Category: Blogs

I think an important evangelical legacy is its emphasis upon the authority, even inerrancy, of Scripture. Therein we find the truths revealed about our need, as well as God’s plan of salvation through Christ. We also discover some amazing promises and expectations regarding what the Christian life should look like.

Put simply, biblically, the Christian life is a supernatural one to be lived in a deeply intimate, personal relationship with the living God. Through His Spirit in us, we have Jesus’ promised presence and power made available to us. We have been given power to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8); bear the fruit of His life (Gal 5:22-23); see the risen Christ made present (manifest) in our midst, through His body (1 Cor 12:7); be filled to all the fullness of God (Eph 3:19); and much, much more. Jesus even warns us that apart from abiding in Him – living life in deep unity with, and in dependence upon, Him – we can do nothing (John 15:5).

But, if the normal Christian life is one in which we, His people, are to be marked by His presence and power, how come we seem to see so little of that today, at least in the west, and particularly the U.S.? How come so many seem to think Christians are not really living differently from others?

There could be various factors at work here. But, I want to consider the Bible’s expectations of what the Christian life should be like, and then consider our expectations in light of Scripture’s. I think we will find that there is a considerable disconnect between them.

Consider Scripture’s expectations. I think it narrates an overarching theme: God wants to be our God, we are to be His people, and He wants to dwell in our midst. For instance, repeatedly, the Old Testament announces God’s desire to be our God and make a people for Himself (e.g., Ex 6:7; Lev 26:12; Jer 7:23, 11:4, 30:22; and Ezek 36:28). He also wants to dwell in the midst of His people; e.g., Ex 29:45-46; Zech 2:10-11; and Ezek 37:27. God wants to be intimately personal with people. Consider Moses (Ex 33:7-20, 34:4-6a) and David (Ps. 27:4, 34:8). Those same themes continue in the New Testament (e.g., John 1:14; John 17:3; and 2 Cor 6:16). Finally, at the end of Scripture, these same themes reappear in great beauty (Rev 21:3 and 22:4).

Before the fall, Adam and Eve lived in this intimacy and deep unity with the Lord. His Spirit lived in them, and their hearts and minds were united with His. They knew and experienced the beauty and fulfillment of God’s love.

But, when they chose to listen to the voice of the serpent to be as God, they died spiritually – the Spirit no longer lived in them. Moreover, their hearts and minds no longer were united with those of God. Instead, they would listen to and follow the voice of their “father” the devil (cf. John 8:44), such that they would want to define good and evil (Gen 3:5), and even the rest of reality, I think.

But, God’s solution addresses these very needs. The Spirit of God lives in us and has given us a new heart. Biblically, the heart is the core of our being, that from which we really live, will, and trust. The old heart was desperately deceitful and wicked (Jer 17:9), but the new heart is to live in deep unity with God’s, trusting and loving Him and one another. We can live as God desired for Solomon, with a hearing heart (1 Kings 3:9, lit.) that listens to and loves God. Also, in the new birth, we have been given access to the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). What intimacy!

Now, this intimacy far exceeds what we need to know truths in Scripture. God also wants us to know Him – experientially, by intimate acquaintance with Him. But, we have expectations of the Christian life, too, and I think these have been shaped by factors other than just the Bible. I will consider some of them in subsequent posts.

Last time, I explored how, biblically, God wants His people to live in a deep, intimate unity with His heart (“a hearing heart”) and mind, all in the life and power of His Spirit. This intimacy involves knowledge of truths God has revealed, which are vital. Yet, it seems we often focus primarily on getting such knowledge.

However, God also wants us to know Him in personal, experiential ways. Jesus said that this is enteral life (John 17:3). David heard God’s voice and guidance (e.g., 1 Sam 23:10-12), and he desired supremely to dwell in God’s presence, to behold His beauty (Ps 27:4).

These and other biblical passages create a heightened expectancy that God wants to be intimately personal with us. Yet, why are so many believers in the west not experiencing His promised power and presence? Many factors, and not just biblical ones, can shape our expectations. Some can be very individual; e.g., if someone has been abandoned by his or her father, that trauma easily can affect that person’s perception of God as Father, who could seem distant, or untrustworthy. Yet, other factors can be more pervasive in their influence on Christians. I will survey some such factors in this and other posts.

