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Contents

Editor’s Note

Jonathan Leeman

BOOK REVIEWS ON THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH

Book Review: Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just

By Timothy Keller

Reviewed by Jonathan Leeman

Book Review: The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission

By Christopher J.H. Wright

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

Book Review: The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative

By Christopher J.H. Wright

Reviewed by Mike Gilbart-Smith

Book Review: Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture

By David VanDrunen

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

Book Review: Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought

By David VanDrunen

Reviewed by Jonathan Leeman

Book Review: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

By James Davison Hunter

Reviewed by Greg Gilbert

Book Review: When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…And Yourself

By Steve Corbett and Bryan Fikkert

Reviewed by Steve Boyer

BOOK EXCERPTS FROM WHAT IS THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH?

Book Excerpt: Is “Incarnational” the Best Way to Describe Christian Mission?

By Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

Book Excerpt: Why Do Good?

By Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

MISCELLANEOUS BOOK REVIEWS

Book Review: The Priority of Preaching

By Christopher Ash

Reviewed by Alistair Begg

Book Review: Taking Your Church to the Next Level

By Gary McIntosh

Reviewed by Matt Smethurst

Book Review: Counsel From the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the Love of Christ

By Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson

Reviewed by Deepak Reju

AUDIO - LEADERSHIP INTERVIEWS

Life and Ministry in the Southern Baptist Convention with Danny Akin

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary, talks about his conversion, the Great Commission Resurgence, easy believism, what he’s learned from Paige Patterson and Al Mohler, and more. *Listen online Now »

Posted on November 1, 2010

An Amazing Testimony of God’s Grace with Mez McConnell

Mez McConnell tells the riveting story of how God rescued him from a life of drugs and violence and sent him to preach the gospel in inner-city Edinburgh, Scotland. *Listen online Now »

Posted on October 1, 2010

* This audio might not be supported by your particular device

Jonathan Leeman

Editor’s note

Several of us at 9Marks recently spent a long afternoon with a wise old friend talking about the conversation evangelicals are having about the mission of the church. There are two basic mistakes people keep making in this conversation, said our friendly sage. On the one hand, some people pit good things against one another—bodies versus souls, this world versus the next, and so forth. This group needs to view human beings whole cloth.

On the other hand, some people fail to hold up eternal and temporal realities next to one another and ask which is more important. Everything is crammed under the label “equally important.” But that doesn’t make sense. We need to treat the weighty things as weighty, and the weightiest things as the weightiest.

Notice then what our friend was doing: he was avoiding the “either/or” as well as a simplistic “both/and.” He was instead going for what Tim Keller, referring to the relationship between evangelism and social justice, calls an “inseparable asymmetry.” Things can be stuck together, but still differ greatly in their importance.

Whatever you might think about our friend’s counsel, the conversation about the church’s mission is difficult, which is why we are devoting this Journal to reviewing the books on the topic. That way, you don’t have to just hear from us, but from people who have thought about these issues longer and more carefully than we have.

Some of these books we would commend to you wholeheartedly, like VanDrunen’s, Hunter’s, and Keller’s, precisely because they discern the type of distinctions described above. Others we like for one reason or another, but would refrain from giving a full endorsement, as with Wright’s two books or Corbett and Fikkert’s. All of these books are deeply intelligent, Christian, and have something to teach each of us. I do want to call special attention to David VanDrunen’s two books. A number of neo-Calvinists and tranformationalists just might discover that their thinking is more amenable to aspects of the two-kingdoms view than they realize.

Finally, Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert kindly agreed to give us a sneak preview of their book What Is the Mission of the Church? to be released next year by Crossway. Through it all, we hope these reviews and excerpts will help you, pastor, discern which things in your church’s life are weighty and which things are the weightiest.

Reviewed by Jonathan Leeman

Book review: Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us

Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. Dutton, 2010. 230 pages. $19.95

Two months ago I was asked to write a Sunday School class introducing the entire book of Isaiah. I felt somewhat competent with the book and its message since Isaiah has long been one of my favorites. So I accepted the assignment.

The Bible, in response, was unwilling to be regarded so lightly; and it decided to remind me, as it often does, that my professions of competence over it are those of a small yipping dog. Reading through Isaiah, sure enough, I discovered an entire theme I had not really noticed before; you might even call it a major theme in the book: justice.

The word shows up five times in just the first chapter: Israel is commanded to “seek justice” and “bring justice to the fatherless” and “widow” (1:17). Its people are condemned because, though they were once “full of justice,” no longer do they “bring justice” (1:21, 23). And we’re told that Zion will be redeemed “by justice” (1:27). On and on the book goes, mentioning the word 24 more times.

One more example: I’ve often meditated on those wonderful words about the servant—“a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” (42:3). Yet somehow I had never paid attention to the fact that justice is mentioned three times in those same verses: the servant will “bring forth justice,” “faithfully bring forth justice,” and “establish justice” (42:1, 3, 4). Interpret any one text how you will, the book of Isaiah seems to say that justice is a pretty big deal with God.

The experience of reading Timothy Keller’s latest offering, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, felt very similar. Keller does not manipulate the emotions with heart-rending stories or melodramatic rhetoric. He does not offer slanted and reductionistic readings of redemptive history in order to reinforce his political ideology. He just points to a bunch of biblical texts. It’s a grownup’s book, not a young zealot’s or an ideologue’s. The first five of eight chapters, in fact, are chock-full of Bible. A good pastor, Keller knows that all those texts, faithfully interpreted, will do their own work of pressing into a believer’s heart. Again, say what you will about any one text, you look at the whole pile and think, “There sure are a lot of them.”

Generous Justice contains two basic ideas, and you can see these in the title and subtitle. First, God’s work of graciously justifying a person will inevitably result in the believer’s desire to be just and to do justice. Justice follows justification. God’s grace makes us just, as the subtitle puts it. If you are a Christian, you should have a growing desire to see justice done, both in this life and the next. And that desire should increasingly evidence itself in your actions and life-decisions.

“Again, social justice follows justification, and social justice is generous.”

Second, the idea of justice is not simply about just deserts or equitable punishment before the law. It’s also about giving people their due as beings made in the image of God. For the convicted criminal, yes, this means punishment. But for the person stuck in poverty, the command to “do justice” (Micah 6:8) might call us to relief work, development work, or the work of social reform. Typically, Christians think of such activities as “charity.” But if a person’s poverty results at least in part from larger structural problems beyond his or her control, then we must address those larger issues in order to be just—in order to give the person his or her due and establish right relationships. In other words, being just in these circumstances means being generous, like the book’s title suggests. Justice is not just a responsive activity warranted by transgressions of the law, it’s an initiating and forward-leaning activity. It involves going “to places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of societies are falling through the fabric, and to repair it” (177). As many others have done, Keller calls this larger concept of justice which combines both just deserts and social righteousness social justice.

Ever the evangelist and apologist, Keller writes not just for the Christian, but for the skeptical non-Christian who is convinced that Christianity is one of history’s greatest sources of injustice. Biblical Christianity, Keller argues, leads to just the opposite. Again, social justice follows justification, and social justice is generous.

The topic of justice or social justice, in my opinion, is more complex than Christians may at first realize. It’s difficult hermeneutically and theologically: it’s connected, like a blackberry deep in the bramble, to a host of other thorny questions about the nature of the gospel, good deeds, the church institutional and organic, canonical continuity, eschatology, church and state, and more. The topic is difficult emotionally: stories of poverty, ethnic discrimination, and other forms of injustice hit us in the gut, making sound judgment a little bit harder. And it’s difficult spiritually: our hearts are small and reluctant to make sacrifices for others, but they are also susceptible to legalistic and misplaced guilt. Countless are the writers and preachers who have tried to navigate these treacherous waters only to crash their vessels into one of the rocks—this writer included. But Keller, I believe, manages to sail us successfully betwixt the crags and through the froth.

THE INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIC CHURCH

For instance, many writers and preachers today smother the distinction between a local church’s primary obligations and a Christian’s. Drawing from Abraham Kuyper’s idea of “sphere sovereignty,” however, Keller patiently explains the difference between the institutional church (the congregation meeting together with its leaders to hear God’s Word and celebrate the ordinances) and the organic church (individual Christians scattered throughout the world). Then he argues that we should not assume that both are called to do exactly the same thing:

The church should help believers shape every area of their lives with the gospel….But that doesn’t mean that the church as an institution is itself to do everything it equips its members to do. For example, while the church should disciple its members who are filmmakers so that their cinematic art will be profoundly influenced by the gospel, that does not mean that the church should establish a company that produces feature films. (144)

The institutional and organic church bears a similar division of labor when it comes to doing justice. The institutional church “is to evangelize and nurture believers in Christian community,” which in turn “produces individuals who change society” even though “the local congregation should not itself engage in these enterprises” (145). Keller sees some room for churches institutionally conceived to carry out ministries of relief, but he encourages them to refrain from the more complex and involved work of social reform.

ASYMMETRICAL AND INSEPARABLE

It’s also common these days to insist on the “both/and” of word ministry and deed ministry. It’s said that the Bible calls for words and deeds, and so our ministries should be marked by the same. They’re like the two-wings of a bird, and we should do both for their own sake. Some would even say that doing justice is evangelism.

Well, yes and no, says Keller. Yes, we need something of a both/and, but don’t confuse one for the other or even say they are equally important. “Evangelism [speaking words] is the most basic and radical ministry possible to a human being. This is not true because the spiritual is more important than the physical, but because the eternal is more important than the temporal” (139).

Keller helpfully captures the relationship between evangelism and social justice, or words and deeds, by saying that they “exist in an asymmetrical, inseparable relationship” (ibid). You need both; they are inseparable. But one is more important than the other; they are asymmetrical—unlike the two wings of a bird. Here’s one helpful summary of his view:

I urge my readers to discern the balance I am seeking to strike. If we confuse evangelism and social justice we lose what is the single most unique service that Christians can offer the world. Others, alongside believers, can feed the hungry. But Christians have the gospel of Jesus by which men and women can be born again into the certain hope of eternal life. No one else can make such an invitation. However, many Christians who care intensely about evangelism see the work of doing justice as a distraction for Christians that detracts from the mission of evangelism. That is also a grave error. (141)

I believe Keller is exactly right (I’ve previously used the less elegant language of “both/and with distinctions”) so long as I can provide three qualifications. First, “inseparable” must be understood normatively (what we should do), not absolutely. People can be evangelized and converted without good deeds, whereas they cannot be evangelized and converted without words (e.g., radio ministries or Phil. 1:15-18). Obviously, this is part of the asymmetry. Second, we should take care not to privilege social justice over other areas of gospel obedience. Many evangelicals do seem to privilege it since it’s one area of the church’s life that just might win praise from outsiders, unlike, say, sexual fidelity. But privileging it risks turning social justice into another form of legalism. Third, along the same lines, we should make sure that our overall ministries as pastors, elders, and churches reflect this asymmetry. I assume Keller would agree with these qualifications.

ESCHATALOGICAL FREIGHT

To a large extent, Keller avoids “entering into debates over the nature of [Christ’s inaugurated] kingdom and other matters of ‘eschatalogy’” since he believes that “an extremely strong case for doing justice and caring for the poor can be made” without doing so (203, n. 61.). And I think he’s right—a strong case is made. But this means he tries to avoid siding, at least in this book, with the so-called transformationalists, who say that our work of social justice actually redeems culture and ushers in the kingdom of the new heavens and the new earth; or siding with the two-kingdoms advocates, who would say that our work of social justice does not redeem culture or usher in the final kingdom, per se, but it signifies our citizenship before Christ the King as we seek to ensure that his redemptive rule extends into every area of our lives, physical and spiritual, secular and sacred. (I’m working with David VanDrunen’s more careful, less caricatured conception of the two-kingdoms. See reviews of VanDrunen’s books here and here.)

What that means is, Keller writes in a way that should basically satisfy the two kingdoms minimum. He doesn’t pack “eschatological freight,” to use VanDrunen’s phrase, onto our works of social justice. He doesn’t say they are ushering in end-time realities. He doesn’t say we can redeem culture.

Now, while reading the final chapter I did wonder if he does carry a small handbag of such freight. He begins the chapter by observing that the whole world stopped “working right” when we lost our relationship with God. So far, so good. But then he tells an extended story about an entire community which learned sign language as an example of sacrificing themselves for the less advantaged and so “doing justice.” He doesn’t quite say that this community restored God’s creation shalom, but the story’s placement will leave all but the most careful reader assuming that’s exactly what he means. And the problem with that assumption, of course, is that it contradicts the earlier point about a broken relationship with God being the source of injustice and brokenness in the world. Self-sacrifice and sign language, by themselves, don’t fix this basic problem between us and God and so restore creation shalom. At most, they can signify what a fixed relationship will look like.

Then again, I’d like to say that that’s all Keller means for the sign language story to teach, because a little later in the chapter he observes that even the Nazis enjoyed the beauty of Mozart while slaughtering Jews. He recognizes that peace, beauty, and even justice in this world will not ultimately redeem people. Only Christ redeems.

In short, a Christian’s work of social justice makes the world a better place. It demonstrates a Christ-like love for sinners. It points to a world to come, whether that world is a replacement or a transformed version of our present world. But such work does not “redeem” the world. I’m fairly confident Keller would affirm all this. Still, it has to be said, he keeps his kingdom and eschatology cards close to his chest. And once or twice he feels a smidgeon too optimistic for me, but his overall exhortation to justice and caring for the poor certainly does not require one to hold a transformationalist position, which I do not. If Keller’s habit of always planting himself in a “third way” is any indication, he probably sees both sides of the debate!

Keller wonderfully concludes the chapter and the book by pointing readers squarely toward the one thing that will make them just: beholding God’s work of becoming man, identifying himself with sinners, and receiving the condemnation that we deserved.

SO WHAT IS JUSTICE?

If I had to guess, the most contentious issue will be Keller’s more expansive understanding of social justice, which I described above. He makes a biblical case for it (e.g. Deut. 10:7-8, 18-19; Job 29:12-17; 31:13-38; Ps. 146:7-9; Is. 58:6-7; Jer. 22:3; Ezek 18:5,7-8a; Zech. 7:10-11; Matt. 6:1-2), but he also insinuates that it’s a systematic theology concept, combining both the biblical concepts of justice and righteousness (10ff).

Personally, I’m convinced he’s right, although I might nuance the comparison between the narrow definition (“equitable treatment before the law”) and Keller’s broader definition (“giving people their due”) a little differently. As far as I can discern, these two definitions are saying the same thing, but the narrow definition has been situated in the context of the courtroom. Treating people equitably before the law is giving them their due—in court. When we turn to asking what justice requires in another domain, such as in the economic domain, it’s the broad definition not the narrow definition that will prove more workable. This sensitivity to context is one of the basic and helpful insights of Michael Walzer’s classic Spheres of Justice (which, interestingly, overlaps somewhat with Kuyper’s ideas of sphere sovereignty). Different spheres of life require us to slightly reformulate how we explain the basic ideas of justice, however one might conceive of those basic ideas in the first place.[1]

For my part, I think Keller’s “giving people their due” is a helpful way of explaining the basic idea of justice, at least in theological terms, since it implicitly contains both God’s eternal principles of right and wrong as well as the “intrinsic” value he has imparted to every individual created in his image.

Suppose, for instance, that a rich man and poor man are situated differently beneath an unjust law; the law unfairly advantages the rich man and disadvantages the poor man. What does true justice (giving people their due) look like in this circumstance? It might require someone to simultaneously enforce the law on both men while also acting apart from the law to redress those deeper injustices through acts of “charity” or efforts to change the law. In other words, justice might require one thing in the legal sphere, another thing in the political sphere, and still another thing in the sphere of personal relationships. It might even require someone, in Keller’s language, to go “to places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of societies are falling through the fabric, and to repair it.”

As such, the laws in a truly just society will account for various kinds of imbalances in other spheres, such as the sphere of economic exchange. Keller helpfully observes that the laws which God gave Israel didn’t simply call for equal punishment before the law in accordance with one’s crimes; God also established laws that would address the various kinds of disadvantages which people experience, laws for instance that would help the poor receive their due as people created in God’s image. Gleaning laws or property reapportionment laws are clear examples.

A HEART CORRECTION

Now, I don’t expect my brief defense of Keller’s more expansive view of justice will convince everyone, but I don’t think it needs to. Whether or not we call acts of self-sacrifice and generosity “justice” or “love” or “compassion,” Keller’s parade of texts still stands, calling us to oppose injustice and care for the needy, and these Scriptures should weigh in on the Christian’s heart, just like all the texts I discovered in Isaiah.

“Our principal work must be to see that our own hearts and the hearts of our congregations are growing with the love and justice of God.”

