Navigating the Culture War

 A few years ago I wrote about some of my anxieties about the concept of 'culture war'.  At that time, it seemed like the culture war was a uniquely American conflict.  It seemed broadly good to me that we weren't fighting a culture war.  It seemed particularly good that the church wasn't implicated on one side of a culture war as it tends to be in the US.

Well, time moves on.  The culture war has reached the UK.  Perhaps it has been brewing for a long time, but now it seems much more out in the open.  Increasingly, 'normal' politics has been suspended in favour of a battle over what British culture is and what it ought to be.  We have almost reached the point where remaining a non-combatant is only possible by not engaging at all in public life.  That is the way I see it, anyway.

Here are a few 'thinking out loud' pointers on how to navigate the culture war:

1.  Remember that in the UK, the church is not a major player in the culture war.  In the USA there are enough evangelical Christians that their opinion matters to politicians.  Leaders in the culture war want the church on their side; either because they think the church supports their values, or just because they need the church's votes.  Nobody in the UK very much cares what we think.  It would be a mistake, then, to read the UK version of the culture war through an American lens which makes the role of religion and the church look much larger than it really is.  The war between 'conservatives' and 'liberals' over UK culture is only tangentially related (via history) to Christianity.

2.  Keeping that in mind, we should refuse to allow the culture war to become absolute.  We should refuse to identify one side or the other with the kingdom of God.  We should not speak or act as if one side or the other embodied 'Christian' values.

3.  This doesn't mean we shouldn't engage.  Human culture is a natural - which is to say, a created - good.  We should be concerned about our culture.  We should endeavour to influence our culture, with whatever little influence each of us has individually, in ways that we deem to be good.  We should not sit secure in our knowledge that the real Kingdom endures no matter what goes on in the world (which is true), and therefore not care about what happens in the world.  We should aim to do good.

4.  When we engage, we should resist picking a side.  We need to think through each individual issue and avoid seeing things as a slate, where we are forced to accept everything that is said by one side or the other.  Because you agree with one side on the value on life does not mean you have to agree with them on economics.  Because you agree with one side on refugees does not mean you have to toe their particular line on sexuality and gender.  One thing this will mean is that we will probably end up looking like the baddies to everyone.  Such is the Christian life.

5.  We need to be careful to distinguish Kingdom issues from culture issues.  Sometimes this is easy.  Whether patriotic songs should be sung at the Proms is a culture issue.  Whether people should be allowed to kill other people in utero is a Kingdom issue.  This does not mean the Kingdom has nothing to say about the Proms, or that issues of abortion aren't influenced by culture; it is simply to say that some things are clearly and directly related to a Christian ethic, and others are much more open to disagreement.  Sometimes it is more complex: on gender issues, I think there is a Kingdom issue at the heart of things - the created difference between men and women - but a cultural issue around how this is expressed.  We need to think this through because some issues will be a matter of repentance and discipleship, and others of agreeing to disagree, within the church.  If someone in your church thinks abortion is okay, it is a matter of Christian discipleship to set them right and call them to repentance; if someone in your church wants to sing Land of Hope and Glory, fine - whether that is to your taste and consonant with your politics or not.

6.  How we engage is as important as the substantive issues.  We can be enthusiastic exponents of left or right wing politics, but we can't let those things trump the Gospel.  We can witness to the reality of the other Kingdom, the true Kingdom, by caring as much about our culture as anyone else, but expressing ourselves with a godly gentleness born out of a confidence that God is in control whatever happens.  In particular, we witness to the reality of the Kingdom by committing to a church community where not everyone will agree with our stance on cultural issues.

The diminished capacity of language

 Reading theologians and pastors of previous centuries, it is rare to find a bare reference to 'Jesus' or to 'the Trinity'.  It is always 'the Lord Jesus'; it is always 'the Holy Trinity' or 'the Blessed Trinity'.  These are not just decorative adjectives.  They are, it seems to me, part of a whole way of using language to express reverence.

Problem: if I use language like that, I just sound pompous.

I think it's clear that linguistic usage has shifted, in the direction of more casual language, more off-hand use of words.  I imagine that follows our culture in general, which has become much more casual - and presumably it circles around to reinforce that tendency.  The question is: can we be reverent when our language no longer has the capacity to carry the weight of reverence?

I think the same probably applies to the use of (what seems to us) extravagant language of love to the Lord Jesus.  Our cynical culture struggles to take this seriously; I find myself that reading Owen or Bernard on the Song of Songs is difficult.  Our language doesn't seem to possess any longer the capacity for this sort of expression.

Resolved: in a casual, throw-away culture, in which language has become thin and diminished, to wrestle to use words with care, in order to preserve and perhaps restore their capacity to express and encourage great thoughts and emotions.

The light of Christ

One thing that Ike Miller's book on illumination has brought out very clearly for me - and it's something I've thought about before - is that the gospel binds together word and experience, the objective and subjective.  The last chapter of the book in particular discusses illumination as a human experience.  Illumination that doesn't actually illuminate is not a thing.  The Divine Light of the Father, shining in the face of Christ, has to reach human hearts and minds in the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit.  The work of the Blessed Trinity has to bless actual human lives in their real experience; only then are we really talking about illumination as we see it in Scripture.

But putting it in those Trinitarian terms helps to explain what Christian experience is.  It is a genuine experience of God, but what that means is seeing by the Spirit the light of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  It means having the eyes of one's heart opened by the Spirit of God so that in Jesus we see God's glory.  Miller does a great job of showing how this means, for us, concretely an encounter with Christ mediated by the Scriptural witness.  The word of God written is the place where we meet the Word of God in person.  The light in the face of Christ comes to us in the light of the sacred page.

