VanDrunen and the Great Commission

Reading When Helping Hurts thrust me into David VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms. I’m desperate for clarity amidst a cacophony of voices on mission. Authors of the former, Corbett and Fikkert, join the growing list of writers who see cultural renewal/transformation/redemption/recreation as part and parcel of the Church’s mission.

The solution to poverty, they write, is reconciliation: “moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation” (78), quoting 2 Corinthians 5. I appreciate the crux of what they’re saying but wouldn’t call that reconciliation. Would the apostle Paul recognize Alisa Collins from the Chicago ghetto, finding steady work and self-fulfillment, as the process of reconciliation he writes about in 2 Cor 5? No.

To be fair, they do write several pages explaining that “profound reconciliation” (as opposed to ‘half-ass reconciliation’?) “cannot be done without people accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” (80, c.f. 94-97). My only concern is that there is already a host of members in the missions community who believe that sin equals poverty, that the gospel equals kingdom, and would be delighted to have an advocate saying that reconciliation equals a process of alleviating suffering.

Why is Renee Padilla being invited to Urbana to depict mission exclusively in terms of coming to the aid of internally displaced people? Why is Shane Claibourne growing in popularity for his message that the only hell worth fighting against is that of poverty? Why is Christianity Today including articles about environmental concern as a chief pillar of mission? Why did Ralph Winter argue that we must do missions on the microbe level, battling Satan in the realm of infectious diseases? Why has 2010 marked the year in which more North American Great Commission dollars are going toward social work than evangelism and church planting?

To David VanDrunen we must turn. Lumping neo-Calvinists, advocates of the New Perspective on Paul, and emerging church leaders together as those who believe “the salvation or redemption brought by Christ is essentially restoration or re-creation” (18), he mounts a compelling defense for a two-kingdoms theology.

It comes down to two Adams and two covenants. Transformationalists oft-repeat the line that the cultural mandate of dominion to Adam has never been rescinded in Scripture. Therefore, we inherit this mandate as Adam’s heirs. Not so, says VanDrunen. Better than never rescinded the cultural mandate has been fully fulfilled in Christ. What the first Adam failed to do as a righteous king and priest in creation, Jesus did, resisting and conquering the devil, becoming the perfect priest to God, and achieving the Sabbath rest intended as the culmination of the first Adam’s labors. The New Testament takes great pains to connect the two Adams (Rom 5; 1 Cor 15; c.f. Hebrews and many other allusions).

Jesus left nothing incomplete, not justification and not achieving the world-to-come. We add nothing. Our cultural engagement now does not make new creation, but is in response to new creation. Far from cultural isolation, we understand that we dwell in two kingdoms, both firmly under the Lordship of Christ.

God’s covenant to Noah established the common kingdom: it involved cultural activities, all humanity, preservation of the natural order, and temporary nature. In contrast, God’s covenant to Abraham established the redemptive kingdom, conversely: pertaining to faith and worship, a distinct people within humanity, bestowing salvation, and is everlasting.

Christians are not pseudo-Gnostic, isolationists denigrating the physical for the spiritual, awaiting heavenly ethereal bliss in the clouds. We are cultural beings in a cultural world called to honor God in an infinite array of cultural activities. But we do so as sojourners. We do so as members of a redemptive kingdom who understand a radical end to this world and its culture and wait for a new (not improved) heavens and earth.

That which does last is our primary mission. Paul describes it as a building undergoing fire (1Cor 3). John, alluding to Isaiah, as the glory and honor of nations entering the new Jerusalem. Both refer to the proclamation of the gospel and growth of the Church.

Evangelicalism and Environmentalism

It's true, Jesus said the gates of hell would overcome his church in the form of a "green dragon".



I would ask if this is worth responding to, but plenty of Christians really believe this, and what's more, they believe it's Christian. Doug Moo, this is your hour.

Recovering the Vocation of the Pastor-Theologian

This is a brilliant article on the growing gulf between academic theology and the pastorate that I think all of us can resonate with:

The Pastor as Wider Theologian, or What’s Wrong With Theology Today

One question I might ask would be, is their a connection between the structure of our churches and what he calls a lowering of the "theological water level"?

Naming Names

It's remarkable just how many names Luke drops in his two opening chapters (and 3.1). And they mean everything for his message. Jesus comes not just to earth but to people. To peoples. To names.

He comes for Jews, the children of Israel, of Levi (Zechariah and Elizabeth), Judah (Mary and Joseph), Asher (Anna) and all tribes, for high priest (Annas and Caiaphas), Levitical priest, religious teacher, prophet and prophetess, poor couple, marginal shepherds. For every position, for every vocation, for every pedigree, he comes.

He comes for the Gentiles, the wealthy (Theophilus), accomplished physician (Luke), wicked centers of political power from Herod to Caesar Augustus, in Judea, Galilee, Ituraea, Trachonitis, Abilene, Syria, and Rome and all “those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” For every race, for every evil, he comes.