And this is right where I want to give Generous Justice my highest praise. God cares deeply about justice, a concept which is generally coupled with caring for the needy in Scripture if it’s not the same thing as caring for the needy. Some people on the transformationalist side of the spectrum should read Generous Justice to have their theology corrected, particularly on the points I highlighted above. For myself, I needed (at least) a heart correction. For that reason, I plan to read it again with my wife, and I would strongly encourage other pastors to read it.

Yes, the book just might create some messy pastoral questions like “How much should we encourage our people to do justice?” And it will certainly provoke objections like, “There’s no conceivable limit to “doing justice” more actively. You’ll become obligated to help every poor person on the planet!” Well, yes, there are limits—the same limits you might place on doing evangelism, such as the need to faithfully steward other areas of your life. But more to the point, I think we have to make such practical questions secondary, so that pragmatic considerations don’t override theological ones. Our principal work must be to see that our own hearts and the hearts of our congregations are growing with the love and justice of God. How do we do that? By preaching to our congregations week after week, not just about doing justice, but about justification. We must center our sermons where Keller ended his book—on the gospel.

About the Author:

Jonathan Leeman is editorial director for 9Marks and the author of The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline.

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

Book Review: The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: a Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Zondervan, 2010. 304 pages. $24.99

Mission is a hot topic among evangelicals these days. Not missions, mind you, but mission.

This summer, Southern Baptists hosted a conference called MissionShift, which produced a “missional manifesto.” Just around the corner is a conference sponsored by the Gospel Community Mission Collective, which exists “to promote, create, and equip gospel communities on mission.”

This fall, on a much grander scale, the Third Lausanne World Congress on Evangelization convened in Cape Town, South Africa. It aimed to forge a global evangelical consensus about crucial issues facing the church today as we carry out the task of evangelizing the world. The Lausanne movement has grown out of the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, which produced the Lausanne Covenant, a statement on the nature and priorities of Christian mission which was chiefly authored by John Stott. Now, over three decades later, the Lausanne Congress at Cape Town has produced another document, the Cape Town Commitment, which stands in this tradition and which will surely shape evangelical concepts of mission in coming years. Its chief architect was a noted Old Testament scholar and missiologist, a man who counts Stott as a personal mentor: Christopher J. H. Wright.

What kind of priorities undergird this document, and the movement it embodies? More broadly, what are the shape and emphases of these newer conversations about mission among evangelicals?

Many of the answers are likely to be found in Wright’s new book The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, which is the first volume in Zondervan’s promising new series, “Biblical Theology for Life.”

WHAT MGP IS, AND WHAT IT DOES WELL

Following on the heels of Wright’s denser and more hermeneutically-oriented volume The Mission of God (IVP, 2006), The Mission of God’s People (MGP) aims to answer the question, “What does the Bible as a whole in both testaments have to tell us about why the people of God exist and what it is they are supposed to be and do in the world?” (17). By “mission,” then, Wright means the all-embracing purpose which encompasses everything that the people of God are called to be and do in this world. He writes, “So when I speak of mission, I am thinking of all that God is doing in his great purpose for the whole of creation and all that he calls us to do in cooperation with that purpose” (25).

The first half of the book focuses primarily on the kind of people God’s mission calls us to be. Christians should be “People Who Know the Story They Are Part of” (ch. 2), “People Who Care for Creation” (ch. 3), “People Who Walk in God’s Way” (ch. 5), and “People Who Represent God to the World” (ch. 7). With this theological and ethical foundation in place, Wright turns his focus in the second half to the specific tasks God’s mission calls us to. Specifically, he calls us to be “People Who Bear Witness to the Living God” (ch. 10), “People Who Proclaim the Gospel of Christ” (ch. 11), and “People Who Live and Work in the Public Square” (ch. 13).

This book has several notable strengths. The first is that it is full of evenhanded, plainly articulated biblical theology. Here are several examples:

• Wright’s concise summary of the biblical narrative and its theological implications in chapter 2 forms an integrative foundation for a biblical worldview.

• Wright’s solid work on Christian ethics as the foundation of mission in chapter 5 provides an Old Testament flavored antidote to the kind of nominal Christianity that plagues many churches’ corporate witness.

• Chapter 8, “People Who Attract Others to God,” is a rich exposition of several Old Testament passages which envision all the nations being attracted to worship the true God through his people’s distinctness in the world, along with how these themes are picked up and fulfilled in the New Testament.

• Wright sketches a simple, straightforward overview of the Bible’s teaching on work and participation in the public square in chapter 13 in which he rightly exhorts pastors to labor to equip their people for works of ministry in the public sphere.

• Chapter 14 provides a thoughtful reflection on the missional thrust of prayer and praise. That is, Wright argues that worship in Scripture is not only the goal of mission, but that the corporate praises and prayers of God’s people have an evangelistic impact of their own, quite apart from any efforts at being “seeker-sensitive.”

Another of the book’s strengths is that Wright joins together many things which evangelical Christians have too often separated: faith and obedience, evangelism and discipleship, gospel proclamation and social action. Wright correctly insists that all these things and more have a role to play in the life of God’s people, and that these pairs mutually reinforce one another in ways that more antithetical constructions of them have tended to obscure. Even if one wished to raise questions about certain aspects of Wright’s proposal, as I intend to, he is to be commended for painting an integrated, biblically-informed portrait of what God’s people are to be and do in the world.

WHAT MGP ISN’T

Before examining a few of those issues, I should say a few quick words about what this book is not.

First, as Wright explains in the preface, it’s not a simplified version of The Mission of God, although it is both shorter and simpler. The Mission of God argued for a “missional hermeneutic of the whole Bible” and sought to expound the idea that “The mission of God is what unifies the Bible from creation to new creation.” MGP, building on that foundation, aims to answer the “so what” question: “If the Bible renders to us the grand mission of God through all generations of history, what does it tell us about the mission of God’s people in each generation, including our own? What is our mission?” (17).

Second, the book is not a “biblical theology” in the sense of sequentially tracing an unfolding theme through the canon. Rather, it is mainly a selective, topically arranged exposition of a number of (primarily Old Testament) texts which bear on what God’s people are to be and do in the world. While the topical arrangement of MGP gives it a certain layered richness, it leaves one without an overall sense of what the various biblical corpora—particularly in the New Testament—contribute to our understanding of the mission of God’s people.[2]

A FEW ITEMS WORTH PROBING CRITICALLY

As I said above, this book has much to commend it—more than I’ve mentioned. Keeping that in mind, there are a few aspects of Wright’s proposal which are worth probing more critically.

“Everything is Mission”

The first is Wright’s avowed insistence that “everything is mission.” Early in the book Wright explains that he understands “mission” as the all-embracing category and “missions” as specific manifestations of that mission, on the analogy of science and the sciences. He continues,

And it seems to me there are as many kinds of missions as there are kinds of sciences—probably far more in fact. And in the same way, in the variety of missions God has entrusted to his church as a whole, it is unseemly for one kind of mission to dismiss another out of a superiority complex, or to undervalue itself as “not real mission” out of an inferiority complex. The body image has powerful resonance here too. That is why I also dislike the old knock-down line that sought to ring-fence the word “mission” for specifically cross-cultural sending of missionaries for evangelism: “If everything is mission, then nothing is mission.” It would seem more biblical to say, “If everything is mission…everything is mission.” (25-26)

One wishes that Wright would have argued his point, rather than dismiss the opposing viewpoint with a wave of the hand as “the old knock-down line.” And it’s hardly clear why his definition would “seem more biblical.” Still, there’s no strictly biblical reason why Wright shouldn’t use the word “mission” the way he does. As he points out in chapter 1, a common contemporary definition of the word “mission” is “a sense of purpose or goal-orientation” (24). So, given this reasonably common usage, Wright uses the term mission to encompass all that the people of God are to do and gets on with his exposition.

A further aspect of Wright’s all-embracing definition of mission is that he intends to explode the hierarchy which evangelicals have traditionally set up between evangelism and the whole broad range of Christian responsibilities. Evangelicals have traditionally restricted the term “mission” to mean something like “evangelism and church planting, especially of the cross-cultural sort,” and this prioritizes such activities over other Christian responsibilities. Wright wants to do away with this hierarchy almost entirely. For example, he explicitly critiques the idea that we should “put individual salvation and personal evangelism at the center of all our efforts” (273). Further, he poses the question, “Is the church’s mission primarily the delivery of the message of the gospel—in which case the verbal element is all that really matters?” (30). It seems Wright not only wants Christians to give more attention to matters that we may be neglecting, but he wants to do away with the common notion that disciple-making should be our central aim or highest priority or most urgent task.

I say “it seems” because elsewhere in the book, following the Lausanne covenant of 1974 and the “Grand Rapids Report” of 1982, Wright very cautiously affirms that the proclamation of the gospel has “a certain priority” in the church’s mission. Yet even then he is quick to argue that “in missional practice, the distinction is hardly, if ever, a real one” (276). Wright suggests that evangelism and social action should be so intertwined in our practice, much as prayer and Bible reading should be in a Christian’s devotional life, that to ask which is primary is basically irrelevant (277).

Wright continues by addressing the suggestion that “‘centrality’ rather than ‘primacy’ might be a better word for evangelism within mission” (278). Without either endorsing or rejecting this terminology, he interprets the idea of evangelism’s “centrality” in a way that translates to total interdependence between evangelism and social action: “If evangelism is like the hub, connected to the engine of the gospel power of God, then it also takes the living demonstration of the gospel in Christians’ engagement with the world to give the hub connection and traction with the context—the road” (278).

A Response to Wright’s Version of “Everything is Mission”

What response should be offered to Wright’s statements about the place of gospel proclamation within his all-encompassing category of mission?

First, there is certainly merit to Wright’s insistence that the Grand Rapids Report of 1982, for example, “was attempting to ‘reconcile’ two things which should never have been separated in the first place” (276). If Scripture lays a whole range of responsibilities on Christians, one thing we must not do in discussing the relationship between them is marginalize or neglect any of them. “These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.”

“Whatever we conclude about the nature of our responsibility toward the non-human creation, not one blue whale or Brazilian rosewood is threatened with eternal damnation as the just penalty for its sin.”

Yet on the other hand, I would argue that Wright’s somewhat equivocal statements about the priority or centrality of evangelism within the church’s mission obscure the unique emphasis we must give to evangelism—and its consequents, discipleship and church planting—if we are to be faithful to the whole thrust of Scripture. For example, in discussing the cosmic scope of God’s redeeming work, Wright argues that “Our mission therefore has to be as comprehensive in scope as the gospel the whole Bible gives us” (41). This idea of the all-encompassing scope of our mission is part and parcel with Wright’s insistence that we should not erect a hierarchy of priorities within our mission (30). But Wright’s presentation of these related points seems to veil important distinctions we find in Scripture which should lead us to place a unique emphasis on making disciples of Jesus Christ.

If our mission flows from and in some sense participates in God’s mission, as Wright correctly and repeatedly insists, then we should carefully note the different ways God brings about the various aspects of his comprehensive plan of redemption. For instance, Scripture clearly teaches that God will usher in the new creation unilaterally, apart from anything we do, on the last day. Certainly, we joyfully experience a foretaste of certain aspects of this new creation now, but according to Revelation’s vision of the end, it is only at the consummation that the New Jerusalem will descend to earth from heaven as a bride prepared (by God) for her husband. Scripture also clearly teaches that people will be delivered from eternal hell only through faith in Christ, which will only happen through our evangelistic efforts, only before the last day. I’m fairly confident that Wright would affirm all of this.[3] Yet he tends to so emphasize the comprehensive scope of redemption that he neglects to properly wrestle with the dramatic differences in the means by which—and the timing in which—God works out various aspects of redemption.

Further, I would argue that by dismantling virtually any hierarchy of importance between creation care, social action, and working in the public square on the one hand and disciple-making on the other, Wright’s version of holistic mission fails to reflect necessary practical emphases which flow from these biblical distinctions. For example, whatever we conclude about the nature of our responsibility toward the non-human creation, not one blue whale or Brazilian rosewood is threatened with eternal damnation as the just penalty for its sin. Yet the way Wright works against the idea of the “priority” of evangelism (I prefer the term “centrality”) seems to me to run exactly counter to the way these weighty biblical realities should impact our concept of mission.

If God is going to accomplish one aspect of his redemption apart from anything we do and another aspect exclusively through our efforts, shouldn’t that lead us to give special weight and urgency to what God accomplishes only through us? If only one group of creatures in all of God’s creation (namely, humans) are threatened with eternal, conscious torment which can only be averted through belief in the gospel, shouldn’t that cause us to focus especially on ministering to our fellow humans, without in the least neglecting our responsibility toward the non-human creation? Or again, if human suffering in this life is temporal while God’s judgment against sinners is eternal, should we not seek to address to whole sweep of human suffering, especially that which is eternal?[4] In view of these biblical realities, I think Keith Fernando is exactly right to argue that evangelizing and making disciples is absolutely central to Christian mission and that the vocabulary we develop for conceiving of Christian mission must reflect this absolute centrality.[5]

In sum, to place all of our missional imperatives on virtually the same plane of emphasis, as Wright does, does not seem to square with (i) the way the Bible dramatically distinguishes between the nature of the plight faced by humans as opposed to the non-human creation; (ii) the means by which God “redeems” the non-human creation as opposed to humans; (iii) and the unique role God’s people have in working to bring about the salvation of sinners compared with God’s completely unilateral, eschatological act of creating a new heavens and a new earth. Further, I fear that any concept of mission which deliberately avoids making such distinctions leaves us without crucial biblical ballast for keeping our churches focused on that which is of first importance.[6]

The Exodus as a Definitive Model of Redemption

A second matter worth probing is Wright’s insistence that “The exodus provides the prime Old Testament model of God acting as Redeemer. This is what redemption looks like when God does it” (41). Or again, “God’s idea of redemption is exodus-shaped” (96). By this Wright means that, just as the exodus had political, economic, social, and spiritual dimensions, so too God’s climactic act of redemption in the cross of Christ has the exact same scope. In other words, Wright argues that the Bible’s idea of redemption is not merely informed by the exodus, but that it “matches” the exodus at every key point (103). Wright explains the practical outworking of this view as follows:

The exodus has been seen as the biblical foundation par excellence for theologies of mission that emphasize the importance of social, political, and economic concern alongside the spiritual dimensions of personal forgiveness. Or rather, and with greater biblical faithfulness, it is the biblical basis for the integration of all these dimensions within the comprehensive good news of the biblical gospel. Such holistic, or integral, understandings of mission point to the totality of what God accomplished for Israel in the paradigmatic redemptive event—the exodus. And I believe they are right to do so. (109)

I would suggest that there are a few significant problems with Wright’s articulation of the sense in which the exodus is a definitive paradigm of redemption.

First, Wright arbitrarily privileges the exodus narrative itself (roughly Exodus 1-15) over the rest of the Old Testament in constructing a “paradigm” of redemption. In other words, Wright sets up “the exodus” as the definitive model of redemption abstracted from all that follows on its heels, whether immediately or remotely, including the giving of the law, the establishment of the sacrificial system, the wilderness wanderings, the inheriting of the land, Israel’s inveterate and unending rebellion against their covenant God, and all that follows from their rebellion in the grand sweep of the Old Testament narrative. The problem with this arbitrarily narrow focus is that the Old Testament itself picks up and develops the exodus themes in ways that ultimately contribute to the New Testament’s appropriation of the exodus and shape our understanding of what the exodus “means” almost as much as the original narrative. As the story unfolds, what comes to the fore again and again is the people’s inability to keep God’s law and their need for radical spiritual surgery—along with a covenant that would not merely demand their obedience but supernaturally enable it and provide a truly effectual means of atonement for sin.

Second, Wright’s application of his “holistic” understanding of the exodus to the New Testament obscures the New Testament’s emphasis on redemption as forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to God.

Certainly, Wright’s conclusion that redemption through Christ is “holistic” is true in an ultimate sense. The new creation will be a world of perfect justice, of total human flourishing, and of perfect fellowship with God. But in its discussion of redemption the New Testament seems to strongly emphasize the vertical, theocentric dimension (what Wright calls the “spiritual” aspect), while clearly indicating that “holistic” redemption in the social, political, and economic senses will only be obtained in the eschaton.

Examples of the New Testament’s accent on the vertical, theocentric dimension of redemption are found in the parallel statements of Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:13-14. In Ephesians 1:7 Paul writes, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” That Paul can define redemption as the forgiveness of sins demonstrates that at the very least Paul regarded personal reconciliation to God as the highest peak in the mountain range of redemption. Further, Colossians 1:13-14 says, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” In this passage Paul draws on the political imagery of the Israelites being redeemed from Pharaoh’s oppressive rule and brought into the service of God to describe our present experience of redemption as being delivered from bondage to Satan and brought into God’s kingdom. This radical transfer happens on an entirely different plane from Israel’s geo-political deliverance, which is something that Wright’s presentation of the exodus as the definitive paradigm of redemption unaccountably glosses over. That Wright articulates a view of the exodus which doesn’t align with the New Testament’s use of exodus imagery betrays a basic methodological error. That is, Wright fails to allow the New Testament authors’ interpretations of the Old Testament to properly influence his.

