Nonetheless, I want to exhort and encourage the Christians at Harvard–whatever campus fellowship you are a part of, whatever church you belong to, whatever organization or group you are recruiting for–to take this brief interval of time seriously, to be humbly aggressive and lovingly bold with the gospel, and to be intentional in stepping out in faith.  Take the initiative with the many freshmen who are currently unknown to us, whether they be Christians already or not.  For the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of our neighbors whom we are called to love with a realistic love.  I know we all have hectic lives and schedules of our own.  I know it’s profoundly inconvenient and not particularly fun (well, not for the introverts).  Almost nothing is natural here. 

I also know it’s easy for we enlightened intellectuals to mock any attempts at real evangelism that are done poorly and without nuance or sensitivity, and to scorn those who actually take Jesus and the gospel seriously if they dare to do it in a way that offends the delicate, self-centered cultural sensibilities of this present evil age.  That’s a spectacularly easy mindset to fall into.  And cheap.  And dishonest and cowardly, if Jesus actually rose from the dead.  But do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Not here.  Flee from that perception of the matter, repent of it, do whatever needs to be done to disown it entirely in your soul.  Then strap back on the shoes of the gospel, which even today continue to make beautiful the feet of those who wear them, who bring its message of hope and deliverance from sin, death and hell.

But perhaps more tangible motivation is needed, so here’s a solid reality that ought to give rise to such an attitude toward the new freshmen, one that I find personally compelling and binding upon my soul.  C. S. Lewis, Paul and Penn–each in their own distinctive way–hold it up to the light for us to consider:

“In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised…St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (1 Cor. 8:3).  It is a strange promise.  Does not God know all things at all times?  But it is dreadfully re-echoed in another passage of the New Testament.  There [Matthew 7] we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, ‘I never knew you.  Depart from Me.’  In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all.  We can be left utterly and absolutely outside–repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.  On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.  We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities…It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.  The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.  This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously.” (C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory“)

“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.  Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others…For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.  For the love of Christ controls us…From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.1 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  Working together with him, then, we appeal to you: do not receive the grace of God in vain.” (II Corinthians 5:10-6:1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w&feature=related

Recently I’ve been plodding through 1 Corinthians in my Greek New Testament.  Two passages in particular have stuck out to me by virtue of the stark variance that exists between what Paul actually writes, and how almost every English translation changes it.  In 5:1, Paul rebukes the apathetic tolerance of sexual misbehavior in the community by pointing out that this particular display is so revolting, it is actually of a sort that not even “pagans” would be willing to put up with.  At least, so go the standard translations.  But the word rendered “pagans” is actually “Gentiles.”  Wait, but aren’t the Corinthians all Gentiles?  Yes.  But it gets even more interesting.

In 12:2, Paul contrasts the past idolatry and present (genuine) spiritual experience of these Christians by reminding them of their futility back ”when you were pagans.”  Yep, you guessed it.  Again, the word is “Gentiles”–and always translated as such in other similar contexts in the NT documents–not “pagans.”  Perhaps driven by the legitimate recognition that the church in Corinth consisted entirely of ethnic Gentiles, the English translations mute the embarassment by spiritualizing Paul’s vocabulary.  Yet by doing so, I think we lose something significant. 

A few years earlier, I had noticed this strange pattern elsewhere in the Pauline letters–namely, that when addressing Gentile Christians, Paul seems inconsistent in his use of the term.  On the one hand, there are countless occurrences of “Gentiles” (ethnoi) in his writings that refer to the cultural/racial heritage of these early Christians (Galatians 1:16, 3:8, 14, Romans 1:16, 3:9, 3:29, Ephesians 2:11, 3:1, etc.).  On the other hand, there are other passages where this usage appears to be contradicted, or at least retracted.  Consider the following:

I Corinthians 5:1–”It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among the Gentiles, for a man has his father’s wife.”

I Corinthians 10:1–”For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea.” [of course, the actual term Gentiles does not appear here, but we cannot miss the shocking implications of Paul referring to the Jewish people of the Exodus generation not as "my" fathers in a letter addressed to a bunch of unclean Gentiles, but rather "our" fathers.  In all branches of Judaism, this idiom was reserved for ethnic Jews alone]

I Corinthians 12:2–”You know that when you were Gentiles you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.”

