delicious pork chops while chopping wood on a Saturday. Oh, you want some pork chops, too? Well here you go, amigo! You can thank Jesus for these!

Man, this whole New Perspective on Saul way of life just rocks—eating shell fish, violating the Sabbath, not circumcising my kids, living a good enough life to be justified—I don’t know why I didn’t think this up sooner. And to think how hard life was before Jesus came along! Peter and all those guys at the Jerusalem Council were right to whine and moan about life under Moses versus life under Christ. I mean, have you ever actually tried a kosher hotdog at a ballgame? Because until you've tried to stomach one of those things, you’ll never truly appreciate how superior the New Covenant is.

< /satire >

You Say You Want a Revolution?

I’m neither a student of the philosophy of science nor the son of a student of the philosophy of science, but I do know this: Thomas Kuhn wrote a pretty important book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in which he argued that the way many people tend to think about the development of scientific theory is all wrong. The popular assumption is that on the one hand there is a mountain of data, and on the other there are hypotheses and conclusions that scientists draw from it. As the data increases, our hypotheses adjust to the new information and are slightly tweaked and modified over time so that all the relevant data can be accounted for.

Wrong, says Kuhn.

As nice as this theory may sound, the fact of the matter is that the increase in observable data often renders the reigning hypotheses obsolete due to their inability to account for it all, and when this happens, the existing hypotheses aren’t merely modified and adjusted, they are thrown out altogether and replaced with completely new ones.

What’s the point of all this?

Well, it seems that the same thing can be true when it comes to the relationship of exegesis and systematic theology. When one’s understanding of the biblical data can no longer support his systematic categories, the best response is not simply to tweak the categories or invest them with new meanings, but rather to scrap them completely and start over.

For example, if a Reformed believer’s understanding of the biblical data is such that baptism regenerates and conveys adoption, justification, and union with Christ, it does little good to qualify this with the phrase “in a certain sense.” Likewise, if a Reformed believer thinks that the Bible teaches that the principle by which Adam would have inherited eternal life before the fall was the same as what happens afterwards, it’s not enough to appeal to the need for covenant faithfulness no matter when we live. And still further, if a good Calvinist thinks the Scriptures teach that saving blessings can be had and then lost, and that the works that finally justify are ours and not Christ’s, then again, it doesn’t really help to point out that the New Testament demands good works of Christians in order to attain eternal life. In a word, these various appeals and qualifications notwithstanding, a point seems to have been reached for some of those among us where expecting Reformed systematic categories to bear up under the burden of all this so-called biblical data is unfairly stressful and unrealistic. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, there must come a point where the one trying it needs to just surrender and admit the futility of the task.

Perhaps a better (not to mention much less frustrating) alternative to maintaining a carefully nuanced and highly qualified allegiance to doctrinal standards that don’t really fit one’s biblical theology anyway would be to take Kuhn’s advice and jettison the old lenses for new ones. Think about it: you’ll see more clearly, you’ll avoid battling with those who don’t see things the way you do, and perhaps most significant of all, you’ll garner the respect of those you leave behind (since admitting what we are is always better than pretending to be what we’re not. Plus, you weren’t really fooling anyone anyway!).

White and Chapell

PCA Pastor Wes White just published a post in which he clarifies and apologizes for some statements made by him and Brian Carpenter about Dr. Bryan Chapell. You can read the post here.

Burn, Baby, Burn

The more discussions I am involved in about the two kingdoms, or about the relationship between cult and culture, or about the differences between amillennialism and postmillennialism (which is sometimes called “optimistic amillennialism”), the more clear it becomes that one of the most important exegetical sticking points in such debates is the issue of the eternal state in the age to come. Specifically, how exactly this present age will give way to the age to come, and how much continuity there will be between the two. Will earth just be swallowed up by heaven in an immediate and cataclysmic gulp, or will earth gradually become more heavenly over time as God’s people continue to take dominion over creation?