Third, Wright asserts continuity between the exodus and New Covenant believers’ experience of redemption where the New Testament plainly asserts discontinuity. God redeemed Israel politically, socially, and economically through delivering them from political oppression, bringing them into their own land, and giving them his law to govern every aspect of their life as a distinct geopolitical entity. Yet at least in its present manifestation, New Covenant redemption differs from the exodus at each of these points.

Consider, for example, the life of a first-century Roman believer who happened to be a slave. What sort of political, social, and economic redemption did such a believer experience? Did the apostles respond to the tangible plight of such a one by saying that he or she had been redeemed, and so must “put on” that redemption by obtaining a new social and economic status, just as the Israelites were delivered from Pharaoh’s oppression? Not in so many words (1 Cor. 7:17-24). Or again, Peter calls Christians “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11-12), which alludes both to Israel’s status in Egypt before they were redeemed and their status in exile as they awaited the second exodus God promised to work for them. Revelation, a book rich in exodus imagery, graphically defines the present experience of God’s people in terms of the grisly experience of being persecuted by a hostile political power, much as the Israelites were before the exodus. Since the New Testament speaks of Christians as already having been redeemed and yet being consistently subject to political oppression, it is imprecise at best to say that redemption always embraces the political, economic, and social dimensions.

Fourth, another way to say this is that Wright’s distinctive portrayal of redemption as “exodus-shaped” partially collapses the New Testament’s eschatological timeline. Granted, Wright admits that “we do not yet see the completion of that redemptive work in present history” (111; see also 103-104). But it seems to me that to speak of redemption as inexorably “exodus-shaped” and as demanding an “exodus-shaped mission” (102) keeps the force of this admission from shaping one’s conception of redemption, and therefore of mission, as it should. Ultimately, we do look forward to the glorious day when we will dwell with God in the new earth, “the home of righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13), at which time we will enjoy all the fruits of a perfectly consummated redemption. But at the present time, we enjoy the foretaste of that redemption in the forgiveness of sins and the spiritual freedom we enjoy as members of God’s kingdom, even while many of our social, political, and economic circumstances remain far from “redeemed.”

This is not to deny that our redemption through Christ has implications that spill over into every sphere of life, including the social, economic, and political spheres—far from it. But it is to say that our theology of redemption, and therefore of mission, must take stock of the differences between redemption’s application now compared to the full consummation of redemption in the eschaton. It should be noted that these differences strongly parallel the differences between our present experience of redemption and the Israelites’ experience of redemption through the exodus, which suggests that Wright significantly overstates the continuity between the exodus and New Covenant redemption in its inaugurated form. In view of this, a more typological reading of the relationship between them has more to commend it than Wright’s dismissive label of such a reading as “spiritualizing” would suggest.[7]

“Church” and “Christians” Used Interchangeably

A final matter to discuss is Wright’s consistent reference to the church as the people of God in a generic sense. That is, he uses the term “church” interchangeably with the term “people of God,” with very occasional reference to local churches in his application questions at the end of each chapter. As D.A. Carson points out in a discussion that touches on Christians’ responsibilities in the public sphere, this is not without problems:

But however achieved, this equation between church and any collective of Christians, such that “church” and “Christians” can be used interchangeably, skews discussion in a maximalist direction. John Stott is a fine example of a Christian leader who takes this approach. When he argues that Christians ought to be involved in various forms of social care, he means, equally, that the church ought to be involved in various forms of social care. In other words, when he asserts that part of the Christian’s obligation is to be involved in some enterprise or other, this is, for him, virtually indistinguishable from asserting that the church’s mission mandates such enterprise.[8]

“We need to ask ‘What is the mission of the local church?’ not merely ‘What is the mission of the individual Christian?’”

But, Carson suggests, if we suppose that “church” in the New Testament “cannot be reduced to a collective of Christians,” then we have to ask whether the Christian’s responsibility to “do good, to show mercy, to care for the poor” and so on “belong to the church as a church.” If they do, then we would expect to see church leaders taking responsibility for these activities and directing them. But what we find in the New Testament is that the church’s earliest leaders, the apostles, were careful to protect the priority of the Word and prayer in their ministry, and even handed over matters of justice within the congregation to other mature men (Acts 6:1-7). Further, the qualifications for elders/overseers and descriptions of their work seem to place a distinct accent on “the ministry of the Word and prayer.” Moreover, when we examine New Testament teaching about the gathered church’s distinct responsibilities, they seem to cut a narrower profile than that of the individual Christian.[9]

This means that if we want to cling tightly to biblical priorities, we must be prepared to acknowledge that the full range of activities which come along with serving as salt and light in the world “may not be the church’s mission, under the direction of the church’s leaders” while they certainly are “the obligation of Christians.”[10] Therefore our discussion of the church’s mission is incomplete and possibly misleading until we wrestle with the question of the distinct responsibilities of the local church as an institution over against the responsibilities of individual Christians. We need to ask “What is the mission of the local church?” not merely “What is the mission of the individual Christian?”

CONCLUSION

As is surely evident by now, this review must fall slightly short of a commendation.

I hope that this lengthy critical discussion has not obscured my appreciation for the sound biblical theology which comprises much of The Mission of God’s People. Further, though I have reservations about certain aspects of his vision for mission, I want to state again that I think many of Wright’s correctives are both biblical and needed. These include his admonitions not to neglect the Bible’s insistence that we are to do good to all men and that we are to care for God’s creation. Wright’s vision of what Christians are to be and do in the world draws together biblical imperatives which many evangelicals have wrongly torn apart, whether in theory, practice, or both, and for that contribution I am grateful.

Yet I hope that Wright’s proposal will not be uncritically imbibed, but will rather serve as a catalyst for Christians to continue wrestling with the Bible’s teaching about what we are to be and do in the world—and what the local church is to be and do in the world. I hope that many more voices will contribute to this conversation and help spur us all on to a more faithful practice of the mission to which God has called us.

About the author

Bobby Jamieson is assistant editor for 9Marks.

Reviewed by Mike Gilbart-Smith

Book Review: The Mission of God

Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. IVP, 2006. 582 pages. $40.00

Reviewing a book about missions by Chris Wright makes me feel a little like a grown-up Pinocchio writing a critique of Geppetto’s toy-making skills. Chris was very much involved in introducing me to the mission of God and to the God of mission when he served as a curate in my parents’ church when I was between the ages of 3 and 9.

I still have pleasant memories of Chris leading a Holiday Bible Club in Cage Green Hall, Tonbridge and sharing the gospel in a clear and faithful way. And Chris and his family were the first ones to embody the reality of overseas missions for me. I remember sitting by the lake at Ashburnham Place talking with Chris’s nine year old son about his family’s upcoming move to India. I remember saving some of my pocket money as a ten year old to put into a “Bible Church Missionary Society” box that sat in my father’s study, excited at the possibility that my pennies might be used by the Lord over 4000 miles away where Chris was training pastors.

About fifteen years later I heard Chris give a series of talks at “New Word Alive” on Deuteronomy, and was struck by the missional reading of an Old Testament book that I had previously thought of as being a bunch of rules.

All that is to say, I owe a deep personal debt to Chris Wright.

The Mission of God is the culmination of decades of thought and teaching that Chris has done on the relationship between the Bible and missions—rather, mission. He’s been thinking about the material in this book longer than I’ve been thinking about anything. It’s also a mammoth book, weighing in at 535 pages plus indexes. And so, in this brief space I will not be able to do much more than briefly outline some of the content and engage with some of the more controversial questions that Wright raises.

SUMMARY

In the introduction Wright describes how he used to look for the “biblical basis for missions” but grew to prefer to explore “the missional basis of the Bible” (22). Mission is not just one of a hundred different biblical themes that we might explore; the Bible is fundamentally about mission, and is even the product of that mission. We are not just people who “do missions” for God, but God himself is a missionary God, and we have the immense privilege in being incorporated into and involved in the mission of God.

The book then explores God’s mission and our place in it in four parts.

Part I: “The Bible and Mission”

Part one, “The Bible and Mission,” takes up the question of a missional hermeneutic. Central to Wright’s approach to missions is to use the term “mission of God” not merely to refer to what has commonly been called “overseas missions.” Rather, everything that belongs to the overarching purpose of God constitutes his mission, his “long-term purpose or goal”—like a company might draw up a mission statement (23). This broad approach to God’s mission then opens up a similarly broad approach to our place within it.

Wright critiques the fact that so much missiology has been built upon one text, Matthew 28:18-20. If the whole Bible is fundamentally missional, this kind of approach hardly makes sense. Wright argues that we must have a missional hermeneutic of the whole Bible that is informed not only by the great imperatives of the Great Commission and Great Commandment, but also the great indicatives which all reveal to us the identity and saving purpose of the Great God for his whole creation (60).

The Bible is a book which has a mission, and that mission is God’s mission: to confront us with “the reality of this God, the reality of this story and the reality of this people” (54, his emphasis).

Part II: “The God of Mission”

Part two, “The God of Mission,” stares more closely at the identity of God, focusing on how the uniqueness of God implies the universality of mission.

Monotheism is not, as some reconstructions of the religion of Israel would suggest, a growing development in Hebrew theology. Rather, “there was a radically monotheistic core to Israel’s faith from a very early period, however much it was obscured and compromised in popular religious practice” (73). This unique God reveals himself through a unique people in the Old Testament, but his intentions in this were always universal.

The universal intentions of God’s election of Israel are fulfilled when God himself enters history in the person of Jesus Christ, and acts as creator, ruler, judge and saviour. In Christ Jesus universal mission is opened up to be spread through all nations

Part III: “The People of Mission”

Part three, “The People of Mission,” explores what it means to be God’s chosen, redeemed, covenant, holy people. A biblical theology of mission cannot begin at Pentecost; instead Wright begins with the Abrahamic covenant as “arguably...the single most important biblical tradition within a biblical theology of mission and a missional hermeneutic of the Bible” (189). In God’s promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, we discover that the unique God’s intention through his particular people is to reach all. Through the blessing of one man and his one seed, all nations would be blessed through the New Covenant. This covenant is fundamentally missional. “Mission is an unavoidable imperative founded on the covenantal lordship of Christ our King. Its task is to produce self-replicating communities of covenantal obedience to Christ among the nations. And it is sustained by the covenantal promise of the perduring presence of Christ among his followers” (355).

Part IV: “The Arena of Mission”

Part four, “The Arena of Mission,” explores God’s intentions for all nations and cultures and the whole of creation. Namely, God’s election of a particular people opens up into God’s grand, cosmic plans for his whole creation through the coming of the Messiah.

It is in this final section that it becomes most evident that Wright is constructing a very broad model of mission.

Since God’s mission (his overarching plan) encompasses the whole earth—human, animal and environment—so should the Christian’s mission. And because God’s mission as applied to humanity involves the restoration of human beings spiritually, rationally, physically, and socially, so should ours.

So, as Wright offers a vision of “holistic mission” he is truly offering a vision of cosmic proportions, as we are caught up into the mission of God himself.

POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION

There is so much that could be said in admiration for this book, not least regarding its sheer scale and readability.

I love the overall approach of the book. Wright is right that we mustn’t see missions as some kind of small theme in the Bible, but rather as central to God’s purpose.

And there is so much Bible in the book. The nine page, four column Scripture index makes this abundantly clear. The deliberate emphasis on the Old Testament is a helpful corrective to missiologies that neglect three quarters of Bible and also to readings of the Old Testament that neglect mission.

It is also wonderful to have a book that is both broad in its scope and also emphasizes the non-negotiability of such central gospel truths as penal substitution (312 ff.), the centrality of the cross, and the necessity of evangelism.

There is also a huge amount of missiological wisdom in the book. Typical of this wisdom is how Wright encourages evangelism that rightly recognizes the dignity of every divine image-bearer we might seek to evangelize. “Anything that denies other human beings their dignity or fails to show respect, interest and informed understanding for all they hold precious is actually a failure to love” (424). Yet Wright doesn’t swing too far in this direction; he continues, “Not that love means accepting everything your neighbor believes or does. Paul did not accept the religiosity of the Athenians, but he did seek to relate to them with polite respect, even while challenging their assumptions.”

While there is much to admire, there are also some serious causes for concern.

How can that be the case when the book is steeped in Scripture and the unfolding purposes of God? We shall first examine Wright’s biblical-theological method, and then raise some concerns about the conclusions he reaches.

QUESTIONS ABOUT WRIGHT’S BIBLICAL-THEOLOGICAL METHOD

1. Where is continuity, and where discontinuity?

A missiology that focuses upon the Old Testament is certainly a valid approach, but it requires a very careful exploration of the lines of continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments.

Wright employs polemical language to dismiss those who see the “physical” model of the Exodus in the Old Testament fulfilled “spiritually” in the New. Within two pages they are accused of “press[ing] a spiritualized application of the exodus” and “airbrush[ing] the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the original historical event” (ital. his). They “misuse the typological method” with “a twist of Platonic dualism.” They undermine the “organic continuity between Old and New Testament” and make the Old Testament “like a booster rocket that, once the space capsule is launched, drops off and falls away into redundant oblivion.” Instead, they ought to see that “the biblical narrative is like a tree. We now enjoy the spreading branches and abundant fruit of the New Testament fulfillment. But the Old Testament is like the inner rings of the trunk...still supporting the structure on which the branches and fruit have grown” (278-279).

Such language is powerful, but by choosing different metaphors, one could launch an equally scathing critique of positions that see too much continuity.

One could say that Wright fails to see the dynamic way in which the New Testament reality fulfills the Old Testament history. Instead he causes the new wine of the gospel to stagnate in its old wineskins, strangling its bouquet. Instead of a caterpillar finding its fulfillment in the butterfly free to take to the air, Wright insists that the butterfly be grounded as it is forced to drag around the worn out body of the caterpillar in its unmetamorphosized state.

The fact is that neither set of metaphors proves anything. What is needed is a careful examination of how the Old Testament paradigms are picked up and employed in the New Testament. Yet Wright fails to provide this.

I would argue that the New Testament suggests greater discontinuity than Wright allows. The exodus is clearly picked up in the New Testament as a paradigm of our salvation from slavery to sin. Yet it is nowhere picked up as a mandate for Christian political and socioeconomic activism. On the contrary, Jesus insists that his disciples refused political resistance because his kingdom is not of this world.

2. What aspects of the Old Testament narrative are given more weight?

There is also an imbalance concerning which Old Testament events or institutions are seen as the model for New Testament mission.

So, Wright sees the exodus and the exile as models of the mission of God. But if we picked other key themes or events, it’s not clear that we arrive at precisely the same conclusion.

If we take, for example, the function of the law, the Levitical code, and the lessons of the Old Testament prophets, we would see a picture in which our personal guilt before God is a far more central problem than our bondage to the enemies of God, though this is certainly related to that central problem.

The basic problem here is that Wright doesn’t seem to allow Jesus and the apostles’ interpretation of the Old Testament to guide his own interpretations. For instance, he insists on giving equal primacy to the political, economic, and social aspects of the exodus, even though the Jesus of the Gospel records does not. Why does Jesus say that he came, and how does he fulfill the salvation events of the Old Testament? We should ask him:

• He came to preach: “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out” (Mark 1:38).

• He came to call sinners: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (2:17).

• And he came to save his people from sin in a new exodus: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45).

Strangely, Wright describes this very emphasis on salvation from sin as a “spiritualizing” of the Old Testament (276). In so doing, does he unwittingly end up choosing his own interpretation over Jesus’?

3. An overly “horizontal” reading of sin

A biblical theology of the mission of God needs to examine Genesis 3 in closer detail than Wright provides. Genesis 1 to 3 sets up the context into which sin comes, and from which the Lord seeks to redeem a people.

The two most substantial treatments of the fall in the book come in the exploration of idolatry in chapter 5 and in the image of God in Chapter 13. In Chapter 5, Genesis 3 is explored for about a page (164-165) in which Wright rightly describes sin as idolatry that blurs the Creator/creature distinction and thus attempts to displace God from his throne. Chapter 13 explores the spiritual, mental, physical and social effects of sin (429-430).

What is missing from both accounts, and from the whole book, is a careful exploration of how God sees sin. Sin certainly has many destructive effects within the world, but what we see so clearly in Genesis 3 is not merely the horizontal results of sin: we see God’s response to it. It is not merely that we are “alienated, fearful, suspicious and hostile” towards God, but that he acts in holy anger towards us.