(As an aside, I am regularly struck by this prayer in the CW liturgy for Morning Prayer: 'As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you...'  It is a prayer which directly prefaces the reading of the Scriptures!  Of course it is.  Where else do we see the light of his presence?  I don't have Miller in front of me, so I can't be sure on this, but I don't think he particularly discusses how this would extend to the word of God preached, the proclamation of the church; but certainly on Barthian terms we would want to construe that in an analagous way to the use of Scripture).

Here's the thing: it's the same light - the Divine Light of the Father, the Light of the World in Christ Jesus, the Enlightening Holy Spirit who sheds light abroad in our hearts.  The same light.  The light which dawns in the heart is the same light which shone before there was a first dawn.  ("God, who said 'let light shine out of darkness' has shone in our hearts...")  And it is the light of Christ!  There is no divine light that reaches this world which is not mediated by Christ Jesus and carried to us by the Holy Spirit.

Christians from time to time talk as if you could separate spiritual experience from content; as if there were some access to God which did not have cognitive content.  I do not think that will fly.  We encounter God in his Word - in Christ as he is brought to us in Holy Scripture and biblical preaching - by the Spirit.  There is no chasm between the taught content of the gospel and the felt experience of the gospel, just as there is no gap between Christ and his Spirit.  We tear them asunder at our peril.

Seeing by the Light

 Part of my holiday reading was Seeing by the Light by Ike Miller, subtitled Illumination in Augustine's and Barth's Readings of John.  This is the first book I've read in the Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture series, published in the UK by IVP under the Apollos imprint, but the aim of the series - to promote constructive contributions to systematic theology from an evangelical perspective through faithful Scriptural engagement and engagement with the tradition of the church - definitely appeals.  This particular book fits the vision perfectly, exploring the important theme of illumination - that is to say, how it comes about that certain people are enlightened, enabled to see the truth of the gospel.

Miller tackles his subject in three sections.  The first two look at Augustine and Barth respectively, and in particular the readings of John's Gospel in Augustine's sermons and Barth's lectures of 1925-6.  In both cases, Miller takes us first to the systematic/dogmatic statements of the theologian in question, to show us their general thoughts about illumination as a topic.  He then turns to their treatment of John's Gospel to see these principles worked out in exegetical practice.  For Barth, in particular, he highlights the contemporaneity between the lectures on John and the writing of the Gottingen Dogmatics.  We can be confident that 'theory' and 'practice' were being developed together.  Both historical sections of the book were fascinating, even if I did get a little bogged down in some of the discussion of Augustine reception.  I have always found Augustine pleasantly straightforward to read; books about Augustine less so!  But Miller helps us to navigate certain critical points around the influence of Neo-Platonism on Augustine's thought as it touches on the subject of illumination, clarifying especially that for Augustine light is not a faculty of human reason, but is a divine gift.  It will come as no surprise to the regular reader here that I was particularly interested in the section on Barth.  What comes across clearly here is that, whilst Barth does not devote much space to discussions of illumination within his dogmatic works, this is largely because he subsumes the topic under the heading of revelation.  This is not incidental; for Barth revelation has not occurred unless it has gone all the way, so to speak.

The third section of the book is devoted to turning these historical exercises into a constructive theological proposal.  Here Miller draws on the resources offered by Augustine and Barth, but is not afraid to supplement and correct them.  By offering first some Biblical Theology - an attempt to draw out the doctrine of illumination presented in John's Gospel (and Epistles) - he ensures that his work is not merely a reflection on past theological constructions, but a positive contribution to theology now.  The proposal proper is offered in two chapters, dealing with the theological nature of illumination and illumination as a human experience.  The latter in particular draws heavily and positively on Barth's Church Dogmatics II/1.

You'll need to get the book to see the full proposal, but here are a few things that I'm taking away from it.  Firstly, if we're going to treat the theme of illumination in a way which conforms linguistically and conceptually to Holy Scripture, we need to avoid making illumination merely an annexe of Pneumatology.  The 'Spirit as spotlight' version of illumination is not consonant with John's Gospel as a narrative of Christ entering the world as its light.  Second, we need to see the doctrine of illumination as what Miller calls 'an economy of light'.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are working in their distinctive but united ways to shed the divine light abroad in the world and in human hearts.  Third, we need to recognise that the experience of illumination is one which simply may not be explicable in human terms, because it is grounded firmly in God himself and his action.  That is to say, illumination is something that happens to human beings; it comes from without.  Fourth, it is helpful to see illumination in terms of participation.  The Spirit enables us to participate in Christ's own knowledge of the Father.

The topic of illumination is surely of critical importance, particularly in this cultural moment.  At a time when Christianity is very definitely a minority interest, and belief can no longer be taken for granted, it becomes more important than ever that believers be able to give an account of how they come to be believers.  This matters for us, in terms of having a secure basis in our faith; and it matters for our witness to the world.  So as I got to the end of the book, I wanted another couple of chapters.  I want to think about what the Biblical doctrine of illumination means for apologetics and evangelism; and I want to think a bit more about whether what is being proposed here is necessarily a version of fideism - and what that means for those who struggle in their faith.  But maybe that is all somewhat beyond the scope of this volume, and is stuff I will need to think through for myself.  When I do so, I think Miller will have provided me with plenty of theological fuel for my ponderings.