Though we are not to be conformed to this world (Rom 12:2), nonetheless we are shaped by the cultures in which we live and the ideas of the times. Some Christians have paved the way with shaping ideas, too. For instance, about 600 years ago, a seemingly small, but profound, shift took place. William of Ockham, a theologian, championed the move away from universals to nominalism. In the Middle Ages, under Catholicism, Aristotle’s paradigm had dominated theologically and philosophically. On it, people thought real, immaterial, essential natures exist that are shareable (i.e., they are universals). For instance, all humans are a unity of a human body and a common human nature. Each person’s essence is his or her soul.

Moral virtues also are universal qualities all humans should have because their nature. As a universal and immaterial, courage would be one virtue. In addition, on Plato’s views, courage itself is not located in space and time. Yet, courage itself can be present in many people. So, a universal is a “one-in-many.”

However, nominalism suggests that things are what they are in name only. According to it, everything is concrete (exists in space and time) and particular, not universal. While nominalists might say people are courageous, or maybe their particular qualities seem to resemble each other, they literally do not share a common quality, courage.

What then makes a group of humans all human? It is not their having a common essence. Also, it seems hard to imagine how immaterial entities really have a place on nominalism, for what exists is located in space and time. Such things would seem to be material and empirically knowable.

Key philosophers who helped shape the Scientific Revolution (such as Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Hobbes) adopted nominalism. Accordingly, science would focus on what is empirically knowable and, most likely, material. But, this shift has vast implications. In Europe, Christian thought dominated religiously and philosophically, so the shift suggested reality should be understood in terms of two groups. On one hand, there would be the empirically knowable things. On the other, there could be immaterial things like God, souls, angels, virtues, and the like. However, if what is objectively real is what nominalism says, then these things seem to be just subjective or faith posits. This implication tended to undermine confidence in what Christianity taught is real. Nominalism has other implications, too. Suppose we really are just material; how can God really have a personal relationship with us? If everything is particular, how can we have God’s intended meaning in Scripture in our minds? How can Jesus save us from our sins if He doesn’t literally have a common nature with us? These implications alone are serious and suggestive, but thinkers also combined nominalism with other views that would deeply shape our expectations for the Christian life. I will look at more of them in the next

In my last post, I surveyed how a shift 600 years ago, away from believing in the reality of immaterial, universal qualities, to the belief that everything is concrete, particular, and located in space and time (nominalism), served as a key philosophical underpinning of the Scientific Revolution. If everything in creation (except God, angels, souls, etc.) is located in space and time, then it seems these are material and known empirically. That helped spur the development of modern science. However, it also raised serious issues for Christianity and the nature of reality.

In the early modern period, two other philosophical views arose to prominence. One was mechanical philosophy; we, and even the universe, are machines than function mechanistically. The second was atomism. Fundamentally, we are composed of atoms, which are the basic constituents of reality. Material qualities, such as size, shape, quantity, and location, became known as the objective, primary qualities. But, in light of the influence of Christianity and Aristotle, people still tended to think there are secondary qualities, such as colors, tastes, or odors. But, because these philosophies treated what’s real as material, these became regarded as subjective or just names we use (a nominalist view).

As results, Newton’s views developed along mechanistic lines, so God was needed only to start the initial machine. Indeed, if the universe is a machine and runs by natural laws, then those naturally lead to a deistic view of God. Plus, it suggests the universe is causally closed.

Moreover, the Puritans welcomed investigation into the orderliness of creation, since God is an orderly lawgiver. They embraced this 17^th-century science. Likewise, evangelicals in the U.S. revered Francis Bacon’s inductive, scientific method. With the growth in prestige of science, they thought all disciplines, including theology, should be done scientifically. Bacon advocated that in science we should drop two of Aristotle’s four kinds of causes. He thought we should use material causes (the matter of which something is made) and efficient causes (what brings about an effect), but drop formal and final causes. These latter causes appealed to our essence and its related teleological goal, but as an atomist, Bacon had no place for such immaterial things. Instead, he focused on what we can know empirically, which was material.

With these kinds of views in place, scientists (e.g., Galileo, Boyle) used empirical methods to observe the created order. Through many discoveries, modern science developed and gained great prestige. But, it is important to notice that these empirical discoveries did not depend upon the truth of nominalism or mechanical atomism. If universals exist, there still could be an empirically knowable world with particular instances of colors, shapes, locations, etc. If creation includes essences, they still would be in their instances. For things like humans, we still could know what is empirically accessible about them, but that alone would not have anything to say against the existence of the soul. If the material aspects of the universe operate according to natural laws, that does not rule out in principle the existence of immaterial things, including such laws themselves. In other words, science with its empirical focus does not rule out the existence of immaterial realities. Rather, it was the wedding of science to these philosophies that served to undermine belief in what’s immaterial.