Once this is in place, we will continue to see this world as broken in all its relational complexity. But we will rightly see of all of that in relation to God, and we will see that our primary need is to be restored to him.

Further, a focus on the horizontal rather than the vertical effects of sin seems to pervade much of the rest of Wright’s reading of the Old Testament.

“The Exodus is a great model of New Testament redemption precisely because in it we see how God’s people, though deserving of the same judgment as God’s enemies, are redeemed through the sacrifice of a perfect substitute. This is why the New Testament presents Jesus as the Passover Lamb.”

So, to return to the theme of the Exodus: even as Wright uses the Exodus as a central model for the mission of God, I fear that he has overlooked the central event in the Exodus, namely, the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the sharing of the Passover meal. For Wright, Passover is seen purely as a reminder that God’s redemption is social: God judges the genocidal Egyptians by destroying their own firstborn (267). But the Passover lamb is strikingly absent from this description. Once we see the centrality of the lamb, we recognize that the Passover is a reminder first and foremost that those who are redeemed would fall under the same judgment as the enemies of God were it not for a substitutionary sacrifice. Yet Wright sees the Exodus as “decidedly not deliverance from their own sin” (277). This seems to miss the centrality of the Passover lamb within the Exodus event, and also in the annual Passover festival. The explanation of the Exodus and the Passover celebration which the Israelites were to hand down clearly focuses on the lamb and what it represents: “And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians’ “ (Ex. 12:26-27; ital. mine).

The Exodus is a great model of New Testament redemption precisely because in it we see how God’s people, though deserving of the same judgment as God’s enemies, are redeemed through the sacrifice of a perfect substitute. This is why the New Testament presents Jesus as the Passover Lamb. Yet Wright seems to miss, or at best ignore, all this.

4. The insistence on flattening primary and secondary issues

In seeking a middle ground, Wright ironically falls into the fallacy of the excluded middle. Wright wants to find a middle position between a liberal mission that is all social action and an extreme evangelical mission that is all evangelism and no social action, or at least a concept of mission in which evangelism is seen as primary and social or political action is secondary.

Wright respects those who hold to the priority of evangelism but he resists the terms “primacy” and “priority” because it “implies that all else is ‘secondary,’” and we know from our sports that “second is nowhere... the language of priority and primacy quickly tends to imply singularity and exclusion” (317).

This is another point at which Wright’s characteristic carefulness falters, and he seems to let old-fashion pragmatism drive his thinking instead of Scripture. Surely as Christians we have to be able to say that some things are more important than others without denying the importance of those things that are secondary. Does Paul’s insistence in 1 Corinthians 15 that some things are of first importance relegate the first 14 chapters of the letter to being of no importance at all?

FROM METHOD TO CONCLUSIONS

Our methodology radically affects our conclusions. I would suggest that these four flaws in Wright’s approach result in a mis-definition of God’s mission. Insofar as he turns discontinuities into continuities and flattens canonical trajectories, Wright ends up decentering the distinctively Christian aspects of God’s mission and gives just as much emphasis to the things that even non-Christians would want from God. This further results in a concept of the church’s mission which focuses too much on what is peripheral and not enough on what is central.

In response, I would argue that the mission of God is not about shaping the church around Israel, but seeing the fulfillment of Israel in a kingdom that is not of this world. The mission of God fulfills all of the Old Testament, not just some of it. It is about peace with God first, and one another only as we are reconciled to him. It has a trillion implications that range from the very central to the very peripheral with all their consequential variations in importance.

In order to flesh out this big-picture critique, allow me to highlight a few of Wright’s specific conclusions that cause some concern.

1. What Is the Christian Mission?

First, by raising other aspects of mission to the level of primacy, Wright’s conception of Christian mission demotes evangelism to “first equal.”

In his portrayal of holistic mission throughout the book, Wright has an imaginary talking partner: an advocate of a more traditional and narrow missiology in which the gospel is defined exclusively as the salvation of individuals from hell and to heaven, and mission is defined exclusively as sharing that gospel of individual salvation. This view of missions is the one he grew up with.

I write as a son of Northern Ireland. That has to be one of the most “evangelized” small patches on the globe. As I grew up, almost anybody I met could have told me the gospel and “how to get saved”...Yet in my Protestant evangelical culture, the zeal for evangelism was equal only to a suspicion of any form of Christian social concern or conscience about issues of justice. That was the domain of liberals and ecumenicals, and a betrayal of the pure gospel... So the proportionately high number of the evangelizers and the evangelized...certainly did not produce a society transformed by the values of the kingdom. On the contrary it was...possible to hear all the language of evangelistic zeal and all the hatred, bigotry and violence coming from the same mouths. (321)

There is not space in this review, or the expertise in this reviewer, to unravel the intertwined social, political, religious, cultural and ethnic complexities of the tensions in Northern Ireland. But surely it must be reductionistic to lay responsibility for these tensions at the feet of Christians for regarding evangelism as more important than social concern, or even to say that a more “holistic gospel” would have made any difference.

“A 500 page book on mission that doesn’t stare—in fact, doesn’t even glance—at the reality of hell for the unevangelized has lost its bearings.”

No doubt, there are many ways in which one would hope to see the salt and light of Christians in Northern Ireland would reform the society’s values, but there are also clear examples in which positive change has occurred—changes that have not occurred in mainland Britain. For example, the British state has sanctioned nearly 7.3 million murders since the 1967 Abortion Act; but not in Northern Ireland where the Act does not apply. Yet strangely, in a book championing social justice as a coequal partner to evangelism in Christian mission, Wright doesn’t mention abortion once. I fear that when we start making things that non-Christians will love co-centers of mission along with evangelism, even some forms of social justice will remain too unpopular with non-Christians to be championed by Christians. It’s fine to talk about AIDS and recycling, but abortion must be avoided.

Wright may have seen the primacy of evangelism over social action more clearly if he considered more of Jesus’ evangelistic warnings. Jesus repeatedly talks about the dangers of hell. Just in Matthew’s gospel, one can find references in 5:22, 29, 30, 8:12, 10:28, 13:42, 50 18:9, 22:13, 23:33, 24:51, and 25:30. Both the words heaven and hell do appear next to each other in the Mission of God’s index, and “heaven” has 42 entries and “heavenly” receives 17. But “hell” receives only one. And the one reference to hell says nothing about the importance of evangelism, but, ironically, simply warns those who do not care for the poor (306). What about all those who do not hear the gospel? Nowhere in this book are they presented as being in danger of hell. On the contrary, physical death is presented as the “ultimate” and “the most terrible” of enemies (439).

A 500 page book on mission that doesn’t stare—in fact, doesn’t even glance—at the reality of hell for the unevangelized has lost its bearings. It has fallen into the danger of elevating other undeniable human plights to the level of importance and centrality that should be accorded only to our need to be reconciled to God and saved from the eternal death of his wrath. We can see with our eyes the horrific images of children dying of famine, evil regimes destroying their own citizens, AIDS epidemics devastating whole societies, wars ravaging whole nations, the environmental horrors that might be unleashed by unchecked global warming, and so on. But we can only hear and imagine the reality of billions of souls heading towards unending torment in hell, without experiencing the loving presence of their perfect Creator, but knowing him only as the Judge whom they have made their enemy. And only the gospel holds out to them the unending bliss worshipping and enjoying their beautiful Creator, Saviour, and Lord as they see the glorified wounds of the Risen Lamb. If we truly stared at these eternal realities, we would view the gospel and its power to save individuals from hell as rather more central to Christian mission than healing the sick or planting trees. Do understand, I’m not just comparing the physical with the spiritual, I’m comparing the temporary with the eternal.

Wright fears that, unless evangelism is removed from the position of primacy within Christian mission, everything else will be removed altogether. My fear is that unless evangelism is recognized as uniquely central to Christian mission, we may end up making the lives of people in this world more comfortable while they continue down a road that leads to hell.

2. What Is the Gospel?[11]

Similarly, Wright’s conception of the gospel is as inclusive as his definition of mission.

So, according to Wright, mission is not merely preaching the gospel, but also social, political and environmental action.

And, according to Wright, the gospel itself is not merely the good news of salvation for sinners from the consequences of their sin: “Bluntly, we need a holistic gospel because the world is in a holistic mess. And by God’s incredible grace we have a gospel big enough to redeem all that sin and evil has touched” (315).

Of course, one must not deny the cosmic significance of the gospel. As Paul says, “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). But once again, to suggest that the gospel has implications for the whole of creation does not mean we need to deny that the gospel has a center. Wright acknowledges this, and is clear that “the very core of biblical faith [is] the cross of Christ” (312). He then goes on to expound the huge dimensions of the redemptive work achieved in the cross “to deal with the guilt of human sin...to defeat the powers of evil...to destroy death... to remove the barrier of enmity and alienation between Jew and Gentile...and to heal and reconcile his whole creation” (312-313).

But I’d love to ask a few questions that push things further: What is at the center of Christ’s work on the cross? Are these five areas of God’s redemptive mission all equally central to that mission?

As D.A. Carson has so clearly put it,

But I think it can be shown (though it would take a very long chapter to do it) that if one begins with the centrality of penal substitution, which is, as we have seen, grounded on a deep understanding of how sin is an offense against God, it is very easy to see how all the other so-called “models” of the atonement are related to it... It is very difficult to establish the coherence if one begins anywhere else.[12]

It seems that when one sees the cross at the center of the gospel, and penal substitution at the center of the cross, it makes sense why the gospel can also be a term in the New Testament that focuses on the central effect of the good news: the salvation of sinners from hell and into a restored relationship with God through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Consider, for example, the following passages:

• 1 Corinthians 15:2-3: By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

• Romans 1:16: I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

• Ephesians 1:13-14: And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

In sum, while Wright may be correct to draw attention to the cosmic dimensions of the gospel, he fails to give sufficient weight to what is most central to the gospel itself: the penal, substitutionary death of Christ which accomplished the salvation of all those who turn from their sin and trust in him.

3. What is the church?

Wright argues that “Holistic mission cannot be the responsibility of any one individual. But it is certainly the responsibility of the whole church” (322). And that seems to be the purpose of the church according to Wright: to have enough people so that they will be able to spread themselves across the whole breadth of the mission of God.

Further discussion of Wright’s ecclesiology must be left to Bobby Jamieson’s review of Wright’s recent book, The Mission of God’s People. Suffice it to say here, it seems strange to me that if the renewal of creation, political action, and social justice are all essential aspects of the church’s mission that we find so little about them in the New Testament letters addressing New Testament churches. Instead, we find a great deal about preaching the gospel, living holy lives and growing in discipleship. What we find is in fact a living out of the Great Commission.

Further, Wright seems to contradict himself somewhat about whether the Great Commission is the center of Christian Mission. Early in the book we read,

A missional hermeneutic, then is not content simply to call for obedience to the Great Commission (though it will assuredly include that as a matter of nonnegotiable importance)... A missional hermeneutic of the whole Bible will not become obsessed with only the great mission imperatives, such as the Great Commission, or be tempted to impose on them one assumed priority or another (e.g. evangelism or social justice or liberation or ecclesiastical order as the only “real” mission). Rather we will set those great imperatives within the context of their foundational indicatives, namely, all that the Bible affirms about God, creation, human life in its paradox of dignity and depravity, redemption in all its comprehensive glory, and the new creation in which God will dwell with his people. (60-61)

That seems to suggest that the Great Commission is a pretty small piece in a jigsaw that would be incomplete without it, but which has plenty of other pieces.

However, later we read, “The Great Commision is the command of the new covenant” (354, emphasis mine). “Mission then, as articulated in the Great Commission, is the reflex of the new covenant... Its task is to produce self-replicating communities of covenantal obedience to Christ among the nations” (355).

What’s going on here? Perhaps if we try to suggest that the Great Commission is one among many aims within the mission of the church, rather than the center, one of two things will happen. Either it will fall off the edge, as other things will be much more popular with the world and much easier to achieve. Or, as we keep reading our Bibles, it will not let us off the hook, but will keep returning us to the center.

I pray that this would be the case not only for the writings of Wright, but for the understanding of the church as we continue to reflect upon the mission of God and our place within it.

About the author:

Mike Gilbart-Smith is the pastor of Twynholm Baptist Church in Fulham, England.

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

Book Review: Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture

David VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture. Crossway, 2010. 208 pages. $16.99

The transformationalist approach to Christianity and culture casts a captivating vision. Transformationalists argue that because God will create a new heaven and earth in the end, and because his kingdom has broken into this present age, we must work to redeem every aspect of culture here and now. Critiquing what they perceive to be a pattern of quietist evangelical retreat, transformationalists urge us to do justice, seek the welfare of the city, bring the Lordship of Christ to bear on all of life, and comprehensively care for others’ needs. And they are right to exhort us to take up these biblical imperatives.

Yet it can sometimes sound as if the only way to give these specific biblical imperatives their proper place is to embrace the whole eschatological vision. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the transformationalists; it may simply be that, in the current evangelical conversation about Christianity and culture, very few people have presented a positive alternative.

Enter David VanDrunen’s new book Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (Crossway, 2010).

A BIBLICAL CASE FOR TWO KINGDOM THEOLOGY

In this book VanDrunen, professor of systematic theology and ethics at Westminster Seminary California, makes a biblical case for a “two kingdoms” approach to Christianity and culture. What sets VanDrunen apart from transformationalists is that his approach to Christianity and culture is grounded in creation and in what Christians hold in common with non-believers, rather than seeing our involvement in culture as somehow deriving from and contributing to God’s eschatological work of redemption.

In the introduction, VanDrunen surveys the current evangelical conversation about Christianity and culture and notes similarities in the transformationalist views of neo-Calvinists, emergent church leaders, and N.T. Wright. From there, the book proceeds in three parts.

Part One: “First Things and Last Things”

Part one, “First Things and Last Things,” is an exposition of the Bible’s teaching on Adam’s role in God’s plan and Jesus’ fulfillment of that role as the last Adam. The upshot of VanDrunen’s discussion is that redemption is not “creation regained” but “re-creation gained” (26), which means that believers do not now take up Adam’s task and do it right, but rather celebrate the fact that Christ has accomplished humankind’s “cultural mandate.” As VanDrunen explains, this by no means leaves Christians without any motivation for cultural labors, but it does put those labors on a different footing from most treatments of the cultural mandate.

Part Two: “Living in Babylon”

Part two, “Living in Babylon,” examines the people of God’s status as sojourners in the Old and New Testaments. In these two chapters VanDrunen argues that now, as in the patriarchal age and during the exile, God’s people live as sojourners and exiles on earth, and that we live in two realms, or kingdoms: the “common kingdom” established through the Noahic covenant, which consists in the God-ordained society and institutions which are common to all humanity, and the “redemptive kingdom” established through the Abrahamic covenant, which consists of God’s saving rule over his distinct people.

Part Three: “Christian Life in Two Kingdoms”

In part three, “Christian Life in Two Kingdoms,” VanDrunen explores the practical application of the theological vision he set out in parts one and two. Chapter 6 is an extensive discussion of the role of the church in the Christian life, including its corporate worship, distinctive ethic, and ministerial authority, and chapter 7 puts the two kingdoms vision to work in the areas of education, vocation, and politics.

MANY WELCOME CONTRIBUTIONS

In many ways, this book is the most helpful, balanced contribution to the evangelical conversation about Christianity and culture that I’ve yet read. Here are a few of its many welcome contributions to that discussion.

A Corrective That’s Not an Over-Correction

First, this book is a corrective that avoids being an over-correction. The tone is gracious and gentle, and VanDrunen repeatedly affirms all that he agrees with in the transformationalist vision, in terms of both theology and practice.

A Positive Alternative to Transformationalism

Second, VanDrunen presents a positive framework for interpreting and engaging culture that is not based on the transformationalist vision which contemporary neo-Calvinists and others such as N.T. Wright advocate. Thus, VanDrunen shows that loading cultural activities with an eschatological burden (to borrow a phrase from his other recent book) is not the only way to ascribe value and dignity to them and to accord them an appropriate place in the Christian life.[13] Further, much to his credit, VanDrunen’s work is far from being narrowly critical. While part of his aim is to de-program a theology which he regards as a faulty basis for cultural engagement, he very deliberately articulates a positive vision for Christian cultural engagement from within his two kingdoms stance.[14] This is especially important because the two kingdoms view he espouses is regularly caricatured as quietist, dualistic, and so on.[15]

“This transformational tenet casts a captivating vision and fuels stirring rhetoric, but few people are critically probing the theological and exegetical assumptions which undergird it. Thus VanDrunen is doing us all a service by helping us carefully think through an entire worldview which is increasingly being taken for granted.”