Ephesians 4:17–”Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.” (cf. 2:11, 3:1, 3:6, 3:8)

I Thessalonians 4:3-5–”For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”

I Peter 4:3–”The time that is past is sufficient for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” [While there are some scholars who believe I Peter was written exclusively to Jewish Christians, I agree with the majority position that the audience was primarily Gentile Christians]

The evidence, so far, is a mixed bag.  Confusing, even.  Imagine a local pastor here in the U.S. exhorting his congregation passionately: “Do not live like the Americans!”  It would strike us as a peculiar way of talking, to say the least.  So it would appear that in at least some sense, Gentile Christians remain very much Gentiles when they enter the people of God.  In another sense, however, they are no longer Gentiles.  Then what are they, really?  Are they Jews?   That idea surfaced early on in the church’s history, of course, and attracted more than one fierce ”anathema” from Paul’s pen for its blatant stupidity.  No, everything in the NT militates against that interpretation, even though I do think it is quite appropriate to say that Gentile Christians are “grafted” into Israel, the true people of God.  But that is hardly an ethnic or cultural claim.  What, then?  Here I find a third category of texts helpful in finally piecing together the puzzle:

Galatians 3:28–”There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 9:24–”Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.”

I Corinthians 1:22-24–”Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 

I Corinthians 10:31-32–”So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.”

This last passage is especially instructive, as it makes more explicit what is clearly assumed in the others: namely, that Christians–whether Jew or Gentile, black or white, male or female, slave or free–are given a new identity in Christ that transcends their old cultural allegiances, while at the same time preserving their cultural locations.  There is a new distance that the gospel creates, and yet a real belonging still remains.  I am still an American, and still white, yet as a Christian I find myself having far more in common with an African brother or an Argentinian sister than I do with those of my own family or culture or racial makeup or country who do not embrace the gospel and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord of all. 

By the grace of God, I now ascribe ultimate significance to Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and all else that once dominated my thoughts and my affections, my values and my priorities, takes second place.  In this sense, I am very un-American and very un-white, just as that brother is very un-African and that sister very un-Argentinian compared to the social dynamics in play all around them.  For the one thing that every culture and every race outside of Christ shares in common is idolatry (Romans 1:18-32).  But Christians are no longer idolaters, even though most of us are still Gentiles.  Thus, we are no longer Gentiles (or Americans, or whatever) in the most important sense, while at the same time we continue to socially inhabit our God-given racial and cultural identities.  Indeed, we unabashedly embrace them in every way possible that avoids the stain of idolatry.

It was his insightful recognition of this dynamic that led the early Christian writer Aristides (2nd century) to claim, in his Apology, that Christians were not actually Jewish or Gentile, but rather constituted a new third race: the people of God.  Many have quite understandably criticized Aristides for his unqualified use of this category, but as long as the disclaimers I have offered here are acknowledged, I think Aristides is on the side of the angels. 

More than any other theologian, however, I have been particularly spurred on by the writings of Miroslav Volf to grasp the momentous implications of these realities born of the gospel:

“The courage to break his cultural and familial ties and abandon the gods of his ancestors (Joshua 24:2) out of allegiance to a God of all families and all cultures was the original Abrahamic revolution.  Departure from his native soil, no less than the trust that God will give him an heir, made Abraham the ancestor of us all (see Hebrews 11:8)…the ultimate allegiance of those whose father is Abraham can be only to the God of ‘all families of the earth,’ not to any particular country, culture, or family with their local deities.  The oneness of God implies God’s universality, and universality entails transcendence with respect to any given culture… Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans, Croatians, Russians, or Tutsis, and then Christians.  At the very core of Christian identity lies an all encompassing change of loyalty, from a given culture with its gods to the God of all cultures.  A response to a call from that God entails rearrangement of a whole network of allegiances…Departure is part and parcel of Christian identity.” (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 39-40)

“Each culture can retain its own cultural specificity; Christians need not ‘lose their cultural identity as Jew or Gentile and become one new humanity which is neither.’  At the same time, no culture can retain its own tribal deities; religion must be de-ethnicized so that ethnicity can be de-sacralized.  Paul deprived each culture of ultimacy in order to give them all legitimacy in the wider family of cultures.  Through faith one must ‘depart’ from one’s culture because the ultimate allegiance is given to God and God’s Messiah who transcend every culture.  And yet precisely because of the ultimate allegiance to the God of all cultures and to Christ who offers his ‘body’ as a home for all people, Christian children of Abraham can ‘depart’ from their culture without having to leave it (in contrast to Abraham himself who had to leave his ‘country’ and ‘kindred’).  Departure is no longer a spatial category; it can take place within the cultural space one inhabits…The proper distance from a culture does not take Christians out of that culture.  Christians are not the insiders who have taken flight to a new ‘Christian culture’ and become outsiders to their own culture; rather when they have responded to the call of the Gospel they have stepped, as it were, with one foot outside their own culture while with the other remaining firmly planted in it.  They are distant, and yet they belong.  Their difference is internal to the culture.” (p. 49)

