Christian Education
The Enemy

Why is there so much enmity against education from a Christian perspective? Some say the hostility comes from the culture and the dominant secular media. Others claim it is from the secular educational establishment itself. Recently, I had an educator tell me neither is the biggest enemy of education from a Christian perspective. No, he says the biggest enemy is the contemporary church.

Why? Because the church is caught up in the tolerance thing.. And, that includes the view of each parishioner of his or her Christian life. That is, everyone has carved out their idea of Christianity based on what works for them and each such idea is acceptable. In today’s church world all where few absolutes are believed, certainly each view of Christian life and belief is of equal value and worth. So, to push an educational process from a Christian perspective that may challenge pre-existing notions of what a parishioner believes is not a good thing for the health of a church.

It used to be churches were big sponsors and proponents of Christian schools. Not so anymore with the spiritual and intellectual climate of the church today. To promote a specific education for children which embraces a Christian and Biblical worldview may upset parishioners who, as consumers, have chosen what they like of Christianity and set up their own little “Christian worldview” they do not want shaken. Pastors of churches, not wanting problems of any kind, do not want to encourage an educational process that challenges the children of parishioners, and, therefore, the parishioners themselves. Christians are happy about their concept of Christianity as well as the depth and commitment of their beliefs. As offended consumers, they may chose to leave the church pushing such intolerant positions for one that is more tolerant of their view of Christianity. And, there is always a more tolerant church out there.

If the churches do not promote an education for children from a Christian and Biblical worldview, who will?

Christian Thinking
Discovered and Uncovered Truth

You cannot construct truth from a mass of dissonant and disparate material. You cannot construct truth at all: you can only discover it. And the more noisily opinionated people intervene with their contributions, the less likely you are to find it…Yet, within the Church as well as outside it, this perverted notion persists. Truth is conceived on a quantitative basis—no doubt under the influence of statistical reasoning and public opinion [polls. It is being assumed that the more people there are with different opinions to contribute, the greater “truth” will emerge from the mixing of these opinions in the melting pot. Truth is regarded as a kind of pudding or brew, which you concoct from human opinions…But truth is more like a rock than a pudding—a rock which you lay bare by scraping away the soil. And that soil is largely compounded of human prejudice and passion.

Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, How Should a Christian Think? (Ann Arbor, Mi: Servant Books, 1963), p. 112-13.

History
What is history and how do we know?

History is important to the Christian. The life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ must be “actual historical events” for believers to have salvation from their sin and God’s wrath against sin. We often tell young people, history is His-story…it is all about Christ. But, what exactly is history? In his excellent book, In Defense of History (WW Norton & Company: New York, 1999), Richard Evans lays out some of the problems in defining what history is. He sets forth that the definition of history is currently under attach by post-modernism [pomo] with its disdain of truth. He posits that before pomo, two definitions were the accepted alternatives for defining history. They come from two different British scholars, Edward Hallet Carr and Sir Geoffrey Elton.

In his book What is History? Carr presses the idea:
…that history books, like the people who write them, are products of their own times, bringing particular ideas and ideologies to bear on the past.
In Defense of History, pp. 1, 2.
In contrast to Carr’s relativistic approach, Elton in his The Practice of History mounts a defense that history:
…is a search for objective truth about the past. It concludes optimistically that historians’ efforts in this enterprise more often than not meet with success.
In Defense of History, p. 2
Their approaches were diametrically opposed. Carr’s was a sociological approach; Elton’s was a narrative of political events. Carr urged his students to study the author of the history; Elton urged his students to look at the documentary evidence as the ultimate arbiter of historical accuracy and truth.

As you would expect, in what constitutes an historical fact, Carr and Elton also disagreed. Carr defined historical fact as follows:
…a past event did not become an historical fact until it was accepted as such by historians…Historical facts were therefore constituted by theory and interpretation. They did not exist independently.
In Defense of History, p. 66.
Elton strongly opposed Carr on what was an historical fact:
A historical fact was something that happened in the past which had left traces in documents that could be used by the historian to reconstruct it in the present…the material left to us in the past must be read “in the context of the day that produced it…The present must be kept out of the past if the search for truth of that past is to move towards such success in the circumstances as is possible.” The historians question should be formulated not by some present theory but from the historical source themselves.
In Defense of History, p. 65.

Curiously, in spite of his relativism, Carr did not believe all views of the past are equally valid. He was still an empiricist who would not agree that facts are nothing and interpretation is all. He was well aware of the extreme interpretations of Bolshevik history ranging from anti to pro-Soviet accounts. He tries to integrate facts and interpretation:
The historian starts with a provisional selection of facts, and a provisional interpretation in the light of which that selection has been made—by others as well as by himself. As he works, both the interpretation and the selection and ordering of facts undergo subtle and perhaps partly unconscious changes through the reciprocal action of one on the other…History was an unending dialogue between the present and the past.
In Defense of History, p. 193.

