Some Things Never Change

Fourth Century Christian art

According to Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (pp. 16-19), one of the hot button issues of the ancient church was the relationship of culture and classical learning to the church and its faith.  In the second century, Justin Martyr took what we would call today a liberal position on the question.  He was willing to draw widely and deeply from culture, writing "Whatever all people have said well belongs to us Christians."  He wrote that, "those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists." (First Apology, 46)  In the third century, Tertullian articulated the opposite position, namely that the church must divorce itself from "pagan" culture and learning.  These things only lead the church into error.  Eventually, St. Augustine (354-430) arrived at a formulation that became the default western Christian approach to culture, which McGrath describes as a "critical appropriation of classical culture."  Augustine's perspective was that, "whatever was good, true, or beautiful could be used in the service of the gospel." (McGrath, p. 19)  Augustine also believed, however, that these good, true, and beautiful elements of pagan culture had to be freed from that culture and grafted onto the tree of the Christian faith.  In modern terms, Augustine leaned toward a conservative position but mixed a bit of a more liberal approach in with it.

The ancient fathers of the church, thus, staked out three alternatives to the relationship between faith and culture;  One could largely embrace culture and use it to express faith.  One could largely reject culture and see it as an enemy of faith.  Or, one could pick and choose elements of culture useful to the faith.

These three choices are still with us today.  In fact, they stand at the heart of the ongoing controversy among Christians concerning culture in general and science in particular.  However, in early 21st century America the matter is slightly more complicated.  In fact, evangelicals in some ways are closer to Justin Martyr, the ancient "liberal," than either Tertullian or Augustine.  They tend to equate certain American values with the Bible and their faith and to conflate patriotism with their Christian faith.  We have even coined recently a new name for some of these folks; they are "teavangelicals."  In the U.S., on the other hand, progressive Christians tend to be critical of social and patriotic values while open to more liberal aspects of culture including science.  In fact, Tertullian's option hardly comes into play these days.  Augustine seems to have won the day for Christian conservatives while Christian progressives tend toward Justin's position that "anything said well" is Christian.

From a liberal perspective, however, we do well to be more precise about what we mean by anything being said well being Christian.  It doesn't mean that we take over or claim as our own all that is good, true, and beautiful.  Where we find value in the teachings of other faiths, for example, we recognize that we do not "own" those teachings just because we find them helpful for our own Christian faith.  Thich Nhat Hanh can speak powerfully to Christians, but he is not a Christian.  His writings are not Christian.  We insist on that for the sake of his integrity as much as our own.

At the end of the day, Christians of all stripes are still called upon to evaluate contemporary culture and make critical choices about what is good, true, and beautiful in light of Christ.  He remains the measure of culture.  Our failure across the theological spectrum is that we too often confuse him with culture and chain him to ways of thinking and behaving that aren't Christ-like.  Idolatry remains a threat, although today it more often takes the form of ideology rather than images.  In any event, some things never change.  The challenge of Christ and culture is one of those things.

The Impure Church (ii)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the second posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches.  The series began with the previous posting (here).

The first criterion used on the Mars Hill list of criteria is, "The church is made up of regenerated believers in Jesus."

This criterion, first, describes the ideal church rather than a real one.  By "regenerated believers," we can take it the church is supposed to be made up of individuals who have gone through a conversion experience that has changed their lives fundamentally.  They are "born again."  This strongly suggests that churches are to be composed only of those who are "true" Christians.  And that is a problem.  In the real world, churches are a mixture of people consistently serious in their faith, people who are sometimes serious, people seldom serious, and people who belong to the church for other reasons—frequently because other members of the family go to the church.  No church is composed entirely of "regenerated believers in Jesus."

Since at least the time of Tertullian, an early church father who lived in the second century, the church has repeatedly struggled with the issue of its purity.  It was the issue that dominated the Protestant Reformation and has contributed to the frequent subsequent splits among Protestants resulting in today's horde of denominations.  The question of true faith and right belief lies at the heart of the great divide between ecumenical and evangelical churches.  These issues have repeatedly shaken the foundations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as hundreds of churches and tens of thousands of members have abandoned the denomination especially over the question of homosexuality.

Among Protestants, at least, the purity of the church is of much greater concern, clearly, than is the unity of the church.  The problem is, of course, that a pure church is an impossible dream.  And, ironically, the pursuit of the dream does more harm than good because it fosters intolerance and judgmental attitudes, which are in spirit quite unlike Christ.  It tends to externalize our struggle with evil by encouraging us to see the speck in the eye of the other and miss the log in our own eye.  In its arrogance, the demand for a pure church made up only of "regenerated believers" actually offends others, drives them away from Christ.  And, in all of this, the desire for a pure church divides Christians one against another, weakening the church and its ability to serve in Christ's name.

The church's task is not to be pure but rather to be as effective as it can in service to Christ and neighbor, while confessing its own limitations and failures.  In the real world and facing our real human limitations, the church is not an organization of the regenerated but of the committed.  Our task is not to discover purity but humility.  Humility of spirit is a real, invaluable possibility.  Purity is a chimera.