16 February 2020

Cultural Christianity or Antithesis: The Means of Sanctification and the Tools of Kingdom Growth (Part 2)


The Sermon on the Mount is a profound section of Scripture and yet it is one that sacralists actually take great exception to. Not openly of course but it is striking that it is the very words of Christ that they really struggle with the most.


Some go so far as to suggest that Christ is not the pattern we are to follow but that his conduct and much of his teaching were unique to his role. Such arguments expose a great ignorance of the New Testament and there are many passages that could be appealed to but one will suffice. 1 Peter 2 makes it abundantly clear that we are to follow Christ's example. We of course are not instruments of substitutionary atonement but as servants of the Second Adam we are called to pattern our lives after Him and emulate Him.
Interestingly the context of the exhortation is within a discussion regarding our status as strangers and pilgrims and how we are to behave toward those outside, the Gentiles as they're called in the epistle. Some believe Peter's audience is compromised of strictly Jewish Christians but I think a very strong case can be made otherwise and thus some of Peter's language with regard to concepts such as diaspora and Gentiles is to be noted with great interest as once again the Church is cast as New Covenant Israel and able to appropriate its language even while leaving behind its fulfilled polity. The reference to the world as gentiles once again delineates a strong line of demarcation between the Church and the world, reminiscent of Old Israel's antithesis vis-à-vis the nations. While the Old Covenant has been fulfilled and is thus annulled (Heb 7.12-18), the historical patterns and themes of the Old Testament live on and instruct the Church. The Church like Old Israel is the Holy Nation contra mundum, and just as Israel fell into apostasy, the pattern is repeated by the Church (1 Cor 10.11).
Matthew 5 lays out a Christian ethic rooted in humility, weakness, submission, mourning and the expectation of persecution. How is this anti-Dominion ethic and imperative compatible with the idea that culture and its power are somehow a means that God uses to bring people to Christ or aid in sanctification?*
Matthew 6 lays out a piety rooted in the inner life and of one's walk with God. This is in complete contrast with the sacralist thought of Stonestreet which in reality finds more resonance in the thought of someone like Plato who believed that all piety must be tied to the public sphere. This über-Sacralism is also expressed in the thought of figures such as Peter Leithart.
Your will be done on Earth is twisted by the Dominionist to mean – help us to enforce and impose your law on the world.
The prayer which is an acknowledgment of submission and a yearning desire for the eschaton (thy Kingdom come) is perverted into an imperative for power.
And then of course there are unequivocal statements made by Christ regarding mammon. Money when reflected upon and studied out in the Scriptures is not some neutral medium of exchange to be stewarded (or efficiently exploited) as the false teachers of our day would have it. It represents security and thus is a powerful temptation toward idolatry. It's all too easy to put one's trust (or faith) in money and thus genuine faith and worship (wherein treasure is laid up in heaven) are contrasted with mammon which represents not only money, but the world and the ethics of power. Christ is very clear, there are two different religions being presented... one is the following of the True God and the other is Mammon the god of this world. They are incompatible. One is about earthly riches and power and the other is about heavenly riches and laying aside all power on this Earth, the ethics of non-resistance so clearly laid out in the sermon. Paul echoes these thoughts in passages such as Colossians 3.1 and of course 1 Timothy 6.6-12 as well as 1 Thessalonians 4.11-12.
But Stonestreet's doctrine confuses this point and the world and its mammon (and lust for it) can in fact be a means to help the Church grow and even draw people to Christ. This is of course in complete contrast to Paul's warnings in 1 Timothy 6 regarding the destructive snare of money, itself a sequel to Christ's warnings in Matthew 13 concerning the deceitfulness of riches... dangers which rob men of salvation.
It is no wonder that the false teachers of our day are also wont to pervert v.33 of chapter 6. All these things shall be added unto you becomes a form of prosperity, a cover for their riches and acquisitions, not the things of necessity mentioned in the passage.
I will not pretend that the Christian's relationship to the world and questions of money are easy. They certainly are not, all the more in this techno-industrial age – but we are guaranteed to fall into confusion following the likes of Stonestreet and his world-affirming ideology.