So Carr had an objectivity about history, but it was not the same as Elton’s. Elton said:
“The purpose of history is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must be given full respect in its own right.” The event of the past occurred, people lived and died, whether or not historians were interested in writing about them. They had an independent reality. The historian’s job was to discover and analyze them through the study of evidential traces they left behind. Establishing what happened, and when, and how, was a major part of historical research, he argued, and differences among historians over these matters often reflected the depth of the historian’s knowledge of the sources rather than a contemporary standpoint or opinion…Objectivity was simply a matter of reading the documents without prejudice and using them to reconstruct the past in its own terms.
In Defense of History, p. 197-98

Both views of objectivity have faults, but that does not mean we abandon history to the pomos who believe there is no possibility of objective knowledge. If all theories are alike valid, why should we embrace the pomo view of history? And, if all knowledge is relative, it is impossible to give an accurate view of pomo historians without placing our own significance to it. So, why bother? Pomos are usually leftists, anti-authoritarian and radical in their individuality. So, their theories of history, liberating man from objectivity, lends itself to the challenging, radical individuality that disdains history as we have it as written by dead white men who were winners. This permits the deconstruction of all that has been the groundwork for traditional values and virtues.

Pomos do force historians to reexamine their assumptions and interpretive categories. But pomo is not an answer to the search for what really occurred in the past. Richard Evans, in the face of Carr, Elton and pomos says this:
I will look humbly at the past and say, despite them all: It really happened, and we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical, find out how it did and reach some tenable conclusions about what it all meant.
In Defense of History, p. 220.

It is quite easy to fall into a belief that history is meaningless in the culture we live. But, for Christians, that is never possible. As Evans points out, history is something that “really happened”. God Himself has mediated to us Who He is and what He has done in history. Like all historians we must be scrupulous, careful and self critical in reaching conclusions about Him. But as believers, there is one critical difference. We believe the Truth of Christ not by the evidence alone (Elton) or by ordering, selecting and interpreting the evidence (Carr), but because of the work of the Holy Spirit Who brings the Truth to bear in our minds, hearts and behavior. Man wants to look at the evidence alone for history, or interpret the evidence in his way to determine history, or dismiss history as objective facts evidencing some true reality. Christians understand that history is objective truth through faith, not by any method devised or instituted by man.

Reading
John Williamson Nevin

My paternal relatives belonged to St. Luke’s German Reformed Church in Luthersburg, PA. My father’s baptismal certificate is in German and the church conducted its services in German until 1939 when a nutty Austrian propelled German into an invasion that began WW II. I was always interested in the theology of the German Reformed Church. So, I was naturally drawn to DG Hart’s biography John Williamson Nevin, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2005).

Nevin was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian who studied at Princeton from 1823-28 and was a favorite of Charles Hodge. He achieved the rank as the “best Hebrew scholar” at Princeton. Because of his academic abilities, when he graduated from Princeton, he took over Hodge’s teaching duties while the latter was on a sabbatical in Germany from 1826-28. No small feat for a freshly minted graduate. Their later falling out is more remarkable since Hodge came to criticize his pupil and replacement for being too influenced by German theologians, those Hodge himself went to study with on his sabbatical.

From 1830-40, Nevin was a professor at Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, near Pittsburgh. This ten years was a time of personal assessment and recognition of theological issues he had not yet resolved in his mind. In 1840 he accepted a call to Mercersburg Seminary of the German Reformed Church which was viewed by many as just a move from Scot Presbyterian to German Presbyterian. The German Reformed views certainly had a profound affect on Nevin. However, it seems that Nevin’s move to Mercersburg had the effect of burying him as an influence on the greater Reformed world. He became a forgotten genius. But, in two ways he has had a lasting influence.

When he began his tenure at Mercersburg with an inaugural address on 20 May 1840, little did he realize the impact Finneyite revival was having on the German Reformed Church. Also, the lack of ministers had opened the denomination to all forms of “wild and irregular” religious experiences. In the denomination’s official publication, Weekly Messenger, Nevin joined the issues with these problems. John Winebrenner, a former German Reformed pastor who in 1825 began the Church of God in Harrisburg as a separatist German Reformed group under the influence of Finney. They began a running dispute that continued for many years and had a profound affect on Nevin. All of this lead to Nevin writing, probably his most famous work, The Anxious Bench [AB].