This is why my ears pricked up upon reading Keith Mathison’s review and critique of David VanDrunen’s newest book, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms—it was precisely this issue that Mathison considered to be the focal point of his disagreement with VanDrunen. My goal for this post is simply to present VanDrunen’s case that there is virtually no continuity between this age and that to come beyond what is found in believers themselves. In other words, none of our cultural artifacts—whether musical, architectural, or artistic—will withstand the Day of the Lord and emerge in the new heavens and new earth. In subsequent posts I may draw some further implications out of VanDrunen’s position as well as interact with Mathison’s critique, but the goal here is simply to present VanDrunen’s case and see how you think it holds up.

(And let me say that I have tremendous respect for both of these men. I was a student of VanDrunen’s for three years at Westminster Seminary California, and Mathison and I have corresponded via email over a number of topics over the last few years, this one included. Both men are charitable and careful scholars.)

VanDrunen puts the question this way:

The Main question is: what happens to the things of this world and particularly to the products of our cultural activity, in light of the revelation of the world-to-come in the new heavens and new earth?

He then answers:

The New Testament teaches that the natural order as it now exists will come to a radical end and that the products of human culture will perish along with the natural order.... The world-to-come will be revealed amidst the destruction of the present world.

For evidence of his position VanDrunen appeals to II Peter 3, which says that “the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly,” and that on the Day of the Lord, “the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed... the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!” (vv. 10-12). Moreover, God’s promise to Noah that seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter would not cease was prefaced with the words “while earth remains” (Gen. 8:22). Peter “announces the coming of a time when earth will remain no more and the regularities of nature will cease, being dissolved in the consuming fire of the last day.”

Similarly Hebrews 12 says, “At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (vv. 26-28).

VanDrunen then points us to Romans 8, where Paul says that the created order is groaning to be released from the burden of its bondage to decay. In so doing, creation is longing for “glory”—not for “an improvement of its present existence but the attainment of its original destiny.”

It is here that we see some continuity between this world and that to come, but that continuity is not to be found in our cultural artifacts or production that somehow survive the judgment and make their way into the eschaton. Rather, the continuity lies in “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23). VanDrunen says that

... it is precisely this—the resurrection of believers’ bodies—that the created order is now longing for.... Our earthly bodies are the only part of the present world that Scripture says will be transformed and taken up into the world-to-come. Believers themselves are the point of continuity between this creation and the new creation.

Paul tells the Corinthians not to be overwhelmed by their earthly engagements (such as marriage, mourning, rejoicing, and commerce) as though these things were of ultimate importance. The reason for this is that “the present form of this world is passing away” (I Cor. 7:31). Jesus reminds us that marriage will not continue into the age to come, and Paul told Timothy that just as we brought nothing into this world, so we can carry nothing out.

Finally, VanDrunen appeals to Revelation 18, which describes the doom of Babylon in vivid detail, including the destruction of all its activities such as merchantry, music, and marriage. In the new heavens and new earth, “the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (Isa. 65:17).

VanDrunen goes into greater detail than I have entered into here, but the foregoing data should suffice to give you a general picture of what his position entails.

Thoughts?

No Nation Under God

In her Newsweek article titled "One Nation Under God," Lisa Miller reports that President Obama met with a team of moderate Christian leaders in Washington on November 30—among them Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo—for the purpose of articulating “a vision of Christianity that will counter a new—and newly powerful—religious-right rhetoric in advance of the 2012 election.”

The reason for such a meeting of the minds is obvious, especially if you’ve been watching Fox News: America enjoys a kind of divine Most-Favored Nation status in the world, and that status is being compromised by socialists who are calling our most beloved core values into question.

What’s motivating religious conservatives now, says Campolo, is a vision of America as God’s own special country, and free-market capitalism as crucial to the nation’s flourishing. Everyone who doesn’t see things this way, according to this perspective, is a socialist or a communist—“Pinkos who are subverting America under the auspices of the president of the United States,” he says. “The marriage between evangelicalism and patriotic nationalism is so strong that anybody who is raising questions about loyalty to the old, laissez-faire capitalist system is ex post facto unpatriotic, un-American, and by association non-Christian.” Support for Obama, in other words, equals an abandonment of American principles equals godlessness.