“Both distance and belonging are essential.  Belonging without distance destroys: I affirm my exclusive identity as Croatian and want either to shape everyone in my own image or eliminate them from my world.  But distance without belonging isolates: I deny my identity as a Croatian and draw back from my own culture…There is a reality that is more important than the culture to which we belong.  It is God and the new world that God is creating, a world in which people from every nation and every tribe, with their cultural goods, will gather around the triune God, a world in which every tear will be wiped away and ‘pain will be no more’ (Revelation 21:3).  Christians take distance from their own culture because they give the ultimate allegiance to God and God’s promised future.” (pp. 50-51)

Indeed, the followers of Jesus, whatever their ethnic and cultural identities might be, nonetheless possess the status of ”a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”  [I Peter 2:9-10; cf. Exodus 19:4-6]

How, then, should we live?  Peter does not leave the matter in doubt: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.  Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.” (2:11-12)

“Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, “I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.”

And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God “glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,”–that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,–”they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, “and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, “that God may be all in all.”” (Augustine, City of God, 14.28)

“Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.  Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.  Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.  We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes, and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.” (Sir Francis Drake, 1577, cited in John Armstrong, Your Church is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission is Vital to the Future of the Church, p. 191)

“Well, I have had a certain amount of experience with skepticism and the conversation it generates, and there is an inevitable futility in it.  It is even destructive.  Young people from my own flock have come home with a copy of La Nausee or L’Immoraliste, flummoxed by the possibility of unbelief, when I must have told them a thousand times that unbelief is possible.  And they are attracted to it by the very books that tell them what a misery it is.  And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them ‘proofs.’  I just won’t do it.  It only confirms them in their skepticism.  Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense…In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer.  I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things…So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon.  It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.  So my advice is this—don’t look for proofs.  Don’t bother with them at all.  They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.  And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them.  That is very unsettling over the long term…I’m not saying never doubt or question.  The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it.  I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.” (pp. 177-79)

Before weighing the relative merits of Ames’ convictions concerning the alleged dangers of defending one’s faith to spiritual outsiders, consider this strangely similar meditation from C.S. Lewis–himself undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and original intellectual defenders of the Christian faith in recent history!

“I have found that there is nothing more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist.  No doctrine of the Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.  For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar…That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality—from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself.” (“Christian Apologetics,” in Undeceptions, p. 76)

I wonder what your immediate, unmeditated reaction to these statements were?  If you are anything like me, it was something along the lines of “Yes, but…”  Both of these excerpts provoked insightful ”aha” moments for me, putting into words something I could only previously sense in a generic and vague way.  In hindsight, the legitimacy of what these statements affirm seems self-evident to me, especially in light of my own past experience with the realities they allude to.  Yet, at the same time, I would very much want to say more than just this.  To settle for only giving the warning and then to simply stop and move on stirs up discontent in me.  “But that’s not the whole story…”

Here, then, is what I find compelling about Ames and Lewis.  First, rationalism is a constant risk to which all we heirs of the Enlightenment are prone.  We may not even be conscious of it, yet we are regularly tempted into foolishly imagining that we can isolate our intellectual pursuits and logical grasp of the world from our emotional, social and spiritual condition.  It gives us a sense of power over our surroundings, and it is relatively easy.  Who cares what type of person I am or where my heart is at before God, for this (we implicitly think) has nothing to do with the accuracy of my mental evaluation of true and false or of good and evil. 