AB was the most trenchant and probing critique of revivalism in the Finneyite mold ever written. Nevin was discomforted with the state of evangelicalism in American and it was, in his view, Finney who introduced the individualistic concern with personal experience that plagued the church then, as it still does. In the book Nevin outlines four dangers of the anxious bench: It creates a false issue for the sinner [what outward action must I take] rather than the real issue [Repentance]; it obstructs and diverts attention to the Holy Spirit in the truly awakened; it foster spurious conversions; and harm and loss to the souls of men who are false professors of faith.

In AB, Nevin does not stop at criticism as we often see today in analysis of wrongs. He offers a Reformed corrective: “system of Catechism”. By this Nevin emphasized the that God carries out His saving work through the family and Christian Church through ordinary and divinely established means of grace. Nevin emphasized the Church as the divine supernatural organism of God which was contrary to Finney’s view of religion as a natural, right way of exercising human facilities. Because of Finney, the world was introduced to a man-centered system of self-salvation by his free will. For Nevin, the church is not a collection of saved individualists, the product of those individuals. The Church is a divine organism with its own supernatural life, a living body existing prior to individual believers manifesting its life through those brought to faith.

Nevin’s other memorable contribution was over the Lord’s Supper in Mystical Presence. He debunked the Lutheran and Roman views of transubstantiation [the elements change to the body and blood of Christ] and consubstantiation [the flesh and blood was in with and under the outward signs] by affirming the classic Reformed position that Christ’s ascended body “remains constantly in heaven, according to the Scriptures” so His participation in the supper could only be spiritual. With these errors understood, he then maintained that Christ’s person was present in the sacrament “so far as the actual participation of the believer is concerned.” To Nevin, the Reformed Church spoke of a spiritual real presence. This means:
…the body of Christ is in heaven, the believer on earth; but the by power of the Holy Ghost, nevertheless, the obstacle of such a vast local distance is overcome, so that in the sacramental act, while the outward symbols are received in an outward way, the very body and blood of Christ are at the same time inwardly and supernaturally communicated to the worthy receiver, for the real nourishment of his new life.
This, Nevin substantiated was the view of Calvin but his critics believed he was attempting to improve on Calvin.

His former teacher, Charles Hodge, became his harshest critic. He dismissed Nevin’s view of the supper. He acknowledged that Nevin marshaled the facts but that two views of the sacrament had been present from the beginning. One, in the “sacrificial virtue” of Christ’s body and blood, and the other in the mysterious and supernatural “efficacy flowing from the glorified body of Christ in heaven”. Hodge interpreted the latter view as simply a concession to Lutherans in the 16th century and that the former as correct. While history and the Westminster Confession [Shorter Catechism # 69] proved Nevin correct, tangling with Hodge was not a contemporary benefit to Nevin or his views.

Hodge, as the centurion of Reformed faith, saw Nevin as too Catholic. For Hodge sola scriptura and justification by faith alone, the formal and material causes of the Reformation, were the keys to understanding Biblical faith. And, he believed Nevin’s mystical presence was compromising those principles. But Nevin wanted the supernatural church to be grounded in the mystery of the incarnation of Christ through the sacrament. For Nevin, Hodge, like Finney, had a subjective and individualistic form of devotion that from Nevin’s churchly view was flawed.

This is a book worth reading. It shows how doctrinal issues flare up in every generation and that devoted servants of Christ can have sharp differences. Hart says Nevin’s greatest contribution is showing us that the American church lost its function in society, not by adopting modernism, but when it no longer regarded the church as a medium of grace but more or less a voluntary society of Christian disciples. Certainly food for thought at a time when we see individualistic evangelical Christianity running rampant. A greater question may be, if the church is primarily a supernatural creation of God ministering salvation and grace through the Word, is not being such a church a greater danger to the souls of men than the most hostile of cultures?

Holiness
In an unholy world

Malcolm Muggeridge is attributed with saying that the depravity of man was proved every day in the newspaper and electronic media. No one reading this need be told we live in an unholy world. This is in sharp contrast to God Who is holy in all His power, truth, justice, love, and knowledge. He is holy, holy, holy! And, when He enters in His people by faith He marks them off as separate and distinct from the rest of the world. God living in you creates holiness in an unholy world.

Each of us claimed by God as His are a holy temple. Paul tells the Corinthians:
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. (I Cor. 3:16,17)
So, if you are a Christian, how do you live holy in an unholy world? It is not easy. We live in a global community. Instantly we know what goes on all over this globe we live on. We can travel to every nook and cranny of this world. We are slaves to technology…our phones, TVs, I-pods, CD players, and various other electronic gadgets. We listen to each other, talking heads, entertainers and political pundits, but not God. Is it any wonder we have difficulty cultivating holiness. The only holy One is the last we talk or listen to.

