I read this article the other day and it disheartened me to
say the least.
It's one thing for a state to allow illegal activity if that
activity stays low-key and off the main street so to speak. But when those
engaged in illegality (as defined by the state) move to conspire and
collaborate with the enemies of the state, their actions are no longer
back-alley subcultural exploits but instead become overtly political.
The Chinese Underground Church has long suffered from persecution
at the hands of the state and this has intensified under Xi Jinping who came to
power in 2012. Part of this larger story is the tale of Xi and his
consolidation of power, the greatest we've seen since Mao during the Cultural
Revolution. But prior to Xi, certainly for the past twenty-five years, things
were going relatively well for the underground churches. They were able to meet
without too much difficulty especially if their congregations were kept small.
I don't mean to make light of their difficulties, and there were certainly
arrests and forms of persecution but things had improved and were improving.
For the official state-sanctioned groups like the Protestant Three-Self
Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the Roman Catholic CPCA, the past twenty years
have been a time of flourishing and openness.
But then some in the underground decided to push the envelope
and meet openly in buildings on the 'main street' so to speak... and crown
their buildings with crosses. Much could be said about buildings and crosses
and the theological errors that permeate those who advocate and make much of
these things, but we can leave that aside for the present.
Why did the underground movement become more brazen? Was it
the prosperity of the last two decades? No doubt in part. This new impulse
flows not from the rural and urban poor but from the Middle Class and its
affluence. Despite the nomenclature and the Mao narrative, China abandoned
Communism forty years ago.
But there's also been a theological shift in that Western Evangelicalism's
'worldview' and Dominionist ethos has invaded and is even now permeating the
Chinese churches. Evangelicalism has always been about eradicating separatism
and engaging in cultural transformation but the post war movement got a shot in
the arm during the 1980's as it began to seriously interact with and be
influenced by Calvinism and its more robust and intellectual forms of this
doctrine. This picked up steam in the United States and since the 1990's has
been in the process of going global. And now it's becoming a force in China.
The New York Times article acknowledges as much.
Of course this isn't quite the same as old Confessional
Calvinism. Though it seems to be rooted in the Middle Class as is so often the
case when it comes to Calvinism, this is the 'New Calvinism' which embraces
(somewhat) Reformed Theology's understanding of predestination and decretal
theology and combines it with the Evangelicalism's ecclesiology and cultural
impulses. So in other words you get cultural transformation mixed with modern
styles and models of 'doing church' and a bit more in the way of deep
theology... at least when compared with the older forms of Evangelicalism. It has an ear-tickling power in terms of numbers that the older Calvinism seems to lack. The
so-called 'Gospel Coalition' in many ways embodies this new movement and its
ethos. Culturally minded, feminist and egalitarian, the popular and influential Dominionist
organisation often masquerades as old school theological conservatism. In the
United States the larger movement is starting to divide on a Centre-Right vs.
Far Right political faultline but such divisions are decades and even generations
away in the wider world.
As far as I'm concerned the movement is highly subversive
both to older forms of Magisterial Protestantism and to Biblical Christianity
in general. Their worldview frameworks and Dominionist theology undermine the
authority of Scripture, even while claiming to do otherwise. It is a veritable
poison and it has infected China and is rapidly spreading around the world.
Why is Wang Yi a fool? Because he has politicised the gospel
and is not a victim of persecution but rather is suffering the penalty for meddling in other men's matters and for entangling himself (and the Church) in the affairs of the world. His offense
is not due to the gospel, but rather he has chosen to drag the Church into politics,
the struggle for power. His struggle is not for the Kingdom of Christ but for
the throne of Beijing. Is this an absurd claim? Not in the least. He many not
even recognise the full import of his actions but you can be sure Xi Jinping
does. Wang's Christ is not the one who said to Pilate 'My Kingdom is not of
this world'. Instead Wang (and figures like Bob Fu) emulate those Paul
identified as confusing godliness with
gain.
When Wang traveled across the ocean in 2006 to meet with
George W Bush he betrayed the Church of Jesus Christ in China. He put all of
them in danger and compromised their nature and character because his actions
identified the Underground Church as being a Fifth Column, a political movement
seeking alliance with forces that would break the power of Beijing and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Their sought alliance and allegiance was not
with the Kingdom of Christ. He met not with Church leaders in another land but
with the president of the United States, head of the most powerful military
force on Earth... and no friend to Beijing. This antagonism has only been
amplified in the wake of Obama's Pivot to
Asia and Trump's full embrace of the Blue Team agenda.