I do not have the space here to nitpick the profound self-deceptions that invariably attend this way of interpreting the matter, but suffice it to say that the Christian vision of humanity is irreducibly holistic.  Yes, arguments are important.  Thinking is crucial.  But these are not the only things that go into one’s relationship with God, and arguably not even the most important.  Consider the human dilemma as narrated by Paul in Romans 1:18-32 or Ephesians 4:17-18.  False thinking about God and about spiritual reality–at least according to Paul–is rooted in something more fundamentally awry about God’s image bearers: namely, hardness of heart, moral rebellion and spiritual darkness.  Typically truncated approaches to apologetics can in practice deny this state of affairs, mostly by treating bad thinking as the essence of human sin, rather than its by-product.  The deepest, most essential aspects of reality can only be seen by the humble, for God is God.  That the standard epistemologies on tap in the West today would feign to make all knowledge as equally accessible (at least in principle) to those who love evil and practice unrighteousness as to those who pursue justice, love mercy and care for widows and orphans should be of the gravest concern for the people of God.  Christians ought to be suspicious of any account of human knowing that ignores the undeniable moral dimensions of our created existence.

Indeed, a complex network of issues comprise what any given person finds persuasive and compelling about their ultimate perception of reality. For Christians with a committment to sharing the gospel of grace with others, how can we fail to acknowledge the importance of the inward work of the Spirit, of human love as the tangible marker of the love of Christ for us, of devoted prayer for the spiritually blind, and of the authentic witness of a community of Christ-followers actually living out the gospel in word and deed?  Lesslie Newbigin, who spent decades as a missionary in South India before becoming a famous theologian late in life in England, saw the futility and “disconnect” of merely contending for the objective validity of orthodoxy while denying (or at least neglecting) it in the moral and communal aspects of our existence:

“How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?  I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 227)

If this is so, how then can we be satisfied with putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket by only trying to argue people into the kingdom of God?  Does not our experience teach us to admit that while intellectual arguments are usually a necessary condition for believing in the crucified and risen Jesus, they are never a sufficient one?  Ames and Lewis both recognize this mistake for what it is and call it out. 

Second, both Ames and Lewis point to the insufficiency of the self as grounds for their rejection of the overconfidence of many an apologist.  It’s not that Christianity doesn’t make sense, or that we shouldn’t have good, sufficient warrant for believing the gospel over and above some other competing worldview.  Rather, the problem—and I’m assuming at this point that I have some degree of genuine self-knowledge of my own weaknesses and failures—is that I don’t want the validity of any person’s faith (including my own!) to rest ultimately on my cleverness.  If Christianity is only as solid as my subjective awareness of superior arguments for it and ability to articulate it, then good night are we in trouble.  Who hasn’t felt this agonizing doubt?  It would seem that even the Apostle Paul wrestled with such existential dilemmas:

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

But here is the “more” I would also want to insist on in dialogue with Ames and Lewis.

Fideism is just as potentially harmful as the most extreme rationalism and, in the end, just as flat-out mistaken.  Ames the Barthian, of course, is more plausibly open to the charge of fideism than Lewis is, but regardless we must affirm that faith is not (as Locke argued) the opposite of knowledge, but rather only of sight.  Faith requires real warrant to be morally praiseworthy, and most of us intuitively know that simply believing something (anything!) for the sake of believing it is both intellectually bankrupt and ethically dangerous.

Turning to the New Testament writings, it is a salutary reminder to see how frequently the early Christians did indeed seek to defend the faith with compelling logic and demonstrable reasons to the surrounding world of skeptical unbelievers.  Of course they occupied themselves with a lot more than just this priority, but neither did they forsake it entirely to simply feed the hungry or be “authentic” in community with each other.  I know plenty of apparently genuine people who believe incredibly stupid things.  Neither authenticity nor social justice, in and of themselves, are any guarantee of possessing the truth, of not being self-deceived.  Therefore, Peter commands us to have a reason for the hope that is within us and to be ready to share it with others (1 Peter 3:15).  Paul spent an enormous amount of his time reasoning and seeking to persuade both Jews and Gentiles of the historical factuality of the death and resurrection of Jesus as the climactic fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures (see Acts 17:2, 17, 18:4, 19, 19:8-9, 24:25, 28:23-24, etc.).   It is impossible to deny the fact that many of the NT documents put forth reason after reason and argument after argument to convince their readers of the sturdy foundation available to them in the gospel.  Jesus himself constantly debates with people in his interaction with them.  How then are we exempt from this responsibility? 