Because God is holy and the world is not, the latter tries to marginalize the former. In some parts of the world it is by active persecution. World lovers beat, torture and kill Christ lovers. In Europe and the US, we allow the impulses of religious pluralism, relativism, multi-culturalism and political correctness to keep holiness from being an option. We privatize our faith. We take God and His holiness completely out of circulation. The unholiness of the world does not have to compete with the holiness of God. And, that suits the world just fine, thank you.

You and I have to get back to basics. We belong to the holy One. It behooves and becomes us to live holy lives in an unholy world. Living holy lives is not easy and it is not an accomplishment of ours. It comes as a result of being more and more yielded to our Lord and Savior thus allowing us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to become more and more like Christ. In Paul’s prayer for the saints in Ephesians 3, he prays:
…that according to the riches of His glory, He may grant your to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being. Eph. 3: 16 [ESV]
This petition is all about sanctification. We are always weak; it is only by His power working in us by the Holy Spirit that strengthens us and permits holy living.

But, it does happen. And, we must be ready to forsake the unholy world as children of the holy God. Not to do so is an affront and abomination to the God Who died for us. Listen to a voice from another time, Robert Leighton, who demands Christians be severed from the common, unclean and profane world:

It is no matter that the profane world (which so hates God that it cannot endure His image) so mock and revile; it is thy honour to be…more vile, in growing still more like unto Him in holiness…renouncing of the lusts and pollutions of the world, both in heart and life…filling of their room with the beautifying graces of the Spirit of God…[being] like Him Who hath called them. Consider Whose you are and you cannot deny that it becomes you to be holy. Consider your near relation to the holy God…You were running to destruction in the way of sin, and there was a voice together with the Gospel preached to your ear, which spake into your heart, and called you back from the path of death to the way of holiness, which is the only way of life. He has severed you from the mass of the profane world, and picked you out to be jewels for Himself. He hath set you apart to this end, that you may be holy to Him…It is sacrilege for you to dispose of yourselves after the impure manner of the world, and to apply yourselves to any profane use, Whom God hath consecrated to Himself.

He has chosen you for Himself out of the world. Is it too much to live for Him and not the world? That is holiness in an unholy world.

Living in the World
Cheap Oil

School has started again throughout the land. I happen to live within ¼ mile of the high school in my community. I also have to make a turn across traffic heading to the school in the morning. There is a steady stream of cars and buses zipping down the highway between 7:40 and 8:00 a.m. every weekday morning. Parents hauling kid, School buses hauling kids and vehicles driven by licensed kids hauling kids. All coming to the same destination from the same area in 3 different types of transportation. Why don’t they all ride the school bus? Cheap oil.

I recently read an interview with Wendell Berry who opined that if you look at the way all our institutions are run today, behind it all is cheap oil. Education is one. How much oil is wasted in transporting kids to school. The high school near my home is built on the edge of the school district. Less than ½ of 1 % of the students could walk even if they wanted to. Why do we have suburbs? Cheap oil. Why have downtown shopping areas disappeared and folks go to malls with big box stores? Cheap oil. Why are most goods and services delivered by truck? Cheap oil. Why do we have interstate an highway system that transports us coast to coast? Cheap oil.

This past summer we were lamenting the seeming loss of cheap oil. The prices of gasoline are slowly falling now, but gasoline prices and what should be done about them is a key issue in the 2006 Congressional races. It shares equal billing with Iraq as a campaign issue, where lives are lost by the dozens each day. Cheap oil. It is important to us because we have built a way of life around it. I often think of my grandfather who was born, lived and died within a 6 mile area. He walked to work and went to town once a week to peddle what he raised on the farm and get what he needed for the coming week. He had a large family that helped tend the farm and worked at various jobs to help supplement the costs of living. The neighbors threshed together, raised barns together, worshiped together, shed tears and enjoyed laughter together. No one vacationed in a far away place, worked away from home or lived a self-sufficient life without others. We live in a far different world, but is it better because of cheap oil?

We wonder why we have such a difficult time dealing with our “terrorist enemies.” They know we are addicted to cheap oil. Our very lifestyle, much of which they despise, depends on cheap oil. And, we are not about to “sacrifice” our individuality. Many of my environmentally friendly friends want to conserve oil to save the planet. I’ve got news for them. The industrial pollution from China and India in the coming years will make our emissions problems seem sophomoric. Cheap oil has cheapened life. We know less about each other, spend less time with neighbors and school mates, and live lives separated from all forms of community. Cheap oil seems to make us what we are…and it is not very pretty. Maybe its time to park the car and ground the airliners [then there would be not worry about terrorist threats], walk over to your neighbors and see how they are doing and share the joys and sorrows of life with others. That will mean more than cheap oil.