A Careful Critique of the Idea that, Because God Will “Transform” The World, So Should We

Third, the book carefully and thoroughly critiques the main tenet of transformationalism: that because God will one day “transform” all of creation, we should seek to transform all of human culture here and now.[16] It seems to me that this is quickly becoming an unquestioned, basic axiom in evangelical thinking about culture, which renders VanDrunen’s careful critique all the more necessary.

This transformational tenet casts a captivating vision and fuels stirring rhetoric, but few people are critically probing the theological and exegetical assumptions which undergird it. Thus VanDrunen is doing us all a service by helping us carefully think through an entire worldview which is increasingly being taken for granted.[17]

Filled with Careful Biblical-Theological Reflection

Fourth, the book is filled with Bible. VanDrunen carefully traces out a number of important biblical-theological themes in chapters 2 through 5, some of which are strangely neglected in this conversation.

For instance, VanDrunen carefully examines the relationship between God’s people and their cultural environment in the patriarchal age, in theocratic Israel, during the exile, and in the New Covenant era, carefully delineating continuities and discontinuities between Christians’ relationship to our culture and the cultural situation of God’s people in various preceding eras. In so doing, VanDrunen puts New Testament believers in precisely the right place on the Bible’s eschatological timeline, which is crucial for building a biblical view of Christianity and culture.

Further, VanDrunen frequently returns to the New Testament’s teaching on the passing nature of this present world, Christians’ status in this world as sojourners and exiles, and the need for Christians to firmly set their hope on the world to come—all of which are important biblical themes that do not figure as prominently in evangelical discussion of Christianity and culture as they should.

The Kingdom and the Church

Fifth, in chapter five VanDrunen has a thoughtful and suggestive discussion of the relationship between the kingdom of God and the church. In sum, VanDrunen argues that the church is the (only) present institutional manifestation of the kingdom of God (101). Too often, evangelical discussion of the relationship between the kingdom and the church stops shortly after the commonplace observation that the church and the kingdom are not identical.[18] The net effect of this is to inject a considerable conceptual gap between the church and the kingdom, as if they have little to do with each other, which hardly does justice to the ways in which the New Testament ties them very closely together.[19] VanDrunen’s work in this area is an important contribution because it paves the way for an ecclesiology which recognizes the distinct role that the local church as an institution plays in God’s redemptive kingdom.

Full and Helpful Discussion of the Distinct Role of the Local Church

Closely related to this is another issue which deserves far more attention than it has received up to this point in evangelical discussion of Christianity and culture, namely, the local, institutional church’s distinct role and responsibilities. Here too VanDrunen’s discussion is, for the most part, extraordinarily helpful.

VanDrunen begins chapter 6 by hammering home the primacy of the local church in the Christian life. He continues with a provocative discussion that includes the church’s distinctness from “common kingdom” institutions and its “ministerial authority.” While few readers will be persuaded of all of VanDrunen’s positions—Baptist and other believers’ church readers will want to adjust his ecclesiology at several points—this is the fullest, most practical discussion of the institutional distinctness of the local church that I’ve yet read.

Further, VanDrunen’s discussion of the church’s “ministerial authority”—that is, that the church has authority to command only what the Word of God teaches, and nothing more (151 ff.)—would serve any pastor well as he thinks through how to address a whole host of political, cultural, and behavioral matters, not to mention what the church should do in its corporate worship services. And VanDrunen’s discussion of all of these issues will encourage church leaders to carefully consider how the unique responsibilities of the local church affect practical matters such as the church budget.

“This book deserves wide and careful reading, and my hope is that those who differ with VanDrunen’s conclusions will serve us all by articulating thoughtful responses which engage the substance of what he’s written.”

The practical upshot of both of these points is that VanDrunen wants to draw a very clear line around those things which the church as an institution should do and those things which are the responsibilities of individual Christians. While many will doubtless want to draw the line in a different place, VanDrunen at least provides a theological framework for engaging this important and extremely practical issue.

NOT QUITE READY TO BUY IN HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER

Apart from some predictable disagreements over ecclesiology, I don’t have any substantive critiques to offer. Yet I do have one caveat for the reader who’s persevered to the end of this review. VanDrunen’s argument frequently turns on a very theologically loaded reading of a number of key biblical texts. For example, his interpretation of the cultural mandate and its fulfillment in Christ, while familiar to those who are influenced by Meredith Kline, may leave other readers with a few unanswered questions. And since this is not a technical, scholarly monograph, but an accessible, popular-level book, VanDrunen doesn’t show all his work.

To be sure, he handles biblical texts carefully, but his arguments often involve some pretty complex moves that invite more careful hermeneutical justification than he has space to give them in this context. Thus, something in me says, “Consider this a bit more carefully before buying in to this hook, line, and sinker.”

A FRESH VISION

And my hope, actually, is that people would do just that—carefully consider VanDrunen’s arguments. VanDrunen has winsomely advanced a whole series of arguments in favor of a vision of Christianity and culture that decisively differs from the view that is increasingly prevailing in many quarters of evangelicalism.

This book deserves wide and careful reading, and my hope is that those who differ with VanDrunen’s conclusions will serve us all by articulating thoughtful responses which engage the substance of what he’s written. May VanDrunen’s work spur us all on to live more faithfully as citizens of God’s kingdom—or kingdoms, as the case may well be.

About the author:

Bobby Jamieson is assistant editor for 9Marks.

Reviewed by Jonathan Leeman

Book review: Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought

David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. Eerdmans, 2010. $35. 466 pages

C.S. Lewis once used the illustration of how difficult it is to join a debate at 10 p.m. which had begun at 7 p.m. All the terms would have been set, and the key ideas defined. It would take a while to get caught up.

But what if someone could provide you with a transcript of the first three hours?

David VanDrunen’s fascinating Natural Law and Two Kingdoms does just this. It provides the transcript for 2000 years of conversation about natural law and the doctrine of the two kingdoms, or at least one historian’s very compelling rendition of that conversation.

Actually, it does something even more interesting. It argues that many of the people involved in the debate at 10 p.m.—to go back to the analogy—have lost track of what the 7 p.m. interlocutors were saying, since these earlier participants have all left the table. That’s kind of like jumping in at 10, and saying, “You guys have lost the thread. Let me explain.” (VanDrunen puts it more graciously than this!)

DEFINING NATURAL LAW AND TWO KINDGOMS

The natural law and two kingdoms conversations are important because they get at questions like, “What is the church’s mission?” and “What’s the basis and extent of any separation between church and state?” and “What do non-Christians know of God’s law?” Here’s VanDrunen’s explanation of the doctrine of the two kingdoms:

In affirming the two kingdoms doctrine, [the Reformed thinkers] portrayed God as ruling all human institutions and activities, but as ruling them in two fundamentally different ways…God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer, and thus these two kingdoms have significantly different ends, functions, and modes of operation. (1)

The Christian belongs to both kingdoms: one kingdom in which senators, factory managers, magazine editors, mothers and fathers, and Hollywood stars call the shots, and they do so because God has given them their position; and another kingdom in which the Bible through the church exercises authority, again, because God has granted (a different kind of) authority to each. Non-Christians, on the other hand only belong to one kingdom, the civil kingdom.

At this point, the question quickly becomes, on what basis should Christians cooperate with non-Christians in the civil kingdom? After all, non-Christians neither know nor care about the Bible. Answer: the natural law. VanDrunen defines the natural law, which most people ground in Romans 2:14-15, this way:

In affirming natural law [Reformed thinkers] professed belief that God had inscribed his moral law on the heart of every person, such that through the testimony of consciences all human beings have knowledge of the basic moral obligations and, in particular, have a universally accessible standard for the development of civil law. (1)

It’s important to realize, and many don’t, that the Lutheran and/or Reformed doctrine of the two kingdoms is different from Augustine’s well-known “Two Cities.” Both conceive of life in the context of a fallen world, yes, but the later two kingdoms doctrine makes a distinction between the spiritual and political domain, while Augustine’s earlier two cities draws the more explicitly biblical line between the city of God (kingdom of God) where people love God and the city of man (kingdom of Satan) where people love themselves. Augustine’s is not a spiritual/political divide, but a spiritual divide between love of God and love of self.

THE REFORMED TRADITION

Unlike VanDrunen’s other 2010 book, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, which deliberately advocates for a two kingdoms worldview, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms is a work of history which seeks principally to get the historical transcript right. This is an important historical task for at least two reasons. First, there’s a growing trend within Reformed circles to adopt a neo-Calvinist or transformationalist position, the position which sets itself against the two kingdoms position. Advocates of the transformationalist position affirm one kingdom of God, not two.

This kingdom, encompassing all human activities and institutions, was originally created by God in perfect righteousness (with potentialities that were to be actuated in history), was corrupted through the fall into sin, and is now being redeemed from corruption and advanced toward its eschatological goal. Christians are not to dismiss any area of life as outside of God’s redemptive concern, and thus are to seek to transform all activities and institutions in ways that reflect the kingdom of God and its final destiny. (4)

VanDrunen credits the popularity of these views partially to neo-Calvinist writers such as Henry Stob, Cornelius Pantinga, Albert Wolters, and Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, who have worked on Reformed college campuses such as Calvin College. Also significant have been writers with broader influence such as Stanley Hauerwas, N. T. Wright, John Milbank, or Emergent writers like Brian McLaren, all of whom either critique natural law or have strong conceptions of Christ’s redemptive work as extending into every domain of life, the cultural fruits of which are ultimately taken up into the eschaton.

What’s important to realize here is that the transformationalist position has become popular well beyond those who read such writers and has moved into mainstream evangelicalism. It’s like we’re sitting at the table at 10 p.m. and almost everyone is a transformationalist. VanDrunen’s historical enterprise, then, is his way of saying, “You know, there were a number of people sitting at this table at 7, 8, and 9 p.m. who had a different view, and it might be worth considering what they said.”

Second, it’s important to get the historical transcript right because the doctrine of natural law is often treated as a purely Roman Catholic conception coming from writers such as Aquinas, while the two kingdoms position is dismissed as belonging only to the Lutherans. VanDrunen points, for instance, to a scholar no less eminent than Mark Noll as referring to the “Lutheran ideas of two kingdoms” (215). (This is like someone at 10 p.m. saying that someone at 7 was one thing when really he was another.) But it doesn’t take long to look at Calvin himself and see that this cannot be quite right. Turning to book 3, chapter 19, section 15 of Calvin’s Institutes, for instance, one learns that Calvin believes,

There is a twofold government in man: one aspect is spiritual, whereby the conscience is instructed in piety and in reverencing God; the second is political, whereby the man is educated for the duties of humanity and citizenship that must be maintained among men. These are usually called the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘temporal’ jurisdiction (not improper terms) by which is meant that the former sort of government pertains to the life of the soul, while the latter has to do with the concerns of the present life—not only with food and clothing but with laying down laws whereby a man may live his life among other men holily, honorably, and temperately. For the former resides in the inner mind, while the latter only outward behavior. The one we may call the spiritual kingdom, the other, the political kingdom…There are, so to speak, two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority.

In my mind, it’s difficult to conceive of a more explicit “two kingdoms” statement than that. VanDrunen sure looks right. Now, this leaves him having to explain away certain inconsistencies in Calvin’s practice, such as how he allowed for a measure of overlap between the Genevan state and church. Perhaps the neo-Calvinist would say that Calvin really was a transformationalist, and that his political practices were consistent, and that statements like these reveal where the real inconsistencies in Calvin lie. The problem here, of course, is that it leaves one wondering what exactly Calvin would have to say in order to convince us that he really did perceive two kingdoms. Could he be more explicit than he was here?

“I’m basically inclined to say that anyone who wants to discuss these various positions responsibly needs to work through this book.”

Of course the historical record does not start or stop with Calvin. VanDrunen begins his narrative back with the Didache and the Epistle to Diognetus; moves through Augustine and then into the Middle Ages; examines both Luther and Calvin; traces it through subsequent Reformed writers like John Knox, Theodore Beza, John Owen, Samuel Rutherford, and George Gillespie; and follows it across the pond to America and writers as varied as New England’s John Cotton and spirituality-of-the-church Presbyterians like Stuart Robinson and James Thornwell. These post-Calvin writers differ widely, and most of them are riddled with inconsistencies. Yet VanDrunen demonstrates that all of them hold to some version of natural law and the two-kingdoms.

A striking turning point comes with Abraham Kuyper who ambiguously straddled the two kingdoms and a transformationalist position. Those following him, like Herman Dooyeweerd and perhaps Cornelius Van Til, generally moved in a transformationalist direction, though Van Til, like Kuyper, was a little more ambiguous, demonstrated by the fact that he spawned both an exteme transformationalist like theonomist Greg Bahnsen as well as Meredith Kline, whose thought lines up with a two kingdoms view even though he didn’t use the traditional terminology.

EVALUATION

Any substantial weaknesses in VanDrunen’s transcript will have to be ferreted out by a historian with more knowledge of these early writers than me. For my part, his narrative is exceedingly compelling, and his breadth of reading is astonishing. That makes it a long and detailed read, but I’m basically inclined to say that anyone who wants to discuss these various positions responsibly needs to work through this book. After writing a first draft of this review, I discovered that Paul Helm says the same thing: “The book cannot safely be ignored by anyone who wishes to make a contribution to this area in the future” (click here and here for Helm’s more in-depth two-part review). It truly illumines the conversation which has transpired not just from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., but from the early second century to today.

My only complaint is that VanDrunen waits until the third page from the end of the book to fully concede that the language of “spiritual/political” or “inner/outer” which one reads in Calvin is problematic (he does briefly raise the question earlier in the book). Though he’s writing as a historian, most of us will read it as theologians, who continually ask the question, “Can this be right?”

For much of Natural Law and Two Kingdoms, then, I found myself sympathetic with various aspects of a two kingdoms doctrine but unable to accept the spiritual/political division. After all, our political actions are deeply spiritual—from abortion law to economic policy. And a Christian’s work in the civil sphere is guided not just by the eternal Son but by Christ the Redeemer. On the other hand, abandoning some formulation of a two kingdoms view, I believe, leaves us with a number of problems, such as the lack of a solid theological foundation for the separation of church and state. A renewed Constantinianism or Bahnsen-like theonomy strikes me as logically inevitable. If Christ the Redeemer means to take over every square inch of this world at this point in redemption history—in the “already”—wouldn’t that mean Christians should take over Congress and legislate the faith, as in Islam, a true one-kingdom religion? As soon as you pull back and say that we shouldn’t, you effectively concede that there exists a line between the kingdom of Christ which is “not of this world” and some other realm, a line that can only be crossed through conversion. And it’s another kingdom not simply in the Augustinian “opposed to God” sense, it’s a zone where Christians must operate together with non-Christians sweeping floors, passing laws, painting pictures, and making friends.

Meredith Kline points toward the balance, I think, when he writes that Christians’ work in the common grace, cultural realm “is not ‘kingdom’ (of God) activity. Though it is an expression of the reign of God in their lives, it is not a building of the kingdom of God as institution or realm” (in VanDrunen, 415).

How does VanDrunen put it all together? Well, David VanDrunen the historian doesn’t say. To find out you’ll have to read David VanDrunen the theologian.[20] In the meantime, buy this book and read it.

About the author:

Jonathan Leeman is the editorial director of 9Marks and the author of The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (Crossway, 2010).

Reviewed by Greg Gilbert

Book Review: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

James Davison Hunter. Oxford University Press, 2010. 358 pages. $27.95

I remember some of the anticipation that greeted the announcement of the release of James Davison Hunter’s latest work, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Given that evangelicals have for some time now been engrossed in a renewed and often passionate conversation about how to engage the culture, how to change the world, and what exactly the church’s mission really is, many looked forward to Hunter’s book as a major step forward in that conversation. That it is, but not exactly in the way one might have expected.

With a title like To Change the World, the book head-faked in the direction of a straightforward advocacy of a transformationalist way of thinking—that is, that the world should be changed and can be changed, and that it is the church’s task and mission in this age to do it. That’s not what Hunter does, though, and by the end of the book the reader realizes he should have paid more attention to the word “Irony” in the title. For Hunter’s understanding is a good deal more chastened and humble than much of the “change the world” rhetoric that infuses various corners of evangelicalism.

RECALIBRATING EVANGELICALS’ APPROACH TO CHANGING CULTURE

To Change the World is an academic book. It is sociological theory, sociological analysis, historical investigation, Bible study, and theological consideration all wrapped up into one. Though you probably wouldn’t hand it to the average church member—unless he’s interested in concepts like ressentiment, the meaning of culture, and the nature of power—it is certainly good material for you, the pastor, to read, consider, and have at hand for conversations with idealistic young (or otherwise!) people who want to change the world, whether their particular strategy is to do so through the political process or through some other way of “confronting the powers.” Not only so, but the sections of biblical and theological study come to largely good conclusions, even if other books will provide a fuller framework for reaching those conclusions.