C. S. Lewis, of course, exerted an incredible amount of time and effort in his adult life to a robust intellectual defense of the Christian faith on a very public stage.  Many of us owe him our spiritual lives, under God.  It is, I trust, uncontroversial to claim that he would have agreed with what I have contended in the last two paragraphs.  With those reservations noted, then, the advice of both Lewis and Ames is worth listening to reflectively and seriously.  To paraphrase the final sentence of the excerpt from Lewis above, here is the attitude of the most compelling apologists–one that will deliver them from the impotency of their own cleverness and commend the gospel with power to those who hear: “Trust in the Lord will all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways, and he will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:5-7).

Who needs to bother about dry, dusty theology?

“Many things can be meant by the word ‘God.’  For this reason, there are many kinds of theologies.  There is no man who does not have his own god or gods as the object of his highest desire and trust, or as the basis of his deepest loyalty and commitment.  There is no one who is not to this extent also a theologian.  There is, moreover, no religion, no philosophy, no world view that is not dedicated to some such divinity.  Every world view, even that disclosed in the Swiss and American national anthems, presupposes a divinity interpreted in one way or another and worshipped to some degree, whether wholeheartedly or superficially.  There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.  Not only does this fact apply to philosophers who desire to affirm—or who, at least, are ready to admit—that divinity, in a positive sense, is the essence of truth and power of some kind of highest principle; but the same truth is valid even for thinkers denying such a divinity, for such a denial would in practice merely consist in transferring an identical dignity and function to another object.  Such an alternative object might be ‘nature,’ creativity, or an unconscious and amorphous will to life.  It might also be ‘reason,’ progress, or even a redeeming nothingness into which man would be destined to disappear.  Even such apparently ‘godless’ ideologies are theologies.” (Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, pp. 3-4)

Indeed:

“Theology is not undesirable, it is unavoidable.  What matters is that it should be good theology.” (Trevor Hart, Faith Thinking: The Dynamics of Christian Theology, p. 7)

Therefore:

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.  For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, p. 1)

Conclusion: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

UPDATE: Here are a few notable resources that might helpfully propel one into the serious study of theology:

*A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke

*The Religious Life of Theological Students by B. B. Warfield (this classic piece may also be read online here)

*The Trials of Theology, ed. Andrew Cameron and Brian S. Rosner (includes the Warfield essay, as well as selections from Augustine, Luther, Bonhoeffer, D. A. Carson, and others on the dangers and delights of being a theologian.  Highly recommended.)

“Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which mean, God with us).” (Matthew 1:20-23)

“And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’  And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’  And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy–the Son of God…For nothing will be impossible with God.’  And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’  And the angel departed from her.” (Luke 1:30-38)

“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.  And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.’” (Luke 2:8-14)

**A good Christmas sermon you can read or listen to here:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByScripture/14/1022_We_Have_Come_to_Worship_Him/

A quick aside to set the table.  John Calvin famously opened his Institutes of the Christian Religion with these lines (note: if you haven’t spent quality time in a dusty library with this masterpiece yet, shame on you, and settle it in your mind right now to do so in the near future.  Preferably as you don sackcloth and ashes to express your sincere repentance.  Why?  This is arguably the single most influential theological work, from a purely historical perspective, in the life of the Western church during the past millenium.  Plus, it barely talks about predestination at all!).

Calvin’s basic point is that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are irrevoccably joined together in our experience, so that we can never gain entrance into the reality of one sphere without the other focusing our blurred gaze.  To know God, we must have at least a shred of accurate perception concerning our own hearts and the world He has made.  To know ourselves and the good yet marred creation we inhabit, we must interpret it in light of the one true God’s character and purposes (Incidentally, Calvin admits the epistemic starting point in this cyclical process–whether ideal or actual–is unclear).  God cannot be recognized from within the domain of de-historical abstractions, nor can the essence of being human be accessed and enjoyed if we ignore our Creator and trade off His glory for mud pies in the slum.  Therefore Christians must be people who are concerned–always–with both fields of inquiry (that is, with everything), lest we forfeit everything and become blind, self-deceived fools.

Plantinga’s treatment is marked by a ruthless realism, and he finishes his dark, exposing volume by making precisely the same claim as Calvin–only now with respect to the dialogical relationship that exists between sin and grace in the Christian life.  Once again, it would appear that neither theme can be properly compreheneded without serious, sustained reflection on the other.  Sin and grace must constantly talk to one another in any Christian theology worthy of the name.  Grace must never be shaped in isolation from the radical evil that both surrounds and indwells us all.  Yet are we willing to be people who really talk about sin?  If we love grace, we simply must be.  There is no other path available for those who prize the gospel.  But now it is time for me to get off the stage and introduce the main act:

“Evil rolls across the ages, but so does good.  Good has its own momentum.  Corruption never wholly succeeds. (Even blasphemers acknowledge God.)  Creation is stronger than sin and grace stronger still.  Creation and grace are anvils that have worn out a lot of our hammers.  To speak of sin itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God.  God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back.  Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way.  Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler.  Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life.  To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly—to say to the world ‘I have some bad news and I have some bad news’—is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior.  To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom. 

But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better.  To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ, to skate past all the struggling by good people down the ages to forgive, accept, and rehabilitate sinners, including themselves, and therefore to cheapen the grace of God that always comes to us with blood on it.  What had we thought the ripping and writhing of Golgotha were all about?  To speak of grace without looking squarely at these realities, without painfully honest acknowledgement of our own sin and its effects, is to shrink grace to a mere embellishment of the music of creation, to shrink it down to a mere grace note.  In short, for the Christian church (even in its recently popular seeker services) to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel.   For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.” (Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not The Way It’s Supposed To Be: A Breviary of Sin, p. 199)

“Faith is not that human notion and dream that some hold for faith.  Because they see that no betterment of life and no good works follow it, and yet they can hear and say much about faith, they fall into error, and say, ‘Faith is not enough; one must also do works in order to be righteous and saved.’  This is the reason that, when they hear the Gospel, they fall-to and make for themselves, by their own powers, an idea in their hearts, which says, ‘I believe.’  This they hold for true faith.  But it is a human imagination and idea that never reaches the depths of the heart, and so nothing comes of it and no betterment follows it.  Faith, however, is a divine work in us.  It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God; it kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers, and it brings with it the Holy Spirit.  Oh, it is a living, busy, might thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly.  It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises; it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.  He who does not these works is a faith-less man.  He gropes and looks about after faith and good works, and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.  Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.  This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures; and this is the work of the Holy Spirit in faith.  Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace; and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.  Beware, therefore, of your own false notions and of the idle talkers, who would be wise enough to make decisions about faith and good works, and yet are the greatest fools.  Pray God to work faith in you; else you will remain forever without faith, whatever you think or do.  Righteousness, then, is such a faith and is called ‘God’s righteousness,’ or ‘the righteousness that avails before God,’ because God gives it and counts it as righteousness for the sake of Christ, our Mediator, and makes a man give to every man what he owes him.  For through faith a man becomes sinless and comes to take pleasure in God’s commandments; thus he gives to God the honor that is His and pays Him what he owes Him; but he also serves man willingly, by whatever means he can, and thus pays his debt to everyone.  Such righteousness, nature and free will our powers cannot bring into existence.  No one can give himself faith, and no more can he take away his own unbelief; how, then, will he take away a single sin, even the very smallest?  Therefore, all that is done apart from faith or in unbelief, is false; it is hypocrisy and sin, no matter how good a show it makes (Romans 14).” (“Preface” to Romans)

Because he loved God’s Word and consistently submitted all of his mental, rational activity to its truth:

“See to it that you fasten your attention on God’s Word and stay in it, like an infant in a cradle. If you let go for one moment, you have fallen away from the truth. The one intention of the devil is to get people away from the Word and to induce them to measure God’s will and works with their reason.” 

Because the Spirit filled his heart with courage and boldness, even though his confession of faith nearly cost him his life countless times:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the solider is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” (Quoted in Parker T. Williamson, Standing Firm: Reclaiming Christian Faith in Times of Controversy (Springfield, PA: PLC Publications, 1996), p. 5)

Because while it is basically intuitive (even common sense) that a deep awareness of sin is a prerequisite for a profound appreciation for grace, Luther is one of the few who saw the reverse relationship–that to be truly honest and ruthlessly genuine about the utter heinousness of our sin, we must trust and revel in grace with all our hearts:

 “If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly—for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (Letter to Philipp Melancthon on August 1^st, 1521)

Because for all of his criticisms of the Catholic church, he knew where the root disease in God’s fallen creation lay and where the battle must ultimately be fought:

“I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals.  I have within me the great pope, Self.”

Because–let’s be honest–the guy was absolutely hilarious:

“You will not only despise the books written by adversaries, but the longer you write and teach the less you will be pleased with yourself. When you have reached this point, then do not be afraid to hope that you have begun to become a real theologian, who can teach not only the young and imperfect Christians, but also the maturing and perfect ones. For indeed, Christ’s church has all kinds of Christians in it who are young, old, weak, healthy, strong, energetic, lazy, simple, wise, etc.  If, however, you feel and are inclined to think you have made it, flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching, or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it– if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey ears.  Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you, and say, ‘See, see! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well.’ That very moment you will be blessed and blessed beyond measure in the kingdom of heaven. Yes, in that heaven where hellfire is ready for the devil and his angels. To sum up: Let us be proud and seek honor in the places where we can. But in this Book the honor is God’s alone, as it is said, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ (1 Pet. 5:5); to whom be glory, world without end, Amen.” (“Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther’s German Writings,” Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, Ed. Timothy Lull. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 67-68)

“I’m like a ripe stool and the world’s like a gigantic anus, and we’re about to let go of each other.” (Table Talk, in LW 54:448, to his wife Katy in 1543 when he thought he was about to die)

For my money, one of the most undeniably significant insights of modern biblical scholarship is the increasing recognition of “narrative” as central to genuinely Christian thought about God.  I do not want to go too far and critique ALL older theology that is more systematic, abstract or propositional in nature, as many today excel in doing.  Wisdom was not born with this generation–can we at least be clear on that?  And narrative theology has its own dangers, not the least of which is the temptation to flee from realism and actual history when talking about “story”.  Yet, with that disclaimer put forth, I do think the recovery of “narrative” in contemporary theology holds forth great promise for a renewed, deeper, and ultimately richer understanding of the Scriptures. 

Listen to this provocative suggestion:

“Influenced as it has been by the Greek philosophical tradition, the church throughout the centuries has often articulated an understanding of God under heavy influence from Plato’s god of ideal form and perfect moral goodness and from Aristotle’s unmoved mover.  We thus find Augustine [in Confessions] asking, ‘What, then, are you, O my God?’ and giving a list of attributes that includes ‘Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent…unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old.’  In the medieval period, Anselm’s Proslogion seeks to prove the existence of a God whose definition is of the same ilk: ‘that being greater than which cannot be conceived.’  Centuries later, we find the British Reformed tradition [i.e. Westminster Confession] giving this definition of God: ‘What is God?  God is a spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.’  Not only do these Christian definitions, like their Greek philosophical counterparts, all focus on a g/God who is wholly other, they also define God in universal terms without reference to the story of Israel.  In the Scriptures of Israel, however, God’s identity is inseparable from a particular people and from certain actions performed on behalf of that people.  God is not known in universal abstract qualities but in limiting and particular actions.  The question of the Scriptures seems to be less What is God? but rather Who is God? or perhaps Which God?  The God of Israel is known through that God’s commitment to and actions among a particular people…The God of Israel’s Scriptures is the God who, though Lord over all things, has chosen to disclose himself and make his name known to the world through one particular people.” (J. R. Daniel Kirk, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God, pp. 1-2)

Let me be blunt: this is a brilliant nugget in what it affirms, but unhelpful in what it denies (or at least ascribes to past generations of Christian thinkers).  Kirk’s book  as a whole strikes me as a typically modern overreaction against Augustine and Luther and Calvin–after all, “narrative” is not the sole possession of the 21st century, lest we forget who penned this claim:

“This gospel of God or New Testament is a good story and report, sounded forth into all the world by the apostles, telling of a true David who strove with sin, death, and the devil, and overcame them, and thereby rescued all those who were captive in sin, afflicted with death, and overpowered by the devil. Without any merit of their own he made them righteous, gave them life, and saved them, so that they were given peace and brought back to God. For this they sing, and thank and praise God, and are glad forever, if only they believe firmly and remain steadfast in faith.” (Martin Luther, LW 35:358)

Luther (and most Christian theologians throughout history) knew that the gospel is ultimately a story about what God has done in Christ, and any “abstract” or “systematic” theologizing was done by them within this larger framework.   Any other claim is pure historical revisionism. Furthermore, there’s quite a bit of discussion in both the Old and New Testaments that would fall under the same hammer Kirk wants to swing at Western theology.  But…it is also the case that, concomitant with the move away from modernism into postmodernism, our ears are becoming slowly more attuned to the centrality of “narrative” for understanding God and our role in the world He has made.  On that theme, Kirk is dynamite and provides a helpful corrective to other kinds of extremes.

A further trend in much scholarship today is the growing awareness that human identity cannot ultimately be understood or defined apart from history…that is, our actual lived lives.  Our stories.  If someone asks me to describe my wife Kasey to them (and they have never met her), and I reply by saying: “Well, she’s intelligent, funny, athletic, beautiful, humble…”, the result would not be true knowledge of who Kasey really is.  In fact, that would be spectacularly unhelpful.  BUT if I told you a number of personal, true stories from her life experience, that “narrative” would embody these qualities and make them vibrant to you.  What Kasey has done and experienced plays an intimate role in who she is today.  And thus for you to know her, you cannot skip around her history. 

So it is with God Himself.  Biblically, God is defined primarily by what He has done in salvation history–that is, by how He has acted in relation to Israel and the Church and most of all, in Jesus. 

“For Paul, the question who God is can best be answered by reference to what God does—just as, in a narrative, a character may be individualized by reference to significant actions within a specific history rather than through immanent attributes or dispositions. Divine being and divine action are inseparable from one another, and no distinction is drawn between how God is in se and ad extra.” (Francis Watson, “The Triune Divine Identity: Reflections on Pauline God-Language, in Disagreement with J.D.G. Dunn,” JSNT 80 (2000), p. 105)

In Romans 4, God’s identity is fleshed out in three statements that are descriptive of how He acts in the world.  To have “faith” in Romans 4 (which brings righteousness!) means to believe in and trust this God.  The object of faith determines the subjective, pyschological makeup of that same faith.  Faith means relating to Him as the One who has done (and continues to do) these things. 

So who is God according to Romans 4?

God is the One “who justifies the ungodly” (4:5)

God is the One “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (4:17)

God is the One “who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord” (4:24)

The significance of this narrative identity of God for Christian faith cannot possibly be overstated:

“It is noteworthy that while Paul never reduces God to a function of human faith, Romans 4 is exclusively concerned with God ad extra, with God as he is to be believed in…for Paul in Romans 4 human faith is inseparable not only from God, but also from God understood in a certain way.  For Paul there is no true human faith that is not faith in ‘the God who justifies the ungodly’ (4:5), ‘the God who gives life to the dead and calls non-entities to be entities’ (4:17), and finally ‘the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead’ (4:24)…It is an essential pre-requisite of faith that it is faith in such a God.” (Simon Gathercole, Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. II, p. 165)

 If I read Paul aright, his argument in Romans 4 is that this God who has now revealed Himself in Jesus’s death and resurrection is the same God who called out Abraham and gave him promises–in spite of, to be sure, the rejection of this Messiah by so many children of Abraham.  In Abraham’s story, God was the one who justified the ungodly, and he was the one who gave life to the dead and called into existence the things that are from the things that are not (i.e. creation ex nihilo).  This same God has now raised Jesus from the dead–and by giving life to the dead once more, He has once and for all justified the ungodly (4:24-25).  Paul’s point is clear: of course this is the same God, the redeeming Lord whose narrative identity was splashed all over the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures in Israel’s story.  Raising Jesus from the dead and justifying ungodly Gentiles is exactly how you would expect Him to act at the end of the ages, if you are reading the Old Testament Scriptures rightly. 

So the death and resurrection of Jesus define, for Christians, the core identity of God.  God–for us–is the one who handed Jesus over to be crucified, who raised him from the dead, and who has subsequently installed this risen Jesus at His right hand as Lord over all.  Deny this and, simply put, you are talking about another God.  I’ll leave the last word to Robert Jenson as he unapologetically lays out what which distinguishes Judaism and Christianity ever since Jesus came on the scene (hint: it’s not primarily different “attributes” of God, as if the prospect of Jews and Muslims and Christians all signing off on the same list of divine attributes would mean we all worship the same God.  What we fundamentally differ over are the acts of God in history, along with their specific interpretation and meaning for the community of faith):

“To the question “Whom do you mean, ‘God?’” Israel answered, “Whoever got us out of Egypt”.  The gospel of the New Testament is the provision of a new identifying description for this same God, that this new description comes to apply is the event witness to which is the whole point of the New Testament.  The content of the gospel is that God can now be known as “whoever raised Jesus from the dead” ‘ (Robert Jenson, The Triune Identity God According to the Gospel [Philadelphia Fortress Press, 1982], pp 7-8)