The two countries do business but they've long been on a
conflict trajectory. By meeting with the man who holds the keys to nuclear
weapons and has threatened China's neighbours and wages wars on its borders...
wars based on lies at that... Wang Yi ceased to be a pastor and became a
political dissident-activist and as a consequence suffers the penalty that is
due.
Imagine Irenaeus journeying to Parthia and seeking aid from
the Persian Shah. How would the Caesars view such a move? What would have
happened to the Church in the Roman Empire? The Diocletian Persecution would
have come much sooner and been even more vicious. Similarly when Constantine
favoured Christianity the Christians in Persia fell under suspicion and
eventually were persecuted by Shapur II.
This does not exonerate Beijing. Xi Jinping is a wicked
tyrant and the CCP (while no longer remotely communist) nevertheless seeks to
exercise authoritarian and Beast-like powers. The Beijing government wickedly
tries to suppress the preaching of the gospel and the dissemination of religious
literature. The Church is right to ignore their laws and ought to continue
publishing, speaking and assembling. They are wicked to persecute Christians but
Wang Yi is not being persecuted. He is a dissident and by most legal
definitions a criminal who has put his faith not in the God of Scripture and
the Kingdom of Christ but in Liberalism, the Enlightenment values of the West
and their kingdoms... and their vast military power.
He is a fool and has permanently destroyed the testimony of
the underground movement. A false teacher, the Chinese Underground needs to rise
up en masse and condemn him and
distance themselves from him. He has betrayed them. His defeat means grief and
suffering for the Church. His victory would mean the Chinese Church would
succumb (even more than it already has) to the seductive poisons of the Western
Evangelical Harlot Church.
The City on the Hill in Scripture is not about politics. Read
Matthew 5 more closely. It's about antithesis. The people who live by the Beatitudes
pour scorn on the world and its ways. The idea that this means that the Church
is to appropriate the world and transform its kingdoms into Zion is
antithetical to New Testament doctrine.
As Meredith Kline wrote in 'God Heaven and Har-Magedon':
"Latent in the
Apocalyptic symbolism is an even more direct contradiction of dominion
theology's postmillennial eschatology. The melding of church with the state and
its coercive power, the arrangement which theonomic reconstructionism regards
as the kingdom ideal to be attained during the millennium, is precisely what is
anathematized in the Apocalypse as the Harlot-Babylon church, the monstrous
perversion of the true church." (Page 186)
Now I'll grant that Wang Yi is probably neither a
postmillennialist nor a Theonomist. However, these are but corollaries to the
real driving force of Dominionist Transformationalism... a doctrine deeply rooted in Calvinism and now
dominant in Evangelicalism. So while Wang and many other New Calvinists are not
necessarily Theonomic Postmillennialists, they might as well be. For their
overall strategy is very similar, as are their tactics and ethics.
Of course one of the greatest ironies in this is that
Calvinism has been historically associated with the doctrine of Total
Depravity, a belief that man has virtually no good left in him, nor any desire
or ability to do good and that the Fall has devastated man's spiritual capacity
and that as sons and daughters of Adam, we're all dead in sin apart from the
regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.
And yet historically speaking Calvinism has de facto denied this doctrine. Its
contemporary manifestations have taken this a step further. Dominion Theology
which in many aspects is but a new name (or perhaps style) for a theology as
old as the Magisterial Reformation and in many ways Theodosius and Constantine,
mandates Christianisation... the 'Christianising' of culture, a concept which
is alien to the New Testament and utterly lacking any exegetical warrant.
For this doctrine to function there must be strong
commitments to the functionality and potency of Natural Law. Of course there
are exceptions to this in some quarters as Theonomy seeks to impose a Judaized
legal system (based in part on the Old Testament) from the top down. But most
of modern Dominionist theology has focused on the concept of Common Grace. Some
theologians such as Meredith Kline have focused on Common Grace as a means of
Divine restraint during the interim. Common Grace here refers to God's
non-redemptive benevolence in which men are kept in check and societies (though
ever wicked) are able to function, produce what is necessary for human
flourishing and keep a kind of basic order. Common Grace keeps the evil in the
world at bay so that the Church can do its work... saving souls and bearing
witness to Christ which includes living in the metaphorical wilderness as
strangers and pilgrims who bear the cross. We as sheep are led to the slaughter
and are more than conquerors but Common Grace allows us to function without
being wholly eradicated by the Beast powers and their prince which dominate
this present evil age.
