The essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and re-created by the grace of the Spirit into a kingdom of God (112).
That is one seriously loaded statement. But it lays down the sort of holistic understanding of Christianity that we so desperately need.
Orthodox men love church, says Frederica Matthewes-Green. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across an article she had written after dialoguing with one hundred Orthodox men who had converted to Orthodoxy as adults to find out what drew them in.
It's no secret that in most Protestant churches, females make up a larger portion of the congregation, often significantly. This was one of the reasons Matthewes-Green decided to find out why Orthodoxy bucks that trend. What she discovered was very interesting. Look at some of the responses below. It is especially noteworthy, I think, that many of the men commented on the challenge of Orthodoxy:
"It's the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you."
"Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it's also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to 'feel good about myself' but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigour I find liberation."
"Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honourable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean."
"Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, Jesus takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may ‘be kept ever warriors invincible.'"
"...‘the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay’ has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering inexorably, silently yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality."
"Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone's attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it's in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It's not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty."
A lot of the things these men say they like in Orthodoxy could be true of Protestantism as well. The problem, though, is that many churches have changed and have adapted too much to modern culture. But a Protestant church that is true to its heritage and tradition does require you to adapt to it. I mentioned the Book of Common Prayer the other day; worshipping in a church which uses the BCP presents a challenge that you need to adapt to. Protestant faith is serious and difficult and demanding; Jesus said that if anyone was to follow him they needed to first lay down their life (Matt. 16:24-25). We are called to be holy too, and learning to submit to Christ's Lordship over all of your life is a difficult process. Early Protestants saw Jesus as a strong and powerful King; the tender, soft Swedish Jesus is a modern invention. Protestant worship isn't about feelings and emotions and it does require participation.
But it's not difficult to see that in many churches this is not the case anymore. So, maybe we need to change something. Maybe it's not about coming up with new ways to challenge men, but returning to more classical forms of faith and worship. Maybe instead of dumbing everything down, we make men wrestle again with words and phrases that take some work to understand. Maybe instead of making worship as comfortable as we can, we make them kneel once in a while or stand for prolonged periods of time. Maybe we get them thinking hard about being disciples of Christ, as workers, as husbands and fathers, as citizens, as sports fans. Maybe we don't allow them to be passive and train them to teach or to lead in prayer or to mentor young men.
Christianity should be hard work. It should be challenging. It requires us, after all, to surrender everything to Christ. If men are not learning that in our churches, then something is wrong.
In Christianity faith in the Mediator is not something optional, not something about which, in the last resort, it is possible to hold different opinions, if we are only united on the 'main point'. For faith in the Mediator – in the event which took place once for all, a revealed atonement – is the Christian religion itself; it is the 'main point'; it is not something alongside of the centre; it is the substance and kernel, not the husk. This is so true that we may even say: in distinction from all other forms of religion, the Christian religion is faith in the one Mediator... And there is no other possibility of being a Christian than through faith in that which took place once for all, revelation and atonement through the Mediator.
Towards the end of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, writes honestly about the reality that Christianity requires a transformation that is very difficult business:
Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'
...The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves', to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at teh same time be 'good'. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centred on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs.
...That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.
We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a day or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible (197-198).
Last year, in preparation for our move to England, I read Peter Hitchens’ excellent book, The Rage Against God: Why Faith is the Foundation of Civilisation, which had been lent to me by an English friend. I simply devoured the book. Hitchens’ writing was very engaging, and his perception of British society’s move away from its Christian foundation to almost embracing radical atheism was intriguing.
With the rioting in a few of the major English cities in the past week, I’ve been thinking about the book again and some of Hitchens’ conclusions. British Prime Minister, David Cameron, attributed the rioting and criminal behaviour of those involved to a decay of the moral foundation of Britain in a speech this morning. He is in large part correct, of course, but what he did not address is the moral decay at all levels of British society, including those in positions of power. Hitchens notes,
The British establishment has ceased to be Christian and has inherited a society with Christian forms and traditions. It does not know what to do with them or how to replace them. Into this confusion and emptiness the new militant secularists now seek to bring an aggressive atheism (123).
That ‘aggressive atheism’ takes on all different kinds of forms at different levels of society, but it was perhaps nowhere more visible than in the flames and destruction caused by those who believe they are accountable to no one, free from any externally-imposed moral standard, a generation raised in the shadows of a society vigorously championing their right to entitlement and autonomy.
While Hitchens’ book needs to be read in its entirety to get the full breadth of his argument (and it is a book you really should read), this extended quotation is helpful in light of these recent events:
Christianity is without doubt difficult and taxing, and all of us fail to emulate the perfection of Christ himself. But we are far better for trying than for not trying, and we know that there is forgiveness available for honest failure. My brother’s [the outspoken atheist, Christopher Hitchens] suggestion that we are urged to be superhuman ‘on pain of death and torture’ reveals a misunderstanding both of the nature of the commandments and the extent of forgiveness. There is also some excuse-making involved. The difficult is being described as superhuman. Yes, there is fear in the Christian constitution, as there must be in any system of law and justice. I should be dismayed if deliberate, unrepentant wickedness did not lead to retribution of some kind. But there is far more love offered for those who honestly attempt to follow the law, and unbounded forgiveness for all who seek it – even those who have most vigorously defamed the faith and then embrace it just before the darkness falls. And that is why, while it is perfectly possible for convinced atheists to do absolutely good deeds at great cost to themselves – not least because God so very much wishes them to – it is rather more likely that believing Christians will do such things. And when it comes to the millions of small and tedious good deeds that are needed for a society to function with charity, honesty, and kindness, a shortage of believing Christians will lead to that society’s decay.
We can live at a low level of cooperation by mutual consideration. But as soon as we move beyond subsistence and the smallest units, problems arise that cannot be resolved by mutual decency. Some people grow richer, some are stronger, some acquire weapons. Power comes into being at a very early stage in human society. So do greed, competition for scarce resources, and wars with other groups. Mutual benefit ceases to offer any kind of guide to behaviour. Who is to say, in a city ruled by a single powerful and ruthless family from an impregnable fortress, that the strongest man is not always right?
Just to be clear, I am not proposing that all of a society’s problems would easily be solved if there were more Christians around or by imposing Christian morality through legislation, or that a society should adopt the Christian faith for merely pragmatic reasons. It is much more complex than that. Indeed, history has proved that 'Christian' societies can be terribly oppressive. At the same time, owing to common grace, there have been societies where Christianity has had no significant presence, yet there have been relative degrees of peace and goodness.
That being said, the only foundation that will provide a society with leaders who are servants, citizens who are wholly devoted to the common good, and a rule of law that upholds true freedom, justice, and peace – in short, one which will ensure the flourishing of all its members – is one based on and submissive to the sovereign rule of Jesus Christ. As politically incorrect as it is to say something like this in our day, the events of late require such candor and honesty. Cameron himself recognises the need to be open about society's ills, and is right to confront something like this so frankly.
The one thing he needs to understand, though, is that politicians cannot fix what is fundamentally a spiritual problem.
During our sojourn here in Grand Rapids, Michigan (which ends today), I took the opportunity to wander through Baker Book House. While doing so, I noticed the book you see to your left, God Without Religion: Can It Really Be This Simple? I thought to myself, 'No, it's not,' and kept walking.
Tonight I was thinking again about the book and looked it up on Amazon. As I had been thinking of the title, I began to consider that perhaps the author himself answered the question as I did, and there was finally going to be a book at a more popular level arguing for the understanding that all of life is religion, and that humans are religious at the very core of their beings.
But it seems that this is not the case. I haven't read the book, but all the reviews on Amazon indicate that it is another book pushing the idea that 'religion' equals 'institutional Christianity' and/or 'salvation by works' and that real authentic Christianity is just Jesus and the Gospel. The endorsements speak of '[dumping] the religious burden' and no longer having to live 'under religious bondage.' What you get, though, is a Christianity that, in addition to being somewhat abstract and overspiritualised, is bent towards individual piety and puts especial emphasis on the second person of the Trinity.