In Matthew 7 we're exhorted to not give that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast our pearls before swine. According to Stonestreet these dogs and swine are means by which the Kingdom can be built and they are able to produce (with the Church's coercion) a type of social morality in which people 'know Christ'.
Given that vv.13-14 indicate that few will be saved, it seems that social transformation is not on the agenda. Need we mention Christ's standing before Pilate in John 18? There it was, the very moment that the conflict was most poignant. Christ standing before the representative of Caesar. Surely he could have at least verbally asserted His Kingdom's prerogatives, he could have hinted at future expectation in the language of what will come to pass as the Church grows and progresses...
But what did he say? My Kingdom is not of this world and it's the sort of Kingdom that my servants will not fight (by implication with swords) to maintain.
Even while Stonestreet (under cover of an ever manipulated and contrived Just War Theory) champions war and slaughter as did his mentor the late Charles Colson, he seems ignorant of the coercive aspect of utilising the state, the legislature and courts to bring about the change he desires. Though Paul and Christ both rejected the courts, and Paul contrasted the Christian ethics of nonresistance with the sword of the state (Romans 12-13), Stonestreet celebrates the tools of power and if given the chance would use the armies of the American Empire to wage war (in the name of Christ) on nations such as Iran and China in order to stop the persecution of Christians. He would cast down the agents of Satan by using the tools of Satan... lies, destruction and the shedding of blood. Those who argue such think they act on behalf of Christ who certainly will come in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God and refuse to obey the gospel of Christ... and yet that task is not appointed to us. We are called to bear witness and glorify God by living martyr lives and in some cases by bearing the martyr's cross.
If Christ was keen to work with the world and viewed it as a means by which the Church could grow why does he evoke Isaiah 6 in Matthew 13 suggesting that he speaks in terms the lost cannot understand? How can the mysteries of the Kingdom (v.11) be compatible with or augmented by a veneer of social morality? How can the revealing of the mysteries of the Kingdom be compatible with a social Christianised epistemology? Apparently the lost can understand the mysteries if they just receive the proper education. They can learn to think (and act) like Christians if only the state will legislate the social code which would bring this about. How are such notions compatible with Christ's teaching? Clearly they are not.
I hope at this point the reader will understand just how pernicious is the theology of Stonestreet and how he has misunderstood the Bible in the profoundest of terms. It's as if a lost worldling has sought to appropriate the Bible and use it to create a world-friendly, world-affirming counterfeit version of the Kingdom and the Church. One wonders just what is it (in Stonestreet's mind) we're told to 'come out of' in Revelation 18.4? Only by redefining and watering down the call to 'come out' can Stonestreet maintain his position, for it is very much his intention to stay in Babylon to the very last and see it sanctified. A great deal more could be said on this point and the type of Babylon that is produced by this theology but there's more to be considered just in Matthew.
Could the profession made by Peter be brought about through the social engineering and 'Christian' education advocated by Stonestreet? What does Christ say in Matthew 16? Flesh and blood did not reveal this to him but my Father which is in heaven (Matt 16.17).
In Matthew 18.17 the Church is contrasted with the heathen man and the publican. While Christ is ready to reach out to the lost he nevertheless affirms the idea that the world-compromised tax collector (or publican) is in fact a covenant violator and should not be treated as a member of the holy community. It is along the lines of this scenario that Paul exhorts the Corinthian church (1 Cor 5.9, 11) to avoid eating with such a person, a person who is not distinguished from the world. The world is the world but the line between the world and the Church is so sharp and defined that when one is put out of the Church or abandons it for the world, they (unless they repent) must be utterly rejected (1 Cor 5.5, Matt 18.17). That's not a posture that suggests the world (the realm of Satan) has a role to play in helping the Church grow or build the Kingdom.**
These are but a handful of verses from the first eighteen chapters of Matthew and a few others that readily came to mind. My notes that deal with the topic of the Church and the World go on for many pages and would make for far too long an article and thus I will stop here. Nevertheless I hope to continue the discussion in another forum and divorced from the specifics of Stonestreet and his thought. It is a profound and very fruitful study.