And there is little doubt who is leading the charge: “And the spokesman for this movement, adds Campolo, is the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck. ‘There’s no question in our minds about that.’” In fact, Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, goes as far as to say that “Right-of-center independents and religious conservatives believe that America is an exceptional place,” says “If you’re going to be a candidate or a leader of a party and you’re seen as a person who doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, you’re going to have a hard time winning.”

Miller explains that

Evangelicals characteristically see themselves as a persecuted group whose values are under assault by the mainstream culture, and Beck has most successfully (and visibly) reframed those values in terms of patriotism. The enemy is no longer “moral relativism,” a term that encompasses sexual promiscuity, divorce, homosexuality, and pornography. It’s socialism, the redistribution of wealth, immigrants—a kind of “global relativism” that makes no moral distinction between America and every other place. Beck speaks frequently about God’s special destiny for America. “We used to strive in this country to be a shining city on the hill,” he said at the “Restoring Honor” rally in August. “That’s what the Pilgrims came here for. That’s what they thought this land was. It’s what our Founders thought ... It is the shining example of a place where people work together in peace and friendship and worship God and make things better together.”

(Of course, it wasn’t Glenn Beck’s spiritual ancestors who ventured to the new world on the Mayflower since his religion hadn’t been invented yet. In fact, in the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries Mormons like Beck were routinely persecuted by the very Christians whose vision he hopes to resurrect, ironically enough.)

Miller also highlights the fact that it is the idea that America occupies a unique place in God’s divine plan that helps account for certain aspects of U.S foreign policy:

This sense of America’s divine mission in the world grew. In the middle of the 19th century, legions of Protestant missionaries fanned out across the globe on errands from God, hoping to teach others the lessons of democracy and the Gospel—ideologies that were inexorably intertwined. “We wouldn’t be in Afghanistan if it weren’t for the missionaries of the 19th century,” says Grant Wacker, professor of American religious history at Duke. “It’s this whole complex of ideas: the world is our province, and we have both the right and the obligation to tutor the rest of the world.”

In other words, our city-on-a-hill national vision not only allows us, but in some sense obligates us, to play the role of earth’s guardian-slash-provider whose job is to export our religion, our democratic ideals, and our fast-food restaurants to those who either long for such things, or who would do so if they truly knew what’s best for them.

How ought the Reformed Christian to react to all this? What should be our response to learning that, come presidential campaign season, both the Democrats and Republicans will be playing tug-of-war with Jesus?

I would like to offer a handful of observations that I hope will help clarify our thinking on some of these issues, as well as provide some fodder for further discussion and study of these matters.

First, any proponent of two-kingdoms theology should feel very uncomfortable with the idea that the solution to the conservative politicization of the Christian faith is cheering on liberals when they try to do it. It is extremely anachronistic for anyone, whether on the left or the right, to try to claim divine sanction for free-market capitalism or biblical justification for universal healthcare. The Bible is not a political manual or blueprint for earthly utopia.

Second (and speaking of utopias), we must remember that our Reformed doctrine of the liberty of conscience means that one man’s utopian dream is may very well be another man’s nightmarish dystopia. This is why those who long for their ministers to “take a prophetic stance against the culture” need to be careful what they wish for—they may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to listen to a 12-week sermon series on the evils of multinational corporations and their role in the killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians during our so-called liberation of Iraq. You see, the thing about prophets is that their hearers have no veto power, nor do they have any say about which sins the prophet chooses to rebuke (and chances are, since “judgment begins in the house of God,” they will pick sins to rebuke that Christian tend to find tolerable [instead of the obvious ones]).

Third, America does not have any role in God’s redemptive plan for planet earth. The kingdom of Christ is manifested in this age in the visible church, not in any nation-state, regardless of how noble its history or how lofty its ideals. Many Reformed people have learned this lesson only partially—they have trashed their Left Behind novels and admitted that they were wrong about Israel, but they still haven’t figured out that they’re wrong about America, too.

