From here:
Again, if this theological argument is correct, we should ask whether there should be Christian hospitals… Haven’t such enterprises, which often do no more than mimic their secular counterparts …?
Michael Horton mixes several different possibilities so that the reader might confuse the issue of the Left Behind video game (gag) with Christian hospitals.
He also obviously lives in an imaginary world of his own making where hospitals simply arise out of secular culture and then are seen and copied by Christians. That not only never happened, but what did happen and is happening is exactly the opposite: states and corporations are trying to find a way to mimic and provide what religious institutions did first.
Does Horton not notice all the religious names on hospitals that are now secular? How can he possibly not know that reality is precisely antithetical to his Christians-mimicking-secular-enterprises claim?
Other than that, the entire article is at war with the Great Commission which sees no conflict between cultural discipleship and Church ministry. But why even pretend that articles like this are written by or to people who care what the Bible says?
(Why even pretend that articles like this are written by or to people who genuinely care about the Reformed Protestant heritage?–the piece is entirely revisionary. Postmillenialism is taken from B. B. Warfield and other classic presbyterians and put into the minds of Billy Sunday? Horton should be writing science fiction. Actually he is writing science fiction.)
By the way, I know this is going to raise issues I don’t have time to address, but if we pretend for a moment that the Bible is, say, inspired by God, what are we to do with,
Because there is so much dangerous talk these days about the church as the continuing incarnation of Christ, the active agent of redemption, who completes the work that Christ came to accomplish.
when compared with this?
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church
OK, I wouldn’t be surprised if Horton was justified in disagreeing with a Pope (which he mentions in the context). But why hand Scripture over to the Roman Catholics?
So, if you knew someone who claimed to be a Reformed or Presbyterian Christian who also still thought the Bible was important, what ministry or publisher could you recommend to him? Hey, for that matter, if you knew someone who claimed to be Reformed or Presbyterian who was actually interested in the history of that tradition, what could you recommend?
Argh. I realize a theologian can’t give an extended argument in a short article, but – wow! – that piece overturns centuries of Christian self-understanding with barely a wave of the hand.
And you are absolutely right on hospitals. We don’t need to “Christianize” hospitals or create Christian parodies of their secular counterparts because hospitals are a Christian institution to begin with, an overflow of the gospel, a blessing of the new covenant, and a manifestation of Christ’s kingdom.
The same could be said, by the way, with regard to the assumptions about property, contract, gift, and exchange that are part of the genealogy of the modern marketplace or about the narrative world of the bible that laid the foundation for the emergence of the story-telling practices embodied in the entertainment industry.
These institutions don’t need “Christianization” because they are already internal to the new world brought about by the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring the Spirit. If these institutions have become unfaithful to their callings within the kingdom, then we need not “redeem” them by creating baptized parodies or acting as external agents. Rather, we try to inhabit them as Christians, honoring the structures that are internal and peculiar to them.
So, the article as whole….Where does one even begin? The implicit nature-grace dichotomy underlying the pitting of “creation” against “kingdom”? The fast-and-loose connect-the-dots historical revisionism? The modernist metaphysics of presence? The unargued assumption that things like “politics,” “art,” “culture,” etc. are external and extrinsic to “gospel,” “sacrament,” “discipline,” etc. so that redemption of these realities involves the kingdom transgressing its proper boundaries? Isn’t the assumed relationship between creation and kingdom incipiently Nestorian?
And isn’t part of the point of the resurrection and, indeed, the ascension that humanity finds the fulfillment of its creational mandate in a human being on the throne, exercising rule as pictured in Psalm 8, so that resurrection and ascension affirm creation and reposition it in Christ, under grace, as kingdom? Has Horton even read O’Donovan’s Resurrection and Moral Order or Hays The Moral Vision of the New Testament?
He writes, “One wonders what might have happened if, instead of dividing over national policy, Protestant churches in the antebellum American North and South practiced church discipline against slave-holders.”
Well, for one thing, a number of churches did practice church discipline against slave-holders. For instance, slave-holding was an excommunicable offense in the Reformed Presbyterian church from the early 19th century onward. For another, how is exercising church discipline in a way that would transform a societal institution not already a political action on the part of the church?
The article is a mess.
Yes, there is a “not yet” as well as an “already.” Yes, the church limps along in history, exercising influence by dying. Yes, triumphalism can be a temptation. Yes, the ministry of word, celebration of the sacraments, and diaconal care are the primary vocation of the church qua church. Yes, of course we cannot find everlasting rest from violence, oppression, injustice and immorality through our own political or cultural works. Yes, the present order of the world is a temporal saeculum and in many of its features is destined to pass away. Yes, we should avoid piling undue burdens upon people and allow them instead to discern where God is calling them to serve, a process that is not a matter of “Law,” but spiritual wisdom.
But this is no excuse for restricting “kingdom work” to a carefully demarcated realm of the “sacred” over against putatively secular space. I just cannot see what any of this has to do with the teaching of the Scripture or historic Christian theology, except perhaps as a kind of idiosyncratic Lutheranism.
This is why I don’t read Horton. In its own way, it’s like reading Scott Hahn. It makes my forehead wrinkle up and gives me a headache.
If he wants to argue that the vision of Kuyper et al was a mistake, fine. But ignoring that there even was such a strand in the Reformed heritage (let alone the plausible claim that it was the whole Reformed rope until recently) just defies any reason.