God uses means, it's a point that needs to be acknowledged and understood. But God defines and delineates the means. We cannot innovate and insist that God uses the means we find most convenient to our goals and aspirations. The world and its thought are not the means used by God, but are instead contrasted with what the Church is supposed to be as it faithfully represent the Kingdom of Christ.
Stonestreet would take the unholy and make it into something that is quasi-Holy, or something that can be harnessed and used for holy purposes. Not only does this mask the true nature of the lost world and its thought but in breaking the antithesis and erasing the line of demarcation, there is a tendency to make everything  holy, a theology which begins to flirt with a type of pantheism as seen most poignantly in its extreme adherents.
But instead of making everything holy the end result is that everything becomes common or profane.... including that which is actually holy. The Church becomes the world and loses its identity. This is the theology of John Stonestreet and Charles Colson, the dominant theology of our day built on the errors of Francis Schaeffer, Abraham Kuyper and frankly finds its root in the Magisterial aspirations of the 16th century Reformers which failed to break with Rome on this point. The virus planted by the sacralist-retaining Reformation has gone through many incarnations but they all result in self-destruction. We saw it in the 19th century, the 20th century and now figures like Stonestreet lead the way for what will inevitably be a tale of 21st century apostasy.
It is no accident the likes of Colson, Stonestreet and by some accounts Schaeffer are ever drawn toward Rome as indeed the pre-Reformation Roman centuries are viewed in more or less favourable terms, a slightly flawed but beautiful ideal they would reiterate if given the chance. The lowest-common denominator approach of theological liberalism has been a driving force of the ecumenical movement. But Dominionism has served the same purpose in conservative circles and this current incarnation of the movement spawned by Schaeffer (and others) in the 1970's has continued to drift toward Rome to the point that many Evangelicals are now utterly confused and have embraced that false church as an expression of true Biblical Christianity. Dominionism is the orthodoxy of our day and as long as its tenets are held the adherents can be embraced as brethren.... those that earlier generations of Christians clearly understood to be representatives and members of antichrist.
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*It must also be noted this is hardly an appealing or marketable reality as the salesman-false teachers of our day would present it. Our joy is always accompanied with sorrow (2 Cor 6.10), and yet there's nothing about the gospel message that appeals to the unbeliever, to those in the grip of the flesh. The embrace of Christianity is rooted not in some kind of cultural ethos or social morality but in conviction, that despite its call to take up the cross and to reject the world, we believe these things with a heartfelt certainty that they are true. Broken and transformed by the Spirit, we cannot go on living a lie. How different is the faith (or trust) and conviction of New Testament Christianity than the superficial culture-focused and compromised Christianity of the likes of Stonestreet.
**It must also be noted that Dominionism's doctrine of the Kingdom has a real problem acknowledging the New Testament teaching that this is a present evil age and under the grip of Satan. There is of course a duality in that God reigns over all but that does not in any way lessen the equally true reality that Satan still has power and influence in this sphere. Broken by Christ, the reality of Christ's full authority (1 Cor 15.25) is not realised until the eschaton. The dominionists constantly appeal to the so-called Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1.26 and additionally argue for the inherent 'goodness' of creation. But this fails to properly take into account the curse resulting from The Fall, the creation's subjection to futility (Rom 8), it's trajectory toward destruction (2 Pet 3), and Paul's call to view this world as that which is passing away (1 Cor 7). The mandate of Genesis 1 is reiterated but with significant modification in Genesis 9. The earth is no longer to be subdued and thus the holy work of the Garden is no longer applicable. There is a marked hostility (fear and dread) to man's endeavours, hence the 'vanity' or 'futility' aspect that is elaborated on throughout the rest of Scripture. This is why we look to a New Heavens and New Earth wherein is found righteousness. Stonestreet and his faction do not grasp this and would work to transform this present evil age and make it holy, something that cannot be done and will only result in a dangerous counterfeit. It must be stated this theology rests on a particularly low and deficient view of the fall of man, a strange thing indeed as so many who hold to dominionism hark from Calvinistic circles, a theology that supposedly believes in total depravity.
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