Notice also some implications of these philosophies.  If we are mechanisms made of atoms, how can we have souls? If not, how can we have personal relationships, even with God? If creation operates according to mechanistic, natural laws, we would tend not to expect God to act miraculously today. Yet, that often seems to be Christians’ mindset today in the west. And, even though evangelicals in the U.S. held onto orthodox doctrines through the Civil War, nonetheless, by these views, they treated God as functionally deistic. All these implications themselves lead to a devastating, practical effect – we shouldn’t expect God to be intimate and personal with us (even though we may preach otherwise).

But, there were more factors that eroded the biblical expectation that God would be intimate with us. In the next post, I will look at another one.

Not only did our (U.S.) evangelical predecessors deeply embrace modern science along Bacon’s lines, they also embraced the broader Enlightenment confidence in human reason, which also was felt in Europe. Kant expressed that motto well: “‘have the courage to use your own intelligence!’- [this] is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”[1] In the states, however, Thomas Reid’s “common sense” philosophy enjoyed great influence. As a response to Hume’s skepticism, Reid emphasized our intuition to know universal truths objectively. Historian George Marsden comments that our objective common sense could discern the “careful observation and classification of facts,” which was applied as a general methodology.[2] The utter perspicuity of truth was clearly seen and easy to understand.  All people needed to do was gather facts, catalog, and properly organize them by Bacon’s method.

People in the U.S. had embraced widely the truths of Christianity as a matter of common sense. So strong was confidence that many evangelicals thought it was just “common sense” that science’s findings will square with the Bible. So, they felt little need to integrate science’s findings with Scripture.

However, don’t we need to interpret these facts? If so, how, and why? The “common sense” answer was that right reason would be able to discern clearly objective truth. Applying this to the Bible, there wasn’t a deeply felt-need to defend it. Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield displayed this attitude:

It is the distinction of Christianity that it has come into the world clothed with the mission to reason its way to its dominion. … Christianity makes its appeal to right reason, and stands out among all religions, therefore, as distinctively “the Apologetic religion.” It is solely by reasoning that it has come thus far on its way to its kingship. And it is solely by reasoning that it will put all its enemies under its feet.[3]

Thus, “common sense” fostered an attitude that there was no problem with our being “objective” (unbiased).  It’s as though people did not need to consider how the many shaping influences (e.g., the philosophies behind, and prestige of, modern science; the high confidence in human reason; Christianity’s strength in the U.S.; etc.) might affect how they interpreted reality.

Notice, though, that while “common sense” had some strengths (e.g., we can know some truths  directly), still our predecessors underestimated the extent of the fall on our minds – and even on our hearts. Now, evangelicals still doctrinally held to depravity. But, it’s as though John 15:5 (that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing) either was ignored or wasn’t seen as a problem. This was a radical underestimation. Not only is our ability to have knowledge limited as creatures, we also have blind spots due to our sinfulness. Unless deeply united with the Lord, we will tend, even subtly, to want to elevate their minds and hearts above the Lord.

This mindset is naturalistic in the sense that Nietzsche meant when he claimed God is dead. He did not mean that God used to exist, but no longer does. Rather, he meant the concept of God is no longer relevant for modern life. Now, this implies we can go beyond any limitations on our authority and freedom, just as the serpent claimed in Gen 3:5: “you will be like God, knowing [or, defining] good and evil” (NASB), and even reality itself.

This over-optimism in our reason’s abilities was another step in making God seem distant, for if our reason is so good, why would we need to depend utterly upon Him to know truth? However, more factors have tended to undermine our expectations that God wants to be intimate. I’ll explore more in the next post.

[1] From his “What is Enlightenment?” trans. and ed. by Carl J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), 145 (bracketed insert mine).

[2] George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2^nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 14.

[3] Benjamin B. Warfield, “Introduction,” in Francis R. Beattie, Apologetics, or The Rational Vindication of Christianity, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA: The Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1903), 26.

We have seen how various philosophies and mindsets of the times served to erode the Christian’s biblically-based confidence that God wants to be intimate with us. On top of them, after Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection broke onto the scene, many began to think Christianity wasn’t needed even to explain our origins.

However, about 70 years before Darwin, Kant had given science even greater prestige. With his theory of knowledge, Kant thought we cannot know things in themselves (as they really are) but only as they appear to us. He concluded that all knowledge comes by the five senses. So, the “realm” about which we have knowledge is the empirical realm, which science investigates. It has the position of giving us knowledge. While his own views differed somewhat, his legacy is that the things in the realm of things as they really are, apart from our experience, are matters of opinion, preference, and our constructs. These include ethics, religion, and more. Today, we call this divide the “fact-value split,” which has its roots in the earlier primary-secondary qualities distinction.

Now, Darwin’s theory was developed in explicitly naturalistic ways – there are no supernatural, immaterial things; only the natural is real. Thus, we are just bodies without souls. Notice how this view of reality was not that much different than had been accepted previously under the influences of nominalism and mechanical atomism.

In hindsight, evangelicals largely were caught unprepared. They thought good science was a study of fixed laws. Moreover, they did not see a need to integrate science with Scripture due to their belief that Scripture’s veracity was just common sense. However, the definition of science had changed to a study of development. All that evangelicals could say was that evolution was not good science (on the older definition). But, that did not carry much weight in a time in which science enjoyed such success and prestige.

Now, let’s think of the fact-value split’s implications. First, it’s hard to grow deeply as a disciple if you don’t believe that we can have religious knowledge. Second, if ethics and religion are up to us, it will be hard to be convinced that we need to obey God, for sin is up to us too (Gen 3:5). Third, it’s hard to see why we really need to seek Him for wisdom and knowledge when we can have it by science.

Also, while we preach that Jesus is to be Lord of all of our lives, often we don’t see connections between our “spiritual” lives and the rest (work, fun, finances, politics, etc.) – except maybe ethics. Often, we don’t teach about their integration, except maybe at schools. Moreover, “faith” and knowledge become divorced. Some Christians think it’s a virtue to “just have faith,” being afraid that “knowledge” (from naturalistic science) may undermine our faith.

Naturalism has many implications, too, some of which we have seen earlier. Here, though we preach Jesus arose from the dead, that can become hard to believe, because science tells us otherwise. Maybe that belief becomes just a punt to “faith.” We also say that our souls will be with Jesus when we die, but our confidence can be eroded when science tells us we are just made of matter.

In short, it is hard to trust God and be intimate with Him if these influences have shaped us deeply enough. However, notice again how these claims raised up against the knowledge of God depend upon the philosophies behind them, and not scientific, empirical observation. So much of how people interpret things (creation, e.g.) depends upon their assumptions. So, we should test them, and that is something our MA Christian Apologetics program helps equip you to do.

There remains another key shaping influence to survey, one that also tends to reduce our expectations that God would be intimate and personal with us. I’ll approach it in the upcoming blog.

We have seen many ways that influenced our evangelical predecessors toward favoring what was rationally and empirically knowable over what we could experience subjectively. Now, these emphases naturally implied a certain approach to Scripture. Being written, it is empirically knowable. As such, it is the surest means to display truth permanently and precisely.

Being God’s word, it is truth, and we could use our “right reason” to discern clearly and easily its veracity. Studying of the Bible therefore could be “scientific” in that it employs objective, empirical observation and reason. Moreover, we could repeat our observations of the text to confirm findings, just as in science.

These factors stress the use of our minds. Since we have seen how the various factors I have been surveying tend to distance God from us, they also tend to erode a confidence in our abilities, and even felt-need, to be united with God’s mind. However, unlike Scripture, which warns us that the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately wicked, wanting to usurp God’s place, notice that these factors don’t really suggest we also need to be deeply united with God’s heart to discern truth. Nor do our minds need to be in unity with our hearts to know truth.

Ideally, it seems the goal in these views was to eliminate anything subjective, and instead rely totally on what’s objectively true and knowable. Thus, when various attempts occurred that stressed religious experience, evangelicals widely viewed these with distrust. Besides problems with Mormons’ claims to add onto Scripture, consider how they relied upon Joseph Smith’s “vision” and fundamental appeal to religious experience to know the Book of Mormon was of God. Also, it promised a return to the fullness of the pure gospel, from Christ and the apostles. Craig Hazen, my colleague in Biola’s MA Christian Apologetics program, notes that “Mormons were open to miracles such as healing, exorcism, and latter-day revelation. This openness yet again set the LDS primitivism over and above … [others] which generally taught that divine messages and miraculous works had passed with the end of the apostolic age.”[1]

Second, liberal Protestantism, which basically is naturalistic, treated Scripture as peoples’ experiences of God and their religious sentiments, and not as a record of objective truths. They accepted the “fact-value split,” treating religion as feeling or opinion.