Dominion Theology rejects this, even though some of that ilk
continue to pay lip service to it. Rather they tend to view Common Grace as not
merely a restraint but a platform for the Church to build the Kingdom utilising
the power and wisdom of the world. The Gospel for them is about saving souls
but it's also about redeeming the world and its cultures. So for them Common
Grace is not so much restraint as it is a means by which this 'other gospel'
(as some have even dared to put it) is able to function and build the
'Kingdom'. Through 'worldview' teaching they combine the knowledge and wisdom
of the world when it comes to science, politics, economics, sociology etc...
with theology derived (sometimes dubiously) from Biblical texts. It's actually a
form of syncretism and an abuse of Sola Scriptura... and certainly a rejection
of the idea of Scriptural Sufficiency.
Common Grace is for them a means in which the unbeliever can
be steered and manipulated into conformity and even unwittingly into helping
the Church build the Kingdom on Earth... which is viewed (practically speaking)
in geopolitical and cultural terms.
This less-than-Biblical teaching has clearly affected this
new wave of Chinese Christianity.
Why does Wang care about the CCP or what the Chinese
Constitution says? Because like a good Evangelical Dominionist he wants the
Church to take over China and transform it into a 'Christian' nation...
whatever that means. Doomed to fail even if it seems to succeed, it's not a
Biblical concept. But it's a Calvinistic one and an imperative of Dominion
Theology.
A true Biblical view of the world understands that the
nations of the world and all their works are destined and doomed to perish in
the fires of Parousia. Let the dead bury their dead. Let the lost draft their constitutions
and form their corrupt governments which all serve the world system... a system
ultimately controlled by Satan and his agents. Wang Yi has not understood that
the nations of the world are Babels.... all of them. The so-called Christian
West is but a confederation of Babels. They've put cheap counterfeit crosses of
gold atop their towers but they're still Babels.
And now China has been infected with this filth, this heresy
born of the Constantinian pit. The False Church that is American Evangelicalism
has exported the plague and yet the story in China is going to take an ugly
turn.... and it makes me weep.
Wang is right in feeling something less than pity for the
compromised state churches, the Three-Self Patriotic congregations which sold
out to the state in order to be granted a respectable legitimacy.
But Wang really has nothing to say. Because if Xi Jinping converted
and China was 'transformed' into some kind of pseudo-Christian state that
favoured the Church and did away with 'underground' illegality... if the same
state now offered tax subsidies and invited pastors to Beijing to consult, Wang
would likely support it. Why? Because ultimately that's what he wants. That's
what the Western model has taught. Dominionists have no problem with the state
being involved in the Church. They just want the arrangement to be favourable
and reciprocal. Wang's criticism of the Three-Self Movement is hypocritical and
is little more than a tactical fog obscuring his true strategy and goals.
And it is this very power that ultimately leads them to sell
out and fall into corruption. Wang would do well to study American
Evangelicalism and its history of compromise. But apart from a solid understanding
of the Scripture he will not be able to see it for what it is. Others like Bob
Fu clearly have not.
Wang may have forgotten his history or is unaware of how the
United States and the West all but conquered China in the 19th and
early 20th century. He may have chosen to ignore what happened
during the Civil War (and after) and how this affected Beijing-Washington
relations right up to 1972. He may choose to ignore what Washington is doing in
Venezuela at this very moment and how US Evangelicalism utilised Right wing
groups and 'Christian' leaders during the Cold War and after. Wang may choose
to ignore these things but you can be sure Beijing has not forgotten.
Once again the worst thing Evangelicals can do is appeal to
Washington for help. Getting the Pentagon and State Department to threaten
China does not help the Chinese Church. It places it in ever greater danger and
compromises its testimony and message.
And even worse, Chinese Church leaders should not appeal to
or work with Washington. Wang must be rejected. Bob Fu should be disowned and
anathematised by the Chinese Church. These men are its worst enemies. Xi can
harm the body but Wang and Bob Fu put the Church in danger and corrupt its very
soul.
See also: