Those of you who know me or have read this blog for some time will know of my disdain for the "gospel versus religion" distinction that has featured so prominently in evangelical Christianity in recent years. It is the flesh and blood, for example, of the gospel tweeting phenomenon. Pastors use it often in their sermons. Well-intentioned believers have made it a staple of their discussions with sceptics who claim that Christianity is just another religion. It has become the mantra of Christian culture.

But I have never liked the distinction. And I am in good company, because neither would Herman Bavinck. In the opening essay of his collection, Essays on Religion, Science and Society, in which he discusses the philosophy of religion, he states very clearly that religion is at the core of who we are as human beings, and is a fundamental and inescapable part of life. This idea would most certainly not sit well with fans of the gospel/religion distinction, but Bavinck is exactly right.

One of the major problems with this gospel/religion distinction is that it is premised on a narrow definition of religion. The understanding is that religion is merely a voluntary action on the part of individuals, who engage in certain practices or rituals in an effort to make themselves better people or to earn their own salvation. Insofar as people use this to indicate a distinction between Christianity and the other religions of the world, there is an element of truth to it—only in Christianity does God grant salvation to his people purely by his grace, requiring nothing on their part.

However, the problem that arises with such a narrow definition of religion is that it implicitly denies something fundamental about every human being, as I noted above: at the core, all of us are religious. To be human is to be religious. All of us have a natural impulse to worship and serve something. The issue at hand, then, is not that humans engage in the performance of different practices and rituals with a view to salvation or moral uprightness. The problem goes deeper than that. It is a question of the orientation of their whole being. Are they living in service to the Creator, or to a creature?

Henry R. Van Til once wrote, "For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet's expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man's whole existence." Every human being has the sense of something ultimate and absolute, and their lives bear recognition of that fact. While Christianity differs from other religions in very major ways—and I am in no way trying to minimize those differences—it also has similarities to all other religions. Each is made up of people who want to worship something or someone with the belief that in doing so, salvation can be found. From there, the divergences of belief and practice vary significantly, of course, but this basic thing is common to all religions.

Western society has long tried to downplay the significance of religion, but the central place of religion in human life throughout history clearly demonstrates that we cannot underestimate its power. This was a reality that many of the Enlightenment-era philosophers were not willing to concede. While they would grant a place to religion as one aspect of the human person, none would assert that mankind is fundamentally religious. Bavinck thus notes,

By limiting religion to one human faculty, they diminish man's universal character. They divide man in two and separate what belongs together. They create a gulf between religion and culture, and they run the danger of reducing religion to moral duty or aesthetic emotion or a philosophic view. But according to the Christian confession religion is other than and higher than all those views; religion must not just be something in one's life, but everything, Jesus demands that we love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. In our thinking and living, there can be no division between God and the world, between religion and culture; no one can serve two masters.

Therefore if we want to do full justice to religion, we must return to the central unity in man that is the basis for differentiating his faculties and which in Holy Scripture is often designated the heart, from which proceed all expressions of life in mind, feeling, and will. Reformed theologians sought that central point for religion in (as Calvin called it) the seed of religion [semen religionis] or sense of divinity [sensus divinitatis], and in the Christian religion theologians went behind faith and conversion to regeneration, which in principle is a renewal of the whole man. When they took a position in this center of man, they saw opportunity to avoid all one-sidedness of rationalism, mysticism, and ethicism, and to maintain that religion is the animating principle of all of life (29-30).

Proponents of the gospel/religion distinction might protest that they are simply using the definition of religion accepted by their culture for the purpose of interacting with them. I would agree that we must be aware of how our culture defines different words and ideas, but would we so quick to accept our culture's definitions if we are talking about things like sin, faith, or the gospel? As Bavinck notes, the idea of religion being only one part of man is an idea that finds expression particularly in the philosophy of the Enlightenment era, and one that has been readily adopted by our culture. However, this is certainly not the case in the Christian tradition. Many theologians and Christian philosophers have spoken readily about the religious nature of man. So the question we need to ask is, to what heritage do we belong?

Owing to its belief that religion can be confined to one part of the human being, our culture further strives to relegate religion to a private sphere. The gospel just becomes another alternative to their idea of religion, and they will continue to view this faith as something private and just one of many parts of life. Because of this, you can't just replace our culture's idea of religion with the gospel. First you must redefine misconceptions of religion and the nature of humanity.

If you truly believe that the gospel transforms the entirety of a man's life, then you need to begin with a proper understanding who man fundamentally is. It is not without significance that the Bible speaks so frequently about the heart, because it is the heart that is the core of the human being. It is the heart that loves and desires. Now, this is the important part—we are fundamentally desiring beings. The basic impulse of our nature is to attach worth to something and to adore it. Our basic impulse is to worship. So, if the core of man's being naturally worships, what does this say about humanity? The conclusion is obvious: we are religious beings.

The gospel, then, is not about replacing or abandoning religion. The gospel takes the religious man and transforms his heart so that he begins to worship the true God, the Lord of heaven and earth. The gospel does not stand as the antithesis to religion because it addresses man as a religious being. To quote Van Til again, "No man can escape this religious determination of his life, since God is the inescapable, ever-present Fact of man's existence. God may be loved or hated, adored or debased, but he cannot be ignored." The gospel confronts religious man with the Creator, demanding that, as a worshipping being, he worship God alone.

I do not like the gospel versus religion distinction. It is an oversimplification, and it is a false dichotomy. Further, it tends toward a deficient view of the nature of humanity. Many Christians, I know, think it is a helpful tool for highlighting the differences between Christianity and other world religions (salvation by grace versus salvation by works, and so on), but we simply cannot let pragmatism rule the day when it comes to something so fundamental to who we are as human beings.

Some will think that I make too much of this, but I am reminded of what Eugene Peterson once said, "We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and then they end up using us." There is much wisdom in this. Religion is not a word to be used lightly and then discarded, because humanity is ulimately religious. As Christians, we need to uphold a biblical anthropology that recognizes the fundamental religious character of human beings if we are to present a gospel that transforms their whole being.