Then, in the early 20^th century, Pentecostals claimed God was speaking further words (but not adding to Scripture) and performing miracles. However, with these appeals to religious experiences, evangelical leaders saw them as being anti-intellectual and thus against reason.

Notice that, due to their shaping influences, evangelicals in these times already had a strong disposition to discount or dismiss religious experiences, even without needing to appeal to cessationism (i.e., the view that the miraculous gifts ceased with death of apostles and closure of the canon). However, evangelicals rightly value the truth of Scripture. Moreover, we need to defend it against critics, cults, etc. Christianity also applies to more than just the religious and ethical aspects of life.

Nevertheless, we also have seen already that the Lord wants to have an intimate, personal relationship with us, one rich in experience. Consider Eph 3:18-19 (AMPC):

¹⁸ That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]; ¹⁹ [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!

God wants us to live in deeply unity with Him in all His fullness, from our hearts, minds, and spirits. Yet, due to these shaping influences and our sinfulness, so often we don’t live that way. I’ll explore that more in the next blog.

---

[1] Craig Hazen, “The Apologetic Impulse in Early Mormonism,” in The New Mormon Challenge (Zondervan, 2002), 41.

With such an emphasis upon knowing universal, objective truth, our evangelical predecessors strongly preferred rational and empirical means. They appealed mainly to the mind to know, but had comparatively little to say about the importance of the heart to bow. Instead, through these shaping influences, they tended to be (overly) confident in our intellect’s abilities to know objective truth and live it. Yet, these shaping factors also conditioned people not to expect God to manifest His presence and power. Given these expectations (and their adherence to the truth of Scripture), it would be easy while a Christian consensus in society lasted to believe orthodox doctrine, yet simultaneously start to live as if God were distant. Having inherited their distrust of religious experience, we should not expect God to manifest Himself much, either. And, He already has revealed all we need to know (as far as objective truth goes) in Scripture.

Yet, we have seen that Scripture raises the expectation that God does want to be intimately personal with us. One image used is marriage; Paul tells us that the husband-wife relationship is to be like Christ’s relationship with the church. I love my wife deeply, but to be one, we need unity in more than just our minds. We could agree on plans to raise our daughter, where to live, etc. But, if that is the primary basis of our oneness, our relationship is distorted, leaving us susceptible to temptations. We also need to unity in our hearts. For example, we need to choose to guard our relationship, not letting others gain a foothold on our affections and start to divide us. But, if not also coupled with a deep unity of mind, each of us may be pulled apart by our feelings.

Now, to trust (heart) one another deeply requires experience and knowledge (mind). Heart and mind need to work together to have trust. Moreover, we also know we vitally need the Spirit’s filling, or else we will be living in our flesh, which will hurt our relationship.

Now, compare this to Christ’s relationship with us. If we try to live in unity with His mind (as revealed in Scripture), yet are not living in deep heart unity, we can be distant from Him relationally. That’s like the church in Ephesus (Rev 2), which had many commendable qualities (some based on knowledge), but they had left their first love. Or, we could be legalistic. But, both are fleshly. Also, if we think God has given us His perfect revelation, but now we shouldn’t expect Him to “show up” personally in our lives (or we are suspicious of such manifestations), we are susceptible to thinking (even subtly) that God has expressed His love in a book, but now has gone away. That’s like if I wrote all my wife needs to know (especially of my love for her) in a book, gave it to her, but then departed – not much of a marriage!

Or, suppose we try to love God with all our hearts, but not really with our minds. We may be very enthusiastic at times, but likely we’ll tend to rely on our own understanding of what God is like and wants. For instance, we could err by thinking we should love everyone, yet at the expense of what God says is upright.

Just as a good marriage needs the husband and wife to be united deeply in heart and mind, so must we be with the Lord. And, with Him, we also vitally need His Spirit, or else we will be living in our own fallenness. However, a well-known tactic in battle is to divide and conquer. I think that is what the devil wants in our marriages, and with the Lord – to separate our hearts and minds from His, and to not really live in utter dependence upon His Spirit for life and power. These factors I have been surveying have those very effects. It’s no wonder then that to the extent we live in these ways that we lack the presence and power of the Lord. We deeply need to repent of that.