Hunter’s basic thesis is that the way Christians have largely gone about trying to change the culture around them has been wholly misguided. That strategy, “idealism,” is the belief that by changing the hearts and minds of individuals, whether by conversion to Christ or by direct engagement with ideas, the culture as a whole can be changed. Hunter rejects that strategy and understanding entirely. “This account,” he says, “is almost wholly mistaken” (17). In fact, the model on which such strategies are based “not only does not work, but it cannot work.” From there, Hunter argues that cultures are more complex than this dominant understanding allows for. Culture is not simply the sum of all the individuals which make it up; rather, culture must be understood as a complex structure of “elites, networks, technology, and institutions” which is highly resistant to change (76). Further, culture is organized in a “fairly rigid structure of ‘center’ and ‘periphery’” (36). There are some institutions that carry much more weight in the culture than others do. The New York Times, for instance, has more “symbolic capital” than the Dallas Morning News. Yale University has more than Bob Jones University.

Because of that, a movement to change the culture either by “changing hearts and minds” or by “making culture” through the production of cultural artifacts, Hunter argues, is doomed to failure. In fact, as he shows through several historical examples, cultures are not so controllable or malleable as that. When they do change, even the relatively fast changes are prone to take decades, and those changes are the result of a somewhat unpredictable coming together of ideas, institutions, elites, and technology.

Then, through an examination of the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the neo-Anabaptists, Hunter shows how each of these groups has erred in one way or another. We won’t take the time now to delve into those chapters, but they, too, provide an informative read.

RELEVANT, HUMBLE, CHASTENED—A HELPFUL CORRECTION

Hunter’s book is immediately relevant—and a corrective in many ways—to the current conversation going on among evangelicals. Into an evangelical context that seems to be swirling with powerful and often theologically inaccurate rhetoric about changing the world, Hunter writes, “It is essential, in my view, to abandon altogether talk of ‘redeeming the culture,’ ‘advancing the kingdom,’ ‘building the kingdom,’ ‘transforming the world,’ ‘reclaiming the culture,’ ‘reforming the culture,’ and ‘changing the world’” (280). That’s because these phrases imply conquest, take-over, and dominion, which, Hunter is right to say, is precisely not what God has called us as Christians to be about. Thus Hunter is very careful to say that while our cultural works in this age are not without spiritual significance (253), they are also not of “ultimate significance” (253) and are not a matter of bringing in or building God’s kingdom:

It is important to underscore that while the activity of culture-making has validity before God, this work is not, strictly speaking, redemptive or salvific in character. Where Christians participate in the work of world-building, they are not, in any precise sense of the phrase, “building the kingdom of God.” This side of heaven, the culture cannot become the kingdom of God, nor will the work of Christians in the culture evolve into or bring about his kingdom. The establishment of his kingdom in eternity is an act of divine sovereignty alone and it will only be set in place at the final consummation at the end of time…Perhaps it will be that God will transform works of faith in this world into something incorruptible but here again, it is God’s doing and not ours. (233)

That point is a matter of considerable confusion among evangelicals today, and Hunter’s clear explanation of it is a welcome addition to the conversation.

Instead of understanding its task as being the building of God’s kingdom or the changing of the culture, Hunter says, the church should understand its charge in the world to be one of “faithful presence within.” He defines this as a calling for the church “to bear witness to and to be the embodiment of the coming Kingdom of God.” The point is not to change the world, but to bear witness to the world in word and deed that a better world is coming. I very much appreciate this emphasis, for it seems to me both more humble and more biblical than the vision of “transforming the culture” that so permeates contemporary evangelicalism.

At the end of the book, Hunter finally asks and answers the big question:

Will engaging the world in the way discussed here change the world? This, I believe, is the wrong question…

The question is wrong because, for Christians, it makes the primary subservient to the secondary. By making a certain understanding of the good of society the objective, the source of the good—God himself and the intimacy he offers—becomes nothing more than a tool to be used to achieve that objective. When this happens, righteousness can quickly become cruelty and justice can rapidly turn into injustice…

To be sure, Christianity is not, first and foremost, about establishing righteousness or creating good values or securing justice or making peace in the world. Don’t get me wrong: these are goods we should care about and pursue with great passion. But for Christians, these are all secondary to the primary good of God himself and the primary task of worshipping him and honoring him in all they do…

Against the present realities of our historical moment, it is impossible to say what can actually be accomplished. There are intractable uncertainties that cannot be avoided. Certainly Christians, at their best, will neither create a perfect world nor one that is altogether new; but by enacting shalom and seeking it on behalf of all others through the practice of faithful presence, it is possible, just possible, that they will help to make the world a little bit better. (285-286)

There’s much about Hunter’s thought and articulation here that I find very helpful. I appreciate, for one thing, his theological sensitivity. He understands that the establishment of the kingdom of God is a work that God and God alone performs, a biblical truth that prevents a boatload of error from creeping into our theology. He also understands, rightly I think, that Christianity is not primarily about creating social well-being. (He says it is primarily about glorifying God; I’d only add that that glorifying is to be done especially by witnessing to Jesus in the world, that is, by proclaiming the gospel and making disciples.)

“Hunter knows that the world is fallen, he knows that God—and God alone—will finally set it right one day, and in the meantime, he wants simply to live a life that will commend that God and his gospel until that final day comes.”

What I appreciate most, however, is Hunter’s humility. For a book titled something as in-your-face as To Change the World, one would really have expected a more in-your-face conclusion than, (I paraphrase) “Can we change the world? Well, who knows? Probably not. But we can perhaps, just perhaps, make it a little better by living godly lives as aliens and strangers in it.” (Thus the word “Irony” in the title!) That’s a humility, I think, that is born of the very same theological care I mentioned before. Hunter knows that the world is fallen, he knows that God—and God alone—will finally set it right one day, and in the meantime, he wants simply to live a life that will commend that God and his gospel until that final day comes. There’s a humility there that we can all learn from.

About the author:

Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville. Kentucky, and is the author of What is the Mission of the Church? with Kevin DeYoung (Crossway, forthcoming).

Reviewed by Steve Boyer

Book Review: When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...and Ourselves,

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…And Ourselves. Moody, 2009. 208 pages. $14.99

When 9Marks asked me to review When Helping Hurts, I already had the book in hand. It’s an intriguing title, and I had read a glowing review from one of the many notable people who filled the first six pages of the book with impressive endorsements. There are many good reasons for such praise.

STRENGTHS

The authors present their thoughts in a well-organized manner, moving from theory to application. First, they develop foundational concepts for helping the poor (chapters 1-3). Then building on those, they articulate general principles (chapters 4-6) followed by practical strategies (chapters 7-9).

This book comes at the right time, as many North American Christians and churches have a growing interest in helping low-income people. The authors do a fantastic job of appropriately directing this zeal by providing insight on how good intentions can actually make matters worse for those in poverty. (Think of thoughtlessly wrapping a wound with unsanitary bandages.) They do this by providing real-life examples of difficult situations and ask us North American Christians, “What would you do to help?” Then they humbly show how our knee-jerk reactions may actually lead to a different outcome than what we hoped for. It’s very practical and very thought provoking. This is the book’s greatest overall strength.

Besides providing a useful framework for assessing how to provide relief to the poor in chapter 4 (for example, there are some great ideas here for enhancing a church’s benevolence fund policy), the authors help us to think wisely through a number of questions, including:

• What kind of relief is needed? We have to understand the situation first and work with the poor, not for them (111). Also, instead of primarily assessing what the poor need, we should note what resources God has already blessed them with that can be used to help (126).

• Who can offer the best help? Those closest to the situation are responsible to help and will better understand how to help (112). Poverty alleviation often fails because of inadequate participation by the poor themselves in the process (142). Including the poor in their relief helps them work and take responsibility as God created them to do.

• What should our attitudes be in helping? Humility is essential. We are all broken (79). We must avoid communicating, however unintentionally, that those helping are superior, which adds to the feelings of shame and inferiority. Many in poverty are plagued by such feelings (65). In other words, it’s not just physical resources they need (53).

If all this isn’t enough, the authors include three practical chapters on micro-financing solutions and cautions, gentrification and training ministries, and a really useful chapter on short-term missions.

IMPROVEMENTS?

Perhaps I’m picking the few weeds among the garden of roses here, but while this book’s wisdom and practicality are to be commended, I think there are some things that could be done to make it a bit better.

Stronger Emphasis on the Gospel

First, I wish there was a stronger emphasis on preaching the gospel. If the authors ever come out with a sequel, I would love to see some attention given to how to practically evangelize through poverty alleviation efforts. Perhaps the sequel could be entitled When Poverty Enriches (2 Cor. 8:9).

While the authors are very clear that no reconciliation happens without the proclamation of the gospel (80), they seem to downplay its importance. For example, they state that in their sampling of thousands of evangelical Christians, over 99 percent aren’t remotely close to answering the question “Why did Jesus come to earth?” correctly because they all say that Jesus came to save us from our sins (33)! Further, the authors go on to say that “saving souls is only a subset of the comprehensive healing of the entire cosmos that Jesus’ kingdom brings and that was the centerpiece of His message” (33; emphasis mine).

“What a great way to serve others and build relationships for the glory of God so that the good news of Jesus Christ may be proclaimed and people may be reconciled to him!”

While it’s true that Jesus’ mission involves more than saving individuals, saving individuals is far more central to Jesus’ mission than this statement would indicate. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15)? Was the healing of the cosmos more central to Jesus’ message than the salvation of those made in God’s image, the pinnacle of his creation? I don’t think so, at least not from the emphasis given throughout Scripture (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:3). In our efforts to relieve temporal suffering, we must also seek—and seek most of all—to relieve the far weightier eternal suffering through the proclamation of the gospel.

More Careful Use of Scripture

Second, I would have liked to see a more careful handling of scriptural texts. For example, the authors ask, “For what sins was Israel sent into captivity?” According to Corbett and Fikkert, it wasn’t primarily idolatry, but “that God was furious over Israel’s failure to care for the poor and the oppressed” (40). It’s true that the prophets often spoke of Israel’s failure to care for the poor and hurting (e.g. Is. 3:14-15; 10:2; Jer. 2:34; Ezek. 22:29). But we must not let the tail wag the dog. Giving primary emphasis to caring for the poor rather than idolatry reverses the two greatest commandments by placing love of neighbor over love of God. Our zeal for helping the poor must be founded in love for God, which will indeed combat any “compassion fatigue” (67).

Greater Precision in Describing the Local Church’s Mission

Third, I would have liked the authors to be more careful in describing how relieving poverty in the world relates to the local church’s mission. The authors frequently assert that Jesus’ mission is the church’s mission, which is theologically sloppy (38). They do nuance this claim somewhat (46), but it’s still problematic to apply all that Jesus does in his unique ministry as God incarnate to the distinct role of the local church as defined in the pages of the New Testament.

CONCLUSION

If you are experienced with helping the poor, you may already be familiar with much of this book’s content. But if you’re new to all of this, then this book will be useful for introducing you to thinking wisely and practically about helping the poor. What a great way to serve others and build relationships for the glory of God so that the good news of Jesus Christ may be proclaimed and people may be reconciled to him!

About the author:

Steve Boyer is an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. He lives with his family in Washington, DC, where he works as Controller for the Salvation Army National Headquarters.

By Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

Book Excerpt: Is “Incarnational” the Best way to Describe Christian Mission?

The following article is an excerpt from Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book What is the Mission of the Church?, forthcoming from Crossway in late 2011. This excerpt comes from chapter 2, “What in the World Does Jesus Send Us Into the World to Do?” and is printed here by permission.

It is very popular to assume that missions is always incarnational. And of course on one level this is true. We go and live among the people. We try to emulate the humility and sacrifice of Christ (Phil. 2:5-11). But incarnationalism in missions often means more than this.[21] It means that we model our ministry on Jesus’ ministry. For Stott, and many others after him, this means the mission of the church is service. “Therefore,” says Stott, “our mission, like his, is to be one of service.”[22] Evangelism and social action, therefore, are full partners in Christian mission.[23] Since the most crucial form of the Great Commission is the one we see in John (argues Stott), the simplest way to sum up the missionary enterprise is this: “we are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve.”[24]

Stott’s reading of John 20:21 has been very influential. There are, however, some problems.

1. It can be misleading to summarize Jesus’ mission as one of service. There’s no problem with this formulation if we mean “serve” in the Mark 10:45 sense of the word, that Jesus came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. But Stott means more than this. He means that Jesus’ mission was to meet human need, whether spiritual or physical.[25] Again, no one can deny, nor would we want to deny, that Jesus showed compassion to countless multitudes in extraordinary ways. Nor do we want to suggest that meeting physical needs has no place in the church’s work. On the contrary, let us be zealous for good works (Titus 2:14) and walk in the good deeds prepared for us (Eph. 6:10). But it is misleading to contend that Jesus’ ministry focused on serving, and even more so to claim, as one recent book does, that “Every moment of his ministry is spent with the poor, sick, helpless, and hurting.”[26] Sometimes Jesus was alone and wanted to be away from people (Mark 1:35, 45). Other times he was with rich men like Zacchaeus (Luke 19:5). Often he was with the disciples who were not destitute and were in fact supported by wealthy women (Luke 8:1-3).

We know this will sound odd to some, but it’s true: It was not Jesus’ driving ambition to heal the sick and meet the needs of the poor. He was sent into the world to save people from condemnation (John 3:17), that he might be lifted up so believers could have eternal life (3:14-15). He was sent by the Father so that whoever feeds on him might live forever (6:57-58). In his important work on the missions of Jesus and the disciples, Andreas Köstenberger concludes that John’s Gospel portrays Jesus’ mission as the Son sent from the Father, as the one who came into the world and returned to the Father, and as the shepherd-teacher who called others to follow him in order to help gather a final harvest.[27] If Köstenberger is right, this is long way from saying that Jesus’ fundamental mission was to meet human needs.

But that’s John, someone may object. His gospel is always something of an outlier. What do the synoptics say? Well, let’s take a look at Mark as an example. No doubt, Jesus often healed the sick and cast out demons in Mark’s gospel. Teaching, healing, and exorcism were the three prongs of his ministry (see, for instance his quintessential first day of ministry in Capernaum in 1:21-34). And yet what drove his ministry was the proclamation of the gospel, the announcement of the kingdom and the call to repent and believe (1:15). Jesus healed and exorcised demons out of compassion for the afflicted (1:41; 9:22), but the bigger reason for the miracles was that they testified to his authority and pointed to his unique identity (e.g., 2:1-12).

Don’t miss this fact: there is not a single example of Jesus going into a town with the purpose of healing or casting out demons. He never ventures out on a healing and exorcism tour. He certainly does a lot of this along the way. He is moved with pity at human need (8:2). But the reason he “came out” was “that [he] may preach” (1:38). If anything, the clamor for meeting physical needs became a distraction to Jesus. That’s why he frequently commanded silence of those he helped (1:44; 7:36), and why he would not do many works in a town rife with unbelief (6:5-6).

In Mark, as in the other gospels, there are plenty of miracles and acts of service to celebrate, but they are far from the main point. The first half of the gospel drives toward Peter’s confession in chapter 8 where Jesus’ identity is revealed. The second half of the gospel drives toward the cross where Jesus’ work is completed (three predictions of death and resurrection in chapters 9-10 and a detailed description of Holy Week in chapters 11-16). Mark’s gospel does not focus on Jesus meeting physical needs. Mark’s gospel is about who Jesus was and what he did to save sinners.

“We cannot re-embody Christ’s incarnational ministry any more than we can repeat his atonement. Our role is to bear witness to what Christ has already done.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus first action in Mark, after preaching (1:14-15), is to call men to follow him and promise to make them fishers of men (1:17). Jesus’ purpose statements in Mark are revealing. He came to preach (1:38). He came to call sinners (2:17). He came to give his life as a ransom for many (10:45). Or as we read elsewhere, Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). The focus of his ministry is on teaching. The heart of his teaching centers on who he is. And the good news of who he is culminates in where he is going—to the cross. The mission of Jesus is not service broadly conceived, but the proclamation of the gospel through teaching, the corroboration of the gospel through signs and wonders, and the accomplishment of the gospel in death and resurrection.

2. It is unwise to assume that because we are sent as Jesus was sent that we have the exact same mission he had. We must protect that absolute uniqueness of what Jesus came to do. D.A. Carson, commenting on John 17:18, concludes that when it comes to the mission of the disciples “there is no necessary overtone of incarnation or of invasion from another world.” Instead, we come face to face with “the ontological gap that forever distances the origins of Jesus’ mission from the origins of the disciples’ missions.”[28] We cannot re-embody Christ’s incarnational ministry any more than we can repeat his atonement. Our role is to bear witness to what Christ has already done. We are not new incarnations of Christ but his representatives offering life in his name, proclaiming his gospel, imploring others to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20). This is how the exalted Christ carries out his mission through us.