Fourth, Obama is not a socialist. Even if our president’s wildest dreams were fulfilled, he would still be miles and miles to the right of much of the rest of the industrialized West. You don’t get elected president in this country unless you’re willing to repay with favorable legislation the oil, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies that helped you gain the highest office in the land. Say what you want about President Obama, but he is a smart man. It would be politically suicidal for him to make any actually progressive moves such as ending the for-profit healthcare system, or re-tailoring U.S. foreign policy in a truly systemic way. Sure, progressive moves such as these may be popular, but the unfortunate fact is that American presidents don’t only work for us, they also work for their corporate benefactors. Thus when we take a couple steps back and analyze our two-party system, it becomes apparent that the only thing that distinguishes Republicans from Democrats is not the overall vision for our domestic and foreign policy (they both agree on this), but the miniscule details of that overall plan about which they disagree. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Lastly and most importantly, American Christians need to remember something that we so easily forget, and that is that our true homeland is an eternal, heavenly one whose allure cannot be compromised by the goings-on of the culture war. It is remarkable that, for all the passionate Christian devotees of right-wingers like Glenn Beck or lefties like Jim Wallis, there are very few evangelicals in this country who can articulate the doctrine of justification in a coherent and biblical way. In other words, we Christians seem to have sacrificed the one thing that makes us unique—the gospel—on the altar of some baptized political ideology for which the divine Son of God isn’t even necessary.

So even if America does cease to be particularly special or unique in the world, we can rest assured that the church will always be so, for it is her errand that cannot be mimicked, and her message that cannot (and must not) be co-opted by the powers that be, whether on the right or the left.

Mathison Reviews Living in God's Two Kingdoms

In case you haven't seen it, Keith Mathison posted a critique of VanDrunen's book Living in God's Two Kingdoms on Ligonier's website today. I am still working through it, so I will refrain from posting any comments about it until I have read the review thoroughly. I do know that Keith is a careful theologian and a charitable debater (in fact, he was gracious enough to run his concerns by me and a couple others in a multi-post email exchange a couple weeks ago which was intended by him to make sure he was correctly representing the 2K position before responding to it publically).

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I'd encourage us all to read Mathison's review and then discuss it in some depth next week.

Seeing Through the See-Through

Here's a snippet from my forthcoming book, The Destiny of the Species:

***

In order for those of us who share this frustration with earth to give expression to our longing for the transcendent over the temporal, we must also join the resistance. And on one level it shouldn’t be that hard to enlist volunteers, for as I argued in the last chapter, the more we are in touch with our true humanity the more we will recognize the misplaced and displaced nature of the unmerry merry-go-round that is our lives. Whether by the market, the state, or the trends of the culture, the fact is that multitudes of Americans feel as if their lives are being co-opted and commandeered by interests not their own.

This phenomenon is powerfully articulated by Naomi Klein in her book No Logo, which draws attention to the inroads that global corporations have made into just about every sphere of life, from public education to public space. She writes that when she began the book,

... my hypothesis was mostly based on a hunch. I had been doing some research on university campuses and had begun to notice that many of the students I was meeting were preoccupied with the inroads private corporations were making into their public schools. They were angry that ads were creeping into cafeterias, common rooms, even washrooms; that their schools were diving into exclusive distribution deals with soft-drink companies and computer manufacturers, and that academic studies were starting to look more and more like market research. [1]

Describing her own research and accompanying journey, she continues:

This personal quest has taken me to a London courtroom for the handing down of the verdict in the McLibel Trial; to Ken Saro-Wiwa’s friends and family; to anti-sweatshop protests outside Nike Towns in New York and San Francisco; and to union meetings in the food courts of glitzy malls. It took me on the road with an “alternative” billboard salesman and on the prowl with “adbusters” out to “jam” the meaning of those billboards with their own messages. And it brought me, too, to several impromptu street parties whose organizers are determined to briefly liberate public space from its captivity by ads, cars and cops. [2]

David Dark (who in addition to being an author teaches high school English) concurs with Klein’s analysis of people’s attitudes toward the loss of control over their own thoughts. He says of his students that:

They take personally the apocalyptic significance of films whose protagonists discover themselves in carefully scripted, immersive environments which create the illusion of freedom while using inhabitants to fuel their own death-dealing machinery. They know the joke’s on them when a voice says, “Because we value you, our viewers/customers/clients....” And the bright colors, earnest-sounding voices, and lively music only serve to remind that someone (or something) is trying to create demand and move product…. The sense that they’ve been playing roles in a vast formula of market research, while occasionally consoling themselves with a packaged rebellion, isn’t a realization anyone can sustain for long without becoming depressed. But there is something powerfully invigorating about imagining, especially in the company of young people, what it might mean to take the red pill of reality on a regular basis or to weather the storm to the limits of one’s bubble and to break on through to the other side. [3]

At our most cynical we admit that, from earth’s perspective (what Ecclesiastes calls life “under the sun”), this is what we’re for. The whole point of our existence, our taking up precious space on this planet, is to fuel the machine and to enforce the system of the status quo: “In The Matrix, we’re conceived for the purpose of being plugged in. We’re fuel for the prodigious machinery. The commodification knows no end.” [4]

But some know better, even if they don’t know how, or why. Like Neo, or like Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, they can stand up in protest to the dehumanizing demands of the their day:

“I see all this potential, and I see squandering: an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy $h!t we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

It is the ability to see through what’s see-through, to penetrate the façade and steal a glimpse of the worldly wizard behind the curtain, that Dark and others refer to as “apocalyptic living.” As I will argue in subsequent chapters, our native eyes and tainted perspective can only take us so far, and that ultimately God alone can provide for us the lenses through which we can truly behold the depths and degree of our servitude. For our present purposes, though, it’s enough to note that, despite the world’s pomp and promises, the emperor is wearing no clothes.

And many of us know it.

[1] Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2000), xx.
[2] Ibid., xxii.
[3] Dark, Apocalypse, 81-82.
[4] Ibid., 87.

Scott Clark Needs to be Narrower

A friend of mine just directed me to one of Doug Wilson’s latest posts in which he offers some thoughts on N.T. Wright and his lecture at ETS. Contra those who consider Wright a Catholic in Anglican clothing, Wilson insists that “Wright's blunders are genuinely Protestant blunders. But blunders they are, and we really need to address them.” One of these blunders, Wilson says, is his wrongly understanding human “righteousness” in terms of one being a member of God’s covenant community, thus removing from the term any moral connotations. So far, so good.

What struck me about Wilson’s post, though, was his somewhat random choice to mock Scott Clark in the middle of it. He writes:

[I]n order to address [Wright’s errors] effectively, someone needs to take the trueblue confessional screechers aside, and tell them to stop being the TSA of the Reformed world…. So, in a postmodern world, teeming with egalitarian, evolutionary, academic, and relativistic C4, Scott Clark is busy confiscating knitting needles and bottles of contact solution containing more than three ounces.

After this rant, Wilson promptly returns to his critique of Wright.

Obviously Wilson feels that his own disagreements with Wright are weighty and substantial, while Clark’s disagreements with Wright are trivial and annoying. What is it that accounts for this seeming double standard? I mean, if you ask Clark about the reasons for his disagreements with Wright, he will say that they focus on Wright’s failure to distinguish properly between faith and faithfulness, gospel and law, and grace and works. Those issues don’t sound trivial to me, and they certainly don’t sound like the spiritual equivalent of the TSA taking away an old lady’s tube of denture cream.

But when you stop and think about it, it becomes immediately clear that the errors for which Clark faults Wright are the very same errors for which he faults Wilson. Wilson’s mocking dismissal of Clark’s disagreements with the New Perspective, therefore, can seemingly be explained by the fact that they also apply to the Federal Vision.

It would appear, then, that the reason Wilson wants people like Clark banned from the New Perspective discussion is not really because of the overly-scrupulous nature of his attacks, but because those attacks aren’t narrow enough to just zero in on Durham, but they also set their sights upon Moscow, Idaho. In a word, Wilson’s problem isn’t that Clark is too nitpicky, it’s that he’s not nitpicky enough, for if he would agree to pinpoint only those errors of Wright’s that Wilson agrees are erroneous, then all would be well and Clark would welcomed back into the discussion. But since his attacks on Wright are broader than what Wilson is comfortable with, he is branded a mere irritant and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

So there you have it: the real problem with Scott Clark is that he's just not narrow enough. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call irony.