|
The
Burden of Change
|
|
John M. Frame |
|
Historical change is an important part of our ethical situation.
As we apply the law of God, we must understand how it applies to each
situation that comes before us. That work never ends. We may not assume that
the Reformers or the Puritans, for example, finished the task, no matter how
great our respect for these great ministers of the Word. The Puritans did not
have to evaluate nuclear warfare, genetic engineering, modern science, or the
“new age” from Scripture; but we cannot avoid those tasks in our own time.
I must warn you
against taking certain popular shortcuts.
Unhealthy
Traditionalism
For example, it is
not scriptural to approach ethics with a mere traditionalism, a desire merely
to emulate the Christianity of a past age. Whether or not we believe that
past ages were “better” than this one, our mandate is not to repristinate or
recreate a past situation; it is to apply the scriptures to the situation of
today. I fear that some churches seek to be mere museum pieces: historical
artifacts where people can go to hear old-fashioned talk and experience older
forms of church life; spiritual versions of Colonial Williamsburg. On the
contrary, Christian worship is to be contemporary, because it must be
intelligible (1 Cor. 14), and the church’s preaching must adapt (insofar as
Scripture permits) to the language and habits of the target population (1
Cor. 9).
Mistaken View of
Divine Sovereignty
People who pit
divine sovereignty against human responsibility and therefore refuse to make
use of modern technology, demographic studies, etc. also avoid the task
illegitimately. All modern tools must be evaluated by the Scripture as to
what we should use and how we should use them. But the fact that God is
sovereign in salvation does not invalidate human study, strategy, plans,
techniques, or efforts. Otherwise there would be no point in seeking even to
communicate effectively; we could walk into a crowd, say any dumb thing we
please, and wait for God to act. We all know that is not right. We all see
the importance of studying the languages and cultures of our target audiences,
and in preaching classes we learn to speak effectively. In doing so we have
no thought that such human preparation violates divine sovereignty. Why
should we not extend this logic to demographic studies and modern
communicative techniques?
The Case for Godly
Change
If we avoid these
shortcuts, we will have to face the fact that ethics in our time, theology as
well, to say nothing of church life and evangelistic strategy, should be
different today, in important ways, from all past ages of church history,
including the New Testament period. We face situations (both difficulties and
opportunities) that were not faced by Machen, Kuyper, Hodge, Edwards, Owen,
Calvin, Augustine, and Paul. The Word must be applied to those new
situations. Of course, I grant that we are in the same warfare as the older
saints, and that we must use the same spiritual weapons. But in its specifics
that war is different now.
The Lazy and the
Shortcutters
Those who take the
lazy way, the way of shortcuts, will be left behind. They may be instructive
historical artifacts, but they will not be powerful instruments to bring
people to Christ. God can, of course, use the feeblest instruments; but He
typically honors the work of believers who count the costs and seize the
opportunities.
Besides laziness,
there is a certain selfishness about the shortcut mentality. Shortcutters are
those who feel comfortable with certain “tried and true” forms of life and
witness, forms that God has used in the past. Then they seek to produce a
theological rationale for keeping those forms even when times have changed.
They talk as if they are fighting for Biblical principle, though in fact they
are merely arguing for a certain application of Scripture that was
appropriate to a past situation.
Confusing the Debate
The debate is
confused, of course, by words like “conservative,” which are applied both to
defenders of scriptural principle and to those who merely defend past ways of
doing things without scriptural justification. But defending authentic Biblical
principle is one thing; defending the continuance of past applications into
our own time is something very different. Both shortcutters and critics of
shortcutters need to be more aware of this distinction.
Against Selfishness
But what masquerades
as a battle for Biblical principle is often at bottom a mere rationalization
of selfish impulses, a desire to stay comfortable, to avoid having to change
familiar patterns. Often, however, Scripture itself is on the side of change!
1 Corinthians 9 is an important text in this respect. Paul was willing to be
a Jew among the Jews, a Gentile among the Gentiles, that some might be saved.
He did not seek his own comfort, even his own rights. Indeed, he allowed his
body to be buffeted, lest while preaching to others he himself should be a
castaway. He tried "to please everybody in every way. For I am not
seeking my own good, but the good of many, that they might be saved" (1
Cor. 10:33). And note: Immediately after this verse, he urges, “Follow my
example, as I follow the example of Christ” (11:1).
This means that in
our evangelistic methodology, indeed in our worship (for that too has an
evangelistic element, 14:24f), our goal must not be to please ourselves, but
to bend and stretch, to accept discomfort and the trauma of change, in order
to speak the Christian Faith into the contemporary world.
|