And Luke names Jesus’ predecessors too. He comes as the Son of God, the bearer of the Spirit, the One heralded by angels, “Christ the Lord” has come preceded by the Prophet Elijah’s spirit and power, fulfilling the Law and Priesthood of Moses and Aaron, securing the Promise of Abraham and Jacob, and taking the Kingly throne of David to accomplish “good news of a great joy that will be for all the people,” forever and ever.

Apologizing for God

There seems to be a prevailing opinion among postmodern evangelicals that we are apart of a kingdom that is continually being duped. We have said the prayer and have been baptized into an unholy communion, a bumbling and awkward people. We are apart of the church, but only to apologize for her.

This morbid tendency to self-laceration seems a dangerous state to be in, because it means that we will believe just about anything our critics want to say about us, true or false. More and more I come to wonder if, in the midst of accusations that Christianity, say, in colonialism, was co-opted by the powers that were, and made its puppet, if this is not getting it completely backwards. Perhaps it is the case that it is not God's kingdom that is co-opted, but His kingdom that co-opts. Here, dear reader, bear with my foolishness. Karl Barth once said that,

"[God's] power is neither a natural nor a spiritual power. nor one of the higher or highest powers that we know, nor the supreme power, nor their sum, nor fount. It is the crisis of all powers…"

God's great mystery is that he is wholly other, and yet makes himself known. The picture Barth evokes is fantastic, as it suggests a Power that is unobservable simply because there is no scale between it and us. It is God as an immeasurable point of light that shoots through dying flesh and breaks up the cellular matter of all being, whether physical, emotional, psychological, bureaucratic, political, or cultural. It becomes a kind of imperceptible healing cancer, with cells rebelling against the old man, forming glorious tumorous growths, negating old appendixes, recreating him into a holy other being. It is imperceptible because it is often so small and so slow, but its effect is immense. If he is among us, we may be equally unaware of his work as the world is. The difference is that we know he is at work.

The task then, is, not to impishly cede the victory to our Accuser, but to overcome him by the biumvirate of, as Revelation 12:11 puts it, Lamb's blood and the faithful testimony of the same.

The Psalms in the Context of the Scriptural Story

Ellen Davis writes,

"...the psalms have nearly inexhaustible potential for making connections with the larger biblical story. This relieves the preacher of the anxiety that has become a modern trademark of the profession, namely, the perceived need to 'find an illustration,' on which the success of the sermon is often supposed to depend. That is a pernicious idea, for very often the illustration proves to be the tail that wags the dog of the sermon (and I use that last phrase advisedly). But if you make good use of the narrative potential of the psalms, then you will be led naturally to illustrations that are appropriately subordinate to the psalm text" (Wondrous Depth 28).

Wrestling as Devotion

When Jacob went to meet Esau, years after the younger stole the birthright of the older, Jacob perceived that his brother intended to bring to naught the blessing of their father Isaac. He heard, "four hundred men are with him," and "he is coming to meet you," (Gen. 32:6).

What else could it be but revenge? Jacob calls out to God, and so began one of the most strange episodes in the history of the people of God.

Night came. Jacob was alone. And a man was there. They wrestled until light returned.

"When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.

Then he said, 'let me go, for the dawn is breaking.'
'I will not let you go unless you bless me.'
So he said to him, 'What is your name?'
'Jacob.'
He said, 'Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.'" (Gen. 32:25-28)

Jacob had received a promise, and just as that promise appeared to be coming to an end, he begins to strive with God. The blessing he receives as a result is a name, but it is an immense name that came to define the people of God: Israel, "he who strives with God."

If the church is, as Andrew Kirk once said, "an enlarged Israel," (as opposed to a "new Israel"), we still carry this name, though we rarely invoke it. It still marks us, even if it is only a latent marking, like an indelible tattoo on our back. What else is the church, but a people who strives with God? Surely the history of the church, and Israel, bears this out. Faithful men are those who are continually wrestling with God, through prayer seated in the heart; through fasting gnawing at the body; through earnest and tireless supplication. They are faithful people, continually submitting themselves to "the sharp compassion" of the wounded and wounding hands.

What else is apostasy, but refusing to wrestle anymore? It is turning instead to wrestle with an object of wood, stone, paper, or plastic–– one we think we can dominate. An idol lets us believe that we define the rules and set the boundaries of engagement. It lets us think it will bend to our lustful clawing hands–– although in a treacherous twist, we all find ourselves crushed in the end.

Wrestling with God is different. It means He sets the parameters. It means knowing we will walk away limping–– a difficult prospect, for none like pain, and most will refuse Him for it. But in wrestling with Him, we will gain our fitness and our blessing. It is the only way we can be prepared for the rigors of His glory and our joy.