So how then is the Son’s being sent a model for our being sent by the Son? Köstenberger explains:

The Fourth Gospel does therefore not appear to teach the kind of “incarnational model” advocated by Stott and others. Not the way in which Jesus came into the world (i.e., the incarnation), but the nature of Jesus’ relationship with his sender (i.e., one of obedience and utter dependence), is presented in the Fourth Gospel as the model for the disciples’ mission. Jesus’ followers are called to imitate Jesus’ selfless devotion in seeking his sender’s glory, to submit to their sender’s will, and to represent their sender accurately and know him intimately.[29]

Consequently, a focus on human service and on human need is not, at least in John, a primary purpose of either Jesus’ mission or the disciples’ mission.[30] If the context of John 20:21 tells us anything, the mission of the disciples was to wield the keys of the kingdom, to open and close the door marked “Forgiveness” (20:23; cf. Matt. 16:19). John wrote his gospel so that his audience might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [they would] have life in his name” (John 20:31). This was John’s mission, as he understood it. And there’s every reason to think he saw this as the fulfillment of the mission he recorded from Jesus a few verses earlier. The Father sent the Son so that by believing in his name the children of God might have life (1:12). The Son sent the disciples, in the same spirit of complete surrender and obedience, so that they might go into the world to bear witness to the one who is the way, the truth, and the life (14:6).

About the author:

Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

What is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Understanding Our Mission

1. A Most Common Word in Need of a More Careful Definition

2. What in the World Does Jesus Send Us Into the World to Do?

Part 2: Understanding Our Categories

3. Grasping the Whole Story: Seeing the Biblical Narrative from the Top of Golgotha

4. Are We Missing the Whole Gospel? Understanding the Good News

5. Kings and Kingdoms: Understanding God’s Redemptive Rule

6. Making Sense of Social Justice: Exposition

7. Making Sense of Social Justice: Application

8. Seeking Shalom: Understanding the New Heavens and the New Earth

Part 3: Understanding What We Do and Why We Do It

9. Zealous for Good Works: Why and How we Do Good, Both as Individuals and as Churches

10. The Great Commission Mission: What it Means and Why it Matters

Epilogue: So You’re Thinking of Starting a New Kind of Church? Advice for the Young, Motivated, and Missional

By Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert

Book Excerpt: Why Do Good?

The following article is an excerpt from Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book What is the Mission of the Church?, forthcoming from Crossway in late 2011. This excerpt comes from chapter 9, “Zealous for Good Works: Why and How we Do Good, Both as Individuals and as Churches” and is printed here by permission.

One of the things we’ve noticed as we’ve had these conversations is that very often people will hear or read arguments like this, and their immediate response is to say something like, “But I think good deeds are important. We are supposed to be doing good things for the people around us, even the non-Christians around us.”

Let us, just for the sake of clarity, say this as straightforwardly as we can: We agree! Fully, whole-heartedly, unreservedly, ex animo, and without the slightest contrary shiver in the liver, we agree! We are of the strong opinion that the Bible teaches that we Christians are to be a people of both declaration and demonstration, and that our churches are to be communities of both declaration and demonstration. Our hope in this book, in fact, has not been in any way to discourage good works, but rather to encourage them in the long-run by being crystal clear about where and how good works fit into Christian theology and into the Christian life.

So why do we do good? If “building for the kingdom,” “living the gospel,” and “joining God in his work of making all things new” are not the correct motivations for good works, what are? Why should we do good works at all if those motivations are not biblically sustainable? Actually, the Bible gives us plenty of reasons to do good works, and they are not small ones, either. We don’t want to leave anyone with the sinking feeling that we’ve pulled the rug out from under the Christian’s duty and desire to “not grow weary in doing good” (Galatians 6:9), so here are just a few of the motivations that Scripture does give us for living a life that is filled with good works.

We do good works to obey God, whom we love.

Of course there’s more to say, but that’s the foundation of it all. At the end of the day, God commands us in His Word to do good works and to live good lives, and as those who love Him we ought to obey Him.

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? (Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 1:10)

They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, (1 Timothy 6:18)

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works. (Titus 2:7)

And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful. (Titus 3:14)

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24)

We do good works to obey the cultural mandate given to Noah.

If you’ve read this far in this book, you know that we are not saying that the cultural mandate calls us to build a new world. That cultural mandate has been taken up and completed by the Lord Jesus, the Last Adam. But there is a cultural mandate that we, as human beings, are under just like other human beings are under it—the one given to Noah in Genesis 9. Now part of that mandate is a command for humans to organize themselves into governed societies that will avenge human blood. But of course that is just a seed for the idea that the structures of society—including government—are instituted by God to reward good and punish evil, as Paul says in Romans 13. Because that is true, part of our obedience to that mandate is working to make sure that the institutions of our society do just that, and not the opposite—that is, that they encourage good and discourage evil, that they are just and not unjust, that they reward civility and punish crime. That’s not a part of our mission as Christians (though we are motivated in a special way to do it because we are Christians!); it is a part of our obedience to God as human beings.

We do good works because we love our neighbors.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment of all is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second, he said, is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:36-40) Not only so, but he also blew the walls out of the narrow strictures the Pharisees had placed on the definition of a “neighbor.”

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matt. 5:43-45)

If the definition of “loving our neighbors” includes praying even for our enemies, then it includes everyone! Part of the reason for that is that each of us, from the least to the greatest, is a person created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27-28). Therefore, in loving our neighbors we are showing that we value the fact that they, too, are works of our God and fellow creatures. So we Christians are to be a people characterized and marked by love—not just for those who are like us, or those who are in our churches, or those who are in our particular social groups, but everyone. We’ve argued elsewhere in this book that precisely how that love is expressed is a matter that requires much wisdom and a sensitivity to the fact that we can’t do everything. We are finite creatures, and therefore it’s important for us not to flog ourselves with undue guilt because we cannot show full, unbounded, active, suffering-relieving love to all seven billion people on the planet. But neither can we use our finitude to build walls around ourselves and excuse a lack of love toward those who are in a close “moral proximity” to us. We as Christians should be marked by a posture of love and generosity toward our neighbors, and that includes everyone, according to Jesus, from our best friends to our worst enemies.

We do good works to show the world God’s character and God’s work.

Jesus told his followers—that’s us!—to “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) When we approach the world with a posture of love and generosity, our good works provide a powerful confirmation of our declaration that “God is love.” They show the world that we really mean what we say, and they make it just that much more plausible that God really is there and that His influence in our lives is real, powerful, and different from anything else in the world.

That is at least part of what Jesus was saying when he told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.” (Matthew 5:13) Salt was known for doing many things. It preserved, it cleaned, and it enhanced taste. But figuring out what exactly salt did is not the point—probably all those things are evoked by Jesus’ words. The point is that the salt does all those things precisely because there is something about it that makes it different from the thing onto which it is sprinkled. Salt is useful, Jesus says, exactly because it is salty, and if it loses its saltiness—if it becomes no different from what it is sprinkled on—then it’s of no use at all. The same is true of light; its use comes in the fact that it is not darkness. It is different, and if you take away its “lightness” by hiding it under a basket, it’s no good for anything. Do you see the point here? We Christians are to be conspicuous in our following of our King Jesus. We are to do good works as a testimony that God has made us into something different from what we once were, and from the unredeemed world around us. As people of the kingdom, we are to be salt and light in a fallen world. That is, we are to be different, and by those good deeds together with our true words, we are to testify to God’s character.

We do good works because they are the fruit of the Spirit’s work in us.

Simply put, apples grow on apple trees, oranges grow on orange trees, and good works grow on Christians. It’s just the way the world works. Jesus is as clear about this as he can be:

You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:16-20)

It’s not that good works are in the root of the tree; they’re not the thing that makes the tree what it is. They’re not the ground or the basis of our standing with God. But if we truly are redeemed through the blood of Christ, if the Holy Spirit truly dwells in us, then we will be people who bear fruit in good works. Our lives will be marked by what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) And if those fruits are not present in us, Jesus says, we have reason to question whether the tree was ever really healthy at all.

James is perhaps evoking this image of a tree bearing fruit when he says that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26) What he means is that a living faith, one that has the sap of the Spirit’s life running through it, will inevitably bear fruit. It will issue in a life that is marked by good works. Abraham’s faith was that kind of living faith: It issued in the good fruit of obedience to God, even when God’s command was that he should kill his own son. Rahab’s faith, too, was a living one: It issued in obedience to God through her protection of the Israelite spies, even when the cost of her obedience could have been her very life (James 2:21-25).

“Every good tree bears good fruit,” Jesus said (Matthew 7:17). If we claim to be Christians, then we are claiming to be “good trees,” and therefore we should be bearing “good fruit.”

We do good works to win a hearing for the gospel.

Sometimes the argument is made that when Christians do good things for other people and then share the gospel with them, they’ve pulled a bad bait-and-switch trick. I suppose that could be the case, especially if the Christian is thinking of his evangelism as a way to put notches in his religious belt. Then neither his good works nor his evangelism would be founded on care for the other person. His good works would be grounded on a desire to get to the evangelism, and the evangelism would be grounded in a desire to make himself look good. Love doesn’t figure in there at all.

“In fact, if we are Christians whose love and compassion is aroused not just by physical and emotional needs, but also by spiritual needs, then sharing the gospel will always be in the forefronts of our minds. We will naturally and readily move toward it as we are loving other people.”

But that’s really a terrible way to think about evangelism. Evangelism is the act of telling other people about the plight they are in and how they can be saved from it. It’s an act of deep love and compassion for that person. So the argument that that act of love and compassion can’t legitimately be accompanied by other acts of love and compassion doesn’t hold water. Christians, as we’ve seen, are to love the whole person, and therefore it makes perfect sense to love someone by giving them food and at the same time to love them in a different, eternally consequential way by giving them the gospel. There’s no bait-and-switch there; that’s simply holistic compassion—compassion for the whole person, not just part of him.

Understanding that, we can also see an opposite danger for those who buy the bait-and-switch argument. It’s that they will compassionately meet physical and even emotional needs, but out of fear of falling into a bait-and-switch scenario, they’ll neglect to compassionately meet the other person’s spiritual needs by sharing the gospel with them. In other words, they’ll show compassion to people only at the basest levels—and one could legitimately question whether that is real compassion at all. The reality is that people who make that mistake see evangelism as no more an act of compassion than the person who sees it as a way to put a notch in his belt; it’s just that they see the gospel as something they are trying to sell, and therefore they don’t want to “corrupt” their compassion by moving into the sales pitch.

If we understand evangelism itself, though, as a deep and profound act of love for another person, we will do it more often (because we won’t have the awkward feeling that we’re just giving a sales pitch), and we’ll do it with the right motives, too (love for people, instead of regard for ourselves). In fact, if we are Christians whose love and compassion is aroused not just by physical and emotional needs, but also by spiritual needs, then sharing the gospel will always be in the forefronts of our minds. We will naturally and readily move toward it as we are loving other people.

Does this, by the way, mean that good deeds that aren’t followed by the sharing of the gospel are somehow illegitimate or not worth doing? Of course not! They are worth doing! We can give a donation to Toys for Tots, or pick up a piece of litter in the street, or plant a tree when no one’s watching, or buy someone a sandwich when we’re already late to work and not say a word to them. And when we do, we will be doing a good thing, something that is motivated by our status both as a human being and, more particularly, as Christians bearing fruit under the loving rule of Jesus Christ. But when we do those things, we also need to know and admit that we are not restoring creation to its original shalom, we are not “expanding the borders of the kingdom,” and we are not “sharing the gospel without words.” We are simply doing things that redeemed human beings do. We are living as a human being who has been saved and regenerated by the grace of God. And who knows? Maybe the next time one of us buys the guy a sandwich, we’ll have time to explain why we’re doing it in the first place.

About the author:

Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Reviewed by Alistair Begg

Book Review: The Priority of Preaching

Christopher Ash, The Priority of Preaching. Christian Focus, 2009. 128 pages. $12.99

This book began as a series of addresses given at the 2008 Evangelical Ministry Assembly in London. It is written for the “ordinary” minister who preaches regularly to ordinary people in ordinary places. (All others should stop reading at this point!)

The author sets out to “persuade (or at least unsettle) those doubtful about preaching, and to deepen the conviction of those already converted to the priority of preaching.” With a tip of the hat to Gordon McConville’s commentary, Ash approaches the question of the priority of preaching from Deuteronomy. Such daring ought to immediately capture our attention.

THE (EXPOSITORY) PREACHER’S AUTHORITY

Chapter one considers the authority of the expository preacher in speaking the very words of God. Beginning with Moses, Ash lays down biblical and theological reasons for affirming the priority of preaching. For example, Ash writes that “God did not just give them the book, he gave them preachers of the book so that face to face they could be taught, challenged, rebuked and exhorted to repentance and faith.”

In this context, Ash has some provocative things to say concerning the place of Bible study groups. He also argues that preachers are to continue the “proclamatory work of the prophets.” “It is preaching,” says Ash, “that promotes a proper attitude of submission to the Word of God.” At a time when people are far more interested in discussion of the Bible than submission to the Bible, the need for preaching becomes all the more urgent.

MOSES: A MODEL OF TRANSFORMATIVE PREACHING

In chapter two, Ash sets forth Moses as a model of transformative preaching through considering four themes from Deuteronomy. The first of these is the reality of God. The impact of Moses’ preaching is directly related to the fact that the God he preaches is “the creator of the world and not some little godlet of the ghetto.”

Second, Moses’ proclamation takes into account the stubbornness of the people. A sense of the reality of God gives preachers the authority with which to speak, and a sense of the stubbornness of the human heart sends preachers back to their knees in dependence upon God.

A third aspect of Moses’ preaching is the urgency of faith. Ash writes, “It is a fine thing patiently to explain to me so that I understand. But if you love me, you will press home to me with all the force you can, my need to act on what I now understand and to act on it today.” It was the late professor John Murray who explained preaching in terms of the personal, passionate plea, “I beseech you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.”

The second chapter ends with a fourth theme, the wonder of grace. Moses called the people to believe in God’s gracious promises and so choose life. The chapter ends not with a call to work hard at the task of exposition, but to depend entirely on the work of the Holy Spirit.

PREACHING AND THE CONGREGATION

In the third chapter, Ash turns his attention to the congregation or the assembly. This may prove to be the most challenging chapter of all, since Ash argues that preaching and the assembly are inseparable. The assembly, he says, is not a collection of individuals who sometimes assemble, but it is an assembly whose members may sometimes be dispersed. Quoting from Deuteronomy 4, Ash points out that Moses warned the people that if they would not gather under the Word of God, but instead chose their own worship, then the Lord would scatter them.

As Ash traces the theme of the assembly through the Old Testament into the New, he helps us understand that “Jesus is the place where all Israel assembles in the gathering of the local church.” Pointing out that Jesus is “in the assembly business,” he shows how the Christian church is to stand out in a world that is marked by disintegration and fragmentation.

Ash drives home the necessity of this in a way that some readers may find unsettling. He says first of all that we do not gather solely in order to hear; rather, every gathering of the local church points forward to the time when all redeemed humanity will gather around God’s throne. Ash writes provocatively, “We could scrap Bible study groups and still be a church (an impoverished church perhaps, but still a church): but if we fail to gather together in our main meetings under the preached Word of God, we cease to be a church.”

Ash points out that the weekly gatherings of the local church to hear the preached word should be understood as the primary driving force of church life. Again in a way that will challenge many contemporary views, he suggests that all the other contexts in which the Bible is read and discussed have a supportive rather than the primary role in the life of a local church. In addition, I think you will be as helped as I was by considering Ash’s assertion that the goal of the Bible is Bible performance, and not Bible interpretation.

Finally, Ash observes that God reaches the world by shaping the church by the preached Word. The world looks on and learns something of God’s grace in these transformed communities. I only wish that he had time to develop his brief comments concerning the fact that “the church is the proper and normal context for evangelism.”

There is also a helpful appendix in which Ash lists seven blessings of consecutive expository preaching. His desire to exorcise the demons of relevance, entertainment, and immediacy will surely fuel some lively conversations between pastors over coffee.

WARMLY COMMENDED TO ALL

All in all I found this short book to be as helpful as anything that I’ve read in a long while on expository preaching. I commend it warmly to all.

About the author:

Alistair Begg is the senior minister of Parkside Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Reviewed by Matt Smethurst

Book Review: Taking Your Church to the Next Level

Gary McIntosh, Taking Your Church to the Next Level. Baker, 2009. 224 pages, $16.99

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of many nobler aims than helping pastors improve their churches. As the title suggests, Gary McIntosh’s Taking Your Church to the Next Level intends to do just that.

