Evangelicalism in Terminal Decline (Part 3)
If politicization of the American church is scorned and dismissed as a causal explanation for the present decadence within Protestant Evangelical churches, it is primarily because politics is downstream from theology, philosophy, and ethics. If one’s political persuasions are defective, it likely indicates a defective understanding of the cosmos. Thus, if political understandings on both wings of Evangelical Christendom are defective, corrupted partly through intercourse with the Assyrians or the Egyptians beyond the gates of churchianity, it indicates defective theology underlying Evangelical Christendom which spawns these defective political understandings.
For instance, it is a seminal biblical theme, implicit within the historical narrative of the ancient Hebrews, explicitly expressed in the New Testament,1 and confirmed through the civic experience of all goyim societies, that external regulations, political constructs, Machiavellian machinations, etc. cannot, in of themselves, ultimately stop human evil and, as composite ontological consequence, the disintegration of societies.
For external constraints and constructs are like static Maginot Lines,2 which the evil genius within humanity will invariably and eventually find a way go around, above, under, and even through. The Great Wall of China was not able to keep the Xiongnu out during the Han dynasty (it required “out-horsing” them), or the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century, or the infiltration by Western powers in the 19th century from the sea.
The biblical claim of the futility of extrinsic sociopolitical constructs is part and parcel of the Gospel message. For in order for a “Good Society” to exist and endure, it has been shown that there must exist, generation after generation, a good-willed populace who, without need of shame, manipulation, or coercion, freely consent to do the good and the just, “a people . . . zealous for good deeds.”3 Otherwise, when shame, coercion, and manipulation are relaxed, a populace will invariably stop doing the good and just.
I hated all for which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether that man will be wise or foolish? Yet he will take over all the labor at which I have worked skillfully under the sun. This too is futile.4
Consequently, all human societies ultimately decline, dissipate, and fall. And because of such ultimate futility, it is not the first and foremost purpose of the Christian Gospel to save the world, but to save some from out of the world. This ultimate futility of politics was broadly understood within Evangelical circles two or so centuries ago. But as in a number of areas, knowledge, understanding, and even the Gospel itself has been lost.
Be it true that the pursuit of peace, including civic peace, and social justice is enjoined upon the Christian, as these are temporally profitable in the cause of the Gospel. For the distractions and passions of civic and external wars are not conducive to the success of the Great Commission,5 especially if “Christians” are implicated within these conflicts (i.e., French Wars of Religion, Thirty Years War).
Moreover, constant wise counsels from Christian circles give credibility to the Faith.6 However, such pursuits serve the Gospel in a subsidiary and handmaiden role.
God as Political Theorist
However, wise counsels from Christian circles is a forlorn hope in the current era. Protestant Evangelicals hardly have an understanding of the nature of the Kingdom of God, let alone be able to competently critique and counsel the kingdoms of humanity.
The God of Scriptures is a political theorist. The Gospel, after all, is the Gospel of the Kingdom. This is the first manner by which the Gospel was proclaimed,7 near about its last,8 and the manner by which the Gospel was spoken all throughout Christ’s ministry.9
The gospel is the great news of what God has graciously done in Jesus Christ, especially in his atoning death and vindicating resurrection, his ascension, session, and high priestly ministry, to reconcile sinful human beings to himself, justifying them by the penal substitute of his Son, and regenerating and sanctifying them by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, who is given to them as the down payment of their ultimate inheritance. God will save them if they repent and trust in Jesus.10
The truncated gospel, currently propagated within Protestant Evangelical circles, merely amounts to that Kingdom’s immigration and naturalization policies.
For the Gospel promises a salvation unto a Kingdom to which Christ is Sovereign Lord. It would hardly be good news if the Kingdom turns out to be dystopic, its Sovereign, a capricious tyrant. Salvation only has merit if what one is being saved towards genuine exists and is worthwhile.
Many aspects, even “structural” aspects, of the Kingdom can be inferred from Scriptures, these often being more concerned with interpersonal relations than with physical or spiritual paraphernalia.
As a governing principle undergirding any enduring and thriving “Good Society,” there must exist a vision to which the inhabitants aspire, and an ideological foundation upon which them to base their lives and conduct. For a kingdom without a common vision and ideological foundation becomes one which is endemically and perpetually pulled towards anarchy and societal entropy. (“Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.”11 “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”12)
Another foundational aspect of the Gospel Kingdom is the manner by which it shall be governed.
Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from that time and forevermore.13
Unless one is familiar with history, political theory, even a modicum of philosophy, one may miss the political significance of this Messianic promise. For in claiming that the Kingdom shall be established upon justice and righteousness, the God of Scriptures is implicitly laying claim that it shall be governed first and foremost by moral authority (Latin: auctoritas), albeit buttressed with hierarchical authority (exousian / imperium) and omnipotent power (dunamis, potestas).
For a kingdom, governed by moral authority is one, will be more likely to inspire its populace to freely do more than that which is mandated, than the grating duty given to a kingdom governed solely by hierarchical authority and overwhelming power.14
Hereby, Scriptures incontrovertibly, if implicitly, refutes Divine Command Ethics (DCE), also known as a divine form of legal positivism. Indeed, DCE is a heresy, although not one which should result in church discipline, as this error is not among an explicit scriptural list calling for discipline.