I have been reading John Bolt's book, Christian and Reformed Today (which is available free as a PDF here), and already in the first couple of chapters I have found some particularly important things regarding the trinitarian emphasis in Reformed theology. Bolt argues that, although most Christian traditions certainly claim to be trinitarian, they often focus on one person of the Trinity to the exclusion of the other two. Only in the Reformed tradition, Bolt asserts, can one find a fully trinitarian Christianity.
For the purposes of defintion, Bolt says, "A Reformed person is trinitarian in theology and catholic in vision" (21). Expanding first on the trinitarian aspect of his defintion, Bolt cites Herman Bavinck, who writes, "The essence of the Christian religion consists therein, that the creation of the Father, destroyed by sin, is again restored in the death and resurrection of the Son of God, and recreated by the grace of the Spirit to a Kingdom of God" (29). It is notable that though all three persons of the Trinity are equal, there is a logical flow that begins with God the Father and creation.
When Reformed trinitarian theology begins with the Father, this has some important implications. It means specifically that creation has priority over salvation, that salvation is not escape from or elevation above creation but the restoration of creation. It means that the most important question in life is not, "What must I do to be saved," but "How can I glorify God?" As the Westminster Catechism so beautifully states it, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." It means that the Reformed tradition places a great deal of emphasis upon the idea of vocation or calling, upon serving God in this world rather than escaping from it (28).
So we see that a trinitarian theology begins and ends with God as Creator. This means that Christianity which is fully trinitarian will understand the end goal of the Christian life differently than a Christianity which lays more or less stress on one person of the Trinity. Most common in evangelical Christianity is the tendency to elevate the second person of the Trinity, thus making individual salvation the primary focus. As Bolt suggests, when the question, "What must I do to be saved?" becomes fundamental, the Christianity that emerges becomes too narrowly focused and fails to take into account the work of God to restore his creation and establish his rule as King. The biblical narrative is framed by creation and new creation, and our faith and theology must take this into account.
Bolt continues with an explanation of the second part of his definition:
The second part of the suggested definition has already been hinted at, namely that a Reformed person is catholic in vision. The Reformed view of life in the world is dominated by the idea of God's sovereignty over the entire cosmos. Abraham Kuyper in his Lectures on Calvinism put it this way: The dominating principle of Calvinism 'was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but in the widest sense cosmologically, the sovereignty of the triune God over the whole cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible.' That is what is meant by catholicity—the Reformed vision is cosmic or universal. The Reformed person is not satisifed with the salvation of his or her soul, as crucial as that is to being a Christian. The kingdom of heaven, the great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck was fond of saying, is not only a pearl of great price, the treasure a man finds in a field and must obtain at all costs. It is that indeed, but it is also a leaven and a mustard seed which grows and expands. The gospel is a message for the world as well as for in the individual (29).
The stream of the Reformed tradition that has come to be known as the New Calvinism has a tendency to hear this and levy accusations both of transformationalism and a neglect of personal piety and holiness. That is a misunderstanding, however, and I think Bolt's emphasis on the trinitarian nature of the Reformed tradition is significant in correcting this misunderstanding. The focus of Reformed theology, as Bavinck notes above, is on the work of the triune God – not individuals – in restoring his creation and establishing the Kingdom of God. In turn, the people of God are called to embody the new reality that the coming of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ inaugurates. Holiness, then, is living according to the rule of the King in every part of life.
John Stott once said, "One of the major reasons people reject the Gospel today is not because they perceive it to be false but because they perceive it to be trivial." Because of that, he founded the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in 1982 to be a resource to help Christians grow in their understanding of what it means for Christ to be Lord over all. The mission of LICC, according to their website, is "to envision and equip Christians and their churches for whole-life missionary discipleship in the world. We seek to serve them with biblical frameworks, practical resources, training and models so that they flourish as followers of Jesus and grow as whole-life disciplemaking communities."
Here is Mark Greene, the institute's director, talking a bit more about their mission:
This is very encouraging. It's always exciting when Christians really understand that Christ's Lordship extends over all of life.
Towards the end of 