THE GIST

The book centers on a series of “life cycles” in which all churches find themselves and through which most churches journey.

McIntosh’s life cycle paradigm consists of five stages. First, the “emerging” stage is characterized by a visionary pastor, high commitment, little organizational structure, and seeker-sensitivity (37-40). This is followed by the “growing” stage, in which all the aforementioned features of the emerging stage are present to an even greater degree (48-50). The “consolidating” stage represents the apex of the life cycle. Morale peaks, ministry is maximized, and the building is packed (56-59). However, things begin to head south in the “declining” stage as members lollygag, vision blurs, enthusiasm evaporates, and ministries stall (67-69). The final destination is the “dying” stage (75-78). The mission has vanished, the building has emptied, and the few who remain can only reminisce.

McIntosh then considers the characteristics of various church sizes: “relational” (15-200 worshipers), “managerial” (200-400), “organizational” (400-800), “centralized” (800-1,500), and “decentralized” (1,500+). Gleaning insight from the worlds of business management, sociology, and church growth, McIntosh offers a swarm of research (charts, diagrams, figures, etc.) and advice concerning the impact of size on organizations.

Regrettably, the misfortunes of the book are many. I’ll highlight the two I perceive to be the most serious.

FRUITFULNESS OR FAITHFULNESS?

The first red flag I encountered was on the cover, where I spotted the subtitle: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. I understand what McIntosh means, but what if “what got you here” was simple, steady faithfulness to God’s Word? Do we ever want to go beyond that?

Early on he elaborates, “What brought a church to its current level of ministry fruitfulness will not get it to the next level of growth and vitality” (16). Though I’d like to think it wasn’t his intent, McIntosh seems to suggest that the measure of a church’s success is its size. He even agrees with one writer who says, “Size is the most revealing and useful frame of reference for examining the differences among congregations in American Protestantism” (15). A revealing and useful frame of reference? You bet. But the such frame of reference? I’m not prepared to go that far.

“The aim of every godly pastor is not to hear the words, ‘Well done, good and fruitful servant!’”

In McIntosh’s defense, size does impact many organizational realities in the church and can be an indicator of a church’s spiritual health. No doubt there’s some truth to the saying, “Count people because people count.” Luke certainly sees no problem with reporting the numerical growth of the church in Acts (e.g., 1:15; 2:41, 47; 4:4; 6:1, 7; 16:5). But it seems to me that McIntosh consistently overemphasizes church size by regarding it as a defining measure of a church’s health and success.

I mention this not because numbers are bad, but because Jesus wasn’t all that dazzled by them. In Matthew 7, for instance, he declares that those who enter destruction will be many, whereas those who enter life will be few (vv. 13-14). At the very least, doesn’t this text suggest that numbers are a misguided measure of pastoral success?

The aim of every godly pastor is not to hear the words, “Well done, good and fruitful servant!”

What, then, is biblical growth? I think it mainly involves the blooming of character, not crowds (see, for example, Col. 1:28). If you want to grow your numbers, I imagine this book will help. But if you want to grow your members, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for guidance. Which of the two is the heart of true “church growth”? Pastor, pursue your people’s sanctification; don’t settle for mere stats.

We live in a world that is wowed by crowds and unimpressed by the unspectacular. Unfortunately, this book seems to reflect rather than correct such a mentality.

CORPORATIONS OR CONGREGATIONS?

Another disappointing feature of the book is the extent to which it finds its backdrop in the world of business rather than the Bible. Indeed, McIntosh himself admits that “almost all the work on congregational life cycles has been extrapolated from business models” (28). Even his vocabulary is adopted from the business world.[31] The problem with this is that it runs counter to Scripture’s accent on pastors’ responsibility to shepherd God’s flock, rather than merely manage a corporation.

Though church leaders are certainly to be strong, exert authority, and wisely manage the church’s affairs, they are to do so as shepherds, not CEOs. Just as God relates to his people as a shepherd,[32] so his leaders, or “undershepherds,” are to do the same.[33] In Acts 20, for instance, Paul charges church leaders: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (v. 28; cf. 1 Pet. 5:1-3).

Yet sadly, the sort of leader McIntosh portrays looks more like a president of a firm than a pastor of a flock. Yes, pastors need to be wise institutional leaders, but far more fundamental is their calling to preach God’s Word, pray for their people, and seek the spiritual good of everyone entrusted to their care.

A DEAFENING SILENCE

Finally, the silence of Scripture in this book is simply deafening. From page 29 to 183, the reader is led on a 154-page pilgrimage without a single Scripture reference. Now I’m aware that McIntosh’s book isn’t intended to be a deeply theological treatment. But one would hope that any book on how pastors can improve their churches would at least be distinctly biblical.[34]

LET’S CONCLUDE

While I don’t for a moment doubt that I have much to learn from McIntosh as a brother in Christ, I do doubt whether Taking Your Church to the Next Level is a biblically faithful and therefore helpful book for pastors. Regrettably, I think I’d be more inclined to recommend this book to a friend in business than to a pastor.

About the author:

Matt Smethurst is an MDiv student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a member of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Reviewed by Deepak Reju

Book Review: Counsel From the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the Love of Christ

Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson, Counsel From the Cross: Connecting Broken Peple to the Love of Christ. Crossway, 2009. 240 pages. $15.99

“My counselor never prays or uses his Bible.”

“Sadly, many evangelical Christian counselors buy too heavily into secular thinking, while they too sparingly apply their faith to counseling.”

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a variation of that sentence, I’d be a rich man. Sadly, many evangelical Christian counselors buy too heavily into secular thinking, while they too sparingly apply their faith to counseling.

Counseling books that point us to the cross are always a breath of fresh air. Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson’s new book, Counsel From the Cross, is one of those books.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE BOOK? APPLYING THE GOSPEL TO LIFE

There are literally thousands of counseling books out on the market now. And with the rapid growth of Christian counseling, why add another? What seems to be lacking among most of these books is a distinctive focus on the gospel. Hence, the authors say early on:

We focus on gospel truths for the sake of Christians involved in helping ministries who want to see how the Bible and, in particular, the gospel of Jesus Christ can help others who are suffering. For instance, does the Bible address the blight of pornography or the darkness of depression? If so, how? Does the gospel speak to men and women with broken hearts and broken marriages? What does Jesus’ sinless life mean when your friend discovers that her husband has filed for divorce? (20)

The strength of this book is its relentless pursuit of the gospel. After a few foundational chapters (chs. 1-4), the authors attempt to apply this gospel-centered lens to a number of areas: counseling (ch. 5), sanctification (ch. 6), emotions (ch. 7), and relationships (ch. 8). The book concludes with a relishing of the gospel story (ch. 9), a defense of biblical counseling (appendix 1), a chart of Scripture passages for use in counseling (organized topically; appendix 2), an overview of the gospel (appendix 3), and an evangelistic presentation (appendix 4).

GOSPEL-CENTERED COUNSELING

One of the latest trends in counseling has been adopting the term “biblical” to make one’s work seem more scriptural. Traditional biblical counselors (those associated with NANC, CCEF, or other organizations long associated with the movement) have complained that generic Christian counselors are muddying the waters by borrowing the term.

It’s no surprise, then, that the Fitzpatrick and Johnson adopt the term “gospel-centered counseling,” both to put the emphasis in the right place (the gospel!) and to move away from terms like “biblical counseling” (which carries a lot of baggage itself). They define gospel-centered counseling as

…the process of one Christian coming alongside another with words of truth to encourage, admonish, comfort, and help—words drawn from Scripture, grounded in the gracious saving work of Jesus Christ, and presented in the context of relationship. The goal of this counseling is that the brother or sister in need of counsel would grow in his or her understanding of the gospel and how it applies to every area of life and then respond in grateful obedience in every circumstance, all to the building up of the church and for the glory of God. (92)

THE PROPER CONTEXT FOR COUNSELING: THE CHURCH

We spend a lot of time at 9Marks talking about the church. Why? Because it’s in the Bible. And also because sometimes it seems like the church doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Christian counseling is predominantly individualistic. For the most part, counselors see themselves as independent operators (with a limited amount of accountability to licensing organizations). One-on-one is the norm for Christian and secular counselors. So I was pleasantly surprised to read Fitzpatrick and Johnson’s discussion of the relationship between counseling and the church:

The gospel message—that God has made us his own in spite of our sin—is what we need to hear over and over again….Because of this, some of the first questions we should ask are: How are you doing with church attendance? Does your pastor preach the gospel to you every Sunday, and when he does, do you listen intently? How long has it been since you gave your soul a delicious draught of the glorious gospel message by listening attentively, expectantly, and prayerfully as it is preached from the pulpit? (42-43)

If you liked that quote, how about this:

….the ministry that furthers growth in Christlike desires, emotions, and behaviors belongs in the church and is a function of the church. It is only within the context of the church that ongoing spiritual care, encouragement, and accountability can occur. It is only as we use the powerful word of the gospel in each other’s lives that we can change. (48)

These authors understand that the proper context for spiritual growth is a local church and not our own individualistic endeavors.

OTHER USEFUL PARTS OF THE BOOK

Here are a few other things I liked about the book:

• In chapter 2, the authors helpfully explore three important means of grace in the Christian life: the preached Word, baptism, and fellowship with the saints. Relational issues are common in counseling books, but to hear counselors talk about preaching and baptism is highly unusual!

• In chapter 4, the authors describe two types of Christians: the happy moralist and the sad moralist. While we want to be careful not to be reductionistic, these profiles can help us recognize some dangerous tendencies among Christians. The happy moralist knows God loves him, pridefully thinks he is doing a pretty good job at persevering as a Christian, and feels that with a little help from God he will be just fine. The sad moralist sees God as transcendent and is always surprised that God would bother to help him out. He is prone to see himself as a worm or wretch who doesn’t deserve God’s love. He readily sees his sin and beats himself up for it. He doesn’t as readily embrace the grace that God offers us in the gospel which removes the guilt of our sin. Happy moralists plague the Western church, while reformed types are often sad moralists.

• In chapter 5, the authors describe the declarations of the gospel (i.e., our identity in Christ) and the obligations of the gospel (i.e., what the gospel asks of us—to fight sin and put on Christ). They use the lens of gospel declarations and obligations as a way to think about how to apply the gospel to people’s lives.

• In their discussion of the relationship between the gospel and our emotions in chapter 7, the authors do a good job of connecting our emotions to the biblical concept of the heart.

SHOULD YOU GET A COPY? YES!

The book is scripturally sound and helpful for equipping pastors, lay counselors, and anyone who wants to make the gospel central in their life and the lives of others. If you are interested in counseling, this book is well worth your time!

About the author:

Deepak Reju is an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. He has a PhD in Biblical Counseling from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

November/December 2010

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[1] Admittedly, Walzer, a committed communitarian, would be a little squishy and relativistic about whether or not such a basic universal idea actually exists.

[2] Readers who want to trace the theme of mission as it unfolds through the canon (with brief but valuable reflections on application toward the end) would be well served by Andreas Köstenberger and Peter O’Brien’s excellent book Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission (IVP, 2001).

[3] Though Wright does make an obscure and somewhat concerning statement at the end of chapter 11: “So let us neither (at one extreme) neglect our evangelistic responsibility by forgetting the vital importance that God places on the witnessing role of the church as God’s people, nor (at the other extreme) inflate our evangelistic egocentricity by imagining that God has no other means of communicating his good news” (199-200). I’m at a loss as to what “other means” for preaching the gospel besides God’s people Wright is referring to.

[4] In his informative study of recent debates surrounding the definition of mission, Keith Fernando soundly argues that “if men and women are alienated from God and face eternal judgment, then communication of the message of reconciliation must have precedence over social action. Again, this is not to deny the necessity of social engagement. However, the thrust of the New Testament is that eternal realities have immeasurably greater significance than temporal ones. We may feed the hungry, heal the sick, release the oppressed, but if they remain alienated from God then their gain is relatively small, for the eternal reality has a significance that infinitely surpasses the circumstances of the present (cf. 2 Cor. 4:17). Chester makes the same point in the context of a work in which he argues strenuously for Christian social involvement: ‘the greatest need of the poor, as it is for all people, is to be reconciled with God and escape his wrath.’” See Keith Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition”. Themelios, Volume 33 Issue 1 [May, 2008], 56. The end of the quote refers to Tim Chester, Good News to the Poor: Sharing the Gospel through Social Involvement (Leicester: IVP, 2004), 74.

[5]Ibid., 59.

[6] I’m borrowing the image of “ballast” from Kevin DeYoung’s excellent article, “There’s Something Worse than Death” in the September/October 2010 issue of the 9Marks Journal. See also Greg Gilbert’s similar reflections in his article “Why Hell is Integral to the Gospel” in the same Journal.

[7] For Wright’s more extensive discussion of the exodus, see The Mission of God, 253-80. For a critique of Wright’s views of the exodus which complements the discussion here, see the review of The Mission of God by Mike Gilbart-Smith in this Journal.

[8] D.A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Eerdmans, 2008), 150. Evidence that Wright thinks along similar lines is found in the handful of application questions in the book which apply Wright’s expanded definition of mission to the scope of the local church’s responsibilities.

[9] Ibid., 150-151

[10] Ibid., 152.

[11] For a great article which considers the New Testament use of the word “gospel” and its implications for our definition of the gospel, see http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/files/2010/10/for_the_fame_of_gods_name.excerpt.pdf

[12] See http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/2007_forum_penal_substitution.pdf

[13] David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Eerdmans, 2010). See Jonathan Leeman’s review of this book in the present 9Marks Journal.

[14] See especially chapter 7.

[15] Here a couple recent examples should suffice. First, in his foreword to Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner’s new book City of Man, Tim Keller writes concerning German Christians in the 1930’s, “Ironically, the Lutherans followed a two-kingdoms approach to Christ and culture, in which Christians are not to bring their faith into politics” (Timothy Keller, “Foreword,” in Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, City of Man [Moody, 2010]), 11. Whatever impact some variety of two kingdoms theology may have had on German Lutherans in the 1930’s, the statement that in two kingdoms theology, “Christians are not to bring their faith into politics” would hardly be a fair critique of the robust vision for cultural and political engagement VanDrunen outlines in the present volume. Second, in a recent interview with the Gospel Coalition, Greg Thornbury summarily dismissed two kingdoms theology as “quietist” and “Lutheran.” Most contemporary evangelicals seem to regard two kingdom theology as an exclusively Lutheran doctrine, a view VanDrunen labors at length to correct in his recent book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Eerdmans, 2010). See Jonathan Leeman’s review for more on this volume.

[16] This theme recurs throughout the book, though see especially pages 62 through 70.

[17] One caveat I would offer is that VanDrunen’s arguments against the view that our cultural labors somehow get taken up and transformed in the new creation do not seem to me to be conclusive.

[18] Although far from perfect, George Ladd’s five theses on the relationship between the kingdom of God and the church are a useful starting point. See George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Rev. Ed.; Eerdmans, 1993), 109-117.

[19] VanDrunen’s treatment of the church and the kingdom, especially his handling of Matthew 16:18-19, is in many respects complementary to Jonathan Leeman’s proposal in chapter four of The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love (Crossway, 2010). Interestingly, both discussions draw on Jonathan Pennington’s work on the kingdom of heaven in Matthew. See Jonathan Pennington, Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew (Baker, 2009) and “The Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, vol. 12 (Spring 2008): 44-51.

[20] See Bobby Jamieson’s review of VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms (Crossway, 2010), a theological articulation and practical application of his version of the two kingdoms doctrine.

[21] See David Hesselgrave (141-65) for a helpful summary of the Incarnationalism v. Representationalism debate. Hesselgrave argues for the latter.

[22] Stott, Christian Mission, 23, 24.

[23] Ibid., 27.

[24] Ibid., 30.

[25] Ibid., 24.

[26] Lyons, The Next Christians, 55.

[27] Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples, 199.

[28] D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 566.

[29] Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples, 217.

[30] Ibid., 215.

[31] For example, he writes, “As a church grows ever larger, the leaders must manage the brand to make certain it remains true to its history” (177). The danger with such language is that it suggests God’s church is more a product to be promoted than a people to be pastored.

[32] E.g., Pss. 23:1; 77:20; 80:1; Isa. 40:11; Eccl. 12:11; Zech. 9:16; 10:2; Matt. 9:36; Jn. 10:1-18, 27-30; Lk. 15:3-7; Heb. 13:20; 1 Pet. 2:25; 5:4; Rev. 7:17.

[33] E.g., Jer. 10:21; 23:1-4; Ezek. 34; Isa. 63:11; Jn. 21:15-19.

[34] For instance, over the course of more than 150 pages we hear from Pat Riley (21), James Taylor (87), and Wayne Gretzky (115), yet not once from Jesus Christ.