Empowered Witness (Foreword by Kevin DeYoung) E-Book

Alan D. Strange

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Church in Our Highly Politicized Age  The goal of the church should be simple—share the gospel to the ends of the earth. But in our highly politicized age, Christians can tend to place earthly political and social agendas over God's spiritual mission of the church.  In Empowered Witness, author Alan D. Strange examines the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, making a clear distinction between the functions of the church and other institutions. Strange argues that if the church continues to push political agendas, no institution will be focused solely on the Great Commission and the gospel will be lost entirely. This book calls readers to become aware of the church's power and limits and shed light on moral issues in a way that doesn't alter the deeply spiritual and gospel-centered mission of the church.  - Explores the Spirituality of the Church: An important biblical doctrine developed in the 19th century   - Appeals to Thoughtful Laypeople and Church Leaders: Considers the critical distinctions between the church and other institutions - Historical: Examines the purpose of the church throughout history and the development of the spirituality of the church in the 19th century  - Foreword by Kevin DeYoung: Author of Just Do Something; Crazy Busy; and The Biggest Story

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“The psalmist’s question ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’ (Ps. 137:4) continues to haunt many Christians today. But—both in content and emotional energy—the answers given vary widely. Where, then, is wisdom to be found? In Empowered Witness, Alan Strange offers us a much-needed combination of historical learning, biblical thinking, and deep love for the church. Rather than browbeat us into sharing prejudices, Empowered Witness serves us by helping us think. In expressing the ‘reasonableness’ Scripture enjoins (Phil. 4:5), Strange provides a model for us all.”

Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries

“Excellent history schools us in wisdom and truth, and Empowered Witness is no exception to this rule. Alan Strange skillfully examines the oft-misunderstood but biblical, true doctrine of the spirituality of the church. This book is required reading for anyone who wants to engage the world and at the same time preserve the church’s gospel mission.”

J. V. Fesko, Harriet Barbour Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson

“The fruit of deep reflection over many years, this book by Alan Strange offers the wisdom we need now more than ever. Christ is building his church—his way—and Empowered Witness points us in the right direction.”

Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California

“The spirituality of the church is a doctrine that has fallen on hard times in recent years, and perhaps understandably so, given its very real historical association with a laissez-faire attitude to slavery in the antebellum American South. Nonetheless, at its heart, it expresses a vital truth: the church’s business is primarily heaven, not earth; yet Christians still live in the earthly city, and our faith is to make a difference in all areas of our lives. In this context, Alan Strange’s book is to be heartily welcomed as a guide for the perplexed who seek to honor the church’s task in dwelling on heavenly things while using this mindset as a motive for loving neighbors and being a good citizen. It is a tricky and controversial subject, but Strange’s thoughtful, clear, and kind book gently threads the needle. I hope it receives a wide readership and generates many constructive discussions.”

Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College; author, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

“If the church fails to clearly address the revolutionary cultural and social changes in today’s world, it will be a dereliction of duty, but if it identifies itself with any factions in that world, the piercing message of the gospel will be blunted. Alan Strange discusses these topics with great skill and insight, using his encyclopedic knowledge of Charles Hodge’s contribution to debates on slavery and the spirituality of the church. This is a book that should inform and shape our thinking; it is not to be missed.”

Robert Letham, Senior Research Fellow, Union School of Theology

“As indispensable as Charles Hodge is for the history of American Presbyterianism, Alan Strange contends that Hodge is crucial for its future as well. Hodge steadfastly upheld the church’s spiritual vocation in his day—despite criticism from the South and the North in times of both peace and war. Strange, with dispassionate sense and impassioned urgency, calls us to follow Hodge’s example in our day and remain steadfast to the church’s divine calling, lest we deprive the world of consolation that the church alone can provide.”

A. Craig Troxel, Robert G. den Dulk Professor of Practical Theology, Westminster Seminary California; author, With All Your Heart

“The spirituality of the church is a crucial doctrine and a rather simple idea, even if it is sometimes challenging to apply. Yet the church can so easily lose sight of this doctrine or simply reject it, especially in times of high political tension. Alan Strange’s clear and charitable appeal for the ‘mere spirituality of the church’ is thus timely and welcome. Contemporary readers would do well to ponder Charles Hodge’s wise reflections in the midst of his own politically charged context, and Strange is an excellent guide.”

David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics, Westminster Seminary California

“The debate over American slavery and the ensuing Civil War may not seem the best context for revisiting the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, but Alan Strange looks carefully at the teaching of Charles Hodge that was refined and nuanced in his debates with Southern Presbyterians and other competing versions of the doctrine. Though Hodge did not win the day, he points to how the church can speak into the pervasive politicization of our age. Strange’s commendation of a ‘mere spirituality’ is indeed no diminution of the church’s voice but rather the more excellent way of an ‘empowered witness’ to a divided and confused culture.”

John R. Muether, Dean of Libraries and Professor of Church History, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando

“What should be the role of the church in the affairs of the state, particularly its political process? Alan Strange addresses this much-mooted question primarily through an in-depth treatment—largely sympathetic yet also critical—of Charles Hodge’s wrestling for the answer. Following Hodge, Strange offers his own balanced understanding of the spirituality of the church as an institution. His insights will be helpful for Christians today faced with the same difficult question. A valuable read.”

Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary

Empowered Witness

Empowered Witness

Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church

Alan D. Strange

Foreword by Kevin DeYoung

Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church

© 2024 by Alan D. Strange

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

This work draws on the author’s dissertation, published originally by P&R as The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge, Reformed Academic Dissertations (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2017). Used by permission of P&R.

Cover design: Faceout Studio, Tim Green

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-8427-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8430-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8428-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Strange, Alan D., author.

Title: Empowered witness : politics, culture, and the spiritual mission of the church / Alan D. Strange ; foreword by Kevin DeYoung.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023022924 (print) | LCCN 2023022925 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433584275 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433584282 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433584305 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Mission of the church—History. | Christianity and politics—History. | Christianity and culture—History. | Church and state—History. | Theology, Doctrinal—United States—History. | Great Commission (Bible)

Classification: LCC BV601.8 .S87 2024 (print) | LCC BV601.8 (ebook) | DDC 266—dc23/eng/20230815

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023022924

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023022925

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2023-11-15 11:18:47 AM

To my grandchildren,

Petra, Leo, Gus, and Rosalind

Contents

Foreword by Kevin DeYoung

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1  The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church

2  Slavery and the Spirituality of the Church

3  The Spirituality of the Church Preceding the US Civil War

4  The Spirituality of the Church and the General Assemblies of 1862–1865

5  The Southern Church and the Reunion of the Northern Church

6  The Spirituality of the Church and Politics Today

Bibliography

General Index

Scripture Index

Foreword

In the summer of 2023, at the General Assembly in Memphis, Tennessee, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As a part of the commemoration, commissioners were given a professionally produced replica of a document titled A Message to All Churchesof Jesus Christ throughout the World from the General Assembly of the National Presbyterian Church. The document dates from 1973 and was issued at the founding of the PCA (then called the National Presbyterian Church). The Message to All Churches was named and written as a conscious echo of a previous document. In 1861, James Henley Thornwell issued his Address to All Churches of Christ at the founding of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America (PCCSA). In fact, the PCA deliberately began as a denomination (in Birmingham, Alabama) on December 4, 1973, because the PCCSA had its beginning (in Augusta, Georgia) on December 4, 1861.

These origins continue to be a source of celebration for some and a source of embarrassment for others. The fact is that the PCA saw itself at its founding—and still sees itself today, in some respects—as a continuing church, as the faithful and orthodox branch of the Southern Presbyterian denomination. And make no mistake, the legacy of Southern Presbyterianism is complex. Take Thornwell, for example. Should he be remembered as a gifted educator, preacher, and writer, as the most influential theologian and churchman of his era? Or should he be remembered as a man who defended slavery and helped give birth to the Confederacy? Undoubtedly, he was all the above.

Because of Thornwell’s complicated personal history, Christians in recent decades have been largely dismissive of one of his most strongly held convictions. The first point in Thornwell’s inaugural address from 1861 was to explain and defend the spirituality of the church. For most hearers today—including Bible-believing Presbyterians and other conservative Christians—the spirituality of the church means one thing: a wrongheaded and shameful defense of slavery. And it’s true, Thornwell and other Presbyterians used the doctrine to support the “peculiar institution” in the South. But it would be a mistake to think the doctrine of the spirituality of the church began in antebellum America as a convenient way to avoid taking a hard look at slavery. The explicit doctrine goes back at least to the Second Book of Discipline (1578) in Scotland, and in seed form it goes back further than that. Even in America, Thornwell was far from the only one to defend the spirituality of the church. Charles Hodge, to cite one important example, believed in a version of the spirituality of the church, even as he took issue with how Thornwell applied the doctrine.

When the PCA began in 1973, it announced its continuing allegiance to the spirituality of the church. Here is how the Message to All Churches puts it:

We believe the Church in its visible aspect is still essentially a spiritual organism. As such, its authority, motivation and power come from Christ, the Head, who is seated at the right hand of God. He has given us His rulebook for the Church, namely, the Word of God written. We understand the task of the Church to be primarily declarative and ministerial, not legislative or magisterial. It is our duty to set forth what He has given us in His Word and not to devise our own message or legislate our own laws.1

This is a good summary of the spirituality of the church. The nature of church power is ministerial and declarative. This means all church power—whether exercised by the whole body, pronounced from the pulpit, or bound up in representative officers—must be in service to Christ (ministerial) and involves stating and enforcing the Word of God (declarative). The church does not have the competence, nor the authority, to make pronouncements on every matter that might matter to men and women. The aims of the church are first and foremost spiritual and eternal. Through most of Reformed history, the spirituality of the church has not entailed a silence on all political matters but rather a commitment to the uniqueness of the church’s mission and a principled conviction that the eternal concerns of the church should not be swallowed up by the temporal concerns of the state.

For all these reasons—and many others you will read about in the pages ahead—I am thankful for this book. Alan Strange has marshaled his considerable expertise in this area to write an accessible introduction to the spirituality of the church. Several years ago, I began urging Alan and Crossway to get together and make this book a reality. Now it is finally here; I pray the book finds a wide audience. With admirable skill, Alan shows how the spirituality of the church has been used (and abused) throughout history. But more than that, he also makes a compelling case for employing the doctrine in the church today. Don’t let the size of the volume fool you. Empowered Witness is a learned and important book. While the spirituality of the church will not answer every question pertaining to politics or cultural engagement, it is a historic and biblical doctrine, and we neglect it to our peril.

Kevin DeYoung

June 2023

1Message to All Churches, PCA Historical Center, December 7, 1973, https://www.pcahistory.org/.

Acknowledgments

I am so grateful to P&R Publishing for their kind permission to turn the dissertation that I published with them in 2017 (The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge) into this present volume. All who helped with that work are thanked again here.

I want to recognize as well the support of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, which granted me a sabbatical, part of which was used for researching and writing this volume. In addition to colleagues who took up responsibilities for me in the institution during that sabbatical, I am also grateful for the research support of Bart Voskuil and the technical assistance of Rachel Luttjeboer.

I would also like to thank the students, parishioners, and conference attendees (lay, ministerial, and academic) who heard some part of this material for their patience, kindness, and feedback. Many conversations with colleagues, in the academy and the church, also proved helpful. I am particularly grateful to Justin Taylor at Crossway for his encouragement to write this volume and for helping me along the way.

Thanks are due to a number of Justin’s coworkers at Crossway, without whom this volume would not have come to pass. I am particularly grateful to and for David Barshinger and the invaluable editorial aid he rendered to me in working on this book. He helped in countless ways and should receive combat pay for all the time that he spent laboring on my manuscript and with the author. I also appreciate editorial help from Amy Kruis as well as the help of Matt Tully, Dan Bush, Kirsten Pott, and Dan Farrell, and those who work with them in Marketing, Sales, Typesetting, and Design, respectively. I’m grateful to work with this remarkable team. For my family, I always give thanks, especially to my ever-supportive wife, without whose assistance and love this book would have been most difficult—as would be all that I do. Even after a serious cancer diagnosis and months of devastating chemotherapy, she continues to encourage me in everything, above all by her unshakable faith in the goodness and love of her Savior.

Amid all this, our first grandchildren were born this year (Petra, Leo, Gus, and Rosalind). Everything that they say about grandkids is true. I don’t have words to express my gratefulness for them, but I can dedicate this book to them and pray that, as my family grows in the Lord, the church will increasingly come to recover its spiritual calling.

Alan D. Strange

December 2023

Abbreviations

BRPR

Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review

BRTR

Biblical Repertory and Theological Review

CHMC

Charles Hodge Manuscript Collection

CHP

Charles Hodge Papers

JPH

Journal of Presbyterian History

JSH

Journal of Southern History

Introduction

The calling, or mission, of the church as the church is to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth, not to be another merely (or even chiefly) political, social, or economic institution. The church, in its full-orbed existence, may have political, economic, or social concerns that develop out of its mission, but those aspects are not what primarily mark and define it. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is head and King of the church, made it clear in his marching orders to the church—what we’ve come to call the Great Commission—that he intended the church to go to every people group (often translated “nations”) and to evangelize and disciple them (Matt. 28:18–20), enfolding them into his kingdom, which is “not of this world” (John 18:36), a kingdom that does not have the transitory but the eternal at its heart (2 Cor. 4:18). It is Christ himself, our heavenly King—since he is with us even now by his Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45)—who gathers and perfects his church (Westminster Confession of Faith 25.3) through the appointed means.

The gospel is not about worldly success in any proper sense, then, but is rather about deliverance from the penalty, power, and ultimately the presence of sin, a message that comes to permeate the whole of the lives of those transformed by it. We can rightly say that the message of the church is a spiritual one, coming to people of every sort in every land to bring them here and hereafter into the spiritual reality of the kingdom of Christ. Therefore, Paul encourages the Christians in Corinth, “In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Cor. 7:24). Paul makes clear that the bondservant may and should avail himself of the opportunity of freedom (1 Cor. 7:21). He also makes clear, however, that whatever condition one finds himself in, even whether one is married or not, is not paramount: what is most important is not one’s vocation or life circumstance but being called by and coming to Christ, being a new man or woman in Christ. Paul’s concern is that his readers are Christians, whatever else may be true of their lives. His concern for them, to put it another way, is chiefly spiritual.

This is the spiritual message that the church is privileged to herald to the world (salvation by grace alone), the good news—the meaning of gospel—without which there is no good news. The story of the world after Adam’s fall is nothing but bad news since all is sin, darkness, and hopelessness without the good news of the gospel. The gospel of salvation in Christ, however, is the good news that transforms the worst into the best, seen particularly at the cross, where humanity at its worst not only fails to defeat God but where God uses humanity’s attempt to do so as the centerpiece of our salvation. Christ has overcome the world. This is the message that the church joyfully preaches to the world. It does not preach itself, nor does it promote some sort of political, social, economic, or cultural utopia to be achieved in this age.

The church preaches that we are to live in this age not for this age but for the coming age that has broken in on this age and beckons us to a new heavens and a new earth that await all who trust in Christ alone. This is no “superspirituality” and certainly not any form of gnosticism but simply the recognition of what is central—the spiritual message of the gospel—out of which all else radiates and from which the full-orbed Christian life, with all its consequences, emerges. This is the great message given to the church to proclaim to the world (faith alone in Christ alone), not some lesser political, social, or economic message that addresses only the things that pertain to this world and not to the world to come.

The gospel is a spiritual message for a world whose greatest need is spiritual: redemption from sin and new life in Christ. This is not to say, however, that the effects of the gospel do not have consequences for the world in which we live. Indeed, the effects of the gospel, when the church obeys the Great Commission and the gospel is taken worldwide, is that the nations, in the comprehensive obedience taught to the faithful, come to have among them those who both trust (fundamentally) and obey (consequentially); thus the Christian faith and its fruits do, in fact, profoundly change the world because those touched by the gospel are new creations and because that spiritual rebirth affects them and those around them.

The task of the church as such is not to transform the world at large or any society in it. The task of the church is to transform lives: to proclaim the gospel as the person and work of Christ applied by the power of the Holy Spirit in the means of grace so that men and women come to Christ by faith and are justified, adopted, and sanctified—all a gift of God’s grace. Such changed lives typically affect the lives of others in the various societies in which the saints find themselves. We as God’s people, the church, must certainly be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have within (1 Pet. 3:15) to all those we encounter in their profound spiritual need—chiefly, salvation in Jesus Christ. That we are concerned primarily for the spiritual vitality of those around us, however, does not mean that we as Christians are to be indifferent to the nonspiritual needs and sufferings of those around us, but we are to love and help them as we have opportunity, as did the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), a responsibility with implications reflected even in the final judgment (Matt. 25:31–46).

All that constitutes such obedience, however, does not play out in the life of the corporate, or institutional, church. The church can be variously conceived: as an institute, on the one hand, or as an organism, on the other.1 While it is the mission of the church as institute to evangelize and disciple all her members among the nations of the world, it is not the mission of the church as institute to incarnate the Christian faith in all of life. It is the call of the members of the church as organism to live the whole of their lives from the standpoint of faith and obedience, taking the ethics taught them by the church, for instance, and employing Christian ethics in their businesses, politics, culture, and so on. The church as institute must remain the church, a spiritual entity, and does not become the state, a civil entity, or the family, a biological entity. It does not even seek to do as institute what its members may do, singly or collectively, in the ordinary living of their Christian lives; this latter imperative is the task of the church as organism.2

Throughout history, and again in our times, challenges have come from a variety of corners to the church as church—or, as just noted, the church as institute—pushing it to be something that it is not called to be. Some say that if the church is to have any value to society, it must be or become a political, social, or economic entity, as quarters of the church in the United States became in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when figures like Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden promoted the social gospel.3 This pressure that the church become like other earthly agencies or institutions stems from the conclusion that some agenda other than the one to which the church is called is really the most important thing in the world.

Marxism or other economic or social ideologies are seen by such who ill-regard the true calling of the church as most needful for the problems that currently beset us. These all-comprehensive ideologies demand that the church, along with the family, the university, the state, and any other institutions, if they are to be worth anything, join them in their conviction, as was Sigmund Freud’s, that all reality is sexual/psychological—or, in Karl Marx’s case, economic; in Charles Darwin’s, biological; and so forth—especially manifested in the fluid genderism left in Freud’s wake that outpaces our best attempts to keep up.4

Martin Luther’s theology has been portrayed as teaching, “Let God be God!”5 It is the burden of this book to say, “Let the church be the church.” A variety of competing claims threaten to overrun and overwhelm the institutional church in our times. The call of the Lord to the church, the mission that he has given to the church, is an essentially spiritual one. If the church loses that, she has nothing to offer the world, or as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones reportedly said, “The church does the world the least good when she seeks to be most like it.”6 The world does not need the church to echo all its utopian schemes for a better life. The world needs the church to preach the gospel to it. Yes, when that gospel is faithfully preached and received, men and women throughout the world not only come to Christ but also live in ways that better everything about them. If the church fails to do that, however, as she is called to do it, she suffers and the whole world with her. As attractive as it might seem at any given point for the church to cease to be the truly spiritual body that her Lord calls her to be, it is, in fact, for the church to retreat into futility.

This book, it should be here noted, does not seek to resolve all the difficult problems that surround this subject, such as the relationship between church and state or between Christ and culture or the place of public or political theology.7 For example, two-kingdom advocates distinguish broadly between the redemptive and secular (common) realms, and neo-Calvinists seek to integrate the two.8 Both approaches arguably have insightful contributions and valid concerns about the other, and these two schools, and variants thereof, can continue to battle for their models and the help that they might bring at various points while agreeing with the central concerns of this book.

Beyond the ham-handed efforts of early twentieth-century social gospelers, who rendered the church another public aid society, albeit a religious one, those interested in political or public theology in more recent decades have generally been more subtle and sophisticated in their attempts to bring their convictions to bear on civil society broadly.9 Ultimately, however, some have often proved no less partisan than the social gospel promoters, who were politically quite liberal. Certainly, many contemporary advocates of political or public theology have tended in progressive directions not likely to garner evangelical support, though some who promote political theology do so from a more moderate position.10

We should not, on the one hand, adopt partisan political positions as the church over which those who affirm the same creeds and confessions may rightly differ; we should not, on the other hand, fail to affirm what God’s word clearly teaches, even if our proclamation may be perceived to have political impact. Some within the Reformed and Presbyterian world hold to views about the civil reign of King Jesus that have deep historical roots, and various parties continue to vie for some version of Christendom even in an age that has largely been conceded as being post-Christian.11Nonetheless, I hope that the most zealous Covenanter can read this book and agree that the church must remain the church and, as such, should not “intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth.”12 Some positions would wall off the Christian faith from any influence on the public square. Not this work. Other positions would gladly have the church be viewed as the Republican or Democratic Party at prayer; some progressives and reactionaries, rejecting the “old” politics, look to others now.13 Again, this work calls for the church to baptize no political party or movement.