Thesis One: "The Christian faith has revolutionary implications for human life and society."
From an examination of the teachings of the Bible, it is evident that the apostles and prophets held the belief that true religion would necessarily revolutionize the conditions of life into which it came. Amos spoke, the word of God:
Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream (Amos 5:23-24).
Jeremiah insisted that social justice ought to be visible in evidence of true faith (22:3):
These are the words of the Lord: Deal justly, rescue the victim from the oppressor, do not ill-treat nor do violence to the alien, the orphan or the widow, do not shed innocent blood in this place.
John the Baptist made plain the demanding ethical implication of his message. Jesus himself consistently stood with the poor and dispossessed. He upheld the dignity of women against his culture. His parable of the Good Samaritan clearly states our responsibility to all that are needy. The apostle Paul insisted that Christ has dissolved the old segregations between bond and free, and Jew and Greek. James bluntly said that faith that did not issue in practical concern for people's needs was phony and useless. The Christian faith calls into question all the structures of this fallen order, and places them beneath the judgment of an absolute ethical standard.
Thesis Two: "Institutional Christianity in
One reason why Christianity seems so irrelevant to so many today is a serious ethical failure on its part. In the realm of personal ethics, it has created a subculture with its own peculiar and largely irrelevant taboos. In many evangelical churches, hair length is more of a problem than prejudice, gossip, or pollution. This Christian "theatre of the absurd" would be comical if it were not so tragic.
In the field of social ethics, the church is almost entirely enculturated. Whereas the Bible makes serious criticisms about inequities in society, our church leaders make scarcely a peep. Escaping to white suburbia to escape integration, standing idly by while union and management victimize each other, cheerfully buying products from firms producing napalm and fragmentation bombs — none of these things rate passing mention. The result is that moral initiative passes to the humanists, and liberal Christians.
Christ's disciples are to be salt and light, and leaven. They are to be peacemakers and lovers of the enemy, heralds of a new order. Of late, evangelical Christianity has become silent about the ethical implications of the gospel. To that extent she needs to reform herself biblically. The church has become afraid of being revolutionary; yet that is precisely what she is called to be. Worldliness is the condition of being indistinguishable from the non-Christian culture around one. If so, the contemporary church has become tragically worldly.
Thesis Three: "The contemporary revolutionary student movements represent a secular response to very legitimate moral concerns, but have some weaknesses."
Biblical Christians have to admit that concern over the deliberate defiling of the public environment, a protracted and inexplicable Asian policy, inflation alongside widespread poverty — such concerns are entirely justified. The analysis of the injustices in our society made by the “new left” is fundamentally correct. However, there are three weaknesses.
First, a secular worldview provides a weak basis for such concerns. What imperative is it which binds us in sacred solidarity to our kind? Unless life is a sacred trust from God, as the Bible says, there can be no valid ethical reason why we should owe a duty to posterity or the neighbor. Saving the earth, for instance, obviously calls for self-restraint on the part of us all.
Second, a secular worldview can give little moral content to its revolution. From whence came the values which shall order the new regime? By what standard? Values do not come bubbling up out of the human situation. The “is” does not create the “ought.” Secularism has no way to solve this problem.
Third, revolution must have moral results. Secular revolutionaries are always evasive on the question of how an order without moral failings is going to pop up at the instigation of fallen humans. Clearly, humanity has itself to be changed. The revolutionists are a rebuke to society in their moral concern, but do not point to a complete revolutionary program.
Thesis Four: "The Christian faith supplies an entirely convincing rationale for revolutionary change."
The Christian position is strong precisely where the secular one is weak.
A. The Basis of Revolution
Belief in divine creation solves the metaphysical problem of humankind. Humans are not alone in the universe, tossed up by blind chance. Life, because it was created by God, can be joyfully affirmed as meaningful. Furthermore, we learn who we are as humans. We are stewards of all that God has made (Genesis 1:28) and called to serve God in worldly activity. Any dichotomy of sacred and secular is of course impossible.
Unlike the secular revolutionaries, then, we have a basis upon which to hold the dignity and worth of humankind, something which any revolution has to be able to presuppose. But more than that, because of Jesus Christ, we are the signs of a new and coming order. We are called to bear witness to God's future plan for the earth both verbally and concretely (Matthew 5:16). There's a new order coming. Jesus has called us to herald it in word and deed. Our righteousness is to alert people to the coming Jesus-revolution! The reason our evangelical churches have become “conservative” ethically is due to unbelief: We refuse to take Jesus seriously when he told us to be salt and light. It costs too much. We are like those who called him “Lord” but refused to do what he said.
B. Revolutionary Values
The Christian faith supplies a set of values for measuring problems and constructing solutions. This value-system or axiology is firmly grounded as to its validity in the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not arbitrarily presupposed. On this basis, it is possible to see the wrongness of discrimination, pollution, and senseless war as absolute and damnable, and not just the opinion of the reigning humanistic consensus. Jesus Christ gives us an absolute standard of measurement.
That does not mean accepting this kind of traditional interpretation which domesticates the text. Evangelicals have been reading the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) for centuries with little evident intention of taking the text seriously. Reading the Bible is no guarantee its truth will get applied.
And then, after we take it seriously, there is the matter of application. Clearly we are to turn the other cheek personally (Luke 6:29), but what is the situation where I see someone else being struck on the cheek. Do I stand by while he or she is struck on the other cheek also? And what does the Good Samaritan parable say when not only an individual neighbor but an entire social group of neighbors is trapped in misery? When we say the Bible gives us values, we are not saying the Bible as it has been chained to restricted applications gives them. We have to release its full message again, ask it new questions and listen carefully for new answers.
C. The Modus Operandi
Christians see clearly that the real problem in our society is humankind itself. The underlying cause of racism, pollution, and war is quite simply human greed, lust, hate, and self-centeredness. We may analyze the situation in a way quite similar to the secular revolutionaries, but our solution is much more radical in its true sense. It goes to the root (Latin "radix") of the problem. Humanity can be changed through Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Unless humanity is changed, we will just be tinkering with the system and dealing in effects and not causes. In the wake of a secular revolution, there will be self-love all over again! Where there is no God there is no one else to love. A person transformed by Jesus Christ ought to be the most revolutionary of humans. He or she has the basis and the inward incentives to go out and change the world.
What we propose, however, is not individualism. Quite a lot of people can become Christians with little or no effect on society. Single Christians in isolation, unaware of the total implications of their faith, are not the answer. What we see is a new human solidarity "in Christ," a People reborn and renewed, a revolutionary third force, impelled by the power of God's Spirit moving out to claim humans and all their associations for Jesus Christ. We advocate neither collectivism from the top, nor individualism at the bottom. We see a new People salting and lighting up the whole earth!
Clark H. Pinnock was a frequent contributor to The Post-American and professor of systematic theology at
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!