Legal positivism posits that the validity of the laws is premised solely upon the hierarchical authority of the lawmaking sovereign, in whatever manner sovereignty is constituted. But this passage (and those similar)15 claim that there exists an intrinsic validity, merit, and wisdom to the laws, principles of justice, and counsels which are promulgated by the Sovereign of the cosmos (“the judgment of the God is down from truth upon those practicing such things”16). Some of these may even be discerned through natural epistemological means.17 Herein, the nature of justice and righteousness is epistemologically distinct from merely being that which is promulgated by the divine edict or in conformity with divine nature. For the God of Scriptures subscribes to moral realism, under which Natural Law is a subset element.
This understanding provokes alarm among many theists. For it appears to intimate that law is Sovereign (Lex, Rex),18 even above God to which He must pay homage and abide. However, there is a philosophical/rational way by which one can uphold that justice and righteousness ontologically proceeds from God yet remain epistemologically distinct and semantically meaningful.
Most within contemporary Protestant Evangelical Christendom effectively subscribe to Divine Command Ethics (re: “The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.”) Hereby, curiousity and inquiry into the wisdom undergirding divine laws, principles, and counsels are inherently discouraged, resulting in the inability for Evangelicals to give a reasonable and credible defense (apologian) for such laws and counsels to those outside the camp.19
Current Evangelical defense of proscriptions against same-sex relations, for instance, rely solely upon biblical prooftexts with little attempt to supply historical and sociological evidence to substantiate the deleterious psychosocial consequences, including opportunity cost, which result from that lifestyle, which would hereby confirm the wisdom of the biblical proscriptions.20
DCE is one of the chief causes of the pervasive ignorance and stupidity within contemporary Evangelical circles. (Creedalism is yet another.)
Moreover, many holier-than-God Christian theists21 subscribe to the notion that “virtue is its own reward” (Stoicism) or that any act in which the actor is motivated, even in part, by some personal benefit, lacks virtue (Kantian altruism).
However, the God of Scriptures promulgates the precept that the ethical good is purposed to naturally produce the ontological good (re: metaethical consequentialism) within the context of ontological realities and a covenantal telos. Herein, the ontological good is defined first and foremost as a balanced common good by which all, including the actor, benefit in varying degrees.
It is not personal virtue, which is the ultimate goal, but the good marriage, the good society, and the Kingdom of God to which personal virtue remains a necessary component and means.
In contemporary conservative Evangelical thought in America, however, the notion of “common good” is all too often perceived and quickly disparaged as communism. This was not so two or so centuries ago.
Indeed, Conservatives, including its Evangelical variant, reduce “biblical” justice to a justice of due process, the justice of means, while denigrating justice as social balance, the justice of ends.22 Not to be outdone, Progressives, including its Evangelical variant, exalt social justice while rolling right over the justice of due process. But the God of Scriptures upholds both and reconciles the justice of ends and the justice of means, as attested in the Year of Jubilee civic legislation, whose primary and ultimate social justice purpose was to prevent extreme disparities in income and wealth,23 which have and do invariably overflow to civic inequalities and two-tier justice,24 while not violating the justice of means.
But while the God of Scriptures is a political theorist par excellence, those, currently posing as His ambassadors, are thoroughly worthless with regards to politics, (as in so many realms of knowledge and endeavours of humanity). That utter worthlessness has deeper philosophical and ethical roots as I have attempted to demonstrate through but a few examples.
In the void of independent political thought and analysis, which is derived and deduced from Scriptures and confirmed through the template of world history, Protestant Evangelicals have felt compelled to grasp the political thought and analysis to that which is out there in the secular realm.
Hebrews 7:18–19, 8:7–8; Romans 8:3; Colossian 2:20, 23; Galatians 4:9–10
The French, in the years preceding WW2, built a long line of thick fortifications along the French-German border only to have the Germans to circumvent them through the Ardennes, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Titus 2:14b
Ecclesiastes 2:18–19
1 Timothy 2:1–4
1 Peter 3:1. Herein, I am extrapolating from the spousal to the general. This has firm biblical basis but would require full exposition to demonstrate through the many narratives.
Matthew 4:23; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43
Matthew 24:14
Matthew 9:35
D. A. Carson, “A Hole in the Gospel”, Themelios, Volume 38, Issue 3, November 2013, p 354.
Proverbs 29:18a
Judges 21:25b. Cf. Deuteronomy 12:8.
Isaiah 9:7 (emphasis added)
Hebrews 12:18–24. Good governance, however, does not guarantee a grateful populace as attested throughout human history. It provides, however, reasonable grounds for, at least, reciprocation, near about the basest of human motivations.
Psalm 97:2, 89:14
Romans 2:2 (literal translation)
Romans 2:14–15
A famous treatise by Samuel Rutherford was published by that title in 1644 which was ultimately purposed to refute King James I’s claim of a monarchal form of legal positivism (The True Law of Free Monarchies, 1598).
1 Peter 3:15
Romans 3:4b – “So that You may be proved right when You speak and victorious when You are judged.” The verbs are in passive voice.
Isaiah 65:5
Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe, Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2021.
Isaiah 5:8–10
Amos, Isaiah 10:1–2