And the slavery references ring hollow, given his premises. His problem with the Dutch Reformed would really be not that it justified slavery, but that it meddled in politics at all. Just as wrong for them to decry apartheid as to affirm it.
Still, I detect some ambivalence in Horton’s mind. He doesn’t really buy what he’s selling. Otherwise, how do you explain his affirmation of Wilberforce as being shaped by the church (i.e., the gospel), and loving his neighbor through his work in parliament?
I like how he leaves his strong affirmation of DL Moody’s approach hanging in mid-air. There’s an uncomfortable subject for the WSC crowd.
I’m not FV, and I’m not postmil (forgive me). But I read Horton’s opinion on this a few days ago and thought it was absolutely crazy. My intuition is that Horton needs to spend a few days in a locked room with Waltke and Pratt. That would shake the strange dichotomy between “kingdom” and “creation”, I reckon.
Of course, it is sheerly by grace (and that should make Horton happy!) that I’ve been influenced by Waltke and Pratt. Otherwise I’d be in the darkness of undifferentiated evangelicalism…
“Isn’t the assumed relationship between creation and kingdom incipiently Nestorian?”
Thus the attempt to eliminate the connection between incarnation and church?
Mark,
I am struck by Prof. Horton’s pathetic treatment of Christ’s ascension. He treats the ascension as though it is primarily about Christ’s “going away” rather than Jesus going to be enthroned. He seems to totally miss the point that Christ’s Ascension is followed by His Session.
Related to this, Prof. Horton writes: “The ascension of Jesus in the flesh opens up an interim within history that keeps us looking forward to the return of the same Jesus. Nothing can replace Jesus in the flesh.” Yet, in John 16:7 Jesus tells His disciples “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” And in John 14:14 He declares: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
Oddly, Prof. Horton goes on to write: “The church is lodged in that precarious place of ambiguity and tension between these two ages, and it must live there until Jesus returns, relying only on the Word and Spirit.” Is not the Spirit, who is the LORD and Giver of Life sufficient to bring about the spread of the gospel and the discipling of the nations? I’m sure this isn’t true of Prof. Horton, but I sometimes wonder if Christians in America think that the Holy Spirit is somehow less divine than Jesus is.
David
Y’all are restoring health to my aching bones.
Sorry for the outburst/tirade earlier. That was basically my initial verbal vomit after ingesting the article.
I suspect that the basic issue boils down to this:
With A.A. Hodge (and, I think, the bulk of Reformed theologians before him), I believe that since the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus “all that happens to the human race…is part of the consequences of Christ’s satisfaction as the second Adam.” Or as John Murray put it, “all the good dispensed to this world is dispensed within the mediatorial dominion of Christ…he is given this dominion as the reward of his obedience unto death (cf. Phil. 2:8, 9), and his obedience unto death is but one way of characterizing what we mean by the atonement.”
Horton doesn’t believe this. For Horton all of the benefits and good things experienced by the human race and created order are “common grace” rooted back in God’s initial creation, in pure nature and law, apart from God’s gracious purposes for the renewal of all things through Jesus.
Much more to be said in unpacking all of that, but when all is said and done, I think that’s the key difference here.
That is interesting Joel because I just wrote an entry saying that creational grace ran out with the Flood. Of course, I’m addressing things at another level than you and Hodge are (and you’re both right!), not that I expect anyone to understand such things anymore.
I can see why Horton’s article is problematic; however, at the same time, I find his attitude understandable as a reaction to evangelical politics.
I find it funny though that he would quote Bonhoeffer, who certainly acted on the belief that it is a Christian duty to transform the civic order.
Not to mention that he seems to think that creation is sustained on the basis of something besides the Cross.
Still, I think that’s it’s unfair to say that Horton doesn’t believe the Bible is important. He does; he just reads it strictly through Lutheran lenses.
I don’t mean to pick nits, but i just had to make sure you knew the phraseology. Just remember that English has an objective case, and you’ll do fine. So, that’s “Who Mimicks WHOM?” As in, “Joe Pagan mimicks HIM,” (not “Joe Pagan mimicks HE”).
I know, but this is a case where proper grammar just doesn’t pack the same punch.
Think how lame the AC/DC song would be.
Uh, dude. That AC/DC song IS lame.
Sort of like the dairy industry having an ad campaign with the phrase, “Have milk?” 🙂
Obviously all the astute comments have been made, so to continue in the nit-picking vein, you might want to drop the k and go with mimics (as in mimic (mimics), mimicked, mimicking). I could agree with the grammar punch, but not sure the same thing holds for spelling? And you know I love you.
He’s failing to make the distinction between mimicking (that’s where the k goes, it doesn’t go in mimicry, though) the world’s stupidity, (i.e. stupid video games and worldly politics) and doing genuinely good things that the world does, regardless of who was “first.” Of course, this is all mixed up with a strange version of two-kingdoms stuff that somehow wants to make Jesus’ commands to serve others to be of the earthly kingdom if it has a strongly physical manifestation (i.e. food, medical care, perhaps visiting orphans and widows?) and so garbage in (a strange view of earthly vs. spiritual), garbage out.
Ugh. “Panic” confuses me also. The URL will attest I spelled it right at first. But then I thought it didn’t look writes For some reason the title bar in my control panel doesn’t seem to register with my spell checker.